Seedlings

Elwyn Jenkins’s three previous books about South African children’s literature in English have established him as an authority in the field. Seedlings is a collection of his essays from journals and magazines on South African topics not covered in his books and includes a new study of children’s verse of the first half of the twentieth century. Chapters include entertaining, broad-ranging discussions of familiar and obscure books and writers both past and present, placing them in national and international context. His historical studies provide new insights into the cultural history of English-speaking white South Africans. Two innovative chapters examine published collections of writing by young people from the apartheid era through to the present, ending with the testimonies of young refugees. He concludes with two chapters on researching South African children’s literature