• 1 “‘It’s a possibility,’ said Sophie. She said it quietly, so the others wouldn’t hear. ‘You should n (...)

“È una possibilità” disse Sophie. E lo disse piano, perché gli altri non la sentissero. “Mai ignorare una possibilità”1.

• 4 Victoria Flanagan, “Gender Studies,” David Rudd, ed., The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literat (...)
• 5 Ibid.
• 6 Ibid.
• 7 Ibid, p. 37.
• 8 As far as gender matters and children’s literature are concerned, see Beverly Lyon Clark, Margaret (...)
• 9 Teoria e Storia della Letteratura per l’Infanzia, Letteratura per l’infanzia and Storia della Lette (...)
• 10 See Giorgia Carta, The Other Half of the Story: The Interaction Between Indigenous and Translated L (...)
• 11 The exceptions concern criticism on the history of children’s literature. See, e.g., Pino Boero, Ca (...)
• 12 See «Leggere Senza Stereotipi», Scosse, http://www.scosse.org/leggere-senza-stereotipi/ (last acces (...)

1Despite the fact that “the representation of gendered bodies and behaviours”4 is an issue that is “highly significant”5 and “frequently addressed”6 in children’s literature, as Flanagan has claimed, “the application of gender studies to children’s texts […] is still very much a work in progress”7. While Anglophone children’s literature criticism has at least acknowledged the need for gender studies8, in Italy the importance of gender issues has not yet really been discussed. Excluded by or marginalised from literary studies, Italian children’s literature is central in education departments9. The negative prejudice that literary studies historically maintain against children’s books in Italy10 makes this field of study particularly resistant to any literary approach11, including that of gender. In fact, analyses of gender issues and children’s literature are mostly limited to the deconstruction of gender stereotypes and are usually aimed at furthering educational projects12.Though they claim to be interested in the deconstruction of gender, such analyses tend to presuppose the binary opposition between men and women, focusing almost exclusively on women and assuming that what is at stake in dealing with gender is merely the subversion of gender models. On the contrary, the theoretical perspective I endorse implies a multifaceted and performative notion of gender, one which is not limited to the binary opposition between boys and girls and men and women, but is focused on how gender and gender identities are performatively constructed and produced within culture in its broader sense.

• 13 Deborah Thacker, “Disdain or Ignorance? Literary Theory and the Absence of Children’s Literature”, (...)
• 14 See, e.g., Benjamin Lefebvre, ed., Textual Transformations in Children’s Literature. Adaptations, T (...)
• 15 Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, (...)
• 16 Ibid., p. 15.
• 17 Ibid.

2The article is grounded on the premise that children’s literature is literature. If this should sound redundant to scholars working in Anglophone departments, actually it is not so with regard to Italian criticism. The framework for the analysis is provided by literary theory. It is quite telling that scholars working in the magmatic field of children’s literature often feel the need to specify not only that children’s literature is literature, but also that they do work within literary theory – a clarification which, as Thacker claims, someone studying Virginia Woolf13is not required to provide. And yet, children’s literature, understood in its cultural and transmedial dimension14, raises many of the questions ordinarily considered as pertaining to theory. Children’s literature criticism is literary theory, if theory is, as Culler maintains : interdisciplinary (children’s literature may be studied from different perspectives within different disciplines) ; analytical and speculative (“an attempt to work out what is involved in what we call sex or language or writing or meaning or subject”15 : children’s literature may question what we conceive as sex, as language, and as subject) ; “a critique of common sense”16 and an “enquiry into the categories we use in making sense of things, in literature and in other discursive practices17”(children’s literature may deconstruct the effects of naturalness, the categories we use to define literature, literary canon and childhood produce).

• 18 The marginality of children’s literature – and of its criticism – within the broader literary syste (...)

3My main aims are, firstly, to argue the importance of children’s literature as literature18, and secondly, to show why gender does matter within children’s literature and its criticism, even within those books not tackling the issue at first glance.

