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Children's Literature in Education

, Volume 44, Issue 3, pp 208–221 | Cite as

Maurice Gee’s Brilliant Borrowings of Maurice Gee and Significant Others: Realism and Postmodernism in Gee’s Books for Children and Adults

  • Vivien van Rij
Original Paper
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Abstract

This paper examines the work of one of New Zealand’s most acclaimed writers, Maurice Gee, and the use of his children’s fiction as an experimental ground for postmodernist techniques further developed in his writing for adults. In particular, it considers Gee’s borrowings of his own and others’ non-fictional and fictional material, to produce richly literary, historical novels. The paper argues that realist and postmodernist features are woven into the children’s and adult books, but that the balance is differently skewed in each. It thus addresses an area largely atypical of the children’s novel, but one that should be of concern to children’s literature critics.

Keywords

Maurice Gee Realism Postmodernism Parody Pastiche Intertextuality 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Faculty of Education, Victoria University of WellingtonWellingtonNew Zealand
  2. 2.WellingtonNew Zealand

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