The essays in this book attempt to comprehend the worlds of children’s progressive fiction - from how they are created to how they affect readers. They explore what happens when speculative genres (fantasy, horror, and science fiction) and imaginative spaces collide headlong with the realities and surrealities of modern childhood.

Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Sites of Speculation: Contestation, Imagination, and the Places of Childhood Fancy Michael G. Cornelius Alice Retaught: A Child’s Experience of ­Rule-Making and ­Rule-Following in Social Space Dakota Root On the Road to Oz: Crossing Fantasy Spaces in L. Frank Baum’s Oz Series Steven A. Nardi Topoi and Character in the Redwall Series John R. Gilhooly Mind the Verbal Cartographic Gap: Uncovering Power in the Fantasy Multiverse of Diana Wynne Jones’ Chrestomanci Series Julia Jin Wang The Map Is Not the Territory: Mapping Growth and Change in Catherynne M. Valente’s Fairyland Series Ellis Khachidze Sowing the Seeds of Fear: Architecting Fearscapes in R.L. Stine’s Fear Street Saga Marybeth Ragsdale-Richards (Un)Making Hell: Mirror Journeys in The Mortal Instruments and Dante’s Inferno Raphaela Behounek Myth, Place, and Time in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Sean Ferrier-Watson Space as a Journey to Survival in Ann Aguirre’s Enclave Jessica Newman-Doubell Terror Castles and Red Gate Farms: “Haunted” Childhoods and the Commodification of Space Michael G. Cornelius Understanding ­Multi-World Metafiction Through ­Place-Attachment: Base World, New World, and (In)Complete World in the Inkheart Trilogy Wenduo Zhang Conclusion: The Limits of Fancy Michael G. Cornelius and Marybeth Ragsdale-Richards About the Contributors Index