• 19 Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, “Essentials: What is Children’s Literature? What is Childhood?”, op. cit.
• 20 Perry Nodelman, The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Universi (...)
• 21 Young Adult literature is children’s literature. Although some differences do exist, they are not s (...)
• 22 Nodelman, The Hidden Adult, op. cit., p. 97.
• 23 Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, “Essentials: What is Children’s Literature? What is Childhood?”, op. cit., (...)

4Critics do not agree on the definition of children’s literature, on what this definition should entail, on its object and even on the ontological status of its content. Nevertheless, they do agree on the constitutive role played by the ideas we have on the readership explicitly addressed by children’s literature in shaping all discourses that focus on the category of books written, produced, marketed for children. As a category19, or as a field20, texts considered to be “children’s literature21” are not “only similar to each other but also similarly different from other forms of literature22.” Hunger Games, La nonna in fuga, Rosaconfetto, La principessa e il drago, L’altra parte di me, Trevor, and Lunamay differ in length, topic, format, implied readership age, complexity, genre… and yet they all are part of the same category of books. Lesnik-Oberstein takes the existence of this category to depend absolutely “on supposed relationships with a particular reading audience : children23.” Children (and childhood) as implied readership are what make it possible for children’s literature to be defined as such.

• 24 E.g. Tra mamma e Jo was published for young adults in the United States while, in Italy, it is publ (...)

5The diversification of children’s books from those for adults is merely instrumental and depends on some generic assumptions about childhood, literature and children’s literature : both the categorisation and the diversification of these texts as children’s literature are made visible by publishers by means of a series of paratextual elements such as book covers, inclusion in specific series, hints for the age of the readers, descriptions on the back cover, and so on. The distinction between a children’s book and a book for adults is impossible within a system which does not mark a certain book’s belonging to “children’s literature” by means of such editorial devices. The effectiveness of this editorial criterion is particularly evident in cases of translation : as it crosses different linguistic contexts the same book may target children, young adults, adults and even both readerships at the same time24.

• 25 For an understanding of children’s literature as an institution see also David Rudd, “Theorising an (...)
• 26 Not only children’s literature, but literature itself is an institution and, as such, it is defined (...)
• 27 See also Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, “Essentials: What is Children’s Literature? What is Childhood?”, o (...)
• 28 E.g. Rosemary Ross Johnston, op. cit.; Maria Nikolajeva, op. cit.; Nodelman, The Hidden Adult, op. (...)
• 29 As far as young adults are concerned, this exclusion has started to weaken (see the global success (...)

6The existence of children’s literature depends on and is defined by the existence of a global publishing market that produces it and markets it as such. Children’s literature is, in this sense, an institution with its own economic, social and cultural reality25. There are at least three aspects concurring to determine what children’s literature is26 : (1) economic aspects (publishers, prizes, research centres, scholars, publishing houses, the whole market targeting children) ; (2) ideological aspects (educational, political, and pedagogical norms historically defining what children’s literature should be and what is should do) ; and (3) aesthetic aspects (aesthetic norms regulating what is historically conceived as “literary value” strongly depend on ideological, political and generally extra-literary phenomena). The institution of children’s literature not only depends on these aspects, but creates the same practices defining it as such. Even if, in the perspective I endorse, all literature is involved in such processes of canonisation and institutionalisation, there is something different in children’s literature. The institution of children’s literature is in fact characterised by an irreducible asymmetry27 between adults, controlling all aspects that concern production and distribution, and children, to whom this literature is addressed. On the one hand, adults write, publish, choose, categorise, praise, give prizes, select what kind of literature children (should) read28 ; on the other, children are excluded from all aspects related to the production29of those books written and published for them

• 31 Childhood, not children. I am not making reference here to real children, nor to real child readers (...)
• 32 Tison Pugh, op. cit., p. 3.

