Young children and works of the imagination^†

† The article begins a new series of articles concerned with works of imagination and the early childhood years, which is to be continued over several issues. The series will be edited for the Journal by Laura Pollard and Michael Rustin.

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Notes

† The article begins a new series of articles concerned with works of imagination and the early childhood years, which is to be continued over several issues. The series will be edited for the Journal by Laura Pollard and Michael Rustin.

1 Esther Leslie, an authority on Walter Benjamin, has pointed out how the conventions of Aaardman films (Wallace and Gromit, Shaun and Sheep and others, with their hand-crafted puppets and stop-motion animation) are the entire obverse of ‘mechanical reproduction’, and notes the cultural assertion implicit in the choice which these film makers have made (Leslie, 1997).

2 Zipes (2002, 2011) gives a radical historical interpretation to these folk tales, Marxist rather than Freudian, seeing them as allegories of scarcity and social oppression. Thus Hansel and Gretel are put out of their house because their family is literally starving, as many families did in early modern Europe, not as a representation of the violent phantasy life of families.

3 Serlin (2014) has an insightful discussion of the meaning of Thomas the Tank Engine for one of her child patients.