Children’s literature studies: general Books

Book SynopsisFrom the bestselling author of The Tall Man and The Arsonist, a personal tale about death, life and the enchantment of stories. With illustrations by Anna Walker.‘A striking voyage of discovery.’ Observer Let me tell you a story… When Chloe Hooper’s partner is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive illness, she has to find a way to tell their two young sons. By instinct, she turns to the bookshelf. Can the news be broken as a bedtime tale? Is there a perfect book to prepare children for loss? Hooper embarks on a quest to find what practical lessons children’s literature—with its innocent orphans and evil adults, magic, monsters and anthropomorphic animals—can teach about grief and resilience in real life. As she discovers, ‘the right words are an incantation, a spell of hope for the future.’ From the Brothers Grimm to FrancTrade Review‘This book is a miracle of light and meaning-making from one of our finest writers. Venturing inward with extraordinary grace, Hooper explores – and extends – the long literary line surging with our deepest inherited wisdom about how to embrace our finite lives. The result is nothing less than the hero's journey we have been collectively starving for. Telling you this is like trying to describe the sun; it is a book so powerful and beautiful – so utterly its own – that it can only be experienced directly.’ Sarah Krasnostein -- Sarah Krasnostein

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Book SynopsisStep-by-step essay plans to help achieve higher grades in the closedbook AQA English Literature examination. With hints and tipsto plan and structure 'great answers' this title will help studentsto see how a great answer meets the required Assessment Objectivesand to perfect their own technique.

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Book SynopsisStep-by-step essay plans to help achieve higher grades in the closedbook AQA English Literature examination. With hints and tipsto plan and structure 'great answers' this title will help studentsto see how a great answer meets the required Assessment Objectivesand to perfect their own technique.

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Book SynopsisCourtney Weikle-Mills discusses such characters as Goody Two-Shoes, Ichabod Crane, and Tom Sawyer in terms of how they reflect these conflicting ideals.Trade ReviewThis tightly argued and convincing book reflects the extraordinary ambiguity that has almost always surfaced in thinking and writing for and about children, and it shows the extent to which the study of history and literature can inform each other. -- James Marten Journal of American History Well researched and engaging, filled with both factual information and insightful analysis. -- Chris Nesmith Children's Literature Association Quarterly This book is impressive for its breadth of scholarship, and it should stimulate discussion among its intended audience of academics and advanced undergraduates about children and childhood as metaphors for how citizenship was, and can be, defined. -- Gail Schmunk Murray New England Quarterly Weikle-Mills provides a fascinating new way to look at American conceptions of citizenship... Historians of childhood will find this book useful, as will anyone who wants to understand the changing position of children and the concept of responsible citizenship. -- Nancy Hathaway Steenburg American Historical Review The main strengths of Imaginary Citizens are its clarity of expression, explicit definition of terms, and easy interaction with multiple fields, including children's literature, early American literary, religious and political studies. The Year's Work in English Studies Weikle-Mills's rich investigation of connections between child readers and political empowerment significantly contributes to both the study of children's literature and the study of American social and political history. -- Thomas Fair Rocky Mountain Review of Language and LiteratureTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: From Subjects to Citizens: The Politics of Childhood and Children's Literature1. Youth as a Time of Choice: Children's Reading in Colonial New England2. Affectionate Citizenship: Educating Child Readers for a New Nation3. Child Readers of the Novel: The Problem of Childish Citizenship4. Reading for Social Profit: Economic Citizenship as Children's Citizenship5. Natural Citizenship: Children, Slaves, and the Book of NatureConclusion: The Legacy of the Fourteenth Amendment: LimitedThinking on Children's CitizenshipNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisBy turns playful, contemplative, humorous, and subversive, these poems appeal to modern sensibilities while giving scholars a revised picture of the nineteenth-century literary landscape.Trade ReviewIt will indeed be a living canon resonating with readers of all ages. Aside from the book's scholarly value, parents and grandparents will find themselves dipping into it regularly. Library Journal Over the River and Through the Wood provides a glimpse of a time less anxious about the boundary between adulthood and childhood, and draws attention to some wonderful poems. -- Teresa Michals Times Literary Supplement This book is a landmark text for scholars of the nineteenth century, for specialists in children's literature, and for scholars of poetry. But many people who are none of these-including people still in elementary school-will find much in the book to enjoy. -- Julia Mickenberg Review 19 A fascinating collection with relevance in many areas of the curriculum... These poems gathered in this very attractive, illustrated and accessible edition, are a delight. -- Frank Startup School Librarian A comprehensive, engaging collection... The editors' careful attention to detail in providing authorship information, dates, and original publication sources as well as the diversity of the poets make this anthology an important scholarly tool for anyone interested in American and/or children's literature. ChoiceTable of ContentsStatement of Editorial PrinciplesAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. "Pretty New Moons": Contact Zones in Nineteenth-Century American Children's PoetryChapter 1. Growing ThingsChapter 2. Landscapes and SeasonsChapter 3. Creepy CrawliesChapter 4. Feathered FriendsChapter 5. Domestic AnimalsChapter 6. Wild AnimalsChapter 7. Toys and PlayChapter 8. NonsenseChapter 9. Cautionary TalesChapter 10. Learning LessonsChapter 11. Slavery and FreedomChapter 12. Politics and Social ReformChapter 13. Death and Affliction Chapter 14. Fairy and FolkChapter 15. HolidaysChapter 16. HistoriesChapter 17. Science and TechnologyChapter 18. Homework and HandworkChapter 19. Family TiesChapter 20. Dreams and VisionsAppendixTable of Contents by DateWorks CitedAuthor IndexTitle Index

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Book SynopsisChildren's literature isn't just for children anymore. This original study explores the varied forms and roles of children's literaturewhen it's written for adults. What do Adam Mansbach's Go the F**k to Sleep and Barbara Park's MA! There's Nothing to Do Here! have in common? These large-format picture books are decidedly intended for parents rather than children. In No Kids Allowed, Michelle Ann Abate examines a constellation of books that form a paradoxical new genre: children's literature for adults. Distinguishing these books from YA and middle-grade fiction that appeals to adult readers, Abate argues that there is something unique about this phenomenon. Principally defined by its form and audience, children's literature, Abate demonstrates, engages with more than mere nostalgia when recast for grown-up readers. Abate examines how board books, coloring books, bedtime stories, and series detective fiction written and published specifically for adults question the boundaries of genTrade Review[Abate's] most foundational argument is that the genre of children's literature for adults exists at all. Abate's study moves well beyond the genre itself to include cultural analysis of the shifting, often contradictory boundaries of childhood and adulthood."—American Literary HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. A Is for Adult: Coloring Books, Bedtime Stories, and Picture Books for Grown-Ups1. "A Book for Obsolete Children": Dr. Seuss' You're Only Old Once! and the Rise of Children's Literature for Adults2. Off to Camp: Mabel Maney's The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse, the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, and Fanfiction3. Material Matters: Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers as a Board Book4. Baby Talk: Barbara Park's MA! There's Nothing to Do Here!, Fetal Personhood, and Child Authorship 5. Learning Left from Right: Goodnight Bush, Don't Let the Republican Drive the Bus!, and the Broadside Tradition6. Not Kidding Around: Go the F**k to Sleep and the New Adult Honesty about ParenthoodConclusion. Both Radical and Reinforcing: The Complicated Cultural Significance of Children's Literature for AdultsNotesWorks CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisChildren's literature isn't just for children anymore. This original study explores the varied forms and roles of children's literaturewhen it's written for adults. What do Adam Mansbach's Go the F**k to Sleep and Barbara Park's MA! There's Nothing to Do Here! have in common? These large-format picture books are decidedly intended for parents rather than children. In No Kids Allowed, Michelle Ann Abate examines a constellation of books that form a paradoxical new genre: children's literature for adults. Distinguishing these books from YA and middle-grade fiction that appeals to adult readers, Abate argues that there is something unique about this phenomenon. Principally defined by its form and audience, children's literature, Abate demonstrates, engages with more than mere nostalgia when recast for grown-up readers. Abate examines how board books, coloring books, bedtime stories, and series detective fiction written and published specifically for adults question the boundaries of genTrade Review[Abate's] most foundational argument is that the genre of children's literature for adults exists at all. Abate's study moves well beyond the genre itself to include cultural analysis of the shifting, often contradictory boundaries of childhood and adulthood."—American Literary HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. A Is for Adult: Coloring Books, Bedtime Stories, and Picture Books for Grown-Ups1. "A Book for Obsolete Children": Dr. Seuss' You're Only Old Once! and the Rise of Children's Literature for Adults2. Off to Camp: Mabel Maney's The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse, the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, and Fanfiction3. Material Matters: Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers as a Board Book4. Baby Talk: Barbara Park's MA! There's Nothing to Do Here!, Fetal Personhood, and Child Authorship 5. Learning Left from Right: Goodnight Bush, Don't Let the Republican Drive the Bus!, and the Broadside Tradition6. Not Kidding Around: Go the F**k to Sleep and the New Adult Honesty about ParenthoodConclusion. Both Radical and Reinforcing: The Complicated Cultural Significance of Children's Literature for AdultsNotesWorks CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsAcknowledgments YA Author Contributors Introduction 1—AN INTRODUCTION TO YOUNG ADULTS AND THEIR LITERATURE Defining Young Adults Defining Young Adults as Individuals Defining Young Adult Literature Authors in Action: On Writing YA by Kate Hart History of Young Adult Literature in Action: Early Adult Books Read by Young People More Young Adult Literature History in Action: First Books Written for Young Adults Defining Young Adult Literature Classic Young Adult Titles Defining Young Adults through Reading Preferences, Interests, and Choices Reading Surveys Reading Survey Questions Goodreads Book Format Choices Reading Preferences and Gender Roles Inclusivity, Diversity, and Own Voices in Young Adult Literature We Need Diverse Books Organization (WNDB) Types of Diversity to Consider in Collection Development Librarians in Action: Using a Diversity Audit to Guide Your Young Adult Collection Own Voice Authors Interview with Eric Gansworth A Sample of Online Resources for Seeking Out and Selecting Inclusive Young Adult Books Interview with Jason Reynolds Worlds of Words Selecting Books for Young Adults Literature in Action: Awards and Award Lists Best Lists by State Best Fiction for Young Adults Young Adults' Choices Project Librarians in Action!: Teen-Selected and Recommended Book Lists Margaret A. Edwards Award Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers Michael L. Printz Award Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults Outstanding Books for the College Bound Alex Award Stonewall Book Awards Rainbow Book Lists Coretta Scott King Book Awards The Walter Dean Myers Award Pura Belpre Award Tomas Rivera Mexican American Children's Book Award Americas Book Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature The American Indian Youth Literature Awards The Association of Jewish Libraries—Book Awards Arab American Book Awards Mildred L. Batchelder Award Librarians in Action!: Introducing Your YA Collection to Readers Promoting Books and Authors with Young Adults Booktube Instagram, Book Blogs, and Building Other YA Book Communities Book Blogs Young Adult Literature–Focused Podcasts Promoting Young Adult Literature through Visual Literacy: Movies Based on Young Adult Books Author Visits Author Visits Checklist Selecting an Author Promote, Promote, PROMOTE! Hosting the Event Virtual Author Visits Promoting Young Adult Literature at Teen-Focused Author Events Professional Organizations with a Young Adult Focus Conclusion Professional Bibliographies for Book Selection, Reading Promotion, and Library Services Assignments in Action: Young Adults and Their Literature 2—BOOK ACCESS THROUGH QUICK READS AND AUDIOBOOKS Effective Strategies for All Types of Readers Comic Books Graphic Novels Popular Categories of Graphic Works Superheroes Literary Adaptations Fantasy Media Adaptations and Tie-Ins Slice-of-Life/School Stories Nonfiction Manga Electronic Graphic Novels and Manga Graphic Novels and Nonfiction in Action Professional Resources for Graphic Novels and Comic Books Librarians in Action: A Manga Club Fiction Series Books Early Series Books: A History Authors in Action: The Power of What If by Ally Carter Anthologies and Story Collections Benefits of Anthologies and Story Collections Diversity in Anthologies and Short Story Collections Librarians in Action!: Using Student Preferences to Help Curate Teen Book Choices Magazines Poetry Poems of Romantic Love Sports Poems Poems about Teen Tragedy, Angst, and Joy Poems of Horror Literature in Action: Poetry Slams and Open Mics! Poems about Neighborhoods Humorous Poems Poems Written by Young Adults Classic Poems Verse Novels Author in Action: Sonya Sones The Case for Audiobooks: Examining and Expanding Teen Reading through Listening Audiobooks as Tools of Literacy Audiobooks Connect Cultures Studies of Audiobooks as Tools of Reading Motivation Making a Case for Audiobooks and Instruction A Brief History of Audiobooks Audiobooks Awards Odyssey Award Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults The Audie Audiobook Resources Sound Learning Project SYNC Guys Read/Listen Audiobook Publishers You Need to Know Conclusion Assignments in Action: Quick Reads for Discussion 3—CONTEMPORARY REALISTIC FICTION Interview with Nicola Yoon Characteristics of Contemporary Realistic Young Adult Novels Contemporary Realistic Fiction Humor and Identity through Friendships, Family, and Communities Interview with Adi Alsaid Coming of Age, Friendships, Family, and Communities Darker Contemporary Realistic Fiction Love and Loss in Contemporary Realistic Fiction Interview with Stephanie Perkins Love Stories LGBTQAI+ Experiences Author Interview with Nina LaCour Loss Getting In on the Action: Sports, Adventure, and Survival Sports Stories Adventure/Survival Stories Authors in Action: Finding my Voice by Jeff Zentner Mysteries and Thrillers Authors in Action: On Writing YA by E. Lockhart Librarians in Action!: Building Readers through Relationships Booktalking A Checklist to Successful Booktalking Conclusion Assignments in Action: Realistic Fiction for Discussion 4—HISTORICAL FICTION Characteristics of the Best Historical Fiction Interview with Jennifer L. Holm Selecting Historical Fiction Novels about War and Conflicts Other Historical Eras in the United States Capturing Stories from the Past from around the World Authors in Action: On Writing Historical Fiction by Ruta Sepetys Awards for Historical Fiction Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People Jane Addams Children's Book Award National Book Award for Young People's Literature Librarians in Action!: Exploring the World through Books Conclusion Assignments in Action: Historical Fiction for Discussion 5—FANTASTIC FICTION Fantasy Characteristics of High Fantasy American Fantasy and Science Fiction Awards Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Nebula Award British Literature Awards for Youth The Carnegie Medal The Costa Book Awards Authors of High Fantasy Classics Supernatural Stories Harry Potter, a Wizard Hero Authors in Action: On World Building by Neal Shusterman Science Fiction Contemporary Science Fiction Written for Young Adult Readers Author in Action: Interview with Veronica Roth Librarians in Action!: Empowering Readers' Choices Conclusion Assignments in Action: Fantastic Fiction for Discussion 6—INFORMATIONAL BOOKS Interview with Kenneth C. Davis History in Action: First Newbery Medal Robert F. Sibert Award YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults The Orbis Pictus Award Biographies and Autobiographies Other Biographical Choices Autobiography Organizing Biographies and Autobiographies Authors in Action: On Writing Nonfiction by Karen Blumenthal Creative Ways to Engage Readers with Informational Books Interview with Candace Fleming Other Informational Books Format of Informational Books Reference Sources and Research A Research Process Ten Classes of Dewey: Sample Titles 000—Computer Science, Information & General Works 100—Philosophy & Psychology 200—Religion 300—Social Sciences 400—Language 500—Pure Science 600—Technology 700—Arts & Recreation 800—Literature 900—History & Geography Pairing Informational Books with Fiction Conclusion Assignments in Action: Informational Books for Discussion 7—THE FREEDOM TO READ Introduction Definitions of Intellectual Freedom Terms Interview with David Levithan History in Action: Classic Challenges Major Stages in Handling Book Challenges Be Informed Be Prepared Understand the Levels of Complaints and Challenges Inform Students, Teachers, Administrators, and Parents (The Learning Community) Q and A with Angie Thomas Celebrating Banned Books Week Librarians in Action!: Supporting Reading Rights and Other Reader Advocacy Ways Librarians Can Help in the Fight against Censorship Conclusion Professional Resources about Intellectual Freedom Assignments in Action: The Freedom to Read for Discussion References Index