8Children’s literature is, in this sense, a particular kind of culturally situated discursive practice. Defining childhood31entails political issues. The matter is political not only because of the already mentioned asymmetry children’s literature implies, but also because “the child, however problematically, represents the future, and perpetuating a given ideology necessitates that children inherit its value32.”

• 33 Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, “Essentials: What is Children’s Literature? What is Childhood?”, op. cit., (...)
• 34 Perry Nodelman, The Hidden Adult, op. cit., p. 167.

9Since childhood is usually conceived of as innocent and helpless, critics’ main concern seems to be focused on the issue of “what is good for children33,” where good means appropriate. Usually, the overt intention of adults who write, produce, market, discuss books for children is aimed at causing a positive response toward their own value system. Ultimately, children’s literature teaches children “how to be child-like34.”

• 35 Robyn McCallum, op. cit.
• 36 John Stephens, Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction, London, New York, Longman, 1992.
• 37 McCallum, op. cit., p. 4.

10McCallum35 and Stephens36 have outlined the liberal humanist ideology children’s literature presupposes. Child characters have strong, neat, autonomous identities and their self is usually represented as natural and authentic ; moreover, fictional children are perceived as free to act independently within and on the reality they inhabit : “the question in adolescent and children’s fiction is not whether the subject exists, but what kind of subject it is and what are the conditions of its coming into being37.” The presupposed liberal humanist ideology and adults’ ideas on childhood imbricate children’s literature criticism in a double-bind : children are considered free (from ideologies), independent and spontaneous human beings ; on the other hand, adults are often worried about the effects this literature (and the kind of ideology it may entail) may have on its child readers, as if texts for children were not already imbricated in ideologies, or as if it weren’t adults’ concerns.

• 38 Karen Barad, op. cit, p. 46.

11Most of children’s literature criticism presupposes representationalism. The belief in political, linguistic, epistemological forms of representationalism is underlied by the metaphysical presupposition according to which beings exist as individuals with inherent attributes, anterior to their representation38. Karen Barad defines representationalism as

• 40 For a broader understanding of the notion of performativity within different disciplines and from d (...)
• 41 Karen Barad, op. cit., p. 89.

12The representationlist logic presupposes the existence of a real child outside of the text and considers “good” those books which better represent that (real) child. On the contrary, the perspective endorsed in this essay implies a performative dimension to understand children’s literature40. Within such a framework, “subjects and objects do not pre-exist as such41,” but they emerge through processes of mattering. If we read children’s literature through Barad, there is no given real child, but childhood comes to matter within specific processes of mattering.

• 42 Ibid., p. 90.
• 43 In Meeting the Universe Halfway, Barad proposes a notion of performativity slightly different from (...)
• 44 See Joseph L. Zornado, op. cit.
• 45 By effects of naturalness, origin and inevitability I mean the result of those discursive practices (...)

13In a representationalist framework, relevant questions concern identification ; on the contrary, within a performative dimension, relevant questions concern “which differences matter, how they matter, and for whom”42. Barad’s notion of performativity43 is particularly productive to question the representationalism often implied by children’s literature critics and can be applied to argue the important role children’s literature has in the definition of childhood narratives44, and the performative power these narratives have on the same childhood whose limits of materialization they concur to establish and upon which they produce effects of naturalness, origin and inevitability45.

• 46 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter, op. cit., p. 2.
• 47 Ibid.
• 48 Ibid., pp. 2–3.

14In Butler’s view, “performativity must be understood not as a singular deliberate “act”, but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names46.” Gender norms regulating gender and sex work performatively to construct the materiality of bodies and, specifically, as Butler claims, to materialize the sexual difference in order for heteronormativity to be reinforced. To claim that gender norms effect the materialization of bodies does not mean that gender, as a cultural construction, is simply attached on a pre-existing material surface, but that, “Once ‘sex’ itself is understood in its normativity, the materiality of the body will not be thinkable apart from the materialization of that regulatory norm47.” The impossibility to think materiality apart from the norm regulating its materialization is particularly significant because the formation of the “I” strictly depends on the assumption of a given sex and of the relation between the assumption of a given sex with questions of identification and with “the discursive means by which the heterosexual imperative enables certain sexed identifications and forcloses and/or disavows other identifications48.”

