ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the “where” of children’s literature – that is, the settings, the playworlds, the places and spaces of the fictional universe, and the maps and means by which stories make room(s) in the minds of readers. The underlying assumption is that a sense of place (the “where”) is central to the experience of literature. Drawing on examples from the international canon of children’s literature, we show how critics, from Bakhtin and Lewis to Tuan, Bachelard, and Lefebvre, have theorized literary geography (in a wide sense) and developed different critical approaches to it.
