'From the Garden to the Trenches': The Child, the First World War, and North America

10-11 May 2012, Brock University and Toronto University, Canada

Logo for 'From the Garden to the Trenches': Pencil sketch depicting a small child on the left and a soldier in battle dress on the right, playing in the mud. This conference, which was part of a three year ongoing international project, explored how children's culture has shaped and been shaped by cultures of war. It focused on North American childhoods during and prior to the First World War.

The conference brought together First World War scholars and writers who have written about the First World War for children, and also offered the opportunity to explore the Osborne Collection of Children's Books, one of the largest collections of children's books in the world.

Conference Programme

Keynote speakers

Michael Morpurgo, UK

Michael Morpurgo is one of Britain's best-loved writers for children. He has written over 120 books for children, including the internationally successful War Horse, told through the eyes of a war horse on the Western Front, and Private Peaceful, the story of a teenage soldier in the First World War. War Horse was adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford in 2009, and Steven Spielberg's film adaptation of the mnovel was released in 2011. Michael was the UK Children's Laureate 2003-2005.

Selected publications: Morpurgo, Michael, War Horse (Kaye & Ward, 1982); Morpurgo, Michael, Private Peaceful (Collins, 2003); Morpurgo, Michael Little Manfred (HarperCollins Childrens Books, 2011)

Linda Granfield, Canada

Linda Granfield is one of Canada's best-known historians and writers of non-fiction for children and young people. She has written extensively on the theme of the First World War, most notably in In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McCrae (1995), which was chosen as an honour book by the Canada Library Association.

Selected publications: Granfield, Linda, Remembering John McCrae: Soldier-Doctor-Poet (Scholastic Canada, 2009); Granfield, Linda, The Unknown Soldier (Scholastic Canada, 2008); Granfield, Linda, In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McCrae, illus by Janet Wilson (Markham, ON : Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1995)

Margaret Higonnet, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Connecticut, Margaret Higonnet has taught at the Universities of George Washington, Munich, Timisoara and Santiago de Compostela.

Margaret has written influentially across a range of disciplines, notably children's literature and culture and the literature of the First World War.

Selected publications: Hayes, Jarrod, Margaret Higonnet and William Spurlin (eds.), Comparatively Queer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Higonnet, Margaret (ed.), Nurses at the Front: Writing the Wounds of the Great War (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001); Higonnet, Margaret (ed.), Lines of Fire: Women Writers on World War (New York: Penguin / Plume, 1999); Clark, Beverly and Margaret Higonnet (eds), Girls, Boys, Books, Toys (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1999)

Paul Stevens, University of Toronto

Paul Stevens is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Early Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Toronto. He has worked on a range of areas, including nationalism and colonialism, modern British literature, Milton, and early modern literature and culture.

Selected publications: Stevens, Paul (co-ed), Early Modern Nationalism and Milton’s England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008); Stevens, Paul (co-ed), 'Milton in America' special issue of University of Toronto Quarterly 77:3 (2008); Stevens, Paul (co-ed), Discontinuities: New Essays on Renaissance Literature and Criticism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); Stevens, Paul, Imagination and the Presence of Shakespeare in ‘Paradise Lost’, (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)