Maija-Liisa Harju

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Anthropomorphism and the Necessity of Animal Fantasy

Maija-Liisa Harju

To think about stories [. . .] is to think about ourselves. To think about animals is to think
about the nature of the human and to reclaim what has been lost to us in the brutality of
the societies we have slipped into.
John Simons, Animal Rights and the Politics of Literary Representation

Animal stories persist throughout the tradition of children’s literature, be they

fable, biography or fantasy. It seems certain that our continued interest in animal life is,

in part, fueled by a desire to better understand ourselves. This inherently human need to

find value in life drives us to anthropomorphize; to ascribe human attributes to animals.

For, as Leesa Fawcett suggests in her article "Anthropomorphism: In the Web of

Culture", “[w]e know ourselves as human, only insofar as we live in connection with and

experience non-humans” (18). Anthropomorphism is a necessary means we employ to

make sense of and relate to other species' experience because we still have no real

knowledge of animal cognition. We must rely on our imaginations to make these links.

That animals may respond to the world as humans do is a plausible deduction

considering we share life on the same planet. Yet anthropomorphism, Fawcett contends,

is generally regarded as unscientific, sentimental and heretical in the West (14). This

attitude prevails because “[t]he way in which people conceive of anthropomorphism is

intimately connected to the way in which they perceive their relationship to nature” and

Western cultures tend to see themselves as distinct from the natural world (14) . Western

ideology is therefore anthropocentric, or human-centred, founded upon the notion of

human “ ‘dominance over nature and nature valued as a human resource’ ” (14). This
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worldview is, in turn, perpetuated by our literature. Asfrid Svensen identifies this

principle at work in "Opening Windows onto Unreality", her examination of fantastical

Scandinavian children's literature. She concludes that we are “taught to believe that

physical reality, for example in nature, consists of objects to be manipulated and

exploited” through our narratives (8). This anthropocentric perspective can only fuel

human disregard for and destruction of animal life. If we are to counter this attitude and

enact ecological change we must adopt personalism, a worldview that recognizes

“humans are continuous with nature and not [its] most important member[s]” (Fawcett

15).

Because ideology is encoded in literature, we must consider our narrative

representations of animal life. By examining the problem of anthropomorphism in both

the realistic and fantastic animal story I mean to identify the narrative form that can best

support and promote a personalistic worldview. The realistic animal story, or animal

biography, does not prove to be adequate because it only purveys anthropocentrism, due

to its negation of anthropomorphism and the limits of realism as a narrative strategy. The

animal fantasy however, is an ideal form as it exploits our tendency towards

anthropomorphism and enables us to envision greater possibilities for interconnections

between humans and animals. The problem of anthropomorphism, the question of

whether or not it is a human instinct and not merely a sentimental gesture, is central to

this discussion and could therefore, use some clarity.

Human-Animal Connections and Conservation

That anthropomorphism is inherent, that it is a means through which we

instinctively relate to the animal world is an idea that is gradually being re-evaluated by
 Maija-Liisa Harju

the scientific community. Biologist Arne Naess insists that scientists cannot help but

empathise with animals. He refers to this response as “spontaneous identification”,

where:

As scientists we observe the death struggle of an insect, but as mature human

beings we spontaneously also experience our own death in a way, and feel

sentiments that relate to struggle, pain, and death. (qtd. in Fawcett 17)

Humans, therefore, relate to animal experience through the acknowledgment that our

sensory responses are alike. This is not a wishful or romantic deduction, Naess insists,

“[g]iven our biological endowment each of us has the capacity to identify with all living

beings” (qtd. in Fawcett 17). As H.Clark Barrett suggests in his study "Cognitive

Development and the Understanding of Animal Behavior", the ability to empathize with

animals can positively influence science. He proposes that this “[i]magining [. . .] can act

as an excellent predictor for where the animal will feed and the direction in which it may

move” and is a useful analytic tool (Barrett 24). Similarly, Juliet Clutton-Brock’s article

“Admitting Sympathy beyond Species” identifies new support for anthropomorphism

from emerging fields of research such as cognitive ethology, which recognize that

“anthropomorphism does not necessarily disrupt scientific observation but can support

the continuity between humans and animals” (958). New science acknowledges the

instinctive and beneficial nature of anthropomorphism and supports the theory that this

tendency is with us from childhood on.

