And This Little Piggy Had None ― Challenging the Dominant Discourse on Farmed Animals in Children Picturebooks

And This Little Piggy Had None: Challenging the Dominant Discourse on Farmed Animals in Children’s Picturebooks is a fascinating critique of how "farm" animals are represented in children’s literature. Drawing from the fields of critical animal studies, critical discourse analysis, and animal behavior research, Janae Dimick questions the validity of these representations as environmental, societal, and other negative effects related to factory farming emerge. Questioning the socially constructed categories that humans use to classify which animals are used for consumption and which are meant for companionship, the book works to dismantle the "truth" of what children learn from the informational texts that are read to them in educational and home settings. The first of its kind, this book will make readers question their relationship with nonhuman animals and rethink how language creates narratives that ultimately act to the detriment of humans, nature, and animals. Students studying critical pedagogy, ecolinguistics, ecopedagogy, early childhood literacy, ecocriticism, bioethics, critical animal studies, environmental studies and education, and human-animal studies would benefit from reading this easily accessible text.

Janae Dimick received her PhD in education from Chapman University in 2016. She is currently Assistant Professor of English at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, California.