La Trobe

From the gingerbread house to the cornucopia: gastronomic utopia as social critique in Homecoming and The Hunger Games.

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journal contribution
posted on 2025-06-30, 05:57 authored by Sarah Hardstaff
Sarah Hardstaff explores a theme surprisingly common in children's literature: hunger, and its connections to child empowerment and disempowerment in society. Hardstaff crosses generic lines, looking at realistic fiction, dystopian fiction, and fairy tales as she explores the differing contexts of each, and how hunger and plenty affect the agency of protagonists as well as the hunger of the reader or hearer in differing circumstances. More specifically, she explores hunger as the driver of change, and the vehicle for protagonists to effect change in their lives and their worlds.

History

Journal

The Looking Glass : New Perspectives on Children's Literature

ISSN

1551-5680

Volume

19

Issue

1

Publisher

La Trobe University

Section Title

Alice's Academy

Author Biography

Sarah Hardstaff is a PhD student at Homerton College, Cambridge University, under the supervision of Maria Nikolajeva. Her research focuses on the novels of Mildred Taylor and Cynthia Voigt, applying ideas from economic criticism and functional linguistics. Sarah's MPhil thesis explored food poverty as a theme in children's literature.

Date Created

2016-07-21

Rights Statement

Essays and articles published in The Looking Glass may be reproduced for non-profit use by any educational or public institution; letters to the editor and on-site comments made by our readers may not be used without the expressed permission of that individual. Any commercial use of this journal, in whole or in part, by any means, is prohibited. Authors of accepted articles assign to The Looking Glass the right to publish and distribute their text electronically and to archive and make it permanently available electronically. They retain the copyright and, 90 days after initial publication, may republish it in any form they wish as long as The Looking Glass is acknowledged as the original source.

Data source

OJS data migration 2025: https://ojs.latrobe.edu.au/ojs/index.php/tlg/article/view/760

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