The essays in Liminal Spaces in Children's and Young Adult Literature, edited by West, considers multiple interpretations of liminality in children's and young adult literature. The collection is divided into two parts. The first part of the collection includes essays on “clusters” of books written for children or young adults exploring themes and genres that consider connections between texts in their treatment of liminal spaces. Examples include Claudia Mills's chapter, which considers children's books set in libraries, examining the library as a physical liminal space. Scott G. Eberle's analysis of found objects and portal fantasies in the work of C.S. Lewis and Francis Hodgson Burnett considers imaginative, or abstract, liminal spaces. The second part of the collection includes essays about individual works in which the author's use of liminal space is an essential component of the story. Examples include Trina Marie Rumfelt's chapter focusing on Kathrine Paterson's use of liminal space as escape from the pressures of reality in The Bridge to Terabithia. Sarah Minslow's chapter considers liminality and double consciousness in Angeline Boulley's young adult novel The Firekeeper's Daughter, whose protagonist is Ojibwe and white. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Choice Reviews

It overwhelmingly achieves its objective of recentering the conversation in children's literature studies on the liminal as dynamic, exciting, and even quasi-magical space in which children may encounter and interact with profound ways of being and belonging.

Children's Literature

A lively and diverse set of meditations on liminality in and around children's literature, as observable in both single texts (as in the essays in Part Two) and across multitextual and/or multigeneric registers (as in Part One). Addressing titles and contexts both familiar and surprising, contributors show how literature makes the most of liminality's affordances, enlarging our options for thinking, learning, and living.

Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida