"Operation Pied Piper": The Evacuation and Children's Literature

FAIN: FT-57781-10

Lee Allen Talley
Rowan University (Glassboro, NJ 08028-1702)

"'Operation Pied Piper': The Evacuation and Children's Literature" is designed to be the definitive critical study of the World War II evacuation of British children and of the children's literature it inspired. I argue that this sub-genre of WWII literature forms a significant and unique canon in its own right that has shaped--and continues to inform--how we imagine childhood. Juxtaposing child narratives (children's letters and diaries from the war) with children's literature, I analyze the ideological and cultural implications of the evacuation on constructions of childhood and adulthood, the city and country, men and women, and the upper and lower classes. My project focuses especially on the unique collaborations between children and adults--in life and literature--that enabled them to forge new relationships, comprehend this extraordinary event and, most importantly, challenge a number of potent ideological constructions of childhood.