Children’s literature studies: general Books
The University of Chicago Press Beasts at Bedtime
Book SynopsisIn Beasts at Bedtime, scientist (and father) Liam Heneghan examines the environmental underpinnings of children's stories.
£24.00
Yale University Press Drawn to Enchant Original Childrens Book Art in
Book SynopsisPresents over 200 selected original artworks from the collection Betsy Beinecke Shirley bequeathed to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. This volume offers to study the reading lives of children throughout American history. It invites reader to recollect images from the treasured books of his or her own childhood.
£28.50
Yale University Press Story Time
Book Synopsis
£19.00
University of Michigan Press HandiLand
Book Synopsis
£69.30
Princeton University Press The Irresistible Fairy Tale
Book SynopsisDrawing on cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychology, literary theory, and other fields, this book presents a nuanced argument about how fairy tales originated in ancient oral cultures, how they evolved through the rise of literary culture and print, and how, in our own time, they continue to change through their adaptation.Trade ReviewCo-Winner of the 2012 Wayland D. Hand Prize, History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2012 "Zipes is a powerful defender of folklore and succeeds in exploring its role in cultural history as well as its influence today."--Maria Taylor, Times Literary Supplement "Zipes is the undisputed 'king' of the literary criticism of fairy tales kingdom... A rich, persuasive, magical brew, graced by seven illustrations."--Choice "Zipes is considered one of the true experts on fairy tales. He brings considerable erudition to the book which covers some broad issues in fairy-tale analysis, such as how they spread ... and the role of women collectors and narrators."--Nidhi Mathur, Organiser "In showing how and why fairy tales have become a core part of our central being, Zipes reveals his extensive scholarship in the field, as well as his skill in expounding profoundly about his key interests and concerns relating to the fairy tale genre. This scholarly masterpiece, which has emerged from decades of thought on the subject, deserves a place in all literary collections, as well as consideration by all those concerned with this particular genre."--Lois Henderson, Book Pleasures "Zipes is one of a handful of today's true experts on the fairy tale. Needless to say, he brings considerable erudition to this book, which covers some broad issues in fairy tale analysis such as how they spread (he takes his lead from Richard Dawkins's theory of cultural memes) and the role of women collectors and narrators... General readers with an interest in fairy tales will definitely enjoy what Zipes has to say."--David Azzolina, Library Journal "From Sumerian fables to Catherine Breillat's cinematic interpretations, fairy tales have traveled far. Professor Jack Zipes follows the evolution of a genre of folklore that serves to discretely communicate knowledge and experience. Reaching beyond our childhood memories of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, he explores the characters and tales that have thrived over the centuries, detailing especially French and Russian tales that have endured, albeit sometimes with a change of focus... This is not a book for the beach but the fruits of a study researched over several decades and offered especially to an academic readership. As such, the considerable chapter notes, bibliography, provocative illustrations, and index are all fitting."--Jane Manaster, Sacramento Book Review "Zipes traces the origin of storytelling back to a primal past... The reason they survive to this day, Zipes suggests, is because the classic fairy tales--such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel, which all have analogues in cultures throughout the world--are perfect examples of 'memetic' engineering."--Adam Kirsch, Prospect "Zipes spends much of The Irresistible Fairy Tale pointing out the hidden gems in the fairy tale's history and present--the ignored fabulists and movements that better embodied the revolutionary spirit of fable-telling."--Max Ross, Open Letters Monthly "The Irresistible Fairy Tale establishes a greater link with the social and natural sciences to explain the appeal of the fairytale. Zipes puts fairytales centre stage in Western culture, in a series of chapters that focus on lesser-known stories and authors. Zipes shows how fairytales mutate to ensure that the stories remain relevant to contemporary audiences, such as the feminist overturning of the traditional patriarchal fairytales in new interpretations of stories such as Little Red Riding Hood. The Irresistible Fairy Tale will appeal to both the academic and the general reader."--Colin Steele, Canberra Times "The Irresistible Fairy Tale strikes gold in giving due attention to a number of neglected female storytellers and collectors. In truth, Zipes could have written an entire book on Laura Gonzenbach, Bozena Nemcova, Nannette Levesque, and Rachel Busk."--Belinda Webb, Review 31 "Zipes is, of course, the undisputed dean of fairy tale studies in the US... In The Irresistible Fairy Tale, Zipes draws on and extends is prior work. He both celebrates the fairy tale as a subversive form and analyzes it as a nearly living creature, evolving from a dim past into the multifarious forms it takes today."--Elisabeth Rose Gruner, Children's Literature "The Irresistible Fairy Tale follows the theoretical trajectory established in [Zipes's] earlier works with a broad range of well-researched, lucidly-written chapters that are supported by informative notes, a bibliography divided into literary and critical works, and a detailed index. Each chapter can stand alone, but read together they offer compelling testimony to Zipes's sheer range of expertise and analytical insight."--Kirsten Mollegaard, Folklore "Zipes is as always impressively erudite but wears his knowledge like a linen suit."--Richard Marshall, 3AM Magazine "The Irresistible Fairy Tale is another informative contribution from this prolific and influential scholar."