ABSTRACT
Reading books can be a way for children and adults to engage in intergenerational dialogue. All children’s books offer a form of intergenerational communication, since they are usually authored by adults, always mediated by adults and read by an audience that is diverse in age. Some children’s books, however, thematise the meaning of age and intergenerational relationships more than others. David Almond’s work is particularly suited for a multi-perspectival study of age in children’s literature. He is a crosswriter who has published work for various ages, often thematises age and memory, and his work has been lauded for its aesthetic qualities and thematic richness. His books do not invite simple mimetic readings, but construct age in nuanced and sometimes ambivalent ways, and on various levels of the text. This chapter provides a short overview of recent theoretical concepts from age studies that are relevant to the literary analysis of age in children’s literature, and then offers an overview of the chapters in the book to list the theoretical paradigms and different methodologies on which the authors draw.