• 50 Mallan, op. cit., p. 3.

16There is little agreement on what feminist theories are and on what they do ; however, despite all their different and not necessarily consistent approaches, feminist theories (if they succeed in considering gender and performativity in their wider sense) can provide a theoretical framework which can help us not to take anything for granted and to cast light not only on the exclusions that gender norms may produce, but also on all other normative exclusions and on the dilemmas “that invariably arise when individuals do not fit neatly into normative categories of existence50.”

• 51 Judith Butler, “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism”, Joan W. Scott, (...)
• 52 Irene Costera Meijer and Baukje Prins, “How Bodies Come to Matter: An Interview with Judith Butler, (...)

17Children’s literature, as it is conceived, represents strong conceptions of subject and provides its characters with a strong agency. The strong identities children’s literature characters have is consistent with the kind of agency the liberal humanist ideology presupposes. Indeed, as Butler claims, “the constituted character of the subject is the very precondition of its agency51.” However, what is actually at stake in dealing with children’s literature is the constitutive element each identity formation entails and the exclusions that, in its constituting as such, may be originated or re-iterated : “identity categories are never merely descriptive, but always normative, and as such, exclusionary52.”

• 53 See Perry Nodelman, “Decoding the Images: Illustration and Picture Books,” Peter Hunt, ed., Underst (...)
• 54 Mallan, op. cit., p. 3.
• 55 Joseph L. Zornado, op. cit., p. 14.
• 56 Mallan, op. cit., p. 3.

18There is an ordinary sense in which gender dilemmas are a fundamental issue within children’s literature : if children’s literature teaches children how to be child-like, where to be child-like simply means to adhere to what a given culture considers to be “natural” for childhood53, then, gender norms are inevitably part of the education children’s literature provides for its readers. Though, as Mallan claims, “children’s literature is not a monolithic field that offers a singular ‘voice’, nor does it invite a singular scholarship of interpretation54,” it certainly is part of the practices narrating childhood in certain ways55 and “it does make significant and often undervalued contributions to how its child readers see the world and their place in it56.”

• 57 See Nodelman, The Hidden Adult, op. cit. Nodelman does not formulate the relation in these terms, e (...)
• 58 Ibid., p. 173.
• 59 Clark, Higonnet, ed., op. cit., p. 1.
• 60 Ibid.

19It is precisely in the relation with gender issues that Nodelman identifies one of the main features of children’s literature57 : to teach children how to be child-like means, in fact, to teach them “what it means for girls to be girls and boys to be boys58.” Clark has contended that “From the start, children’s literature was imbricated with material culture, and reading and play were seen through the lens of gender59.” Children’s literature is, indeed, one of the ways by which adults construct the categories of age and gender60, and they do it performatively. Gender is performatively constructed both within books for children (in characters, in language, in dialogues, in stories) and outside these books (in book covers, in the hints for the readers). Since gender is constructed performatively, it is always possible to deconstruct and to question the gender norms that make it possible for gender to materialize and the effects of naturalness, origin, inevitability they produce.

• 61 See Sergia Adamo, ed., Culture planetarie? Prospettive e limiti della teoria e della critica cultur (...)
• 62 Kerry Mallan, op. cit., p. 14.

