Little Geographies : : Children's Literature and Local Place

This dissertation explores the intersections of twentieth- century U.S. children's literature, regional place, and local place. I argue that child characters in major works for children become social actors through engagement with their immediate environments. Formations of childhood and place in these novels are co-constructive; child characters influence the sociospatial development of their locations just as much as their locations influence the sociospatial development of child characters. Yet despite the narrative of accrued agency in these texts, child characters' actions have important limits that complicate a linear reading of passivity to agency. The convergence of childhood and locality in children's literature mutually addresses two cultural concerns among twentieth- century U.S. adults: the perceived disappearance of the local and the perceived disappearance of childhood. Children's literature that fixes child characters in accessible environments ensures that both the imagined child and the imagined local survive. In this project, I look at six children's texts, showing how these books' productions of local place indicate that U.S. regionalist fiction finds a home in writing for children well into the twentieth century. These children's texts fall into four categories, each defying standard critical assumptions regarding regional literature's practices. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a work of high fantasy for children, harnesses itself to the writings of Hamlin Garland, employing a regional sensibility in its production of local color and colorful locales. Although The Secret Garden takes place in England, Frances Hodgson Burnett uses familiar tropes of U.S. regional fiction to manufacture the locality of Yorkshire, participating in a translocal formation of place. Little House on the Prairie and Caddie Woodlawn use nostalgia and communal belonging to build regional environments that reinforce nationalist paradigms. New York City children's fiction Eloise, Harriet the Spy, and The Planet of Junior Brown offer opportunities for their child characters to construct local environments largely without interference from adults. Finally, I acknowledge the significance of interdisciplinarity to studies of children's literature, and consider how the book version of this dissertation will incorporate research from the field of human geographies in its analysis of place in writing for childre