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Book SynopsisThis practitioner-oriented introduction to literature for children ages 512 covers the latest trends, titles, and tools for choosing the best books and materials as well as for planning fun and effective programs and activities.The third edition of Children''s Literature in Action provides an activity-oriented survey of children''s literature for undergraduate and graduate students seeking licensure and degrees that will lead to careers working with children in schools and public libraries. Author Sylvia M. Vardell draws on her 30 years of university teaching and extensive familiarity with the major textbooks in the area of children''s literature to deliver something different: a book that focuses specifically on the perspective and needs of the librarian, with emphasis on practical action and library applications. Its contents address seven major genres: picture books, traditional tales, poetry, contemporary realistic fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, and informationTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Theme poem: This Book by Joyce Sidman 1—An Introduction to Children and Their Literature Becoming Literate Literacy Development Emergent Literacy Schools and Reading Reading Aloud Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) Readers' Advisory Selecting and Reviewing Children's Books Awards in Children's Literature Other Major Awards Best Lists What Books? Learning about Authors, Illustrators, and Poets Literature in Action: Launching Literature and Literacy Celebrations Ongoing Professional Development Conclusion Professional Resources for Children's Literature Standards in Action: ALSC Competencies Assignments in Action: Getting Started 2—Picture Books Introduction Definitions Types of Picture Books Major Authors and Illustrators of Picture Books Children's Picture Book Illustration Evaluation Criteria Awards for Picture Books and Illustration Literature in Action: Sharing Picture Books Aloud Sharing Picture Books Conclusion Professional Resources on the Art of Picture Books Standards in Action: Common Core State Standards Assignments in Action: Looking into Picture Books 3—Traditional Tales Introduction Definitions Types of Traditional Tales Major Retellers of Traditional Tales Evaluation Criteria Awards for Traditional Tales Literature in Action: Featuring Folktale Variants Sharing Traditional Tales Conclusion Professional Resources for Traditional Literature Standards in Action: National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries Assignments in Action: Celebrating Traditional Tales 4—Poetry for Children Introduction Definitions Types of Poetry Books for Children Major Poets Evaluation Criteria Awards for Poetry Literature in Action: Leading Choral Reading and Poetry Performance Sharing Poetry Conclusion Professional Resources in Children's Poetry Standards in Action: Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for English Language Arts and Reading Assignments in Action: Exploring Poetry Possibilities 5—Contemporary Realistic Fiction Introduction Definitions Types of Contemporary Realistic Fiction Controversy and Contemporary Realism Major Authors of Contemporary Realistic Fiction Evaluation Criteria Awards for Contemporary Realistic Fiction Literature in Action: Guiding Responses Sharing Contemporary Realistic Fiction Conclusion Professional Resources in Contemporary Realistic Fiction Standards in Action: NCTE/ILA Standards for the English Language Arts Assignments in Action: Checking Out Contemporary Realistic Fiction 6—Historical Fiction Introduction Definitions Types of Historical Fiction Major Authors of Historical Fiction Evaluation Criteria Awards for Historical Fiction Literature in Action: Using Community Resources Sharing Historical Fiction Conclusion Professional Resources for Historical Fiction Standards in Action: National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies Assignments in Action: Digging Deeper into Historical Fiction 7—Fantasy Introduction Definitions Types of Fantasy Controversy Major Authors of Fantasy Evaluation Criteria Awards for Fantasy Literature in Action: Expanding Reading with Audiobooks Sharing Fantasy Conclusion Professional Resources in Fantasy Literature Standards in Action: YALSA Competencies Assignments in Action: Delving into Fantasy 8—Nonfiction and Informational Books Introduction Definitions Types of Informational Books Major Authors of Informational Books Evaluation Criteria Awards for Nonfiction and Informational Books Literature in Action: Introducing Text Features Sharing Informational Books Conclusion Professional Resources in Nonfiction Standards in Action: Common Core and Nonfiction Assignments in Action: Investigating Informational Books References Bibliography of Children's Books Cited Copyright Acknowledgments and Permissions Index

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisPerhaps no factor has a greater influence on childrenâs literacy learning than exposure to engaging, authentic, culturally relevant texts. This concise practitioner resource and course text helps K-8 teachers make informed choices about using children's literature in their classrooms, from selecting high-quality texts to planning instruction and promoting independent reading. The authors present relevant theories (such as reader response and culturally responsive pedagogy) and show how to apply them in practice. Key topics include teaching narrative and expository texts, tapping into students' individual interests, and conducting text-based writing activities and discussions. Every chapter features case examples, reflection questions, and learning activities for teachers; appendices list exemplary childrenâs literature.Trade Review"There is so much for children to learn, and literature is the gateway to that learning. From text structure to character motivations, children’s literature provides opportunities for students to question, explore, and experience. This book shows us how it is done--how we can develop students’ thinking as we select the materials they will read."--Douglas Fisher, PhD, Department of Educational Leadership, San Diego State University "Vaughn and Massey help teachers consider their beliefs about texts, tasks, and readers toward the goal of cultivating students' agency. What is especially masterful is the authors' ability to clearly and succinctly address the relevant theories that influence teacher decision making and classroom instruction. The book provides numerous activities and vignettes to illustrate the possibilities for purposeful instruction using children's literature. This is an invaluable resource for guiding the new learning of preservice teachers and supporting the continued learning of inservice teachers."--Denise N. Morgan, PhD, Literacy Education, Kent State University "This is the quintessential text for either a preservice or master's-level course in children’s literature. Vaughn and Massey highlight the importance of developing agentic readers by providing choice and access to high-quality, culturally responsive children’s literature. Each chapter is well developed and offers an excellent blend of theory and practice. The content in each chapter is followed by a series of reflective exercises that help readers take action on the ideas presented. No matter where teachers may be in their careers, this book will help them be more intentional and thoughtful about the most important thing their students do--read!"--C. C. Bates, PhD, Associate Professor of Literacy Education and Director, Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Training Center for South Carolina, Clemson University ​"The authors acknowledge the complexity of teaching literacy and include both theoretical and practical considerations that teachers must weigh when making instructional decisions. The book describes specific instructional approaches, like interactive read-alouds, Reader’s Theatre, and teaching informational text structure, while 'keeping the main thing the main thing'--immersing students in relevant, relatable children’s literature. I plan to use this text in my undergraduate elementary reading methods course. I look forward to using the case studies and guiding questions to engage my students in discussions about the major themes of each chapter and to help them develop their vision for teaching literacy."--Erika S. Gray, PhD, Senior Lecturer, Department of Teacher Education and Higher Education, University of North Carolina at Greensboro-Table of ContentsForeword, Elfrieda H. Hiebert 1. Introduction: Beliefs about Children’s Literature 2. What Is Purposeful Teaching with Literature? 3. What Matters When Teaching with Literature in the Classroom? 4. What Do Books Have to Offer? 5. How Can We Help Students Understand the Books They Read? 6. How Can We Encourage Students to Read Widely? 7. How Can We Incorporate Expository Text Purposefully? 8. How Can We Use Writing and Discussing to Make Sense of Reading? 9. How Can We Encourage Reading Beyond the Classroom? 10. How Do We Put It All Together? Appendix A. Books to Support Student Agency Appendix B. Books to Talk about Visioning with Students Appendix C. Books by Genre Appendix D. Book Awards Appendix E. Popular Series Books Appendix F. Book Club Choices Appendix G. Children’s and Teen Choice Awards References Children’s Literature Children’s Literature by Appendix Index

