The Outside Child, In and Out of the Book is situated at the intersection between children?s literature studies and childhood studies. In this provocative book, Christine Wilkie-Stibbs juxtaposes the narratives of literary and actual children/young adults to explore how Western culture has imagined, defined, and dealt with their outsider status ? whether orphaned, homeless, refugee, victims of abuse, or exploited ? and how processes of economic, social, or political impoverishment are sustained and naturalized in regimes of power, authority, and domination.

In five chapters titled: "Outsider," "Displaced," "Erased," "Abject," "Unattached," and "Colonized," the book situates and repositions a range of pre- and post-millennium children?s/young adult fictions, autobiographies, policy documents, and reports in the current climate of rabid globalization, new "out-group" definitions, and prescribed normativity. Children?s/young adult fictions considered include: Malorie Blackman?s Noughts and Crosses trilogy; Mark Haddon?s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; Jacqueline Wilson?s The Illustrated Mum; Shyam Selvadurai?s Funny Boy; Ann Provoost?s Falling; Meg Rosoff?s, How I Live Now; Elizabeth Laird?s A Little Piece of Ground. Autobiographical works include Zlata Filipovic?s Zlata?s Diary; Kevin Lewis?s The Kid; Latifa?s My Forbidden Face; and Valérie Zenatti?s When I Was a Soldier.