Description: "Following the 'material turn' in the humanities, this book brings perspectives from science and ecology into dialogue with children's fiction written and published in the UK and the USA in the 21st century. It develops the concept of 'entanglement', which originated in 20th century quantum physics but has been applied to cultural critique, through a reading of Fantastika literature. It surveys a wide-raging scope of literary texts, covering the gothic, fantasy and other forms of speculative fiction, to argue that Fantastika positions entanglemet as an ethical imperative that transforms our imaginative relationship with materiality. In doing so, it synthesizes perspectives from a similarly diverse range of areas, including ecology, physics, anthropology, biology and literary studies to examine the storied matter of children's Fantastika as ground from which we might to begin to imagine an as-yet-unrealised future that addresses the problems of our present"--
Brief description: Chloé Germaine is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and a co-director of the Manchester Game Centre.
Review Quotes: "[The Dark Matter of Children's Fantastika Literature] is a huge achievement: the culmination of the author's immersion in a field for a significant time ... It is refreshing to read a book that is determined to show how texts 'matter' in all senses of this word. [It] contributes to our field by reading 'literary criticism, philosophy, and science through one another and through the novels' it encounters. I enjoyed reading it very much." --The British Society for Literature and Science