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Book SynopsisJanice Bland is Professor of English Education at Nord University, Norway. She is co-editor of the peer-reviewed, open-access journal, Children's Literature in English Language Education.Christiane Lütge is Professor of English at Münster University, Germany. She is co-editor of the peer-reviewed e-journal Children's Literature in English Language Education.Trade ReviewChildren's Literature in Second Language Acquisition is perfect reading material for older and new generation teachers because it offers practical examples they can transfer into their classrooms . . . Interesting and motivating -- Petra Bes * Libri et Liberi journal *Table of Contents1. Introduction Janice Bland Part I: Extensive Reading with Children's Literature 2. Free Reading: Still a Great Idea Stephen Krashen 3. Efficient Use of Literature in Second Language Education: Free Reading and Listening to Stories Beniko Mason 4. Extensive Reading of Picturebooks in Primary EFL Annika Kolb 5. Free Space: An Extensive Reading Project in a Flemish School Johan Strobbe Part II: Visual Literacy with Picturebooks and Graphic Novels in ELT 6. Approaching Literary and Language Competence: Picturebooks and Graphic Novels in the EFL Classroom Eva Burwitz-Melzer 7. Picturebook: Object of Discovery Sandie Mourão 8. Fairy Tales with a Difference: Creating a Continuum from Primary to Secondary ELT Janice Bland Part III: Intercultural Encounters with Children’s Literature 9. Otherness in Children's Literature: Perspectives for the EFL Classroom Christiane Lütge 10. Doing Identity, Doing Culture: Transcultural Learning through Young Adult Fiction Susanne Reichl 11. Developing Intercultural Competence by Studying Graphic Narratives Carola Hecke 12. 'We are Britain!' Culture and Ethnicity in Benjamin Zephaniah's Novels Sigrid Rieuwerts 13. Taiwanese Adolescents Reading American Young Adult Literature: A Reader Response Study Lee Li-Feng 14. Developing Intercultural Competence through First Nations’ Children’s Literature Grit Alter Part IV: Empowerment and Creativity through Story 15. Creative Writing for Second Language Students Alan Maley 16. Young Adult Literature in Mixed-Ability Classes Maria Eisenmann 17. Enhancing Self-Esteem and Positive Attitudes through Children's Literature Paola Traverso 18. The 'Art' of Teaching Creative Story Writing Maria Luisa García Bermejo and Teresa Fleta Guillén 19. Stories as Symphonies Andrew Wright 20. Conclusion Christiane Lütge Bibliography Index

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Trade ReviewThis is an important publication for all working in English language education, not only for those working and researching young learner and teenage learning, but for those involved in reading and in the reading of literature ... Bland writes clearly and intelligently and has productively absorbed and applied a wealth of relevant and recent research ... I am convinced [this book] will become widely cited and known as more relevant readers find it, read it and see the need to recommend the author and the title ... and I would be pleased if this review can contribute to a speedier uptake of the ideas found therein * CLELE Journal *Relevant and accessible ... For me undoubtedly [this book's] strongest point is that every approach advocated is exemplified with engaging texts and tasks. The book is very persuasive in that all its major points are supported by relevant references to credible research ... [A] very impressive and valuable book which I really enjoyed reading. * ELT Journal *This is a comprehensive, innovative and thematically coherent book which provides powerful arguments for engaging with a wide variety of genres within children’s and young adult literature ... A worthwhile contribution to modern EFL teaching methodology -- Maria Eisenmann * Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies *With confident writing on children's literature as a 'highly expressive carrier of cultural meaning', the book contains excellent close readings of many picturebooks and graphic novels ... Packed with good ideas for using selected books as positive resources for literary language learning -- Victoria de Rijke, Middlesex University, UK * IRSCL *Bland’s volume does indeed fulfil her aim of generating a rationale for selecting works of children’s literature for use in EFL classrooms and identifying how certain kinds of literature might empower learners ... I have already added it to my own student teachers’ reading lists. -- Lydia Kokkola, Head of English and Education, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden * International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) *[An] impressive feature of the book is the close segmental reading of diverse examples of children’s literature and graphic novels ... Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment provides a theoretical and practical approach to providing ELL primary and secondary school learners with the use of authentic and engaging materials. * IATEFL Voices *It is quite natural to expect a book like this from Janice Bland ... Bland communicates her ideas fluently ... and she offers abundant references that are often interwoven with her own thoughts. She manages to construct a clear message that certainly finds its way to the reader ... In this way, student teachers are led in a valuable direction -- Silvija Hanžic Deda * Libri et Liberi journal *Put tersely, Bland’s Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment is a spirited argument for using original, unabridged children’s and YA literature in the EFL classroom in place of truncated, artificial texts ... [Bland's book] offer[s] insights and arguments that will be valid long after academic capitalism has passed from the scene. No matter where your specific interest in children’s literature lies, these are important books to read. -- Marek Oziewicz, Marguerite Henry Professor of Children’s and Young Adult Fiction, University of Minnesota * The Lion and the Unicorn *This is a comprehensive, innovative, thought-provoking and topical book on children's literature which is equally relevant to scholars working in the field plus to teachers and students of languages and literature. * Werner Delanoy, Professor in the Department of English and American Studies, University of Klagenfurt, Austria *At a time when there is an increasing demand for the effective teaching of EFL and ESL/EAL, this book provides powerful arguments for engaging with a wide variety of genres within children’s and young adult literature and shows how constructing meaning from ‘well-crafted’ texts – including visual and radical texts – can help develop ‘literary literacy’ for children of all ages. Teacher educators will benefit most from the interdisciplinary nature of the book as the author shows how children’s literature scholarship is linked to TEFL theory and practice. However, the result of bringing these two fields together provides exciting new perspectives for all those interested in critical reading and creative writing with children and teenagers. * Evelyn Arizpe, Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, University of Glasgow, UK *Janice Bland’s new book is careful, precise and very fully referenced. She makes a compelling case for the need for teachers and other educators to pay more serious attention to the potential offered by children’s picturebooks. Literary and visual experience is shown to lead to engagement and creative thinking in the classroom which graded readers, extracts or non-fictional materials are unlikely to stimulate. Teachers of the ever-growing numbers of young learners of English in particular should pay close attention to this book. It should be on teacher training booklists and on the shelves of all good Education libraries. * Geoff Hall, Professor of English, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements 1. Introduction: The EFL Literature Classroom Part I: Visual Literacy in the EFL Literature Classroom 2. Developing the Mind’s Eye with Picturebooks 3. Bridging a Curricular Gap with Graphic Novels Part II : Literary Literacy in the EFL-Literature Classroom 4. Postmodern Fairy Tales: Co-constructing Meaning 5. The Poetry of Children’s Literature and Creative Writing 6. Children’s Plays: Beyond the Oracy/Literacy Dichotomy Part III: Critical Cultural Literacy in the EFL Literature Classroom 7. Radical Children’s Literature and Engaged Reading 8. Harry Potter and Critical Cultural Literacy Conclusion Bibliography References Index

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Book SynopsisKey Concepts in Contemporary Popular Fiction r provides an accessible, concise and reliable overview of core critical terminology, key theoretical approaches, and the major genres and sub-genres within popular fiction.

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the adaptation of children's metafictions, including works such as 'Inkheart, The Invention of Hugo Cabret' and the Harry Potter series.

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Book SynopsisThis collection takes informed and scholarly readers to the utmost frontier of children s literature criticism, from the intricate worlds of children s poetry, picturebooks and video games to the new theoretical constellations of critical plant studies, non-fiction studies and big data analyses of literature.

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Book SynopsisThis groundbreaking collection provides students with a timely and accessible overview of current trends within contemporary popular fiction.

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Book SynopsisThe study of Arabic literary texts is blossoming and this book provides a comprehensive theoretical framework to help research this highly prolific and diverse production of contemporary literary texts.

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Book SynopsisRereading Orphanhood: Texts, Inheritance, Kin explores the ways in which the figure of the literary orphan can be used to illuminate our understanding of the culture and mores of the long nineteenth century, especially those relating to family and kinship.

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Book SynopsisJane Newland focuses on children's texts by some of the authors who fascinate Deleuze, including Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, Andre Dhtel, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio and Michel Tournier. They are explored across chapters on central Deleuzian concepts: pure repetition, becoming, cartographies, stuttering and nonsense.

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Book SynopsisJane Newland focuses on children's texts by some of the authors who fascinate Deleuze, including Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, Andre Dhotel, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio and Michel Tournier. They are explored across chapters on central Deleuzian concepts: pure repetition, becoming, cartographies, stuttering and nonsense.

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Book Synopsis Part of Alice''s appeal is her ambiguity, which makes possible a range of interpretations in adapting Lewis Carroll''s classic Wonderland stories to various media. Popular re-imaginings of Alice and her topsy-turvy world reveal many ways of eliciting enchantment and shaping make-believe. Late 20th century and 21st century adaptations interact with the source texts and with each other--providing readers with an elaborate fictional universe. This book fully explores today''s multi-media journey to Wonderland.Trade Review"Presenting readers with a staggeringly ambitious project that makes this reviewer wonder if we indeed are all mad here, in the unreserved scope and trendiness of the multiforms under discussion, Kérchy’s densely particular approach accumulates into an inter-generational, international, intermedial ethnography that honors the possibilities of fantasy as a gendered, cross-cultural genre of awe, imagination, incredibility." - Ida Yoshinaga, Gramarye Journal"Anna Kérchy's Alice in Transmedia Wonderland tackles the daunting task of examining the virtually countless postmillenial adaptations of the original Alice tales - and, as becomes more and more obvious, rewritings of the Lewis Carroll myth as well." - Virginie Iché, Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies

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Book SynopsisComics and childhood have had a richly intertwined history for nearly a century. From Richard Outcault’s Yellow Kid, Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo, and Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie to Hergé’s Tintin (Belgium), José Escobar’s Zipi and Zape (Spain), and Wilhelm Busch’s Max and Moritz (Germany), iconic child characters have given both kids and adults not only hours of entertainment but also an important vehicle for exploring children’s lives and the sometimes challenging realities that surround them.Bringing together comic studies and childhood studies, this pioneering collection of essays provides the first wide-ranging account of how children and childhood, as well as the larger cultural forces behind their representations, have been depicted in comics from the 1930s to the present. The authors address issues such as how comics reflect a spectrum of cultural values concerning children, sometimes even resisting dominant Trade ReviewPicturing Childhood is a much needed and long-awaited interdisciplinary project that looks at representations of children throughout the history of comics. * Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature *This anthology will be extremely valuable for educators and students of children's comics; it is likely to trigger many important conversations about the intersections between comics and childhoods. * Jeunesse *Picturing Childhood is at its best when its contributors are exploring new ground and when they shine the spotlights of historical analysis and close reading on under-researched topics. * Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth *Table of Contents Putting Childhood Back into World Comics: A Foreword, by Frederick Luis Aldama Acknowledgments Introduction. Bridging Comics Studies and Childhood Studies, by Mark Heimermann and Brittany Tullis Chapter 1. Little Orphan Annie as Streetwalker, by Pamela Robertson Wojcik Chapter 2. Competent Children and Social Cohesion: Representations of Childhood in Home Front Propaganda Comics during World War II in Finland, by Ralf Kauranen Chapter 3. In the Minority: Constructions of American Dream Childhood in 1950s–Early 1960s Little Audrey Comics, by Christopher J. Hayton and Janardana D. Hayton Chapter 4. Comics and Emmett Till, by Qiana Whitted Chapter 5. Out of the Mouths of Babes: Mafalda's Interrogation of the Argentine Angel in the House, by Brittany Tullis Chapter 6. Sex, Comix, and Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Zap Comix's Attack on the American Mainstream, by Ian Blechschmidt Chapter 7. RAW and Little Lit: Resisting and Redefining Children's Comics, by Lara Saguisag Chapter 8. Lolicon: Adolescent Fetishization in Osamu Tezuka's Ayako, by James G. Nobis Chapter 9. Wise beyond Her Years: How Persepolis Introjects the Adult into the Child, by Clifford Marks Chapter 10. Vehlmann, or the End of Innocence: Lessons in Cruelty in Seuls and Jolies ténèbres, by Annick Pellegrin Chapter 11. Zeno, Childhood, and The Three Paradoxes, by C. W. Marshall Chapter 12. Dancing with Demons: Consciousness and Identity in the Comics of Lynda Barry, by Tamryn Bennett Chapter 13. The Grotesque Child: Animal-Human Hybridity in Sweet Tooth, by Mark Heimermann List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisComics and childhood have had a richly intertwined history for nearly a century. From Richard Outcault’s Yellow Kid, Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo, and Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie to Hergé’s Tintin (Belgium), José Escobar’s Zipi and Zape (Spain), and Wilhelm Busch’s Max and Moritz (Germany), iconic child characters have given both kids and adults not only hours of entertainment but also an important vehicle for exploring children’s lives and the sometimes challenging realities that surround them.Bringing together comic studies and childhood studies, this pioneering collection of essays provides the first wide-ranging account of how children and childhood, as well as the larger cultural forces behind their representations, have been depicted in comics from the 1930s to the present. The authors address issues such as how comics reflect a spectrum of cultural values concerning children, sometimes even resisting dominant Trade ReviewPicturing Childhood is a much needed and long-awaited interdisciplinary project that looks at representations of children throughout the history of comics. * Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature *This anthology will be extremely valuable for educators and students of children's comics; it is likely to trigger many important conversations about the intersections between comics and childhoods. * Jeunesse *Picturing Childhood is at its best when its contributors are exploring new ground and when they shine the spotlights of historical analysis and close reading on under-researched topics. * Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth *Table of Contents Putting Childhood Back into World Comics: A Foreword, by Frederick Luis Aldama Acknowledgments Introduction. Bridging Comics Studies and Childhood Studies, by Mark Heimermann and Brittany Tullis Chapter 1. Little Orphan Annie as Streetwalker, by Pamela Robertson Wojcik Chapter 2. Competent Children and Social Cohesion: Representations of Childhood in Home Front Propaganda Comics during World War II in Finland, by Ralf Kauranen Chapter 3. In the Minority: Constructions of American Dream Childhood in 1950s–Early 1960s Little Audrey Comics, by Christopher J. Hayton and Janardana D. Hayton Chapter 4. Comics and Emmett Till, by Qiana Whitted Chapter 5. Out of the Mouths of Babes: Mafalda's Interrogation of the Argentine Angel in the House, by Brittany Tullis Chapter 6. Sex, Comix, and Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Zap Comix's Attack on the American Mainstream, by Ian Blechschmidt Chapter 7. RAW and Little Lit: Resisting and Redefining Children's Comics, by Lara Saguisag Chapter 8. Lolicon: Adolescent Fetishization in Osamu Tezuka's Ayako, by James G. Nobis Chapter 9. Wise beyond Her Years: How Persepolis Introjects the Adult into the Child, by Clifford Marks Chapter 10. Vehlmann, or the End of Innocence: Lessons in Cruelty in Seuls and Jolies ténèbres, by Annick Pellegrin Chapter 11. Zeno, Childhood, and The Three Paradoxes, by C. W. Marshall Chapter 12. Dancing with Demons: Consciousness and Identity in the Comics of Lynda Barry, by Tamryn Bennett Chapter 13. The Grotesque Child: Animal-Human Hybridity in Sweet Tooth, by Mark Heimermann List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2022 Children''s Literature Association Book Award, given by the Children''s Literature AssociationWinner, 2020 World Fantasy AwardsWinner, 2020 British Fantasy Awards, NonfictionFinalist, Creative Nonfiction IGNYTE Award, given by FIYACON for BIPOC+ in Speculative FictionReveals the diversity crisis in children''s and young adult media as not only a lack of representation, but a lack of imaginationStories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with children's publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked with adapting these stories into a visual world. When characters of color do appear, they are often marginalized or subjected to violence, reinforcing for audienTrade ReviewOne of the most radiant and thought-provoking descriptions of the potentials of fantastic literature. * LA Review of Books *The Dark Fantastic will entirely change the way you read science fiction, fantasy, [and] horror, and I can absolutely assure you it will be for the better. * BookRiot *The Dark Fantastic is a wakeup call to all who research, teach, or create young adult speculative fiction ... Thomas issues a call to decolonize the speculative fiction genre and to ensure more texts, films, and television shows that include a Black female protagonist become the norm to influence a new generation of readers and writers. The Dark Fantastic is a must-read. * Booklist *One of the most brilliant and woke explorations of race and speculative fiction I've ever read. Thomas breaks down the history of fantasy and imagination and shows us how far we have to go with such patience and clarity I felt like I was sitting beside her, growing smarter with each word. -- Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning author * Brown Girl Dreaming *If you care about thoughtfully engaging with race, Harry Potter, and fandom, you definitely need to check out The Dark Fantastic. * Mugglenet *By bridging pop culture, personal experience, and academic study, The Dark Fantastic provides a crucial examination of race and storytelling in sci-fi fantasy media aimed at teens and young adults. Not only does Thomas discuss how Black characters are erased in an inescapable cycle, but she also provides a guide to breaking it. * Brain Mill Press Voices *Thomas synthesizes theory from several disciplines to build her model of “the dark fantastic”—a cycle in which Black female characters are sidelined in mainstream fantasy narratives for young adults. … Valuable for introducing readers to a range of concepts, this is an important work of criticism on an underexamined topic. * School Library Journal *A creative blend of autoethnography, literary analysis, and counter-storytelling, this volume is intriguing, accessible, and raises important questions that will likely generate additional research on this topic... A must read, especially for current and future educators. * Choice *Timely and beautifully written book [...] Powerfully addresses the imagination gap in white writers’ use of Black characters as props to demonstrate aspects of white protagonists’ character development, often through violence wrecked upon Black bodies. This book should be in the library of any university teaching Children’s literature or Fantasy literature, and on the reading list of any courses in those two areas. * Fantastika Journal *Thorough, creative, and revolutionary, The Dark Fantastic addresses the & imagination gap that plagues the majority of children's and YA media, which erases and mutes the stories and agency of black characters. From Harry Potter to The Hunger Games, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas sheds light on the dark fantastic to point scholars and fans toward a world where we can all experience and be liberated by the power of magic. -- Tananarive Due, American Book Award winner and author * Ghost Summer: Stories *A compelling work of criticism, autoethnography, and counter-storytelling. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas reads within and across novels, film, television, fanfiction, the writers who create them, and online communities in order to explore the & role of race in the collective literary imagination. Thomas powerfully introduces the concept of the imagination gap and articulates its implications for the culture as a whole, recognizing the power and necessity of new stories capable of remaking the world. -- Christina Sharpe, author * In the Wake: On Blackness and Being *A compelling synthesis of speculative fiction, critical race theory, autobiography, and fantasy, The Dark Fantastic provides a powerful diagnosis of how racial difference shapes our imaginations. If you are looking for ways to repair the damage wrought by the lack of diversity in popular culture, there's no better place to begin. -- Philip Nel, author * Was the Cat in the Hat Black? *The form of this piece of scholarly activism is as fresh as its scholarly content; Thomas has a strong authorial voice and uses it eloquently, lightly, and without pretension, making this necessary book accessible to a much wider audience than children’s literature scholars. The Dark Fantastic is a transformative and democratising work in the public humanities, emancipated from stagnant academic notions. * International Research in Children’s Literature *The Dark Fantastic is a timely entree into the literature on speculative and fantastic fictions, and it does exactly what it sets out to do…As fantastical and speculative fictions become more popular, this text is sure to become a must read for scholars, teachers, and readers of the fantastical. * The Journal of African American History *

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Book SynopsisHow children and children's literature helped build America's empireAmerica's empire was not made by adults alone. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, young people became essential to its creation. Through children's literature, authors instilled the idea of America's power and the importance of its global prominence. As kids eagerly read dime novels, series fiction, pulp magazines, and comic books that dramatized the virtues of empire, they helped entrench a growing belief in America's indispensability to the international order. Empires more generally require stories to justify their existence. Children's literature seeded among young people a conviction that their country's command of a continent (and later the world) was essential to global stability. This genre allowed ardent imperialists to obscure their aggressive agendas with a veneer of harmlessness or fun. The supposedly nonthreatening nature of the child and children's literature thereby helped to disguise dominTrade Review"What a book! Sharp, surprising, and creative, Empire’s Nursery tells the story of how a generation of children learned the art of empire. Brian Rouleau has shown himself to be a superb historian." -- Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States"Polished, well organized, and engaging. This is an important contribution that demonstrates the significance of taking children and their material culture seriously. Specifically, whereas most literature on the history of children and youth looks for children to be agents of change, Empire’s Nursery regards children as cultural conservators." -- Jennifer Helgren, University of the Pacific"There is much to admire in Empire’s Nursery, which weaves together settler colonial studies and children’s literary studies—two strands of analysis that aren’t usually put into conversation. Rouleau makes important claims that deserve engagement and elaboration. Featuring excellent archival work, Empire’s Nursery excavates children’s writing in response to the literature they were reading." -- Anna Mae Duane, author of Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew Up to Change a Nation

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2024 ILBA Gold Medal, Best LGBTQ+ Themed Book , given by the International Latino Book Awards Winner, 2024 ILBA Silver Medal, The Raul Yzaguirre Best Political/Current Affairs Book, given by the International Latino Book AwardsArgues that queer picture books with main characters of color can disrupt structures of power in both literature and real lifeColoring into Existence investigates the role of authors, illustrators, and independent publishers in producing alternative narratives that disrupt colonial, heteropatriarchal notions of childhood. These texts or characters unsettle the category of the child, and thus pave the way for broader understandings of childhood. Often unapologetically politically motivated, queer and trans of color picture books can serve as the basis for fantasizing about disruptions to structures of power, both within and outside literary worlds. Fusing literary criticism and close readings with historical analysis and interviews, Isabel Millán documentsTrade ReviewIn this magisterial study, Isabel Millán sweeps across all of North America—Mexico, the U.S., and Canada—to recover a genealogy of queer and trans of color picture books. With incisive questions and insightful close readings, Millán shows how picture books are sites through which queer and trans of color communities have “colored,” or reimagined, themselves to create new worlds. Comprehensive, lively, and inspiring, Coloring into Existence is a landmark in the field of children’s literature. -- Robin Bernstein, author of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil RightsOffers a significant and distinctive contribution to the field, building upon recent scholarship on queerness in/and children’s literature and childhood. Coloring into Existence is cutting edge and making original theoretical and scholarly interventions, speaking in important ways to growing efforts to diversify children’s literature. -- Julia L Mickenberg, author of Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2024 ILBA Gold Medal, Best LGBTQ+ Themed Book , given by the International Latino Book Awards Winner, 2024 ILBA Silver Medal, The Raul Yzaguirre Best Political/Current Affairs Book, given by the International Latino Book AwardsArgues that queer picture books with main characters of color can disrupt structures of power in both literature and real lifeColoring into Existence investigates the role of authors, illustrators, and independent publishers in producing alternative narratives that disrupt colonial, heteropatriarchal notions of childhood. These texts or characters unsettle the category of the child, and thus pave the way for broader understandings of childhood. Often unapologetically politically motivated, queer and trans of color picture books can serve as the basis for fantasizing about disruptions to structures of power, both within and outside literary worlds. Fusing literary criticism and close readings with historical analysis and interviews, Isabel Millán documentsTrade ReviewIn this magisterial study, Isabel Millán sweeps across all of North America—Mexico, the U.S., and Canada—to recover a genealogy of queer and trans of color picture books. With incisive questions and insightful close readings, Millán shows how picture books are sites through which queer and trans of color communities have “colored,” or reimagined, themselves to create new worlds. Comprehensive, lively, and inspiring, Coloring into Existence is a landmark in the field of children’s literature. -- Robin Bernstein, author of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil RightsOffers a significant and distinctive contribution to the field, building upon recent scholarship on queerness in/and children’s literature and childhood. Coloring into Existence is cutting edge and making original theoretical and scholarly interventions, speaking in important ways to growing efforts to diversify children’s literature. -- Julia L Mickenberg, author of Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature

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Book SynopsisIntroduces key terms, global concepts, debates, and histories for Children''s Literature in an updated editionOver the past decade, there has been a proliferation of exciting new work across many areas of children's literature and culture. Mapping this vibrant scholarship, the Second Edition of Keywords for Children's Literature presents original essays on essential terms and concepts in the field. Covering ideas from Aesthetics to Voice, an impressive multidisciplinary cast of scholars explores and expands on the vocabulary central to the study of children's literature.The second edition of this Keywords volume goes beyond disciplinary and national boundaries. Across fifty-nine print essays and nineteen online essays, it includes contributors from twelve countries and an international advisory board from over a dozen more. The fully revised and updated selection of critical writingmore than half of the essays are new to this editionreflects an intentionallTrade ReviewEven the most sophisticated scholars will enjoy seeing how their colleagues achieve the feat of crafting such delicious distillations within the given space constraints. This book is a monumental achievement. -- Claudia Mills, Children's Literature AssociationThis book presents ... thoughtful essays based on various concepts pertaining to children's literature, including genres, literary theories, and the history of children's literature ... This volume will be very useful, especially for colleges and universities with children's literature programs. Highly recommended. -- J. Stevens, ChoiceOverall, this volume succeeds quite well in focusing attention on how we discuss children's literature. The[se] essays are models of thoughtful inquiry into words we frequently use, often without considering how they have been transformed over time. -- Myra Zarnowski, Teachers College RecordBy distilling the complex uses of its core terms, the contributors to Keywords for Children's Literature have produced an indispensable handbook for scholars in this dynamic field. -- Donald E. Pease, author of Theodor SEUSS GeiselKeywords for Children's Literature demonstrates how sophisticated the critical approaches to the burgeoning field of children's literature have become. Not only do the essays on keywords, written by some of the most capable professors in the field, elaborate important concepts in the history of children's literature, but they cover significant cultural debates and discussions. This superb volume of scholarship demonstrates definitively that adult literature cannot be understood without grasping its roots in children's literature. -- Jack Zipes, University of Minnesota"Anyone who reads the collection may find herself—as this reviewer did—continuing the scholarly conversation by putting the premises of one essay in dialogue with others in the volume…. [O]ne of the intellectual pleasures Keywords offers is surprising readers to reconsider their understanding of words that they may have taken for granted.” —Adrienne Kertzer, The Lion and the Unicorn, Vol. 46., No. 1 (Jan 2022). * The Lion and the Unicorn *It is a broad and nuanced selection that reads its contemporaries well and far manages to capture the vast array of new studies and theoretical perspectives that have enriched and deepened our understanding of children’s literature in the 21st century. … an excellent and necessary interlocutor for further thinking about the complex issues surrounding children’s literature and the multifaceted context in which it is created, read, analysed and debated. -- Maria Lassén-Seger * Barnboken *

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Book SynopsisThe single largest category of Beowulf representation and adaptation, outside of direct translation of the poem, is children’s literature. Over the past century and a half, more than 150 new versions of Beowulf directed to child and teen audiences have appeared, in English and in many other languages. In this collection of original essays, Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize examine the history and processes of remaking Beowulf for young readers. Inventive in their manipulations of story, tone, and genre, these adaptations require their authors to make countless decisions about what to include, exclude, emphasize, de-emphasize, and adjust. This volume considers the many forms of children’s literature, focusing primarily on picture books, illustrated storybooks, and youth novels, but taking account also of curricular aids, illustrated full translations of the poem, and songs. Contributors address issues of gender, historical context, war and violeTable of ContentsIntroduction: Beowulf in and near Children’s Literature Britt Mize 1. “A Little Shared Homer for England and the North”: The First Beowulf for Young Readers Mark Bradshaw Busbee 2. The Adaptational Character of the Earliest Beowulf for English Children: E.L. Hervey’s “The Fight with the Ogre” Renée Ward 3. Visualizing Femininity in Children’s and Illustrated Versions of Beowulf Bruce Gilchrist 4. Tolkien, Beowulf, and Faërie: Adaptations for Readers Aged “Six to Sixty” Amber Dunai 5. Treatments of Beowulf as a Source in Mid-Twentieth-Century Children’s Literature Carl Edlund Anderson 6. What We See in the Grendel Cave: Focalization in Beowulf for Children Janet Schrunk Ericksen 7. Beowulf, Bèi’àowǔfǔ, and the Social Hero Britt Mize 8. The Monsters and the Animals: Theriocentric Beowulfs Robert Stanton 9. Children’s Beowulfs for the New Tolkien Generation Yvette Kisor 10. The Practice of Adapting Beowulf for Younger Readers: A Conversation with Rebecca Barnhouse and James Rumford Britt Mize 11. Children’s Versions of Beowulf: A Bibliography Bruce Gilchrist

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Book SynopsisThese interviews span from 1966 to 2011. They show not only Maurice Sendak's shifting artistic interests, but also changes in how he understood himself and his craft. What emerges is a portrait of an author and an artist who was alternately solemn and playful, congenial and irascible, sophisticated and populist.

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Book SynopsisPresents the first collection of interviews with the beloved children's book author best known for her 1962 Newbery Award-winning novel, A Wrinkle in Time. The thirteen interviews collected here reveal an amazing feat of authorial self-fashioning, as L'Engle transformed from novelist to children's author to Christian writer.

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Book SynopsisConversations with Madeleine L'Engle is the first collection of interviews with the beloved children's book author best known for her 1962 Newbery Award-winning novel, A Wrinkle in Time. However, Madeleine L'Engle's accomplishments as a writer spread far beyond children's literature. Beginning her career as a literary novelist for adults, L'Engle (1918-2007) continued to write fiction for both young and old long after A Wrinkle in Time. In her sixties, she published personal memoirs and devotional texts that explored her relationship with religion. At the time of her death, L'Engle was mourned by fans of her children's books and the larger Christian community.L'Engle's books, as well as her life, were often marked by contradictions. A consummate storyteller, L'Engle carefully crafted and performed a public self-image via her interviews. Weaving through the documentable facts in these interviews are partial lies, misdirections, and w

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Book SynopsisOffers the first complete biography of acclaimed children’s author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983) intended for adult readers. Drawing extensively from his unpublished autobiography and letters, the book covers the breadth of Keats’s life.

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Book SynopsisJack Kent (1920-1985) had two distinct and successful careers: newspaper cartoonist and author of children''s books. For each of these he drew upon different aspects of his personality and life experiences. From 1950 to 1965 he wrote and drew King Aroo, a nationally syndicated comic strip beloved by fans for its combination of absurdity, fantasy, wordplay, and wit. The strip''s DNA was comprised of things Kent loved--fairytales, nursery rhymes, vaudeville, Krazy Kat, foreign languages, and puns. In 1968, he published his first children''s book, Just Only John, and began a career in kids'' books that would result in over sixty published works, among them such classics as The Fat Cat and There''s No Such Thing as a Dragon. Kent''s stories for children were funny but often arose from the dark parts of his life--an itinerant childhood, an unfinished education, two harrowing tours of duty in World War II, and a persistent lack of confidence--and tackled su

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Book SynopsisIlluminates how Jack Kent’s life experiences informed his art and his storytelling. Paul Allen draws from archival research, brand-new interviews, and in-depth examinations of Kent’s work. Also included are many King Aroo comic strips that have never been reprinted in book form.

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Book SynopsisWild Visionary reconsiders Maurice Sendak's life and work in the context of his experience as a Jewish gay man. Maurice (Moishe) Bernard Sendak (1928–2012) was a fierce, romantic, and shockingly funny truth seeker who intervened in modern literature and culture. Raising the stakes of children's books, Sendak painted childhood with the dark realism and wild imagination of his own sensitive "inner child," drawing on the queer and Yiddish sensibilities that shaped his singular voice. Interweaving literary biography and cultural history, Golan Y. Moskowitz follows Sendak from his parents' Brooklyn home to spaces of creative growth and artistic vision—from neighborhood movie palaces to Hell's Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Fire Island, and the Connecticut country home he shared with Eugene Glynn, his partner of more than fifty years. Further, he analyzes Sendak's investment in the figure of the endangered child in symbolic relation to collective touchstones that impacted the artist's perspective—the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the AIDS crisis. Through a deep exploration of Sendak's picture books, interviews, and previously unstudied personal correspondence, Wild Visionary offers a sensitive portrait of the most beloved and enchanting picture-book artist of our time.Trade Review"Golan Y. Moskowitz's thorough study of Maurice Sendak's life and work unveils the struggles that led him to 'queer' his children's books. Moskowitz captures the essential forces behind his artwork, showing how Sendak was just as politically radical as he was emotionally provocative." -- Jack Zipes * University of Minnesota *"Easily the best study of Sendak to appear; deeply researched and utterly engaging. Moskowitz brings rich new context to Sendak's life, showing how the artist's historically sidelined queer and Jewish identity inspired his work. Even the notoriously cranky Sendak would have liked it." -- Kenneth Kidd * University of Florida *"This revelatory exploration of Maurice Sendak's life opens up vistas not only on creativity, queerness, and the Jewish-American immigrant experience but also, and most powerfully, on childhood. Moskowitz is a deft guide to the wild places of Sendak's imagination, where generations of children recognized something startling and true about themselves." -- Naomi Seidman * University of Toronto *"Moskowitz has reclaimed Sendak as one of great gay writers and artists of the 20th century... Astutely analyzing drafts of Sendak's narratives, and the progressive stages of his illustrations, Moskowitz demonstrates the sometimes subtle, but often quite overt, ways in which Sendak blurred gender lines and celebrates queer relationships." -- Raymond-jean Frontain * The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide *"InWild Visionary, Moskowitz presents a sensitive and discerning depiction of the life and work of Maurice Sendak, and the ways in which his story offers insights into broader tensions: between what children, and people more generally, see and need, and what the world thinks they see and need; between the worlds of cultural production and the various, often unseen forces that manage both to stifle and reward freedom and creativity." -- Tahneer Oksman * In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies *"This evocative...book captures Sendak's commitment to radical honesty from the inside out and challenges us to follow the threads of Jewishness, queerness, and other diversities of identity as they have shaped, and continue to shape, art and life and everything in between In Sendak's words, let the wild rumpus begin!" -- Noam Sienna * Journal of Jewish Identities *"Moskowitz persuasively grounds Sendak's creative output in his Jewish and queer identities, offering important insights into the links between sexual, ethnic, and cultural experiences of difference, the universal queerness of childhood, and the ways in which intergenerational trauma informs Jewish and immigrant identities in American culture." -- Gregg Drinkwater * Association for Jewish Studies Review *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Introduction: From Limbo to Childhood chapter abstractThis chapter introduces the book's approach of situating a cultural giant within several intersecting histories and minority discourses, as well as analyzing the artist's work as an embodied testament to a complex historical and cultural experience. Contextualizing Sendak's sensitive but convoluted subjectivity within histories of modern childhood, Jewish American acculturation, and enduring affiliations between queer difference and children's literature, it offers a roadmap for the book and orients the project within broader studies of childhood, Jewishness, queerness, and affect. One: Where the Wild Things Acculturate: Roots and Wings in Interwar Brooklyn chapter abstractChapter 1 situates Sendak's artistic vision within intertwined histories of immigrant acculturation and the emergence of modern childhood. Early twentieth-century immigrants' children were in some ways socialized out of their own families of origin. Sendak was born into a zeitgeist of speed and mobility in a culture that celebrated mechanical innovation, youth, capitalism, and superhero fantasies. Popular consumerism exploded alongside the solidification of child psychology, surges in global antisemitism, and rising anxieties about fascism. Social commentators envisioned minorities and cityscapes as potentially threatening to the American child's healthy development. Sendak grew up sensitive to his parents' anxieties as Jewish immigrants and mesmerized by gritty urban spectacles and mass media. His youth clashed with dominant conceptions of childhood as a time of rose-colored, protected innocence. His creative work would instead convey the culturally fraught separation anxieties experienced between immigrant parents and American children in the interwar urban landscape. Two: Love in a Dangerous Landscape: Queer Kinship and Survival chapter abstractFocusing on the years of World War II, Chapter 2 examines Sendak's creative notions of kinship in dialogue with literature of Jewish families in contexts of migration, collective mourning, and survival. Sendak spent the war years as a young adolescent, aware that his relatives were being murdered in Nazi-occupied Poland. Tumultuous, but tight-knit relationships within his mourning family elucidate the almost divine significance his work would attribute to ruptured parent-child boundaries, creative sibling bonds, and queer yearnings. His work took elements characteristic, if stereotypic, of twentieth-century Yiddish-speaking Jewish families and transformed them into nursery rhyme and fairy tale archetypes. Sendak's childhood location within a milieu repeatedly targeted for violent destruction and shrouded in traumatic losses reverberates in his work. His mythical and cosmic fusions convey feelings about growing up with precarious identifications and emotional investment in familial pasts that he did not directly experience. Three: Surviving the American Dream: Early Childhood as Queer Lens at Midcentury chapter abstractIn the immediate postwar years, the young Sendak continued to negotiate competing realities. The dominant "American Dream" idealized childhood innocence, heterosexual marriage, and the suburban nuclear family; his parents' Jewish Brooklyn community mourned destroyed communities of origin; and his own relocation to Manhattan offered fraught realms of discreet exploration as a gay man. This chapter examines how the artist preserved his sense of self apart from a mainstream culture that devalued ethnically and sexually atypical people. Sendak's beginnings as an illustrator and picture-book artist reflect an unassimilable subjectivity that separated him from dominant social meanings and encouraged his investment in excavating his early childhood self. With the help of queer and Jewish mentors, including picture-book author Ruth Krauss and a gay Jewish therapist named Bertram Slaff, Sendak solidified his creative vision and began to subvert the limitations of the American Dream with queer and ethnically marginal elements. Four: "Milk in the Batter" and Controversy in the Making: "Camp," Stigma, and Public Spotlight in the Era of Social Liberation chapter abstractFocusing on the 1960s and 1970s, Chapter 4 connects Sendak's use of child's play to the challenges and triumphs of excluded and stigmatized outsiders. Sendak participated in a tradition historically employed by insider-outsider minorities, including Jews and queer people, whose difference could be selectively hidden in order "to pass." This chapter examines Sendak's relationship to costume, to the dramatic arts, and to spaces of social liberation, including Fire Island, as well as his use of child's play, theatricality, and "Camp" sensibilities in correspondences and picture books to work through feelings of queer shame and social incoherence. It reads his creative process in dialogue with sociological writing on the creativity of stigmatized individuals, queer theories of time and space, and psychoanalytic writings on the "creative personality." Sendak harnessed a stigmatized subjectivity to create messages that spoke to those disenchanted with the homogenous, middle-class ideals of midcentury America. Five: Inside Out: Processing the AIDS Crisis and Holocaust Memory Through the Romantic Child chapter abstractChapter 5 focuses on Sendak's life and work in the years following his move to Ridgefield, Connecticut, in 1972, exploring how notions of "inside"' and "outside" intensified in his creative vision. As late twentieth-century Jews became, generally speaking, more enfranchised in middle-class America and were increasingly essentialized as complacent beneficiaries of "White privilege," anxiety about the need to preserve Jewish distinctiveness increased. Meanwhile, America institutionalized Holocaust memory and became more comfortable with Old World nostalgia. Mainstream culture in the 1980s also retreated from social liberation movements, empowering homophobia and social conservatism. Considering these contextual shifts, this chapter studies the aging Sendak's creative handling of boundary violations and "unnatural," death-infused relations, including visual mergers of the Holocaust with the AIDS crisis. It asks how he reconciled a political calling he felt during that crisis, which took many of his loved ones, with an impulse to turn inward. Conclusion: Conclusion: A Garden on the Edge of the World chapter abstractThis section reflects broadly on social and cultural influences that shaped Sendak's art, as well as on his legacy as a critic of collectively imposed simplifications of childhood. It connects the concerns of his art to contemporary creative representations of childhood, as well as to enduring social inequities. Childhood continues to operate as a cultural site contributing to definitions of deviance, as well as to the inclusion and exclusion of various minority populations, including Black Americans. Sendak celebrated the sensitivity, ferocity, and playful liminality of childhood, cultivating his own "inner child" as a position from which to articulate the complexity of a displaced queer subjectivity in a displaced immigrant family unit, as well as the dangers of puritanism and social coercion in the public sphere.

