Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children's Literature

Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Childrens Literature examines distinguished classics of childrens literature both old and newincluding L. Frank Baums Oz books, Laura Ingalls Wilders Little House series, J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter novels, Lemony Snickets A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Stephenie Meyers Twilight seriesto explore the queer tensions between innocence and heterosexuality within their pages. Pugh argues that children cannot retain their innocence of sexuality while learning about normative heterosexuality, yet this inherent paradox runs throughout many classic narratives of literature for young readers. Childrens literature typically endorses heterosexuality through its invisible presence as the de facto sexual identity of countless protagonists and their families, yet heterosexualitys ubiquity is counterbalanced by its occlusion when authors shield their readers from forthright considerations of one of humanitys most basic and primal instincts. The book demonstrates that tensions between innocence and sexuality render much of childrens literature queer, especially when these texts disavow sexuality through celebrations of innocence. In this original study, Pugh develops interpretations of sexuality that few critics have yet ventured, paving the way for future scholarly engagement with larger questions about the ideological role of children's literature and representations of children's sexuality. Tison Pugh is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Queering Medieval Genres and Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature and has published on childrens literature in such journals as Childrens Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Marvels and Tales.