According to Barrett, children necessarily “use humans as the source domain for

inferences about animals” (23). He affirms Jean Piaget’s contention that children relate to

the world this way because they “are ‘animists’: they see agency in the world where there
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is none” (qtd. in Barrett 22). Bruno Bettelheim in his oft-quoted The Uses of

Enchantment clarifies this point, noting that because “the child is self-centered, he

expects the animal to talk about the things which are really significant to him, as animals

do in fairy tales [. . .] A child is convinced that the animal understands and feels with

him, even though it does not show it openly” (46). Children do not distinguish

themselves from animals in the same fashion that adults do and demonstrate a voracious

appetite for information about animal life, as Andrew Balmford and his colleagues

identify in their recent article “Why Conservationists Should Heed Pokemon”. In this

study, the authors contrast English primary schoolchildren’s categorical knowledge of

real animal facts with their identification of Pokemon characters from the popular,

fantastic trading-card series. The children display a “tremendous capacity for learning

about creatures whether natural or man-made” yet, the authors contend, their “innate

interest in diversity is nowadays being met by man-made variety” (par. 4, 2). Barrett’s

research also supports this deduction as he notes that in instances “when information

about real animals is impoverished, children may fill their taxonomic knowledge system

with information about imaginary creatures” (29). Conservationists must acknowledge

the implication of these conclusions: that we are turning to the fantastic to satisfy our

desire for information about animal life as we become increasingly isolated from the

natural world.

Naturalizing Nature: The Problem of Anthropomorphism and the Realistic Animal

Story

A wave of naturalist tales from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

tend to exemplify the realistic animal story as a narrative genre. These stories illustrate
 Maija-Liisa Harju

the particular challenges facing the writer who seeks to promote respect for animal life

without the use of anthropomorphsim. Classic texts of the genre such as Red Fox and

Last of the Curlews reinforce the dominating anthropocentric worldview by discrediting

anthropomorphism and discouraging the reader’s emotional attachment to animal

subjects. They tend to highlight distinctions between species rather than promote

communion.

As Sheila Egoff and Judith Saltman note in The New Republic of Childhood,

naturalists sought to provide “animal biography in fictional form” by undertaking “an

analysis of character that was based on the influence of environment” alone (90). The

purpose of establishing an “aesthetic distance” between text and reader was to “spare the

reader emotionalism and sentimentalism” (101). Egoff and Saltman suggest that in the

interests of education and conservation, the “naturalist would not indulge in

anthropomorphism” (88). This new breed of animal story, “founded upon scientific

observation and a profound knowledge of animals” meant to counter the heavy

sentimentalism and morality in popular animal stories of the period such as Anna

Sewell’s Black Beauty and Margaret Marshall Saunders’ Beautiful Joe (88, 90).

Though writers like Fred Bodsworth may have decried anthopomorphism they do

not succesfully avoid using it in their own work. In Last of the Curlews Bodsworth

purports that the Eskimo curlew’s migration is determined solely by “glandular activity”,

that “[t]here [is] no reasoning or intelligence involved. The curlew [is] merely responding

in the ages old pattern of his race to the changing cycle of physiological controls within

him” (34,35). The suggestion here, that pure physiology motivates a bird's flight cannot

be proven anymore than a proposal that the curlew migrates because it is desperate for a
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holiday. We simply, scientifically, cannot claim to possess indisputable insight into

animal behavior. Bodsworth’s profession of real knowledge therefore, is as much

guesswork as an anthropomorphic ascription to flight. His inability to maintain a

scientific distance from his subject is also evident in these descriptions: “The essence of

what the curlew felt now was a nostalgic yearning for home” (80), “The male felt as if he

had been reborn and was starting another life” (86), and “the male began to forget that he

had ever known the torture of being alone” (87). With these references to feelings such as

nostalgia, rebirth and loneliness, Bodsworth appears to acquiese that some ascription of

human emotion to relate animal experience may be unavoidable. It seems impossible for

a reader to connect with animal life without the means of sentimental, or empathetic

association.

Imagining Animal Life

It is not only the authors of the realistic animal story who struggle with the problem

of anthropomorphism. Critics and scholars appear to be similarly conflicted when

determining what amount of anthropomorphism might be permitted in the genre. In his

introduction to Last of the Curlews, John Stevens first declares: “Highly developed self-

awareness, usually a necessary condition in tragedy, is not possible here. To allow

creatures to think and act too much like humans is to drift towards fable” (qtd. in

Bodsworth 9). Stevens then contradicts this argument by stating:

By persuading us to accept that the curlew recognizes his loneliness and

isolation Bodsworth can make the necessary emotional bond between

the curlew and the reader, for it is some form of loneliness and isolation

that is the human tragic experience. And perhaps this degree of

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‘humanizing’ the bird is a necessary concession to the limitations of the

human mind. (12)

