Issue No 3. Sliding into: Agency

Welcome to SLIDING’s third issue! Read this month’s editorial to learn more about what we mean by agency and which exciting content we will share with you in this issue.

Van de Vendel and Tolman’s Vosje (2018) is often praised for its extraordinary artwork and adorable main character. In this article, I would like to argue that the book takes a classic anti-curiosity and father-knows-best stance.

In this opportunity, I want to bring forward an example in which the Western idea of child agency is put to the test, one that reveals the tensions between theory and lived experience in the Global South. Specifically, it is the story of how child activism mixed with environmental advocacy led to exile.

Inspired by Oliver Jeffers’ Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth, this poster reminds us that there’s still much to imagine, build, and care for. Download it, color it, or make it your own, because there’s plenty left for you to do.

This article explores the development of children’s rights and agency in India through history, law, and literature. While children were once viewed mainly as dependents, modern acts like the Right to Education (2009) and Juvenile Justice (2015) affirm their rights to education, protection, and participation, though challenges remain in practice. National symbols, too, reflect this shift: Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy and the celebration of Children’s Day highlight cultural recognition of children as the nation’s future. Literature, from R. K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends to Paro Anand’s No Guns at My Son’s Funeral, portrays young people as active agents confronting inequalities. Despite progress, issues such as child labour, early marriage, and gender disparities reveal persistent gaps. The article argues that children’s rights must be recognised as claims of young citizens, demanding both legal reform and cultural change.

Knitting has traditionally been depicted as an old, white grandma’s cosy activity. Anabelle, an assertive and independent girl, shows in Mac Barnett’s picturebook Extra Yarn that knitting can be, in fact, a tool for standing her ground and re-shaping the community.

Introducing children to agency can take as many forms as agency itself. Sometimes it can be done with a lot of humor and a good amount of silliness, as Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen show in their hilarious picturebook. Join us in this read-aloud and find out how Duck and Mouse take matters into their own hands when their home is suddenly in danger, and their lives are at risk.

This study examines how Into the Uncut Grass (Noah, 2024) reconfigures child agency through a relational ontology informed by New Materialism. Drawing on Spyrou’s (2018) framework of relational agency, it analyses three assemblages (a network of relations) through which the protagonist’s agency emerges via intra-actions among human and nonhuman entities. Ultimately, the study challenges idealised, autonomous conceptions of childhood, revealing agency as affective, negotiated, and co-constituted.

GenZ-led revolutionary movements have recently caught the attention of the media, partly due to their innovative approach to protests and politics. Whether in Indonesia, Nepal, Madagascar, or Morocco, young people have relied on similar symbols to showcase their opposition. Among those, the One Piece’s pirate flag has even become an emblem for freedom across the globe. So… Can children’s literature and media actually have an influence on young people’s political agency?

This piece explores the lived realities of Dalit and Indigenous children in India, whose lives and struggles remain largely absent from dominant narratives. It examines how education, often framed as a tool of emancipation, fails to include their histories, voices and experiences, instead reinforcing exclusion within supposedly liberatory systems.