Bookbird 1 / 2026
Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, Vol. 64, No. 1, 2026
This issue is entitled “Crime in Children’s Literature”, but equally it could have been called “Nostalgia and Children’s Literature”, for as the editors point out in the opening paragraph of their editorial, injustice, detectives and crimes of various kinds have been a long-time presence in books for young readers and a stirrer of nostalgia for older readers.
The contents of this issue demonstrate that a broad theme encompassing crime and criminality have enduring popularity across countries and continents. The agency accorded to young sleuths as they investigate wrongdoing receives attention as do the challenges experienced by dyslexic sleuths in a number of popular crime novels from the 21st century. Crime and its consequences in the mid-twentieth century are the focus for an article set in the Florida Keys which presents a turn to white-collar crime in writing for young readers with the loot now modern commodities and institutional deception.
Themes of wrongdoing and its consequences have long played apart in fairytales, and here discussions around this theme are a focus for articles from Armenia and Kerala. Another article proposes that the intersection of horror and detective genres in two picturebooks illustrates an argument that such texts offer young readers a preparation for traumas which may lie ahead for them. And indeed some of such traumas are the focus of a short piece about Armin Greder’s picturebooks about societal injustices.
Social injustice has always been highlighted by Beverley Naidoo in her books, and Children of the Stone City, an allegory, set in a recognizable part of the Middle East, is no exception as this interview shows. Banned and censored books feature in a ‘letter’ from the Banned Books Network Münster, and two of the texts reviewed in the regular “Books on Books” discuss controversy, ideology and censorship.
The short ‘postcard’ recommendations scattered throughout issue 64.1 focuses on a variety of texts for young readers, some with a crime theme, and ‘Focus IBBY’ presents recent IBBY activities, none of which have any criminal intent!
Enjoy reading this splendid issue of Bookbird!
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Crime in Children’s Literature: Playing, Breaking, and Restoring the Rules | by Vera Veldhuizen and Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang | I |
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The Idea of (Dis)Order in the Keys: White-Collar Crime in Mid-Twentieth-Century Florida Children’s Literature | by Noah D. Mullens | 3 |
A Crime Not Committed: The Motif of Slander in Some Folktale Adaptations of Armenian Children’s Literature | by Nvard Vardanyan and Lusine Hayriyan | 11 |
When Morality Masks Law: Exploring Crime and Justice in Malayalam Children’s Literature . through Mayavi Comics | by Sanjay Mohan N M and Jibhi Bhaskaran | 19 |
The Problem with Reading Clues: Identifying the Dyslexic Detective in Children’s and Young Adult Mysteries | by Elizabeth Leach-Leung | 29 |
Child Detectives and Ghosts: Unearthing Difficult Realities in Children’s Occult Crime Fiction | by Sietse W. Hagen | 39 |
Resilient and Fearless: Picturebook Biographies about Chinese American Women | by Jongsun Wee, Sohyun Meacham, and Sunah Chung | 47 |
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Children of the Stone City: An Interview with Beverley Naidoo | by Julia Hope | 58 |
A Letter from the Banned Books Network Münster | byJennifer Gouck, Corinna Norrick-Rühl, Sarah Pyke, and Silvia Schultermandl | 61 |
Armin Greder’s Books and Social Injustices | by Jessica Paolillo | 65 |
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