About the Child and the Book Conference

The Child and the Book is an international conference which provides an

opportunity for scholars, to present papers on their current research in the

interdisciplinary field of children’s literature (thus representing some of the

 most recent developments in the field). The Child and the Book conference

offers both a space for the review and sharing of knowledge about those areas

of children’s literature studies currently being researched, and a meaningful

forum for debate and collaboration between novice and experienced scholars.

Importantly, the conference also seeks to bring together approaches to children's

literature from around the world, not just from Anglo-American and Continental

scholars.

Three Child and the Book conferences have been held so far. The inaugural 

conference was held at Roehampton University, England, in 2004. The second, at

the University of Antwerp,Belgium, in 2005,  had keynote speeches from Professor

Roberta Seelinger Trites (University of Illinois) and Professor Maria Nikolajeva

(University of Stockholm). The keynote speaker at the 2006 conference, at the

University of Newcastle, England, was Professor Kim Reynolds. The keynote

speaker in Istanbul will be Professor Zohar Shavit from Tel Aviv University.

The 2007 conference will be hosted by the Department of Western Languages and

Literatures, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey, between March 30th and April 1st.

Located on the European side of the city, the campus overlooks the Bosphorus, the

channel dividing the European side of Istanbul from the Asian side.  

Not surprisingly, the importance of what is produced in this conference has not

 gone unnoticed by publishers. Selected papers from the Roehampton conference

 were published in The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship. Papers from Antwerp were published by Cambridge Scholars Press, and selected 2006 conference papers will be published by Pied Piper Publishing (forthcoming). Pied Piper Publishing have agreed to publish selected papers from the Istanbul conference in due course.

Please follow the links on the left for more information about the conference, the venue, and the Child and the Book.

Organising Committee (Istanbul)

Anthony Pavlik: cb2007@boun.edu.tr