This book is the first scholarly volume to connect children's literature to the burgeoning discipline of food studies. Spanning genres and regions, the essays utilize a variety of approaches, including archival research, cultural studies, formalism, gender studies, post-colonialism, post-structuralism, race studies, structuralism, and theology.

Series Editor’s ForewordAcknowledgments Part I. Introduction 1. IntroductionKara K. Keeling and Scott T. PollardPart II. Reading as Cooking2. Delicious Supplements: Literary Cookbooks as Additives to Children’s TextsJodie Slothower and Jan SusinaPart III. Girls, Mothers, Children3. Recipe for Reciprocity and Repression: The Politics of Cooking and Consumption in Girls’ Coming-of-Age LiteratureHolly Blackford4. The Apple of her Eye: The Mothering Ideology Fed by Bestselling Trade Picture BooksLisa Rowe FraustinoPart IV. Food and the Body5. Nancy Drew and the "F" WordLeona W. Fisher6. To Eat and Be Eaten in Nineteenth-century Children’s LiteratureJacqueline M. Labbe7. Voracious Appetites: The Construction of "Fatness" in the Boy Hero in English Children’s LiteratureJean WebbPart V. Global/Multicultural/Post-colonial Food8. "The Eaters of Everything": Etiquettes of Empire in Kipling’s Narratives of Imperial BoysWinnie Chan9. Eating Different, Looking Different: Food in the Asian-American ChildhoodLan Dong10. The Potato Eaters: Food Collection in Irish Famine Literature for ChildrenKaren Hill McNamara11. The Keys to the Kitchen: Cooking and Latina Power in Latin(o) American Children’s StoriesGenny Ballard12. Sugar or Spice? The Flavor of Gender Self-Identity in an Example of Brazilian Children’s LiteratureRichard VernonPart VI. Through Food the/a Self13. Oranges of Paradise: The Orange as Symbol of Escape and Loss in Children’s LiteratureJames Everett14. Trials of Taste: Ideological "Food Fights" in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in TimeElizabeth Gargano15. A Consuming Tradition: Candy and Socio-religious Identity Formation in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate FactoryRobert M. Kachur16. Prevailing Culinary, Psychological, and Metaphysical Conditions: Meatballs and RealityMartha Satz17. "The Attack of the Inedible Hunk!": Food, Language, and Power in the Captain Underpants SeriesAnnette WannamakerContributorsIndex