While at first glance it may seem strange that so many films portray children as monstrous characters, the essays in this collection begin by recognizing the pervasive popularity, and the wide variety, of such characterizations. Perhaps because of the wisdom received from our Romantic forebears about the purity of the child, fictional imaginings of children as monsters exercise a tremendous fascination for film audiences, and have for several decades.

These opposing, and yet co-dependent, tendencies are reflected in the modern connotations of the phrases child-like (innocent) and childish (selfish, perhaps even evil.) Yet unlike most previous scholarly work on this cultural phenomenon, the essays in this collection do not remain arrested by this reductive binary, but strive to unearth the many possibilities, meanings and forms that are hidden by the two-faced mask our imaginings of children all too often wear.