This paper aims at analyzing the functions of apocalyptic themes in children’s literature. The main subject of research is the book by Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało Nikt nas nie upomni (2016), presented in the context of earlier examples of the same theme: a girl who rebels against the world, both in literature for adult readers (for example in the ballad Romantyczność by Adam Mickiewicz) and in books written for children. In almost all of the analyzed works the conflict of the girl and her “stepmother” (or other negative figure of the mother) is presented as the emotional background of the phantasmagoric apocalypse. In children’s literature the archetype of a girl causing the end of the world is the title character of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. In the further history of this literature a stable topic appears: “a child causing the end of the world”; in the present article this topos is called “a (very) minor apocalypse.” The works referring to such tradition depict the character of an angry girl who fantasizes about the end of the world, thus overcoming feelings of injustice resulting from a difficult existential situation. In the representations of the end of the world imagined by a child, the positive aspect of the apocalyptic tradition is present usually – the world is re-emerging, often in a more perfect form, acceptable to the child.

Keywords: Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało, apocalypse, phantasm, childhood, girl, emotions