Bestiaires pour la jeunesse. Jouer avec les animaux : du plaisir de la création aux dangers de la dénaturation

This article brings together children's books published from the 2000s onwards that present themselves as a gallery of invented animals. We will begin by looking at the ways in which this imaginary bestiary appears, through textual and iconic devices or through the very materiality of the books themselves. The diversity of the output will then lead us to analyse the aims of these books: they may combine aesthetic experiments, scientific initiations or reflections on animal ethics through the potential animals that young readers are invited to discover or to make them appear.