Age is a complex phenomenon. Think about the following questions for a moment: How old are you? And how old do you feel? How old do other people think you are? And how do you and others know these things?

Some of those insights may hearken back to the books you read as a young person, as they played a part in shaping your identity. So how is…[Read more]

This essay demonstrates the fruitfulness of applying a lens based on 4E-inspired cognitive narratology to David Almond’s My Name is Mina (2010) in order to illuminate how the so-called cognitive-affective imbalance between children and adults needs reassessing, especially when it comes to memory. Merging recent developments in 4E – or emb…[Read more]

David Almond’s The Savage (2008), illustrated by Dave McKean, demonstrates how narrating enables the adolescent protagonist, Blue Baker, to explore themes of loss, grief and bullying in the embedded graphic narrative he creates about a savage boy, a story Blue calls ‘The Savage’. The primary narrative focuses on the interplay between Blue’…[Read more]