Stevens allows for human cognitive limitations by admitting that “we can only imagine

the minds of creatures in human terms” (12). With this change he essentially agrees that

anthropomorphism is unavoidable, for how can one humanize without

anthropomorphizing? Similarly, Egoff and Saltman who originally champion realistic

portrayals of animal life with: “it takes a sure sense of the limits of credibility to keep the

realistic animal story from being maudlin or […] so confused as to be neither animal

story nor outright fantasy” go on to suggest, “[s]ome transference of human intelligence

and emotion in the animal character can, in good hands, heighten the emotional impact of

a story” (89). These contradictory statements are problematic because they criticize

without clarifying how a writer might go about injecting an acceptable amount of

humanity into the realistic animal story. When Egoff and Saltman praise the naturalist’s

characterization of animals not as “mere automatons led by blind instinct [but] creatures

that possess the faculty of reason—but not human reason” the reader is again stymied

(90). We are left to ponder what concept of reason if not human reason we are meant to

relate to.

Though scholars often herald naturalists like Ernest Thompson Seton and Charles

G.D. Roberts for their provision of animal stories that do not anthropomorphize, I suggest

their decision to eschew anthropomorphic identification directly contributed to the

genre's near extinction. The naturalist model is not popularly used today nor are copies of

Red Fox and Last of the Curlews readily available in bookstores. Other critics suggest a

direct link between the limitations inherent in realism as a narrative strategy and the
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decline in readership of these stories. As William Magee relates in “The Animal Story”,

plotlines become repetitious and tedious because the realistic narrative restricts plot

development beyond the “daily business of searching for food" (228). The writer’s

inability to “develop a general repertoire of fresh characters and situations for his new

genre” also stifles the story (228). Magee identifies specific instances in which authors

have injected drama into the storyline, albeit natural drama in the form of an animal’s

near starvation or pregnancy, to heighten plots (225). Certainly, Charles G.D. Roberts,

“[i]n casting around for the necessary variety in the development of his plots [...] fell

back more and more on the repertoire of human fiction” (227). The restrictions of

realism and its disavowal of anthropomorphism have certainly limited the narrative’s

appeal for, as Egoff and Saltman note, the number of realistic animal stories produced in

the 1980’s “declined to almost zero” (101).

Contemporary attempts to represent animal experience in realistic or nonfictive

forms appear to be no better equipped to address complex questions regarding animal

cognition than their naturalist counterparts. Nor are they able to adequately promote

animal-human interconnections because they do not anthropomorphize. In an attempt to

foster respect for animal life, realistic animal texts for children today often employ the

purely moralistic tone that once characterized Margaret Saunders’ Beautiful Joe: “be kind

to dumb animals [. . .] because you ought to, for they were placed on the earth by the

same Kind Hand that made all living creatures” (Hunt , Children's Literature 149). This

can be seen in Sylvia Funston’s Animal Feelings, a recent book of animal facts and

photographs for children that tackles the question of animal emotions. The author

maintains an objective distance, posing questions rather than attempting to posit answers
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and instructs the reader to respect animal life to be on the safe side: “One day we might

know for certain whether animals feel emotions in the same way we do. Until we do, we

should give them the benefit of the doubt and treat all animals kindly” (47). While this

text may work on a primary level by introducing the idea of animal emotion, the realistic

narrative ultimately prevents the author from providing any tangible possibilities for

animal cognition. When Funston relates that elephants often remain with their dead for

days, she can only posit, “Was it grief that kept them there?” (14). This open-ended

question may prompt the reader to consider whether animals feel emotions similar to

humans but cannot encourage our empathetic response to them. Alternatively, Barbara

Gowdy’s animal fantasy The White Bone does enable us to identify with an elephant, by

providing a description of how her heroine experiences grief. When Mud is trapped

under her dead mother and deserted by the rest of her herd, Gowdy imagines her distress

as: “Mud would remember her first hours of life second for second [. . .] Fear was the

shape of the big cows’ feet; craving was the odour of dung [. . .] throughout the day the

air shuddered with thunder, and this was the wound of her entrapment” (11). Because

Gowdy employs a fantastical narrative structure she is free to envision elephant grief

through imaginative description and is not limited by fact alone. It is anthropomorphism

that enables empathy, by allowing us to relate to the possibility of animal grief through

our subjective knowledge of feelings such as fear, loss and abandonement. Recognizing

the value of this kind of association however, means acknowledging the value of

emotional knowledge over rational knowledge, another concept that is a hard sell in the

West.

