The Mighty Child -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Epigraph -- Table of contents -- Table of figures -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Some groundwork -- Part I. Time -- From puer aeternus to puer existens: The advent of the child "thrown forth" -- A series of footnotes to Rose -- The temporal otherness of childhood -- The Little Prince, between untameable others and untimely selves -- The very timely puer aeternus -- The thorny scandal of otherness -- "Not a second for repose": Untimely others -- "Serious men" and miserly adults -- The fox as didactic adult -- Childhood and the future -- Existential wait and the child as hope -- Hope for the end of the wait -- What are we waiting for? Existential wait in children's literature and adventure -- Promised plenitude with polar bears -- The unknowable end of the wait -- The rhythmical otherness of childhood -- The divided adult -- Part II. Otherness -- "Gaps", desire, and the didactic discourse -- Fiction and desire -- What's in the gap? Picturebook theory and the mighty "gap-filler" -- "Readerly" gap, or didactic gap? -- The didactic gap, between "reasonable" interpretation and child might -- Defining the adult-child didactic relation -- Collapsed prescriptions in the didactic discourse -- Subject but object but project: The child "thrown around" -- Cheating death: The Dumbledore problem -- Problems of others -- The adult-child relationship as a special "problem of others" -- The child as "living affirmation of human transcendence" -- The other, beyond the ethical and the empathetic -- How to cure your dad of his problem of others -- The pains of living among others -- Togetherness in the face of otherness -- The other within oneself -- Part III. Commitment -- "An exigence and a gift": Committed children's literature -- Political literature for children.

The didactic discourse of committed children's literature -- Theorising committed literature -- Anguish and hope in the committed children's book -- The political child and the apolitical adult in committed children's literature -- Going on a guilt-trip: Ecological children's literature -- Contemporary children's literature as a form of committed literature -- The pedagogical romance -- Love -- All education is a failure -- Pleasure and jouissance of the pedagogical text -- Spud subversion -- Adulthood reloaded: The pedagogical romance as a form of play -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Primary sources -- Secondary sources -- Name index -- Subject index.