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It traces tensions linking fanishness with childhood, including debates about maturity, seriousness, and who qualifies as a fan. With the Internet expanding children’s access to fandom, it analyzes risks of cross-age interaction and the educational value of children’s perspectives. It also considers how fan presence reshapes characters, tropes, and genres.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/fan-exploring-the-intersections-between-fandom-studies-and-childrens-literature/594781/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/fan-exploring-the-intersections-between-fandom-studies-and-childrens-literature/594781.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Ben ","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":44},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How does the essay connect fandom studies with children’s literature?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It uses “fan” as a keyword to show how fandom concepts illuminate problems and possible solutions in children’s media and educational contexts.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"Why were children historically excluded from much fandom?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The essay notes that pre-internet fandom often required resources such as money for conventions, and that fandom was sometimes associated with “adult” activities like erotic fanfiction.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What changes does the Internet bring to children’s participation in fandom?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It gives children more immediate access to fandom, creating both potential dangers when children and adults share spaces and opportunities for hearing children’s thoughts about the media they consume.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},594781,1792550595,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":44,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":29,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":144,"preview_page_count":4},2336478951081,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","Fan  \nM. Elizabeth Moore  \nKansas State University  \nAbstract  \nThis essay explores the intersections between Fandom Studies and Children’s Literature, showcasing some of the ways in which “fan” as a keyword can illuminate both problems and potential solutions in children’s media and education. Although children have historically been excluded from much offan-organized fandom, the idea offannishness is intertwined with that of childishness, raising questions about maturity and seriousness in the fan experience. With the rise of the Internet, children have gained more immediate access to fandom, a phenomenon accompanied both by the potential dangers of children and adults interacting in the same fan spaces and by the opportunity to hear children’s thoughts about the media they consume. While some scholars focus on the commodification of children’s fannish pursuits, others look at the possibilities that fandom and fanfiction can provide for engaging children in conversations about texts, especially in the classroom. Fans have also started to make appearances in children’s literature and media, creating new character archetypes, tropes, and genres. Understanding fannish identities, practices, and communities can provide valuable insight to scholars and educators as fandom continues to move into mainstream popular culture, influencing both children and children’s media.  \nKeywords: Fandom studies, participatory culture, fanfiction, maturity  \nAuthor Bio: M. Elizabeth Moore is currently a Master’s student at Kansas State University studying children’s literature and media. She holds a B.A. in English from Hollins University where she studied literature as well as creative writing. Her research interests include young adult television, fandom studies, and superhero narratives, particularly as those areas relate to representations of marginalized identities.  \n[Email: mooreme@ksu.edu](Email: mooreme@ksu.edu)  \nAs we are all fans of something—sports teams, television shows, bands—labelling ourselves as fans seems like an easy designation. However, in the age of the Internet, where already blurry relationships between cultural creators and cultural consumers have become blurred even more, the label “fan” actually invokes complicated concepts of identity, community, and agency. The scope of the word fan itself is contested, with academics such as Nicholas Abercrombie and Brian Longhurst (1998) outlining differences between “fans,” “cultists,” and “enthusiasts,” while fandoms make distinctions about who the “real” fans are along lines of gender, emotional investment, and knowledge of the text/person (Busse, 2013; Jenkins, 1992) . Although fan studies is a relatively new field, its brief history closely intertwines with that of children’s literature and media—a field for which questions of audience and authorship are already highly contested. As a keyword for children’s literature, tensions about fans coalesce around how fannishness is connected to childhood, who gets to be a fan, and what young fans (and fan characters) can accomplish in children’s media.  \nThe Oxford English Dictionary (OED, 2011) notes that the word fan, short for fanatic, originated in baseball and was then expanded to mean, more generally, “a keen follower of a specified hobby or amusement … an enthusiast for a particular person or thing.” For the longer form, fanatic, the OED lists a number of definitions which often have pejorative and/or religious connotations, such as actions that “might result from possession” or “[c]haracterized…by excessive and mistaken enthusiasm, esp. in religious matters.” Although the definition offan itself lacks such derogatory denotations, Henry Jenkins (1992) notes that the word fan “never fully escaped its earlier connotations of religious and political zealotry, false beliefs, orgiastic excess, possession, and madness”(p. 12) . We can see these pejorative traces in more recent additions to the OED, including the compound entries for ","cbCaifdDNddvFfAp","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaifdDNddvFfAp","pdf",182946,"English","# Introduction\n## Fan as a contested keyword\n# Historical exclusion of children in fandom\n## Resources and adult-oriented fandom\n## Stereotypes of immaturity and Othering\n# Contemporary scholarship and education potential","[{\"question\":\"How does the essay connect fandom studies with children’s literature?\",\"answer\":\"It uses “fan” as a keyword to show how fandom concepts illuminate problems and possible solutions in children’s media and educational contexts.\"},{\"question\":\"Why were children historically excluded from much fandom?\",\"answer\":\"The essay notes that pre-internet fandom often required resources such as money for conventions, and that fandom was sometimes associated with “adult” activities like erotic fanfiction.\"},{\"question\":\"What changes does the Internet bring to children’s participation in fandom?\",\"answer\":\"It gives children more immediate access to fandom, creating both potential dangers when children and adults share spaces and opportunities for hearing children’s thoughts about the media they consume.\"}]","Fan - exploring the intersections between Fandom Studies and Children’s Literature | PDF",1792079832,15]