The Creative Child and the Natural World: Call for Submissions to a Special Issue of the Journal of Juvenilia Studies

Concerns about the increasing disconnect between humans and the environment have made nature connection for children a matter for discussion and debate since at least the Industrial Revolution. In the western world, recent decades have seen nature-guided education movements (e.g., Forest School) emerge in response to what some are now calling a “nature-deficit disorder” in children (Louv 2005). We ask what creative work by young people might contribute to such debates. How do young writers and artists understand their relationship to nature? When young people choose to write—or draw—about the natural world, what importance do they ascribe to it? What can creative work by young people reveal about the ways—and the extent—to which the natural world matters to the child’s developing identity or artistry?

We also invite scholars to consider the significance of place (geographical, social, political) and time (e.g. pre-Industrial Revolution, post 1970s environmental awareness). Does nature writing or artwork by children look different depending on where or when it is produced, and why do these differences matter? How does the creative child’s education or their built environment mediate their response to nature? In what ways might juvenilia by members of historically marginalized groups reflect, validate, challenge, or complicate mainstream constructions of childhood, of creativity, or of nature?

The Journal of Juvenilia Studies (https://journalofjuveniliastudies.com/index.php/jjs/about) invites scholars of juvenilia studies, childhood studies, and related disciplines to submit original scholarly essays that examine creative writing or art by youth under the age of 21 in light of any of these or related questions. We particularly welcome cross-disciplinary approaches.

Submissions are due 15 September 2025; following peer review, accepted essays will be published in a Special Issue, Guest Edited by Rebecca Welshman. Enquiries and proposals are encouraged but not required: please contact Rebecca Welshman (Rebecca.Welshman@liverpool.ac.uk) or JJS Editor Lesley Peterson (peterson.lesley@gmail.com).

Topics may include but are not limited to:-

• Creativity and taxonomy (classification, naming)
• Engagement with geology, archaeology, and palaeontology
• Indigenous ways of knowing
• Land-based learning
• Urban and industrial childhoods
• Literary and cultural mediation of the child’s response to nature
• Constructions of the natural (vs. the unnatural, the civilized, the supernatural)
• Affordances of the natural world (escape, danger, nurture, solace, material resources)
• Land and national identity