ABSTRACT
Fiction is the quintessential children’s literature, exemplifying the genre’s ability to reflect and challenge the culture that receives it and to enchant and provoke children and adults who encounter it. This chapter explores children’s fiction, noting its eighteenth-century beginnings and its nineteenth- and twentieth-century expansions, and then focusing on the literature to the current day. I examine fiction in four different categories: the plausible present (realism), the plausible past (historical fiction), the unreal (fantasy and science fiction), and the unlikely (adventure, mysteries, and survival stories), tracking their relevant themes, formats, and issues.
