Variations of the Hero’s Journey in Contemporary British, French and Australian Picture Books about the Great War: Reimagining the Horrors of the Past

This book is grounded in the belief that every nation had its own ’Great War’, and that children’s picture books are an important barometer of each country’s national approach.

To explore the depiction of the Great War in modern Australian, British, and French children’s picture books, where this historical event is reimagined in different ways as a futile conflict, as a painful victory, and as part of one country’s founding mythology, this book uses the concept of the hero’s journey as an underlying framework. It claims that this monomythic pattern, as developed by Joseph Campbell and modified by Christopher Vogler, not only informs all picture books selected for this project but can also be used to highlight the extent to which modern children’s picture book authors and illustrators conform to their respective nation’s cultural memory.

It further maintains that the specific historical context of the Great War in these children’s picture books can be used to identify a variant of the hero’s journey: the ’ordinary soldier’s journey’. This analysis of children’s picture books about the Great War through the lens of Campbell’s hero’s journey will be of interest to both students and researchers in the fields of children’s literature, literary theory, history, cultural studies, and education.

Martin Kerby is an Associate Professor (curriculum and pedagogy) in the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. His research focuses on historical and educational areas, with numerous publications that explore children’s picture books, multiliteracies, biography, military history, and artistic and cultural responses to conflict. He is a research cluster leader in the School of Education focussing on student experience and learning. He has published extensively and received numerous awards and grants. Dr Kerby is also the chief editor of the Australian Art Education journal which was ranked in Scopus under his editorial leadership.

Denise Burkhard holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Bonn, where she teaches English Studies. She is also an assistant editor of the peer-reviewed online journal Neo-Victorian Studies. Aside from neo-Victorian fiction, her research interests include nineteenth-century British literature and culture, historical fiction, children’s literature and adaptation studies. In addition to several articles, she has published the monographs Exploited, Empowered, Ephemeral: (Re-)Constructions of Childhood in Neo-Victorian Fiction (Brill/V&R unipress/Bonn University Press, 2023) and Ancient Dwarf Kingdom or the Hoard of a Fiery Dragon?: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Erebor as a Transformed and Dynamic Place (Tectum, 2017) and co-edited two collections.

Alison Bedford is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia with a specialisation in History curriculum and pedagogy and education research. She is editor in chief of Curriculum Perspectives. Her own research interests include the representations of diversity in children’s books and history pedagogy. Dr Bedford’s publications are wide ranging and include the monograph In Frankenstein’s Wake: Mary Shelley, Morality and Science Fiction (McFarland, 2021), as well as a number of history education textbooks for both tertiary and secondary students.

Marion Gymnich is Professor of English Literature and Culture at the University of Bonn and Vice-Speaker of the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. Since 2023, she is Dean of Studies of the Faculty of Arts. She was visiting lecturer at the University of Lodz (Poland) and visiting professor at the University of Graz (Austria). She has published widely on children’s and young adult literature, British literature from the nineteenth century to the present, postcolonial literature, genre theory, narrative theory, gender studies, audio-visual media, and memory studies.

Margaret Baguley is a Professor in arts education, curriculum and pedagogy and the Associate Head Research for the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland. Her contribution to quality learning, teaching and research has been recognised through a series of awards. She has published extensively, and her research encompasses the arts, creative collaboration, creative leadership, and historical commemoration. She has an extensive teaching and research background across all facets of education, in addition to maintaining her arts practice. Dr Baguley has completed a term on the Queensland selection committee for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship and is also the Vice President of Art Education Australia.