The Mighty Child’s reading of time and power in children’s literature redefines basic concepts of children’s literature studies, such as the child, adult, didacticism or hope, and marks new pathways for children’s literature scholarship and criticism. Its coherent, informed and lucid confronting and merging of existentialist writings with recent children’s literature criticism and divergent children’s literature texts – from classics to recent work, from novels to poetry, from picturebooks to crossover literature – can be seen as a demonstration of one of the multiple intellectually stimulating directions which children’s literature studies might take if they dare to try. Future theoretical and historical testing of its arguments and conclusions, their development, confirmation or rejection, will hopefully have the same revealing effect.

- Marijana Hameršak, University of Zagreb, in Libri & Liberi 5(1): 262-263,

<i>The Mighty Child</i> is an impressive book which makes an important and innovative contribution to its field. Its theorisation of existentialism and children’s literature is lucidly written, and its theoretical understanding and arguments are astute. Providing new and significant analysis of the texts it considers, this is a work that promises to become essential reading for those interested in theoretical approaches to children’s literature.

- Adrienne Gavin, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK,

Clementine Beauvais has produced a remarkable book. <i>The Mighty Child</i> is at once perceptive, philosophical, sophisticated and engaging. Her existentialist approach is applied to a fascinating body of 'committed' children's books produced in the West since 1950 to produce readings that illuminate the paradoxes of power and ambivalence about the future in much writing for children. This is a book that shows the value of children's literature as a primary source for scholars working in many fields. It is also a deeply optimistic book that points to the potential for positive change through the literature of childhood.

- Kimberley Reynolds, Newcastle University,