Children’s books seek to assist children to understand themselves and their world. Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children’s Literature demonstrates how settler-society texts position child readers as citizens of postcolonial nations, how they represent the colonial past to modern readers, what they propose about race relations, and how they conceptualize systems of power and government.
Clare Bradford focuses on texts produced since 1980 in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand and includes picture books, novels, and films by Indigenous and non-Indigenous publishers and producers. From extensive readings, the author focuses on key works to produce a thorough analysis rather than a survey. Unsettling Narratives opens up an area of scholarship and discussion—the use of postcolonial theories—relatively new to the field of children’s literature and demonstrates that many texts recycle the colonial discourses naturalized within mainstream cultures.

Clare Bradford is a professor of literary studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, where she teaches and researches mainly children’s literature. Her 2001 book, Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children’s Literature, won both the Children’s Literature Association Book Award and the IRSCL Award of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature. Clare Bradford’s publications have appeared in Canadian Children’s Literature, Children’s Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn, Papers, and The Children’s Literature Association Quarterly.

Clare Bradford's profile page

• Commended, Honor Book, Children's Literature Association

By emphasizing the fact that texts produced by the Indigenous must be read in accordance with their cultural and narrative practices, Bradford frees up a breathing space for Indigenous texts which are, otherwise, read according to the textual and critical modes of dominant communities. Given the subject area of her work and the theoretical tools that she is employing Bradford's book is an intervention that is both timely and necessary.

Anna Kurian, University of Hyderabad, India, Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 30, no. 2, May 2009, 2009 May

Provides an in-depth view of what children's and young adult books tell readers about native populations, immigration, race relationships, and the development of nations, and what they have to say about the place of these Native peoples in today's societies.... [D]efinitely...useful...for assuring the accurate portrayal of indigenous cultures in the library and the classroom by recognizing the political implications of these portrayals.

Janet Hilbun, Texas Women's University, School Library Journal, February 1, 2008, 2008 February

Clare Bradford's Unsettling Narratives fully lives up to the claim on the back cover that the volume will 'open up an area of scholarship and discussion ... relatively new to the field of children's literature.' The volume is thorough, provocative, and persuasive.... One of the biggest strengths of this text is the breadth of material which is analyzed in close detail: Bradford examines as many as fifteen texts in detail to a chapter, including novels, picture books, and films, and this wealth of material not only gives her argument a persuasive strength but also showcases the rich material of postcolonial children's texts which have until now been relatively neglected.... This volume is coherent, thought-provoking, and well-written, moving beyond the conventional and obvious analyses of race, identity, place, and language which so often occur in the study of children's literature, to provide a fresh insight and a provocative new perspective.

Jennifer Sattaur, Aberystwyth University, International Research Society for Children's Literature, July 2008, 2008 July

By emphasizing the fact that texts produced by the Indigenous must be read in accordance with their cultural and narrative practices, Bradford frees up a breathing space for Indigenous texts which are, otherwise, read according to the textual and critical modes of dominant communities. Given the subject area of her work and the theoretical tools that she is employing Bradford's book is an intervention that is both timely and necessary.

Anna Kurian, University of Hyderabad, India, Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 30, no. 2, May 2009, 2009 May