20Gender normativity usually works so that boys and girls are understood as two distinct categories and it produces these categories so that they have specific and appropriate tastes, desires, behaviours. The choice to diversify what is thought to be girlish from what is thought to be boyish is a trend not only within the literary market system, but within the whole market targeting children and young adults. One only has to enter any bookstore, any toy shop or simply any children’s clothing brand site to picture the kind of gender diversification I am talking about. Depending on which tastes, desires, behaviours adults acknowledge as appropriate for children, childhood is materialized within a specific power configuration. Childhood is, in this sense, an effect of power : the distinction between what is childhood and what is not is always normative. Childhood, however, is not a mere construction : discursive practices do not create childhood ; on the contrary, childhood can materialize only within specific discursive practices and power dynamics. Childhood, then, materializes in a system of discourses, practices and norms that concur to determine what it means to be children. Children’s literature is an integral part of these practices. Because of the fundamental role gender norms play in establishing who has the right to be acknowledged as a human being61, gender, understood in these performative terms, is a key aspect in the materialization of childhood, in what childhood is taken to be (in what it means for boys to be boys and for girls to be girls). To read children’s literature through gender performativity means not only to question how gender is produced within and by language, but also, as Mallan claims, “how literary discourse provides us with a means to attend to what literary language ‘does’ as well as what it ‘says’62.”

• 63 Victoria Flanagan, “Gender Studies,” op. cit., p. 26.

22In her introductory chapter on gender studies, Flanagan points out that “evidence of an ideological agenda that explicitly seeks to critique normative categories of gender does not automatically guarantee success63.” Subversion narratives often exemplify this failure. Undoing gender means much more than simply applying to girls some behaviours that a binary logic usually conceives as naturally boyish– or vice versa. This kind of subversion, by marking some characters’ behaviours as exceptionally non-normative, usually reconfirms the binarism implied in the construction of normative masculinity and of normative femininity.

• 64 See Francesca Lazzarato, Valeria Moretti, La fiaba rosa: itinerari di lettura attraverso i romanzi (...)
• 65 Adela Turin, Rosaconfetto e altre storie, Firenze, Motta Junior, 2009, p. 8 (“pinkcomfit”).
• 66 Turin, op. cit., p. 18.
• 67 Ibid., p. 38.

23However, subversion is the first and easiest strategy in order to question gender normativity. It does not seem a coincidence that books trying to question feminine normativity in such a way started to be published in the Seventies. Pasqualina’s story, recently re-edited by Motta Junior, provides a perfect example. Rosaconfetto e altrestorie was published in 1976 by “Dalla parte delle bambine,” a publishing house founded in 1974 by Adela Turin and Nella Bosnia with the aim of creating new images of femininity to be read by young girls. At that time, “Dalla parte delle bambine” thrilled all feminist parents in search of non-sexist and non-stereotyped books for their children64.In a world where all female elephants have big, bright eyes and pink skin (“rosa confetto65”) because their diet consists exclusively of peonies and anemones, Pasqualina’s skin is not pink and will never be (Rosaconfetto e alter storie). In Pasqualina’s world there are, on the one hand, pink female elephants living within an enclosure ; on the other, outside of it, “elephant grey” (“grigio elefante66”) fathers, brothers, male cousins and male friends playing in the savannah, eating green grass, and rolling around in the mud. The “elephant grey” Pasqualina is the disgrace of her mother, who wants her to be as pink as she is ; of her father, terrified by his daughter’s inappropriate, rebellious personality ; and of the whole community, which sees her as different from all other female elephants. When Pasqualina gathers the courage to go beyond the enclosure she is forced in by norms and habits, at first, she arouses concern, then curiosity and, finally, all young female elephants timidly follow her outside the enclosure : “Da quell’epoca ormai lontana riesce difficile, a chi guardi giocare i piccoli di quelle tribù, decider quali sono le elefantine e quali gli elefantini67.”

• 68 Bianca Pitzorno, Extraterrestre alla pari, Trieste, Einaudi Ragazzi, 2003.