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Book SynopsisWild Visionary reconsiders Maurice Sendak's life and work in the context of his experience as a Jewish gay man. Maurice (Moishe) Bernard Sendak (1928–2012) was a fierce, romantic, and shockingly funny truth seeker who intervened in modern literature and culture. Raising the stakes of children's books, Sendak painted childhood with the dark realism and wild imagination of his own sensitive "inner child," drawing on the queer and Yiddish sensibilities that shaped his singular voice. Interweaving literary biography and cultural history, Golan Y. Moskowitz follows Sendak from his parents' Brooklyn home to spaces of creative growth and artistic vision—from neighborhood movie palaces to Hell's Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Fire Island, and the Connecticut country home he shared with Eugene Glynn, his partner of more than fifty years. Further, he analyzes Sendak's investment in the figure of the endangered child in symbolic relation to collective touchstones that impacted the artist's perspective—the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the AIDS crisis. Through a deep exploration of Sendak's picture books, interviews, and previously unstudied personal correspondence, Wild Visionary offers a sensitive portrait of the most beloved and enchanting picture-book artist of our time.Trade Review"Golan Y. Moskowitz's thorough study of Maurice Sendak's life and work unveils the struggles that led him to 'queer' his children's books. Moskowitz captures the essential forces behind his artwork, showing how Sendak was just as politically radical as he was emotionally provocative." -- Jack Zipes * University of Minnesota *"Easily the best study of Sendak to appear; deeply researched and utterly engaging. Moskowitz brings rich new context to Sendak's life, showing how the artist's historically sidelined queer and Jewish identity inspired his work. Even the notoriously cranky Sendak would have liked it." -- Kenneth Kidd * University of Florida *"This revelatory exploration of Maurice Sendak's life opens up vistas not only on creativity, queerness, and the Jewish-American immigrant experience but also, and most powerfully, on childhood. Moskowitz is a deft guide to the wild places of Sendak's imagination, where generations of children recognized something startling and true about themselves." -- Naomi Seidman * University of Toronto *"Moskowitz has reclaimed Sendak as one of great gay writers and artists of the 20th century... Astutely analyzing drafts of Sendak's narratives, and the progressive stages of his illustrations, Moskowitz demonstrates the sometimes subtle, but often quite overt, ways in which Sendak blurred gender lines and celebrates queer relationships." -- Raymond-jean Frontain * The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide *"InWild Visionary, Moskowitz presents a sensitive and discerning depiction of the life and work of Maurice Sendak, and the ways in which his story offers insights into broader tensions: between what children, and people more generally, see and need, and what the world thinks they see and need; between the worlds of cultural production and the various, often unseen forces that manage both to stifle and reward freedom and creativity." -- Tahneer Oksman * In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies *"This evocative...book captures Sendak's commitment to radical honesty from the inside out and challenges us to follow the threads of Jewishness, queerness, and other diversities of identity as they have shaped, and continue to shape, art and life and everything in between In Sendak's words, let the wild rumpus begin!" -- Noam Sienna * Journal of Jewish Identities *"Moskowitz persuasively grounds Sendak's creative output in his Jewish and queer identities, offering important insights into the links between sexual, ethnic, and cultural experiences of difference, the universal queerness of childhood, and the ways in which intergenerational trauma informs Jewish and immigrant identities in American culture." -- Gregg Drinkwater * Association for Jewish Studies Review *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Introduction: From Limbo to Childhood chapter abstractThis chapter introduces the book's approach of situating a cultural giant within several intersecting histories and minority discourses, as well as analyzing the artist's work as an embodied testament to a complex historical and cultural experience. Contextualizing Sendak's sensitive but convoluted subjectivity within histories of modern childhood, Jewish American acculturation, and enduring affiliations between queer difference and children's literature, it offers a roadmap for the book and orients the project within broader studies of childhood, Jewishness, queerness, and affect. One: Where the Wild Things Acculturate: Roots and Wings in Interwar Brooklyn chapter abstractChapter 1 situates Sendak's artistic vision within intertwined histories of immigrant acculturation and the emergence of modern childhood. Early twentieth-century immigrants' children were in some ways socialized out of their own families of origin. Sendak was born into a zeitgeist of speed and mobility in a culture that celebrated mechanical innovation, youth, capitalism, and superhero fantasies. Popular consumerism exploded alongside the solidification of child psychology, surges in global antisemitism, and rising anxieties about fascism. Social commentators envisioned minorities and cityscapes as potentially threatening to the American child's healthy development. Sendak grew up sensitive to his parents' anxieties as Jewish immigrants and mesmerized by gritty urban spectacles and mass media. His youth clashed with dominant conceptions of childhood as a time of rose-colored, protected innocence. His creative work would instead convey the culturally fraught separation anxieties experienced between immigrant parents and American children in the interwar urban landscape. Two: Love in a Dangerous Landscape: Queer Kinship and Survival chapter abstractFocusing on the years of World War II, Chapter 2 examines Sendak's creative notions of kinship in dialogue with literature of Jewish families in contexts of migration, collective mourning, and survival. Sendak spent the war years as a young adolescent, aware that his relatives were being murdered in Nazi-occupied Poland. Tumultuous, but tight-knit relationships within his mourning family elucidate the almost divine significance his work would attribute to ruptured parent-child boundaries, creative sibling bonds, and queer yearnings. His work took elements characteristic, if stereotypic, of twentieth-century Yiddish-speaking Jewish families and transformed them into nursery rhyme and fairy tale archetypes. Sendak's childhood location within a milieu repeatedly targeted for violent destruction and shrouded in traumatic losses reverberates in his work. His mythical and cosmic fusions convey feelings about growing up with precarious identifications and emotional investment in familial pasts that he did not directly experience. Three: Surviving the American Dream: Early Childhood as Queer Lens at Midcentury chapter abstractIn the immediate postwar years, the young Sendak continued to negotiate competing realities. The dominant "American Dream" idealized childhood innocence, heterosexual marriage, and the suburban nuclear family; his parents' Jewish Brooklyn community mourned destroyed communities of origin; and his own relocation to Manhattan offered fraught realms of discreet exploration as a gay man. This chapter examines how the artist preserved his sense of self apart from a mainstream culture that devalued ethnically and sexually atypical people. Sendak's beginnings as an illustrator and picture-book artist reflect an unassimilable subjectivity that separated him from dominant social meanings and encouraged his investment in excavating his early childhood self. With the help of queer and Jewish mentors, including picture-book author Ruth Krauss and a gay Jewish therapist named Bertram Slaff, Sendak solidified his creative vision and began to subvert the limitations of the American Dream with queer and ethnically marginal elements. Four: "Milk in the Batter" and Controversy in the Making: "Camp," Stigma, and Public Spotlight in the Era of Social Liberation chapter abstractFocusing on the 1960s and 1970s, Chapter 4 connects Sendak's use of child's play to the challenges and triumphs of excluded and stigmatized outsiders. Sendak participated in a tradition historically employed by insider-outsider minorities, including Jews and queer people, whose difference could be selectively hidden in order "to pass." This chapter examines Sendak's relationship to costume, to the dramatic arts, and to spaces of social liberation, including Fire Island, as well as his use of child's play, theatricality, and "Camp" sensibilities in correspondences and picture books to work through feelings of queer shame and social incoherence. It reads his creative process in dialogue with sociological writing on the creativity of stigmatized individuals, queer theories of time and space, and psychoanalytic writings on the "creative personality." Sendak harnessed a stigmatized subjectivity to create messages that spoke to those disenchanted with the homogenous, middle-class ideals of midcentury America. Five: Inside Out: Processing the AIDS Crisis and Holocaust Memory Through the Romantic Child chapter abstractChapter 5 focuses on Sendak's life and work in the years following his move to Ridgefield, Connecticut, in 1972, exploring how notions of "inside"' and "outside" intensified in his creative vision. As late twentieth-century Jews became, generally speaking, more enfranchised in middle-class America and were increasingly essentialized as complacent beneficiaries of "White privilege," anxiety about the need to preserve Jewish distinctiveness increased. Meanwhile, America institutionalized Holocaust memory and became more comfortable with Old World nostalgia. Mainstream culture in the 1980s also retreated from social liberation movements, empowering homophobia and social conservatism. Considering these contextual shifts, this chapter studies the aging Sendak's creative handling of boundary violations and "unnatural," death-infused relations, including visual mergers of the Holocaust with the AIDS crisis. It asks how he reconciled a political calling he felt during that crisis, which took many of his loved ones, with an impulse to turn inward. Conclusion: Conclusion: A Garden on the Edge of the World chapter abstractThis section reflects broadly on social and cultural influences that shaped Sendak's art, as well as on his legacy as a critic of collectively imposed simplifications of childhood. It connects the concerns of his art to contemporary creative representations of childhood, as well as to enduring social inequities. Childhood continues to operate as a cultural site contributing to definitions of deviance, as well as to the inclusion and exclusion of various minority populations, including Black Americans. Sendak celebrated the sensitivity, ferocity, and playful liminality of childhood, cultivating his own "inner child" as a position from which to articulate the complexity of a displaced queer subjectivity in a displaced immigrant family unit, as well as the dangers of puritanism and social coercion in the public sphere.

