CFP Children's Literature and Graphic Narrative (10/1/2025)

Children's Literature and Graphic Narrative

deadline for submissions:
October 1, 2025

full name / name of organization:
Routledge

contact email:
ahalsall@yorku.ca

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/07/08/childrens-literature-and-graphic-narrative

In recent years, publishers and children’s book professionals have registered a new enthusiasm for comic and graphic narrative forms. Graphic narratives as children’s literature offer an exciting new type of text for children and youth, providing important insights into the interests and capabilities of these youngsters as readers and as potential agents of change. Curiously, children’s literature criticism has tended to ignore or, at best, marginalize comics and graphic narratives for young people. This “blind spot” in children’s literature and comics criticism, as Charles Hatfield has called it on a number of occasions, is now being addressed.

This reference text, Children's Literature and Graphic Narrative, will be a part of Routledge’s exciting new series, Introductions to YA and Children’s Literature. This volume, aimed at graduates / undergraduates new to the field as well as scholars of children’s literature and graphic narrative, will balance foundational information about these two fields and key topics with new developments and trends related to children’s literature and graphic narrative, broadly described.

Please consider submitting a proposal!

Chapter-length submissions may consider issues such as the following but are not limited by these suggestions:

• Format / target audience / length;
• The blend of word and image / different illustrative traditions;
• The lived experiences of childhood(s) and youth;
• Politics / politics of childhood / political activism / social justice;
• Race and ethnicity / diverse youth stories / immigration stories / migrant comics, refugee stories / postcolonial comics;
• Climate change / climate activism;
• Ideas of disability (physical, emotional, educational, etc.) / mental health;
• Indigenous comics; comics and Indigeneity;
• Adaptations / transmedial storytelling;
• Genres (superheroes; science fiction; romance; funny animal stories, etc.);
• Manga, shōnen (boys’ manga) and shōjo (girls’ manga); Tokyopop;
• Sex and sexuality / intersectionality / girlhood / boyhood / LGBTQ+ / queerness, etc.;
• Class and labor;
• Censorship / book bans;
• Comic book prizes and awards;
• Digital comics for kids;
• Series

Please send a 300-word proposal and 50-word short bio (as MS Word documents) by 1 October 2025 to Alison Halsall at ahalsall@yorku.ca. All submissions will be acknowledged.

Full chapter length academic submissions: approximately 15-18 pages double-spaced, 12-point font, addressing both a scholarly and an advanced general reader.

Contributors’ first drafts will be due by 1 February 2026, and final drafts by 1 April 2026 for a possible summer 2027 publication date.

Contributors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce images in their article and must pay permission costs. Permissions must be cleared before publication. Please send low-resolution images (small .jpegs) in separate attachments. If the article is accepted, high-quality images will be required.



Last updated July 14, 2025