Landscapes of harm: Environmental crime and the passive witness in children’s graphic narratives

Unlike traditional narratives that follow crime-solution-restoration patterns, environmental crime manifests as pervasive, ongoing, and unresolvable conditions that saturate landscapes and lived experience. This paradigm operates through contaminated spaces and child protagonists who transform from active agents to passive witnesses of systemic harm. This study examines how Simon Stålenhag’s visual narratives challenge conventional crime representation in children’s literature. Through analysis of Things from the Flood (2016), The Electric State (2018), and The Labyrinth (2021), I propose “environmental crime” as a new critical framework for understanding contemporary children’s texts that address systemic harm and environmental crisis. My analysis reveals how Stålenhag’s works position children as witnesses to environmental disasters and institutional failures that exceed individual comprehension or response. The environmental crime framework offers new directions for children’s crime literature studies and eco-critical approaches to children’s texts. This study contributes theoretical insights for understanding how contemporary children’s literature represents systemic crises that exceed traditional resolution patterns. More importantly, the urgency of this framework is underscored by ongoing cases of environmental harm affecting children worldwide.