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Children's Literature in Education

, Volume 43, Issue 2, pp 170–180 | Cite as

‘In the hands of the Receivers’: The Politics of Literacy in The Savage by David Almond and Dave McKean

  • Erica Hateley
Original Paper
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Abstract

David Almond and Dave McKean’s The Savage is a hybrid prose and graphic novel which tells the story of one young man’s maturation through literacy. The protagonist learns to deal with the death of his father and his own “savage” self by writing a graphic novel. This article reads The Savage in the context of earlier, “Northern” literacy narratives—particularly Tony Harrison’s poem “Them & [uz]” and Barry Hines’ Kes—through the discourse of neoliberalism and the notion of the reluctant boy reader. It is suggested that Almond and McKean are influenced by currently dominant ideologies of gender and literacy.

Keywords

Gender Literacy Neoliberalism Graphic fiction Barry Hines Kes Tony Harrison 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of Cultural and Language Studies in Education, L Block Level 1 129Queensland University of TechnologyKelvin GroveAustralia

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