Hiding Behind Trees: Anthropomorphism in Children’s Literature and Culture

deadline for submissions: 
March 1, 2025
full name / name of organization: 
Modern Language Association
contact email: 

Hiding Behind Trees: Anthropomorphism in Children’s Literature and Culture

Guaranteed Session at MLA 2026 (Toronto, Jan. 8-11), sponsored by the Children's Literature Association

This panel seeks papers that consider the role of anthropomorphism in children’s literature and culture.

Humans have long believed we are distinct from other animals in our rationality, self-consciousness, and use of language. Why, then, do writers, artists, and even scientists so often use anthropomorphism to interpret the behaviors of animals, plants, and even nonliving things such as trains, teapots, and toys? What are the repercussions of this tendency to understand the world in terms of human social and cultural identities?

While the conceptual metaphor of the anthropomorphized mother figure in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree has been thoroughly examined by scholars, many popular children’s books, films, games, and other cultural artifacts remain underexamined for the subliminal messages and unintended consequences of using nonhuman objects and beings as stand-ins for humans. This session will build on scholarship such as panel chair Lisa Rowe Fraustino’s “The Rights and Wrongs of Anthropomorphism in Picture Books” (2016) and Leslie Bow’s “Racial Abstraction and Species Difference: Anthropomorphic Animals in ‘Multicultural’ Children’s Literature” (2019) to explore the impact of anthropomorphism, from the positives of inculcating biophilia in young audiences to the negatives of speciesism, racism, sexism, and other harmful prejudices. Further interdisciplinary theorizing about patterns across children’s literature will be welcome—from picture books through middle grade and young adult—as will new close readings of widely read texts and storylines in popular culture. 

It is anticipated that this panel will stimulate development of essays suitable for submission to a proposed forum in the 2027 volume of the annual ChLA journal, Children’s Literature, edited by Fraustino.

Please submit an abstract of 300-400 words and a brief bio (a few sentences) to fraustinolr@hollins.edu by March 1, 2025. The MLA convention will be held in Toronto, Canada, January 8-11, 2026