Additional information
by Melanie Ramdarshan Bold (Author), Aishwarya Subramanian (Author)
An exploration of Paddingon the Bear as an international cultural phenomenon
In 1958, a little marmalade-loving brown bear from Peru named Paddington was introduced to the post-war British public. Inspired by his creator Michael Bond's memories of displaced Jewish children in the United Kingdom during World War II, Paddington became a symbol of how to treat refugees with kindness. Author Bond was clear from the outset about Paddington's refugee status. Nearly sixty-five years later, the bear's legacy has evolved into a transmedia phenomenon; his once marginalized image has now been licenced to numerous British organisations -- such as Barbour and Marks & Spencer -- and more recently, even become a symbolic figurehead of national mourning following Queen Elizabeth II's death in 2022.
Author Biography
Melanie Ramdarshan Bold is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor in Children's and YA Literature Studies at the University of Glasgow, and the editor of Cambridge University Press' Young Adult Publishing and Book Culture book series. Her book Inclusive Young Adult Fiction: Authors of Colour in the United Kingdom, 2006-2016, was published by Palgrave in 2019. She co-authored The Publishing Business: A Guide to Starting Out and Getting On (Bloomsbury, 2018).
Aishwarya Subramanian is an Associate Professor of English at O.P. Jindal Global University in Haryana, India. Her research encompasses popular and genre fiction, children's literature, spatiality and postcolonial nationalisms. She serves on the editorial board of the journal Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures. Some of her recent work can be found in Comparative Critical Studies, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Space and Culture, and she co-edited a special issue of International Research in Children's Literature, "Curating National Literatures", in 2019.
