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In this article, I present a comparison of the representation of the uses of money and gift economies in two landmark series for young readers from the United States: Mildred Taylor's Logan family novels , centred on an African American family in 1930s Mississippi, and Cynthia Voigt's Tillerman family novels (1981)(1982)(1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989), centred on a white family in 1970s Maryland. Both Taylor and Voigt depict characters navigating the banking system; moreover, both show the ways in which banking is a question not just of economic competence but of social capital and indeed, of social justice. While Taylor presents money as a social tool, used to acquire things of value (rather than having inherent value) and as a means for characters to collaborate or punish one another, Voigt often presents money as a tool for individual self-actualisation. Similarly, in the gift economy, Voigt shows gifts as having economic potency whereas for Taylor these gifts instead act as conduits for social exchange. In both the Logan and Tillerman novels, gifts are used to strengthen social bonds, but can be dangerous too, creating obligations and conditions of repayment that are too onerous for the characters. Often presented as opposites, the differences between monetary and gift economies sometimes seem to collapse in these novels.

This study explores the responses of Abby, a young person with autism, to David Macaulay's 1990 picturebook Black and White. Although both picturebook researchers and autism practitioners focus on the importance of encouraging empathetic responses to fictional characters, I build on Louise Collins' argument that Macaulay's work offers an opportunity to develop a different kind of "moral literacy" (2002, p.31). Different ways of practising and understanding perspective-taking in relation to fiction are considered in light of Abby's responses to Black and White and to fiction more generally. This study, in considering its own weaknesses, also offers a critique of the typical approaches to picturebook research whereby taking the perspective of fictional characters is sometimes seen as indicative of reading competence. MPhil studies in children's literature. To begin with, Macaulay's picturebook was selected as it seemed like a text that might appeal to older readers, whereas much of the existing picturebook research focuses on the responses of younger children. The initial analysis of the text and the skills it seemed to require prompted the idea of working with a young person with autism. Autism is often associated (not without contention) with lower-than-average empathising and higherthan-average systemising skills. Thus, the purpose of the study was to consider a young person's responses to a complex picturebook narrative in relation to the empathising-systemising model associated with autism spectrum conditions (Baron-Cohen, 2002, pp. 248-254). The initial analysis was produced in part for the purpose of assessing the author's literary analysis of a picturebook: as such, it was heavily text-focused, taking the picturebook as the primary object of study and examining responses to the text in terms of how they related to particular features associated with autism. On reflection and on revisiting the original interview data, this approach seemed to overlook the unique contribution of the young person involved in the study, and thus, the current analysis has now taken on a different emphasis, considering the ways in which researchers themselves make assumptions about the value of empathy and other modes of response in interactions with fictional texts. Literary analysisAt first glance, and indeed on subsequent re-readings, it is difficult to determine whether Black and White consists of four separate narratives or one overall narrative. David Lewis describes how fragmentation and indeterminacy feature in Black and White: "There are hints and suggestions embedded in the pictures that the four stories might be connected but Macaulay makes no effort to explain how, or indeed if, this is so" (2001, p. 96). The visual text in particular seems to invite the reader to look closely for these connections and consider how the four stories might work together as a complete narrative. The four stories appear side by side on each double spread; the relationship between the stories is ultimately left unclear. For instance, the c...

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