Childhood in Animation: Navigating a Secret World

Childhood in Animation: Navigating a Secret World explores how children are viewed in animated cinema and television and examines the screen spaces that they occupy.

The image of the child is often a site of conflict, one that has been captured, preserved, and recollected on screen; but what do these representations tell us about the animated child and how do they compare to their real counterparts? Is childhood simply a metaphor for innocence, or something far more complex that encompasses agency, performance, and othering? Childhood in Animation focuses on key screen characters, such as DJ, Norman, Lilo, the Lost Boys, Marji, Parvana, Bluey, Kirikou, Robyn, Mebh, Cartman and Bart, amongst others, to see how they are represented within worlds of fantasy, separation, horror, politics, and satire, as well as viewing childhood itself through a philosophical, sociological, and global lens. Ultimately, this book navigates the rabbit hole of the ’elsewhere’ to reveal the secret space of childhood, where anything (and everything) is possible.

This volume will be of great interest to scholars and students of animation, childhood studies, film and television studies, and psychology and sociology.

Jane Batkin is Associate Professor of film and media at the University of Lincoln, where she teaches animation and film studies. She is the author of Identity in Animation (2017) and has had chapters published in several edited collections, including Animated Mischief: Essays on Subversiveness in Cartoons since 1987 (Duchaney and Silverman, 2023), Coraline: A Closer Look at Studio LAIKA’s Stop-Motion Witchcraft (Mihaelova, 2021), and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: New Perspectives on Production, Reception, Legacy (Pallant and Holliday, 2021).