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This article reflects on insights gained from a larger study that explored how a class of ten to eleven-year olds read and responded to David Almond's hybrid novel, My Name is Mina. Through focusing on the children's performances of the poems contained within the text the discussion examines embodied aspects of the children's engagement and suggests that these play a critical role in their shared readership. The implications of this analysis are considered in relation to Peter Hollindale's definition of 'childness' and it is argued that a closer analysis of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale reveals tensions inherent between linguistic constructions of childness within the text and embodied performances on stage. Drawing on critical perspectives from children's literature theory and research conducted on classroom dialogue, the article argues that children make use of their social and physical positioning to engage in fictive negotiations of childness and adultness and, in so doing, co-create the aesthetic experience that we refer to as children's literature.

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This article asks how the theory of evolution is represented within nonfiction picturebooks. Twenty-eight picturebooks were originally identified through a series of online searches and crowdsourcing exercises. In this article we look closely at a handful of examples that lend themselves to discussing how nonfiction picturebooks manage readers’ expectations, translate science through their use of metaphors, and encourage readers to engage with alternative perspectives.