Description
This article offers an original engagement with children’s picturebooks as a neglected, but important, site for exploring and reflecting on the politics of desecuritization. Drawing on examples from The Selfish Crocodile, Thud!, and The Heart and the Bottle, the article makes two arguments. First, the genre offers imaginative resources for understanding the diverse processes through which the politics of security might be transcended or otherwise transformed. Second, the stylised engagement with threat resolution common within the genre provokes opportunity for thinking afresh on potential sites of intervention for desecuritization. In making these arguments, the article offers three contributions. First, it expands the purview of literature on desecuritization through sustained engagement with picturebooks as a hitherto unexplored site. Second, it offers an original empirical reading of desecuritization dynamics within three examples of the genre. And, third, it uses these books to develop an original typology distinguishing between desecuritization initiatives targeted at security’s threats, audiences, and emergency measures.
