Parallelwelten

Children's and youth literature (CJL) remains a neglected area within literary studies, despite accounting for about 15 percent of book production and playing a significant role in the development of children, adolescents, and society as a whole. The author illustrates the evolution and popularity of fantastic children's literature since the 1970s and connects it to contemporary phenomena such as place polyamory, plurality, disorientation, migration, and the fragility of identities. By exploring spatial concepts in recent German-language CJL, the work engages with a theoretical framework that has gained particular importance in cultural studies in recent years. Furthermore, it presents analytical and interpretative tools in relation to concepts of space, play, and postmodernism.