[Images of Childhood is a] valuable contribution to the field of visual culture studies. Overarchingly, I highly recommend this text as an approachable primer and as an expansive entry into the understudied realm of the visual discourses of childhood.

Visual Studies

Duncum's text ranges widely, providing concrete and provocative images and examples, guiding the reader to consider the source and the effect of the images of childhood that shape their daily interactions with children.

Studies in Art Education

Images of Childhood will be a useful reference for scholars working on the history of children and youth. Sections could also be readily assigned in classes to introduce students to the constructed nature of
childhood in clear and captivating ways.

The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth

Images of Childhood defamiliarizes childhood, showing that, far from being a normal and natural state, childhood is and always has been thoroughly mythologized. ... [It] demythologizes some of our most common assumptions about children and the nature of childhood. ... By shining a spotlight on the nexus of childhood and pictures, it sets itself apart from other texts in childhood studies ... This book is a sobering reminder that depictions of children serve ideological agendas that have little to do with actual children.

Journal of Childhood Studies

Anchored by respect for children and by compelling imagery, Paul Duncum comprehensively and captivatingly interrogates multiple and contradictory discourses that generate both personal and public conceptions of childhood.

Marissa McClure, Professor of Art Education, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA; Associate Editor, Childhood Art: An International Journal of Research

Images convey so much more than we realize. This extraordinary and seminal text will surely expand, enrich, even interrogate, one's conceptions of what childhood has meant across history, cultural studies and psychology.

Rita L. Irwin, Distinguished University Scholar and Professor, Art Education, The University of British Columbia, Canada