Adults tend to disparage the use of anthropomorphism and favour the realistic
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animal story because it promotes rational knowledge and is considered a better

instructional tool. Bettelheim suggests that because adults “have become estranged from

the ways in which young people experience the world [...] they object to exposing

children to [...] ‘false’ information” (47). Scientifically-correct explanations reassure

adults that they are clarifying the world, despite the fact that these justifications “leave

the young child confused, overpowered and intellectually defeated” (48). As Bettelheim

contends, a child may listen to realistic stories and “maybe get something out of them,

but he cannot extract much personal meaning from them that transcends obvious content”

(54). Factual knowledge is only useful to us once we have digested it as personal or

subjective knowledge (54). Therefore, I contend that emotional knowledge, gained

through the empathetic identification that results from anthropomorphism in the animal

story, is necessary for us to make any real meaning of the factual information about

animal life we are given.

Ultimately, we cannot look to the realistic animal story to support the goals of

personalism because of its inherent anthropocentrism, negation of anthropomorphism and

insistence upon the superiority of rational knowledge. The most elemental argument

against this narrative form, however is due to the genre's lack of vision. The case against

anthropomorphism, Fawcett relates, is essentially a case against teleology, a “doctrine

that phenomena are guided not only by mechanical forces but that they also move

towards the goals of self-realization “(19). When the realistic animal story perpetuates the

notion that an animal's only purpose in life is mere survival, it refutes the meaning of life

for any organism including humans, a notion that can only alienate “humans from their

experience of life” (19). Alternatively, the animal fantasy does afford for and explore
 Maija-Liisa Harju

teleology. Where Bodsworth purports his curlew only exists to migrate, propogate and

expire, Kenneth Oppel's imagines, in his novel Silverwing, that a bat takes flight on a

migratory journey in order to fulfill a mission of self-discovery. The bat Shade comes to

realize: “It wasn’t enough. He wanted something more, and it surprised him. He

genuinely wanted to see the sun. This thing that they were absolutely forbidden” (Oppel

27). Similarly, Robert O’Brien’s rats in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH demonstrate a

desire to change their lot, striving to make themselves self-sufficient to escape the stigma

of a species that steals to survive (157). Works of animal fantasy, in stark contrast to

their realistic counterparts, reflect a teleological philosophy because they grant animals

the the ability to dream.

To Fly by Night and See the Dawn: The Possibilities of Animal Fantasy

There are many kinds of animal fantasy: some introduce imaginary creatures such

as dragons and unicorns, some dress their animal protagonists in human clothes and put

them in human sitcoms demonstrating their troublesome marriage or day at the office.

The animal stories I address here more closely reflect the aims of the realistic animal

story in that their representation of animal communities are grounded in fact. As

Margaret Blount states in Animal Land, the fantasy lies in the composition of societies

wherein “immutable animal laws are made clear by the invoking of a human structure”

(257). Anthropomorphism is used in stories such as Charlotte’s Web, Watership Down,

Mrs.Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Silverwing and The White Bone to present animal

society as that which mirrors our own, composed of language, culture, mythology and a

sense of history.

Fantasy is often considered by adults to be simplistic and less challenging as a

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literary genre. In her article “Fantasy, Realism and the Dynamics of Reception: The Case

of the Child Reader” Marisa Bortolussi refutes this perception, asserting that fantasy

“imitates not what we perceive to be, but that which is intuited or imagined possible, not

yet known [and] delves into new and disconcerting, even shocking dimensions of the

already known” (36). She suggests that fantasy challenges the reader to consider a “new

awareness, perspective, viewpoint, [and] conception of reality” (39). Asfrid Svensen

agrees that the genre provides more than mere escapism, revealing the “hidden

possibilities deep within ourselves [...] the secret and often suppressed resources in our

minds and stimulates their development” (8). Reading fantastical texts, she implies, may

prove to be a greater challenge for readers because they must suspend their disbelief and

accept the negotiation between real and alternate worlds.

A good fantasy is not completely estranged from our perception of reality,

however, and is “only effective if the child can sustain the feeling of being a participant,

and not a stranger in a totally strange world” (Bortolussi 42). The fantasy writer must

therefore sucessfully incorporate the known and the unknown to keep the reader

committed to the narrative. Many contemporary authors of animal fantasies utilize this

strategy, combining factual knowledge of animal life with anthropomorphism to explore

animal potential. In Silverwing, Oppel presents real knowledge of bats’ sonar capabilities

yet extends our understanding, by positing how that sense might inform their culture and

memory. He imagines that bats “see with echoes” and communicate stories and history

by “sing[ing] echo pictures” to each other (Oppel 27). Oppel’s success at melding both

realism and fantasy is evident in this presentation of a " fully imagined nighttime world”

(Anon. qtd. in Oppel 2).

