Children’s Picture Books and Contemporary Egyptian Society

A social and political history of two decades of Egyptian neoliberalism through children’s picture books published in Egypt in the post-2000 era

Children’s picture books are some of the most transparently ideological materials available to parents and educators, and as cultural objects they are an expression of the zeitgeist of a particular era. They reveal much about the hopes, values, and aspirations of the society that produces them, as well as that society’s vision of its place in the wider world at large.

Children’s Picture Books and Contemporary Egyptian Society examines a new wave of Egyptian picture books that was published in the current century to see how these books responded to larger societal trends and transformations in Egypt, as well as to explore the ideologies that lie behind them. Yasmine Motawy argues that a host of factors, including the growth of gated communities and international schooling, the proliferation of lucrative literary awards, returning Gulf migrants, television dramas, and nationwide reading advocacy initiatives helped give rise to a new kind of children’s picture book in Egypt.

Motawy focuses on three clusters of selected picture books to investigate the extent to which these books reproduce hegemonic discourses or, alternatively, open up new horizons of childhood agency and societal transformation. The first cluster includes books that directly socialize the child by showing them ’how things are done, ’ in both the domestic sphere and the increasing globalized spaces that children frequent with their families. The second cluster aims at reframing cultural notions around femininity through the retelling of folk and fairy tales, while the third cluster addresses children’s abilities to assess the impact of their actions on their environment, and invites them to examine their personal suitability to positions of power and stewardship.

Yasmine Motawy teaches rhetoric and composition at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and is a scholar, critic, translator, editor, consultant, and writing mentor in the field of children’s literature. She has served on the 2021 Bologna Ragazzi Award Jury, the 2016 and 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury, the 2017 Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature jury, and on the Arabic books selection committee of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Book Club (2019-2020). She is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to International Children’s Literature (2018).