About the Conference

The Child and the Book is an international conference which offers graduate/post graduate scholars the opportunity to present papers on their current research in the interdisciplinary field of children’s literature. The inaugural The Child and the Book Conference was held at Roehampton University, England, in 2004. Successive conferences have been held at the University of Antwerp, Belgium; the University of Newcastle, England; Boğaziçi University, Turkey; and Buffalo State College, the United States.

The sixth annual The Child and the Book Conference will take place May 1-3, 2009, at Vancouver Island University, in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada.

In the current climate of pro- and anti-globalization movements, competing nationalisms, and the expansion and contraction of states, the relationship between the individual and place continues to be fraught. In what ways might we see children’s literature contributing to the ongoing discussion of this relationship? The theme for the 2009 conference will be This Land is Our Land. Our keynote speakers will be Perry Nodelman, professor emeritus from the University of Winnipeg, and Mavis Reimer, Director of the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures at the University of Winnipeg.