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A reconstruction of animal life after dark not only familiarizes the reader with the

unknown but may help allay their fears. Silverwing is often heralded, much like Janell

Cannon’s picture book Stellaluna, for making the bat, a frightening and unpopular

animal, into a dynamic character children can relate to ( Oppel 218). By choosing to

explore bat life, Oppel illuminates the night with all its “hidden depths of slow and

labyrinthine wisdom” (Svensen 6) and familiarizes the reader with the animal lives that

stir while they sleep. This demonstrates the animal fantasy's ability to provide the reader

with more than a description of habitat. By presenting both real knowledge and possible

conceptualizations of animal life the animal fantasy makes us more comfortable in their

world and better able to relate to it. Encouraging familiarity with animal environments is

one way the animal fantasy may promote the values of personalism. Another means

through which we explore interconnections is through the genre's examination of

interspecies relationships.

Animal-Animal Connections

For Neil Evernden, personalism is possible only when we “[regard] ourselves less

as objects than as sets of relationships” (qtd. in Fawcett 16). This theory predicates

humanity as part of a community of animals. Animal fantasies often tackle relationships

between animal groups themselves, and/or those between animals and humans. In animal

fantasies partnerships between species are essential to survival. There are often

discussions between animal groups in the text to clarify and justify these bonds, such as :

“Why should a crow be a friend to a mouse?”, “We all help one another against the cat”

(O’Brien 50, 26). In Silverwing Marina, Shade’s companion exclaims: “Who’d have

thought a rat would save our lives?” (Oppel 182). The rat in question aids in their escape
 Maija-Liisa Harju

because he feels some kinship with them. He is more bat than rat, sporting leftover

membranes between his arms and legs, a distinction that has made him an outcast among

his own (179). Fraternity between animal groups is not only presented as a survival

strategy in these texts, but as a means through which animals may enrich their lives. As

Nicholas Tucker relates:

[T]the gang life in animal stories is one of their most striking characteristics:

within species, readers are often given the impression of the common purpose

and sympathy that can make life so much easier and more attractive, and across

species as well there may sometimes be friendships, courtship and

marriage.”(100)

Inter-species relationships in animal fantasies are depicted as being both harmonious and

disharmonious but utltimately reflect the personalistic view that animals of all kinds must

find a way to live together. John Simons suggests that our continuing fascination with

stories about talking animals is due to the fact that “humans crucially cannot

communicate fully across the inter-species barrier” (138). Fantasy, however, can override

the physical restrictions that separate us from animals and encourage a sense of kinship

with them on an emotional or even metaphysical level.

Human-Animal Interconnectedness: Promoting ‘Fields of Care’

Many non-Western cultures maintain a belief in the possibility of spiritual

connections between humans and animals. Sara Corbett’s book, Animals and Us,

introduces the child reader to the Eastern reverence for Colobus monkeys who are seen as

spiritual messengers from the gods (15). This veneration of animal life is also evident in

India, she relates, where the cow is considered a sacred animal (15). The suggestion that
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humans can have preternatural links with animals is not easily accepted in the West, but

is a personalistic view that can help us better understand the potential for interspecies

connection. To achieve this kind of perspective, Neil Evernden states, we must begin to

consider ourselves “ ‘fields of care’ rather than as discrete objects in a neutral

environment” meaning that we are “not merely unique individuals all bundled up in our

own needs and feelings. Our very selves extend beyond our bodies, to the beings, human

and non-human, to whom we are connected” (qtd. in Fawcett 16). For Evernden, this

kind of understanding is “nothing short of a new metaphysical approach to the

human/non-human relationship” and determines our ability to connect with animal

species (16). Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass is one fantasy that explores the

potential for extraordinary human-animal bonds and clearly illustrates the particular

ability of this narrative form to provide us with new concepts of interconnectedness.

