Differences, Idiosyncrasies, and Shared Humanity: Reconceptualising Crossover Literature

Crossover literature, as a group of texts that attracts both children and adults, has drawn much attention since the 1990s. This article contextualises contemporary crossover texts against the backdrop of the book industry, the hybridising of child and adult cultures, and the paradigm shift in childhood studies. The family resemblance approach is adopted because such an approach can illuminate the features that many contemporary crossover texts are likely to share without casting them as a stable, closed category. This article argues that crossover literature is a group of texts that are likely to be infused with an ethos of the kinship model of childhood. The argument is then illustrated with a close analysis of Anthony Browne’s The Big Baby (1995), which focuses on how different models of childhood are juxtaposed and contrasted against one another and how the text is infused with an egalitarian and respectful view of children.