24Published in the same years as Rosaconfetto, Extraterrestre alla pari68stages, even more overtly, the same kind of dynamics. However, compared to Pasqualina’s story, Mo’s explicitly questions not only female stereotypes but also gender relations. Mo is an extraterrestrial just arrived on Earth from Daneb to live with a typical terrestrial family. Nobody knows whether Mo is a girl or a boy. On Daneb, nobody asks this awkward question before fifty. While this sexual indeterminacy does not seem to bother neither Mo, nor his/her parents, the impossibility to categorise Mo as a boy or as a girl makes humans crazy. Mo’s terrestrial parents are challenged by the absolute absence of any evidence in structing them in how to behave appropriately :

• 71 It is particularly relevant to point out that both Rosaconfetto e altrestorie and Extraterrestre al (...)
• 72 Ian Falconer, Olivia e le principesse, Milano, Nord-Sud, 2013.

26There are other and more nuanced examples of subversion in the contemporary Italian publishing market71. In a world where girls are expected to be, to desire to be and to behave as princesses, Olivia (Olivia e le principesse72), a little pig, does not want to hear of dressing as a princess. There are plenty of alternatives, she thinks : why can’t she dress as a warthog ? Not to mention the fact that she is rather ambitious and aims at being queen, certainly not princess.

• 73 Robert Munsch, La principessa e il drago, Torino, Giralangolo, 2014. This book has recently hit the (...)
• 74 www.edt.it/aree/giralangolo-sottosopra/, last accessed 30/6/2016.
• 75 See http://www.toscanaspettacolo.it/19698/liber-tutt/, last accessed 30/6/2016.

27Elizabeth (La principessa e il drago73), a real princess about to marry, is ready to take on the task of saving her prince kidnapped by a dragon. She saves him, and, in so doing, she subverts the narrative of the prince saving the princess. However, the prince turns out to be a spoilt and boring dandy and Elizabeth will not have the slightest intention to marry him. In La principessa e il drago the idea of subversion is overtly claimed even outside of the text, in the name Edizioni Giralangolo have chosen for the series in which the book is published : “Sottosopra” (upside down). The series is edited by Irene Biemmi and is aimed at fostering new and alternative ideas on gender, gender identities and gender relations in children’s books. The main characters of these books are girls and boys, men and women, free to act, think and behave out of the limits gender norms establish on their biological sex74. La principessa e il drago is also part of a list edited by Liber* Tutt*, a project supported by the local administration of the Tuscany region and aimed at deconstructing gender stereotypes75.

• 76 Shannon Hale et al., La principessa in black, Nord-Sud, 2015, p. 18 (“Princesses do not slide down (...)

28Princess Magnolia (La principessa in black) is also a real princess. All pink and manners, she is repeatedly being told that princesses do not run ; do not dress in black ; do not throw their clothes in the broom closet and, above all, “le principesse non sfrecciano giù per uno scivolo segreto e non superano con un balzo le mura del loro castello76.” However, despite her strict education, the princess keeps a secret : she is the one who secretly dresses in black to protect her castle from the monsters.

• 77 See, e.g., Flood, Alison. “Study Finds Huge Gender Imbalance in Children’s Literature”, The Guardia (...)
• 78 See book series, such as Principesse Favolose, Le sirene, Storie di cavalli, Belle, astute e coragg (...)

31The second strategy, i.e. agency attribution, stands for another important change within children’s literature. In a publishing market dominated by male central characters77 and where the only female protagonists are to be found in book series specifically targeting girls78— as if a female protagonist were not interesting enough for a male reader— there is, indeed, a change to be noticed in how girls and women are represented. Though there still exist book series for girls and novels in which normative femininity is produced and reiterated, contemporary children’s fiction heroes are often strong, independent girls with a well-defined agency. Moreover, their stories are published and marketed as being both for girls and for boys.

• 79 Suzanne Collins, Hunger games, La trilogia, Milano, Mondadori, 2015.
• 80 Veronica Roth, Divergent saga: Divergent-Insurgent-Allegiant-Four, Novara, De Agostini, 2015. As in (...)
• 81 Scott Westerfeld, Beauty. La trilogia (Brutti; Perfetti; Speciali), Milano, Mondadori, 2013.