In The Golden Compass human beings are bound to animal daemons that serve as

companions, protectors and extensions of their spirit. Daemons do not manifest as one

particular animal but rather reflect the form that best represents their human partner’s

emotion at any given time. When Pullman’s heroine Lyra is fearful he relays her distress

through her daemon’s transformation: “Suddenly she felt afraid. Pantalaimon, as a

miniature lion sprang into her arms and growled” (60). In this world, animal familiars not

only represent emotions but a human’s developing character, settling at last in puberty on

one animal form (167). Daemons and humans are intrinsically linked and to be

physically separated by any distance is incredibly painful. As Lyra describes it, “it [is]

such a strange tormenting feeling when your daemon [is] pulling at the link between you;

part physical pain deep in the chest, part intense sadness and love” (195). Without one’s
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daemon, one cannot survive (218). This profound image of metaphysical connections

between species reinforces a personalistic worldview and reflects the notion that human

survival is dependent on the development of these relationships. Pullman’s vision of

human-animal connections exemplifies Evernden’s concept of “nature-as-self [...] an

understanding of nature as ‘like-self’ or as a community of selves, of persons, with whom

one has relationships similar to those within human society” providing us with more

possibilites for human and animal relationships (qtd. in Fawcett 16). Where the realistic

animal story reinforced distances between species and depended on human goodness to

support conservation, the animal fantasy actively engages the reader by emotionally

connecting them with animal life.

We do not read animal stories solely for their ability to promote a philosophy of

conservation nor do I suggest they should only be read to that end. However, these

narratives are both timeless and timely and can be utilized to further this goal. The

argument against anthropomorphism invoked by the realistic animal story of the past is

no longer defensible. Texts of this particular genre meant to protect the interests of

science, and scientific attitudes have changed. Today there is an acknowledgement that

“treating [animals] as individuals can have a dramatic effect on attitudes to animal

conservation”, and one can only gain understanding of the animal as an individual

through anthropomorphism (Clutton-Brock 958). Because the realistic animal story

disparages this device, it cannot be an affective means of fostering human connections

with animal life. Through anthropomorphism, the animal fantasy familiarizes us with,

and therefore makes us more open to, the exploration of the unknown in animal life.

These stories represent the reality of species' interdependence by depicting complex

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relationships between animal groups. Fore mostly, by allowing us to relate empathetically

to animal characters as individuals, the animal fantasy provides the possibility for

profound connections between human and animal life that reflect a teleological

philosophy. We must therefore, look to the animal fantasy to support and encourage the

new and necessary personalistic worldview that directs our ecological attitude; one that

considers all life to be equal, connected and purposeful.

Works Cited

Balmford, Andrew, Lizzie Clegg, Tim Coulson, Jennie Taylor. Why Conservationists
Should Heed Pokemon. 4 May 2005
<www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/ss64/23676>
Barrett, H.Clark. Cognitive Development and the Understanding of Animal Behavior. 4
May 2005 <www.anthro.ucla.edu/faculty/barrett/Barrett-osm-distribute.pdf>
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.
Blount, Margaret. Animal Land. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1974.
Bodsworth, Fred. Last of the Curlews. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963.
Bortolussi, Marisa. “Fantasy, Realism and the Dynamics of Reception: The Case of the
Child Reader”. Canadian Children’s Literature 41 (1986): 32-43
Clutton-Brock, Juliet. “Admitting Sympathy beyond Species” Nature 434 (2005): 958-
959.
Corbett, Sara. Animals and Us. Chicago: Children’s Press, 1995.
Egoff, Sheila and Judith Saltman. The New Republic of Childhood. Toronto: Oxford
University Press, 1990.
Fawcett, Leesa. “Anthropomorphism: In the Web of Culture.” Undercurrents 1.1 (1989):
14-20.
Funston, Sylvia. Animal Feelings. Toronto: Owl Books, 1998.
Gowdy, Barbara. The White Bone. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1998.
Hunt. Peter. Children’s Literature. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.
Hunt. Peter. Criticism, Theory and Children’s Literature. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
1991.
Magee, William H. “The Animal Story”. Sheila Egoff, G.T Stubbs and L.F. Ashley
(eds). Only Connect: Readings on Children’s Literature. Toronto: Oxford
University Press, 1969: 221-232.
O’Brien, Robert C. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. New York: Atheneum, 1976.
Oppel, Kenneth. Silverwing. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1997.
Pullman, Phillip. The Golden Compass. New York: Random House, 1995.
Simons, John. Animal Rights and the Politics of Literary Representation. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2002.
Svensen, Astrid. “Opening Windows on to Unreality” International Review of Children’s
Literature and Librarianship. 2.1 Spring (1987): 1-9.
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Tucker, Nicholas. The Child and the Book: a Psychological and Literary Exploration.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.