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Book SynopsisUntil recently, scholars believed that African American children’s literature did not exist before 1900. Now, Who Writes for Black Children? opens the door to a rich archive of largely overlooked literature read by black children. This volume’s combination of analytic essays, bibliographic materials, and primary texts offers alternative histories for early African American literary studies and children’s literature studies.From poetry written by a slave for a plantation school to joyful “death biographies” of African Americans in the antebellum North to literature penned by African American children themselves, Who Writes for Black Children? presents compelling new definitions of both African American literature and children’s literature. Editors Katharine Capshaw and Anna Mae Duane bring together a rich collection of essays that argue for children as an integral part of the nineteenth-century black community and offer alternative ways to look at the relationship between children and adults. Including two bibliographic essays that provide a list of texts for future research as well as an extensive selection of hard-to-find primary texts, Who Writes for Black Children? broadens our ideas of authorship, originality, identity, and political formations. In the process, the volume adds new texts to the canon of African American literature while providing a fresh perspective on our desire for the literary origin stories that create canons in the first place. Contributors: Karen Chandler, U of Louisville; Martha J. Cutter, U of Connecticut; LuElla D’Amico, Whitworth U; Brigitte Fielder, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Eric Gardner, Saginaw Valley State U; Mary Niall Mitchell, U of New Orleans; Angela Sorby, Marquette U; Ivy Linton Stabell, Iona College; Valentina K. Tikoff, DePaul U; Laura Wasowicz; Courtney Weikle-Mills, U of Pittsburgh; Nazera Sadiq Wright, U of Kentucky.Trade Review"Was any literature written specifically for black children living before 1900 in the Western Hemisphere? By posing this question, Capshaw and Duane force a reckoning with a gap in children’s literature studies that is predicated on the assumption that slavery invalidated a space for black children to consume literature."—V. A. Murrenus Pilmaier, University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan"The volume’s strength lies in the interdisciplinary perspectives it provides on both African American children’s literature and the experiences of African American child-readers."—The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth"Striking the hard-to-accomplish balance between in-process scholarly exploration and textbook framing, this collection manages not only to profess but also, impressively, to teach."—MELUS"Who Writes for Black Children? is a compelling collection of scholarly essays and primary material that will be valuable to anyone interested in the history of childhood—or in book history, reading and reception history, materiality, ephemera, or interpretation. Examining poetry, fiction, biography, illustrations, periodicals, friendship albums, pamphlets, marginalia, and more, the collection analyzes the goals and rhetorical strategies of diverse genres published for African American children and (perhaps) read by them."—Journal of American HistoryTable of ContentsContentsIntroductionPart I. Locating Readers1. Conjuring Readers: Antebellum African American Children’s PoetryAngela Sorby2. Free the Children: Jupiter Hammon and the Origin of African American Children’s LiteratureCourtney Weikle-Mills 3. “Ye Are Builders”: Child Readers in Frances Harper’s Vision of an Inclusive Black PoetryKaren ChandlerPart II: Schooling, Textuality, and Literacies4. Madame Couvent’s Legacy: Free Children of Color as Historians in Antebellum New OrleansMary Niall Mitchell5. Black Childhood Innocence in Susan Paul and Ann Plato’s Antebellum Children’s BiographiesIvy Linton Stabell6. Equiano as Role Model for African American Children: Abigail Field Mott’s Life and Adventures of Olaudah Equiano and White Northern Abolitionism in the 1820sValentina K. Tikoff7. The Child’s Illustrated Anti-Slavery Talking Book: Abigail Mott’s Abridgment of Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative for African American ChildrenMartha J. CutterPart III: Defining African American Children’s Literature: Critical Crossovers8. “Our Hope Is in the Rising Generation”: Locating African American Children’s Literature in the Colored American’s “Children Department” (1840-1841)Nazera Sadiq Wright9. “No Rights That Any Body Is Bound to Respect”: Pets, Race, and African American Child ReadersBrigitte Fielder10. Finding God’s Way: Amelia Johnson’s Clarence and Corrine as a Path to Religious Resistance for African American ChildrenLuElla D’AmicoPart IV: Bibliographic Essays11. Nuggets from the Field: The Roots of African American Children’s Literature, 1780-1866Laura Wasowicz12. Children’s Literature in the AME Christian Recorder: An Initial Comparative Bio-Bibliography for May 1862 and April 1873Eric GardnerAcknowledgmentsAppendixContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisA beautifully illustrated exploration of how Victorian novelty picture books reshape the ways children read and interact with texts The Victorian era saw an explosion of novelty picture books with flaps to lift and tabs to pull, pages that could fold out, pop-up scenes, and even mechanical toys mounted on pages. Analyzing books for young children published between 1835 and 1914, Playing with the Book studies how these elaborately designed works raise questions not just about what books should look like but also about what reading is, particularly in relation to children’s literature and child readers. Novelty books promised (or threatened) to make reading a physical as well as intellectual activity, requiring the child to pull a tab or lift a flap to continue the story. These books changed the relationship between pictures, words, and format in both productive and troubling ways. Hannah Field considers these aspects of children’s reading through case studies of different formats of novelty and movable books and intensive examination of editions that have survived from the nineteenth century. She discovers that children ripped, tore, and colored in their novelty books—despite these books’ explicit instructions against such behaviors.Richly illustrated with images of these ingenious constructions, Playing with the Book argues that novelty books construct a process of reading that involves touch as well as sight, thus reconfiguring our understanding of the phenomenology of reading.Trade Review"With impressive archival work, considerable historical contextualization, and an admirable knack for close reading, Hannah Field deftly traces how children did, and didn’t, read texts that demanded engagement from the eye, the hand, and the mind. Playing with the Book offers a powerful theory of embodied reading that emerges from a respectful, sustained engagement with these remarkable books and the children who read them."—Anna Mae Duane, editor of The Children’s Table: Childhood Studies and the Humanities"We may be underestimating the movable text’s place in the Victorian imagination. In this persuasive and lively study, Hannah Field reveals how nineteenth-century audiences played with and perceived toy theatres, panoramas, and mechanical books and describes modernity’s ferment in these powerfully nostalgic, ephemeral technologies. Movable novelties provided unique and engaging sensory experiences in the domestic space and in exhibition halls, and Field opens a critical window onto these interactive texts."—Nathalie op de Beeck, author of Suspended Animation: Children’s Picture Books and the Fairy Tale of Modernity "Such books were made to be handled and used as much as read, and as such, they offer insight into the vexing question of children's agency as readers, especially when one looks at, as Field does, physical traces—ripping, scribbling, coloring—left behind by child readers."—CHOICE"Field makes a significant contribution to what seems a niche topic, not least in her argument that it shouldn't be niche at all. At a moment when the focus of book history has shifted towards embodied reading and "doing things with books", such books—often bearing the traces of clumsy little hands—have a new kind of resonance."—Times Literary Supplement"A well-written, thought-provoking, and timely book."—Barnboken"Close attention to embodied engagement and agency is a strength of Field’s Playing with the Book."—Victorian Studies "A valuable addition to graduate and undergraduate-level courses in children’s literature, book history, and Victorian studies... Playing with the Book teaches readers that we might pave the future of children’s literature by looking back into the past innovations and complications of movable books."—ImageText "Field provides insightful readings and thoughtful considerations of novelty and movable books."—Children’s Literature Association QuarterlyTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Novelty Value1. The Three Rs: Reading, Ripping, Reconstructing2. Against the Wall: Stories, Spaces, and the Children’s Panorama3. The Movable Book in 3-D4. Ernest Nister Christopher Columbus: The Tale of a Dissolving-View Book5. Going through the Motions: Lothar Meggendorfer and the Mechanical Book Conclusion: Novelty Book HistoryAcknowledgmentsNotes Index

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Book SynopsisThe most familiar fairy tales call to mind certain images: Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty. Yet these visions often merely reflect illustrations encountered in classic tellings of the tales. The postcards gathered here by one of the world’s foremost scholars of folk and fairy tales tell another story—of the remarkable range of interpretations and reimaginings these tales have inspired, captured, and conveyed picture by picture in this singular form. A pictorial history of fairy-tale postcards from the late nineteenth century to the present, Tales of Wonder presents a fascinating look at how key scenes of fairy tales have been rendered over time, suggesting a rethinking and reliving of the tales through the years.Drawn from the author’s collection of more than three thousand fairy-tale postcards from around the world, these five hundred beautiful illustrations reproduce oil paintings, watercolors, photographs, ink drawings, and silhouettes—all evincing the myriad ways popular artists and their audiences have reimagined these tales. After an introduction and general history of fairy tales in postcards, the book features Jack Zipes’s own translations of the most classical fairy tales in Europe and the United States, including versions by Charles Perrault and by Brothers Grimm.The fairy tale is not just once upon a time: it is, as fairy-tale postcard, a particular if not peculiar expression of a time, created by talented artists and innovative publishing companies. Tales of Wonder tells this intriguing history of the postcards as well as providing new perspectives on familiar stories.Trade Review"A veritable treasure trove of new imagery."—SurLaLune Fairy Tales Site"The illustrated cards are stunners, both for their vivid colors and their detail."—Star Tribune"Highly recommended for fairy tale enthusiasts, this beautifully produced book sheds light on an overlooked vehicle for the dissemination of fairy tales around the world."—Library Journal, starred review"Zipes is a formidable academic but he also has the populist touch when it comes to communicating the value of these tales and he is responsible for rediscovering and translating global wonder stories that would otherwise be lost to the world."—The LetterPress Project

