Crossing Boundaries and Forming Identity in Beatrix Potter’s <u>The Tale of Peter Rabbit</u> and <u>The Tale of Benjamin Bunny</u>

  • Katie Mullins Queens University, Ontario

Abstract

Katie Mullins considers the essential relationship between breaking boundaries (both literal and symbolic) and identity formation in two classic picture books: Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny. After all, if we are not to risk, not to venture beyond conventional norms and territories, how are we to grow? How are we to discover our possibilities? Mullin offers Peter as a questioner and a questor, a hero who chooses to challenge the accepted conventions and limitations of his world.

Author Biography

Katie Mullins, Queens University, Ontario
Kavid Beagley is Lecturer in Children's Literature and Literacy at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, Victoria, Australia, where he teaches units in Genres, History, Australian and Post-colonial children's literature. He has previously taught in secondary schools, and has been a school and university librarian.
Issue
Vol. 13 No. 1 (2009)
Section
Alice's Academy
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.