32Katnis (Hunger Games79), Tris (Divergent80) and Tally (Beauty81), protagonists of three different dystopian trilogies, can all be described in these terms. Their stories are quite similar : they all try to subvert the society in which they are born ; they lead the revolution ; they win and defeat those in power.

• 82 Stephenie Meyer, Twilight Tenth Anniversary/Life and Death Dual Edition, New York, Little, Brown Bo (...)
• 83 I have made reference to the most known novels portraying strong female characters, however, there (...)

36Katnis, Tris, and Tally make it possible for a female agency to be represented and imagined in books to be read by both girls and boys. The remarkable attention editors are currently maintaining towards strong female characters within novels targeting a universal (non-gendered) readership can be well exemplified by the publication of a special double-feature book to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Twilight : on the one side, the “classic” Twilight, on the other – literally, one only has to flip the book –Life and Death82. Life and Death and Twilight tell the same story, follow the same plot, and even use the same words. However, in Life and Death, characters’ genders are reversed : Bella, the human girl in love with the dangerous Edward, becomes Beau, a timid human boy falling in love with the frightening vampire called Edythe. This editorial choice would be unthinkable ten years ago83.

• 84 Judith Butler, “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism,” op. cit., p. 1 (...)

37As subversion, agency attribution does not necessarily entail a radical critique of gender norms. However, more than subversion, agency attribution to female characters overtly challenges, at least in part, normative femininity. Once again, the challenge is constructed in opposition to the norm and always runs the risk of reproducing the same norm it tries to question. However, if, with Butler, we take the constituted character of the subject to be the very precondition of its agency84, and if children’s literature, with its characters provided with strong constituted subjectivities, overtly stages how the constitution of a subject works, then questioning how agency is attributed to these female protagonists is particularly interesting and critically relevant :

• 86 Judith Butler, “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism,” op. cit., p. 8

38Both subversion and agency attribution generally work in order to question normative femininity, to provide other frameworks in order to become viable as one. However, normative femininity is just one effect produced by gender norms. Moreover, femininity, as an effect of power, is always normative. Indeed, even if Katnis, Tris and Tally’s femininity succeeds in challenging more traditional ideas of femininity, it persists in being exclusionary, as every identity category is86.

• 87 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, op. cit., p. xxxi.

39The third narrative strategy children’s books seem to construct in order to question gender norms is the representation of non-normative desires. In Butler’s terms, desire is a foundational category produced by a specific formation of power87. To expose these foundational categories as effect of a specific formation of power, Butler, through Foucault’s genealogical critique, investigates

• 89 Judith Butler, Senses of the Subject, op. cit., p. 5.

40Desire is, then, always connected with norms. Norms, however, do not act within a causal framework, they “tend to arrive in clusters, interconnected89.” Moreover :

• 91 Charlotte Zolotow, Clothilde Delacroix, Una bambola per Alberto, Milano, Giralangolo, 2014 (publish (...)

42Non-normative desires can be the desire of a young boy, Alberto (Una bambola per Alberto91), desperately longing for a doll. This would not be a problem, if he were a girl. But he is not, and everyone makes fun of him and of his queer wish. Luckily, Alberto’s grandmother is not at all interested in what other people think of her grandson’s tastes when it comes to toys. The trouble caused within the text by Alberto’s non-normative desire depends on the disruption of normative masculinity his desire may imply. As Butler claims,

• 94 James Lecesne, Trevor, Milano, Rizzoli, 2014. Before being a novel, Trevor was a play, a short film (...)
• 95 Cristina Obber, L’altra parte di me, Milano, Piemme, 2014.
• 96 James Lecesne, op. cit., p. 62 (“Whether I am gay or not, it doesn’t matter […]. Some of us prefer (...)