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Book SynopsisNonfiction books for children—from biographies and historical accounts of communities and events to works on science and social justice—have traditionally been most highly valued by educators and parents for their factual accuracy. This approach, however, misses an opportunity for young readers to participate in the generation and testing of information. In A Literature of Questions, Joe Sutliff Sanders offers an innovative theoretical approach to children’s nonfiction that goes beyond an assessment of a work’s veracity to develop a book’s equivocation as a basis for interpretation. Addressing how such works are either vulnerable or resistant to critical engagement, Sanders pays special attention to the attributes that nonfiction shares with other forms of literature, including voice and character, and those that play a special role in the genre, such as peritexts and photography. The first book-length work to theorize children’s nonfiction as nonfiction from a literary perspective, A Literature of Questions carefully explains how the genre speaks in unique ways to its young readers and how it invites them to the project of understanding. At the same time, it clearly lays out a series of techniques for analysis, which it then applies and nuances through extensive close readings and case studies of books published over the past half century, including recent award-winning books such as Tanya Lee Stone’s Almost Astronauts: Thirteen Women Who Dared to Dream and We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson. By looking at a text’s willingness or reluctance to let children interrogate its information and ideological context, Sanders reveals how nonfiction can make young readers part of the project of learning rather than passive recipients of information.Trade Review"A Literature of Questions is a groundbreaking work of criticism not only because it covers an area of children's literature that is largely unexamined but also because it provides the field with new language and a new set of critical lenses, which scholars, educators, and writers can use in the future to analyze, evaluate, teach, and create works of nonfiction for younger readers."—Annette Wannamaker, Eastern Michigan University"Not many courses about children’s literature that are offered in English departments include nonfiction titles on the reading lists. A Literature of Questions will irrevocably change this situation. In the wake of Joe Sutliff Sanders’s book, it will no longer be possible to teach an undergraduate or graduate course about literature for young readers without including a section on children’s nonfiction. Every individual working in the field will want to add a copy of A Literature of Questions to their campus library and even to their personal book collection. Additionally, they will want to assign this text their students. Sanders’s work is a new classic."—Michelle Ann Abate, author of Bloody Murder: The Homicide Tradition in Children’s Literature"A welcome addition for school librarians eager to provide upper elementary, middle, or high school students with tools for evaluating the intricacies of nonfiction."—Library Journal "Sanders offers a literary analysis of informational children’s books. The well-researched and insightful book is required reading for those interested in children’s literature." —CHOICETable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: The Literary Study of Children’s Nonfiction1. Beyond Authority: Questioning the Literature of Facts 2. Voice and the Seamless Narrative of Knowledge3. Nonfiction’s Unfinished Characters: The People Who Are Wrong, Flawed, and Incomplete4. Inquiry at and in the Margins: How Peritexts Encourage Critical Reading5. Seeing Photographs: Breaking the Authority of Nonfiction’s Favorite Medium6. The Pursuit of Reliability in Almost Astronauts7. The Empathy of Critical Engagement: Emotion and Sentimentality in Children’s NonfictionConclusion: Critical Engagement’s Moral ImperativeAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisNonfiction books for children—from biographies and historical accounts of communities and events to works on science and social justice—have traditionally been most highly valued by educators and parents for their factual accuracy. This approach, however, misses an opportunity for young readers to participate in the generation and testing of information. In A Literature of Questions, Joe Sutliff Sanders offers an innovative theoretical approach to children’s nonfiction that goes beyond an assessment of a work’s veracity to develop a book’s equivocation as a basis for interpretation. Addressing how such works are either vulnerable or resistant to critical engagement, Sanders pays special attention to the attributes that nonfiction shares with other forms of literature, including voice and character, and those that play a special role in the genre, such as peritexts and photography. The first book-length work to theorize children’s nonfiction as nonfiction from a literary perspective, A Literature of Questions carefully explains how the genre speaks in unique ways to its young readers and how it invites them to the project of understanding. At the same time, it clearly lays out a series of techniques for analysis, which it then applies and nuances through extensive close readings and case studies of books published over the past half century, including recent award-winning books such as Tanya Lee Stone’s Almost Astronauts: Thirteen Women Who Dared to Dream and We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson. By looking at a text’s willingness or reluctance to let children interrogate its information and ideological context, Sanders reveals how nonfiction can make young readers part of the project of learning rather than passive recipients of information.Trade Review"A Literature of Questions is a groundbreaking work of criticism not only because it covers an area of children's literature that is largely unexamined but also because it provides the field with new language and a new set of critical lenses, which scholars, educators, and writers can use in the future to analyze, evaluate, teach, and create works of nonfiction for younger readers."—Annette Wannamaker, Eastern Michigan University"Not many courses about children’s literature that are offered in English departments include nonfiction titles on the reading lists. A Literature of Questions will irrevocably change this situation. In the wake of Joe Sutliff Sanders’s book, it will no longer be possible to teach an undergraduate or graduate course about literature for young readers without including a section on children’s nonfiction. Every individual working in the field will want to add a copy of A Literature of Questions to their campus library and even to their personal book collection. Additionally, they will want to assign this text their students. Sanders’s work is a new classic."—Michelle Ann Abate, author of Bloody Murder: The Homicide Tradition in Children’s Literature"A welcome addition for school librarians eager to provide upper elementary, middle, or high school students with tools for evaluating the intricacies of nonfiction."—Library Journal "Sanders offers a literary analysis of informational children’s books. The well-researched and insightful book is required reading for those interested in children’s literature." —CHOICETable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: The Literary Study of Children’s Nonfiction1. Beyond Authority: Questioning the Literature of Facts 2. Voice and the Seamless Narrative of Knowledge3. Nonfiction’s Unfinished Characters: The People Who Are Wrong, Flawed, and Incomplete4. Inquiry at and in the Margins: How Peritexts Encourage Critical Reading5. Seeing Photographs: Breaking the Authority of Nonfiction’s Favorite Medium6. The Pursuit of Reliability in Almost Astronauts7. The Empathy of Critical Engagement: Emotion and Sentimentality in Children’s NonfictionConclusion: Critical Engagement’s Moral ImperativeAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisFrom The Hobbit to Harry Potter, how fantasy harnesses the cultural power of magic, medievalism, and childhood to re-enchant the modern world Why are so many people drawn to fantasy set in medieval, British-looking lands? This question has immediate significance for millions around the world: from fans of Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones to those who avoid fantasy because of the racist, sexist, and escapist tendencies they have found there. Drawing on the history and power of children’s fantasy literature, Re-Enchanted argues that magic, medievalism, and childhood hold the paradoxical ability to re-enchant modern life.Focusing on works by authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Susan Cooper, Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, and Nnedi Okorafor, Re-Enchanted uncovers a new genealogy for medievalist fantasy—one that reveals the genre to be as important to the history of English studies and literary modernism as it is to shaping beliefs across geographies and generations. Maria Sachiko Cecire follows children’s fantasy as it transforms over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—including the rise of diverse counternarratives and fantasy’s move into “high-brow” literary fiction. Grounded in a combination of archival scholarship and literary and cultural analysis, Re-Enchanted argues that medievalist fantasy has become a psychologized landscape for contemporary explorations of what it means to grow up, live well, and belong. The influential “Oxford School” of children’s fantasy connects to key issues throughout this book, from the legacies of empire and racial exclusion in children’s literature to what Christmas magic tells us about the roles of childhood and enchantment in Anglo-American culture.Re-Enchanted engages with critical debates around what constitutes high and low culture during moments of crisis in the humanities, political and affective uses of childhood and the mythological past, the anxieties of modernity, and the social impact of racially charged origin stories.Trade Review"Re-Enchanted is essential for the study of the fantastic. While other recent critical studies have focused on fantasy’s origins before 1900 or the genre’s place in the contemporary literary landscape, Maria Sachiko Cecire focuses the reader on the influence of the Oxford School fantasists, also known as the ‘Inklings,’ who mapped the world of story through perspectives influenced by their times. Thus, fantasy was left behind while the rest of the world changed. Re-Enchanted reminds us of the ways that English-language fantasy is, was, and can continue to be an instrument of empire. Engaging, thorough, and absolutely necessary."—Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, author of The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games"Full of revelatory scholarship on J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Phillip Pullman, and their heirs, Re-Enchanted makes the case for scholarship itself at the heart of fantasy. No one will read The Lord of the Rings or His Dark Materials again without realizing just how much Oxford itself—its libraries and its landscape—scripted their imaginations and how its syllabi inspire, to this day, Harry Potter, The Magicians, and beyond."—Seth Lerer, author of Children's Literature: A Reader's History, from Aesop to Harry Potter"In the twenty-first century, fantasy has become a way of speaking, in fiction (adults or children's) and outside it. Here Maria Sachiko Cecire interrogates the Oxford roots of something that has become, like wallpaper, part of our world, and helps us to see the landscape of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, of Diana Wynne Jones and Philip Pullman, and understand how that landscape became universal, the ways it buoys us up and the ways that it fails us."—Neil Gaiman "Cecire calls upon readers to acknowledge the dangers of the Oxford School’s project while recognizing the cultural power its members harnessed. She encourages us to embrace and explore new ways of expanding the scope of the tropes of children’s fantasy to become more inclusive in the ways it reaches into the past to find magic in a difficult contemporary world."—Medievally Speaking"Effectively, Cecire proves that in terms of modern children’s fantasy literature, all roads lead to the Oxford School."—CHOICE"Cecire illustrates brilliantly how Tolkien and Lewis took the building blocks of medieval literature and historical linguistics and created alternative worlds."—Times Literary Supplement"An important and endlessly engaging book that will provoke much further thought and discussion."—Mythlore"A compelling case both for training our critical attention on medieval and medievalist literature and for expanding the texts we read, teach, study, and share."—The Medieval Review"Re-Enchanted reveals how magic mystifies ideologies, embedding antimodernist, nationalist, colonialist ideas in children’s fantasy, concealing them in an invisibility cloak of (white) childhood innocence. It’s an essential book for anyone who wants to unlearn the hidden assumptions of our own childhood reading and find better stories for the next generation. "—ALH Online Review

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Book SynopsisOriginal artwork and materials explore children’s literature and its impact in society and culture over time A favorite childhood book can leave a lasting impression, but as adults we tend to shelve such memories. For fourteen months beginning in June 2013, more than half a million visitors to the New York Public Library viewed an exhibition about the role that children’s books play in world culture and in our lives. After the exhibition closed, attendees clamored for a catalog of The ABC of It as well as for children’s literature historian Leonard S. Marcus’s insightful, wry commentary about the objects on display. Now with this book, a collaboration between the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Collection of Children’s Literature and Leonard Marcus, the nostalgia and vision of that exhibit can be experienced anywhere. The story of the origins of children’s literature is a tale with memorable characters and deeds, from Hans Christian Andersen and Lewis Carroll to E. B. White and Madeleine L’Engle, who safeguarded a place for wonder in a world increasingly dominated by mechanistic styles of thought, to artists like Beatrix Potter and Maurice Sendak who devoted their extraordinary talents to revealing to children not only the exhilarating beauty of life but also its bracing intensity. Philosophers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and educators such as Johann Comenius and John Dewey were path-finding interpreters of the phenomenon of childhood, inspiring major strands of bookmaking and storytelling for the young. Librarians devised rigorous standards for evaluating children’s books and effective ways of putting good books into children’s hands, and educators proposed radically different ideas about what those books should include. Eventually, publishers came to embrace juvenile publishing as a core activity, and pioneering collectors of children’s book art, manuscripts, correspondence, and ephemera appeared—the University of Minnesota’s Dr. Irvin Kerlan being a superb example. Without the foresight and persistence of these collectors, much of this story would have been lost forever. Regarding children’s literature as both a rich repository of collective memory and a powerful engine of cultural change is more important today than ever.Trade Review "This is a book for the child in all of us—an exquisitely rendered volume that underscores the power of words and pictures to inspire, build, and transform."—Andrea Davis Pinkney, New York Times best-selling author of A Poem for Peter: The Story of Ezra Jack Keats and the Creation of The Snowy Day "WOW. Fascinating. Illuminating. And deeply entertaining. Required reading for anyone interested in children, reading, and/or children’s reading."—Jon Scieszka, Inaugural National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature "This is a beautiful reimagining of a milestone exhibition on children’s literature. Exquisitely rendered and inclusive in its vision. Highly recommended."—Lynne M. Thomas, Head of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign "Eloquent, illuminating, and often revelatory, this thematic crash course in the history of iconic children’s books is a visual feast."—Judy Freeman, author of The Handbook for Storytelling "Marcus’s text intriguingly tracks deep connections between children’s books and their larger society, around the world and across time."—Paul O. Zelinsky, award-winning author and illustrator "This is a piece of literature that should be in every school of education library and required reading for any student studying children’s literature. Outstanding."—Cynthia Weill, Director of the Center for Children’s Literature at Bank Street College of Education "The catalogue is not a history of children’s literature but rather a review of how children’s books reflect the changing adult view of children. Set out in three thematic sections—"Visions of Childhood," "Off the Shelf: Giving and Getting Books," and "The Art of the Picture Book"—the exhibit and this catalogue touch on many wide-ranging topics. Lavishly illustrated in color, the catalogue preserves the content off an important exhibit and at the same time features an important collection."—CHOICE "Scholarship is changing: we live in a world where browsing is a necessity; where viewpoints are not stable, and connectivity is all. It is a world in which a book such as The ABC of It can have a useful and happy place: it has enough traditional virtues to make it appeal to older scholars, enough information to make it of immense value to new scholars, and enough sheer joie de vivre to give pleasure to both."—International Research Society for Children’s Literature "Marcus’s own profound vision of the history of children’s books and childhood makes this an enlightening and inspirational book."—Children’s Literature Association Quarterly "ABC illustrates the continuing relevance of children's books, by itself being a beautiful and instructive book that children of all ages can peruse with pleasure."—The Corresponder

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