Building Children’s Worlds reviewed in ‘International Research in Children’s Literature’

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Stylised watercolour sketch of a modern city skyline with a balloon and airliner flying above.

Building Children’s Worlds (Routledge, 2023), an interdisciplinary edited book by Architecture’s Dr Torsten Schmiedeknecht, and Prof. Jill Rudd and Dr Emma Hayward (English), has been reviewed in ‘International Research in Children’s Literature’ in May 2024. The peer reviewed journal describes the book as follows:

Architecture is frequently overlooked as a background in picturebook research. However, the field of children’s literature has increasingly focused on architectural spaces and environments in picturebooks as a result of the ‘spatial turn’ and the ‘pictorial turn’. Yet there are still relatively few studies specialising in the architecture of children’s picturebooks. Building Children’s Worlds: The Representation of Architecture and Modernity in Picturebooks is groundbreaking in this field, employing various research methodologies to present a diverse

architectural world in children’s picturebooks that is closely related to history, culture, ideology, and emotion. The collection encourages further exploration of architecture and children’s literature and will undoubtedly appeal to all those interested in modern architecture and modernity in children’s picturebooks.

 Stylised watercolour sketch of a modern city skyline with a balloon and airliner flying above.

The full review can be found here:

https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/ircl.2024.0568