45Non-normative desires par excellence are non-heternormative desires. Trevor (Trevor94), Giulia and Francesca (L’altra parte di me95) question heteronormativity. Trevor is 13 years old and he finds himself dealing with homophobic bullying. As readers, we do not know if he is gay, and, actually, this is not the point, nor is it for Trevor. Trevor adores Lady Gaga and cannot really understand why the whole school is repeatedly calling him gay since he himself does not have a clue if he actually is : “Se io lo sia davvero o no non conta […]. Alcuni di noi preferiscono rimanere un mistero – persino a se stessi – fino a quando non si sentono pronti96.”

• 98 Sonia Elisabetta Corvaglia, Le farfalle indiscrete, Trieste, Einaudi Ragazzi (EL), 2014.
• 99 Ibid., p. 40.

47This seems to be Giulia and Francesca’s case. L’altra parte di me, indeed, is about an ordinary adolescent love. However, it is pertinent to point out that stories of girls loving other girls are not very frequent in Italian children’s literature (Mondadori did publish some of these stories in the past, but the books narrating them are no longer on print). That is why the story of Francesca and Giulia is particularly interesting, as is the fact that the author is Italian (YA fiction, especially about LGBTQI, is for the most part translated from other languages). In 2014, another novel about girls loving girls was published by Einaudi Ragazzi : Le farfalle indiscrete98. Actually, there is no love story here ; only Simona wondering if she likes girls and deciding that, whether or not she likes girls, that will not be a problem99.

• 100 Alex Gino, George, Milano, Mondadori, 2015.
• 101 Julie Anne Peters, Luna, Firenze-Milano, Giunti, 2010.

48There is another kind of non-normative desire emerging in children’s literature, which is the desire of George/Melissa (George100) and Liam/Luna (Luna101) to be girls, despite what their external appearances may suggest. Both girls struggle to make their identities visible, and to reproduce feminine normativity in order to be acknowledged as girls, George as Melissa, Liam as Luna. In Flanagan’s perspective,

• 103 See Adamo, op. cit., p. 35.

49These are only a few of the stories contemporary children’s literature tells its readers. They all raise gender matters, and they do it explicitly because of the fundamental role gender norms play in establishing who has the right to be acknowledged as a human being103. Of course, each of the chosen examples raises specific issues and is worth analysing in detail. However, my main aim in considering these texts is to provide an overview of how gender matters are a fundamental part of children’s literature, whether it questions gender normativity and the binarism it implies, or it reinforces and reproduces masculine and feminine normativity.

• 104 David Levithan, Ogni giorno, Milano, Rizzoli, 2013. In the Italian edition, the translator has chos (...)
• 105 Ibid., p. 182; “I didn’t think of myself as a boy or a girl – I never have. I just thought of mysel (...)

51Firstly, since children’s literature, as it is conceived, represents its characters as having strong identities and well-defined, “natural,” “authentic” subjectivities, it is unlikely to question gender norms radically : the idea of an “I” and of a “self” preceding one’s own body, language and existence can be found even in Ognigiorno, Levithan’s novel where A. (Ognigiorno104), who is neither a girl nor a boy, neither gay nor straight, neither white, nor black, and so on, wakes up every day in a different body. Sometimes she is a girl, sometimes he is a boy, sometimes A. feels as if he/she matches his/her own body, sometimes s/he does not : “Non mi pensavo come un ragazzo o una ragazza ; non l’ho mai fatto. Mi limitavo a pensare a me stesso come ragazzo o come ragazza per un giorno. Era come indossare abiti diversi”105. But still, despite his/her queer existence, A. has a strong, neat subjectivity. Moreover, A.’s lives and experiences persist in being materialized within a binary framework.

• 106 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender, London – New York, Routledge, 2004.

54By way of conclusion, let me quote Butler in the (perhaps too romantic) belief that, if children’s literature does something, this something is to be found in the reconfiguration of what is thought to be conceivable : “Fantasy is what allows us to imagine ourselves and others otherwise; it establishes the possible in excess of the real; it points elsewhere, and when it is embodied, it brings the elsewhere home106.”