Since its inaugural edition held at Roehampton University in 2004, The Child and the Book Conference has become an important scholarly gathering for students and researchers of children's and young adult literature. Following successful editions across universities in Europe and North America, The Child and the Book Conference 2025 (CBC25) will be hosted by Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

Children Shaping The(ir) World: Between the Exceptional and the Everyday

In recent years, exceptional children from all over the world have made it into our news media. Young people like Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, Thandiwe Abdullah, and Bana Alabed have captured our attention because they manage to perform eloquent speeches to crowds, inspire and mobilise huge protest marches, and address violations that had remained hidden. Adults mostly celebrate these young people’s extraordinary achievements. In children’s literature studies, their prominence has inspired several discussions about the possibility of political childhoods.

However, by basing our understanding of childhood on the examples of these extraordinary children, we run the risk of making it a limited – even exclusionary – concept. By way of alternative, we propose to explore the politics of childhood from the vantagepoint of not just the exceptional but of the everyday as well. Children Shaping The(ir) World: Between the Exceptional and the Everyday invites its participants to consider if we can only recognise power in children who stand out from the crowd or if there is a political dimension to children’s daily lives that we have yet to recognise. Further investigations may address the nature of the power of children who do not necessarily change society at large but do shape the world immediately surrounding them, impacting not just their own lives, but also the life of family members or friends on a more intimate scale. 

We aim to explore children’s impact on the(ir) world in a broader context, ranging from the exceptional to the everyday. We invite discussions on what a quotidian citizenship for children can look like and how that relates to the impressive achievements of extraordinary children featured on the news. We propose to examine what effect celebrations of exceptionalism and concomitant individualism have on constructions of childhood and readers’ agency. Other possible questions include: What is the impact of celebrations of exceptionalism that are one-dimensional and hyperbolically positive? How do everyday actions of children shape society and/or the world around them? What forms of heroism or exceptionalism bears the everyday? We encourage participants to be wary of exceptionalist narratives that eschew systemic forms of marginalisation and oppression and to be aware of the limited extent to which they may resonate with young audiences. 

Call for papers

Click here for call for papers. Abstracts due on October 31 2024.

Logistics and practical information

Coming soon.

Contact

Email: cbc2025@tilburguniversity.edu

Follow us on Instagram @childandthebook2025

See you in Tilburg!

Organising committee: Sara Van den Bossche, Suzanne van der Beek, Rosalyn Borst, Lois Burke, Sonali Kulkarni, Élodie Malanda, Ginny Xu