Popular Children’s Literature in Britain (review)

Grenby's introduction exposes the unreliability of the evidence that scholars have trusted: sales figures and circulation records tell us merely what adults acquiring books for children thought they would, or should, want to read; retellings and variations demonstrate what publishers and authors hoped adults would buy; and reader surveys and children's diaries reveal only how savvy youngsters are about the answers expected from them. Since the endpoint of the collection is an analysis of the Harry Potter craze, this reevaluation of the relationship between children's literature and popular entertainment situates J. K. Rowling's series, and the rest of the texts discussed here, in a long tradition of inscribing childhood both within and against mass culture.