Animals are People Too: An Ecocritical Exploration of Fantasy in Environmental Children's Literature

This thesis examines the use of fantasy to promote ecological consciousness in environmental children’s literature. The theoretical foundation of my study is ecocriticism, which explores literary representations of humans’ relationship with the nonhuman. Using this theory, I analyse three novels: Richard Adams’ Watership Down, Diana Young’s FernGully, and Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories. These three novels all contain different fantastical elements, and they all address different specific environmental issues. Despite their differences, all three texts promote an Earth-centred perspective of the world rather than the standard human-centred mindset that typically pervades Western thinking. My analysis shows that fantasy is a useful genre for authors of environmental children’s literature because its wide range of possible settings and characters offers a flexibility that allows authors to approach environmental issues in unique ways that engage readers’ intellects and imaginations.