--Martha P. Hixon, Children's Literature Association Quarterly "[This book presents] a broad range of well-researched, lucidly-written chapters that are supported by informative notes, a bibliography divided into literary and critical works, and detailed index. Each chapter can stand alone, but read together they offer compelling testimony to Zipes's sheer range of expertise and analytical insight."--Kirsten Mollegaard, Folklore "Zipes gives a masterful and hopeful description of the genre and its inclinations."--Jill Terry Rudy, Marvels & TalesTable of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii Chapter 1: The Cultural Evolution of Storytelling and Fairy Tales: Human Communication and Memetics 1 Chapter 2: The Meaning of Fairy Tale within the Evolution of Culture 21 Chapter 3: Remaking "Bluebeard," or Good-bye to Perrault 41 Chapter 4: Witch as Fairy/Fairy as Witch: Unfathomable Baba Yagas 55 Chapter 5: The Tales of Innocent Persecuted Heroines and Their Neglected Female Storytellers and Collectors 80 Chapter 6: Giuseppe Pitre and the Great Collectors of Folk Tales in the Nineteenth Century 109 Chapter 7: Fairy-Tale Collisions, or the Explosion of a Genre 135 Appendix A: Sensationalist Scholarship: A "New" History of Fairy Tales 157 Appendix B: Reductionist Scholarship: A "New" Definition of the Fairy Tale 175 Notes 191 Bibliography 209 Index 227
£31.50
Johns Hopkins University Press Kiddie Lit
Book SynopsisIn Kiddie Lit, Beverly Lyon Clark explores the marginalization of children's literature in America - and recent signs of its reintegration - within the academy and by the mainstream critical establishment. Tracing the reception of works by Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, L.Trade ReviewThis exemplary contribution to children's literature studies engages both general readers-those interested in Little Women or Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Wizard of Oz, Lewis Carroll, Huck Finn, even J. K. Rowling and Walt Disney-and children's literature specialists. -- Cathryn M. Mercier Horn Book Magazine 2004 This engaging book is particularly absorbing in light of the current adult fascination with the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings titles... Highly recommended. Choice 2004 Terrific and important... Clark tracks the various moves by which 'Kiddie Lit' has been diminished and kept in its place, and she does this by tracing the historical reception of a half dozen or so representative works... A 'must read' for scholars in children's literature. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 2004 [Clark's] thorough documentation of the vagaries of the reception of 'kiddie lit' proves that our negative valuations of youth culture deserve rethinking. -- Ilana Nash Women's Review of Books 2004 Offers a convincing plea for taking kiddie lit seriously, and for accepting the imaginative delight and serious literary pleasures such literature can offer. -- Michael Newton Times Literary Supplement 2005Table of ContentsContents: 1. Kids and Kiddie Lit 2. What Fauntleroy Knew 3. Kiddie Lit in the Academy 4. The Case of the Boy's Book: Whitewashing Huck 5. The Case of the Girl's Book: Jo's Girls 6. The Case of American Fantasy: There's No Place Like Oz 7. The Case of British Fantasy Imports: Alice and Harry in America 8. The Case of the Disney Version
£23.85
MY - University of Toronto Press Picturing Canada
Book SynopsisAn interdisciplinary history, Picturing Canada provides a critical understanding of the changing geographical, historical, and cultural aspects of Canadian identity, as seen through the lens of children's publishing over two centuries.Trade Review'Picturing Canada is a book that I will cherish because it has made me think about the books that I love and, perhaps even more importantly, about the children reading them. If, as I so deeply believe, that it is reading Canadian books that will tell us who we are as Canadians then Picturing Canada is an essential tool that will guide us on the way.' -- Jeffrey Canton, Children's Studies Program, York University 'Leafing through the pages of Picturing Canada, I find myself floored by just how much is packed into this history of Canadian children's illustrated books-and their publishing history-from the 1700s to the present day. The book is academic analysis, book history, and thoughtful insight all in one: an objective look at the many styles of children's writing and children's illustration throughout numerous periods in Canada's history.' -- Tiffanie Ing, Canadian Booknews, vol33:02:2010 'This book would make an excellent text for college and university students studying the genre. It will also be of use to librarians who have an interest in the history of picture books and their authors. I would highly recommend it as a professional resource.' -- Victoria Pennell, Resource Links: Journal of Society for Canadian educational Resources: vol16:02:2010 'A groundbreaking study of children's publishing in Canada and of the material conditions and cultural shifts that have informed the production of illustrated books and picture books. They offer much more than this, however: by alerting readers to the complex issues that surround textuality for children and young people, they suggest lines of inquiry and fields of research that will build on the foundational work carried out in this book.' -- Clare Bradford; Jeunesse Young People, Texts, Cultures 3.1(2011) 'Picturing Canada is a welcome addition to the growing list of scholarly titles that demonstrate the centrality of book history to Canada's cultural history.' -- Carole Gerson Canadian Historical Review; vol 92:02:2011 'This book will be invaluable for scholars in the field of Canadian children's literature, cultural studies, and book history. It provides scholarly analysis of one of the most popular forms of reading instruction and entertainment that children will encounter in their formative years, and adds greatly to our understanding of how national awareness is gained through this medium.' -- Leslie McGarth , Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada vol49:01:2011
£34.20
University of Pennsylvania Press Postmodern Fairy Tales
Book SynopsisAn extraordinary book, and a 'first' on the topic. . . . Bacchilega has a remarkable capacity to reveal the intersections of folklore, literature, and film. Her interpretations of classical folk-tale types and their postmodern revisions . . . are stunning.Jack Zipes, University of MinnesotaTrade Review"Examining the workings of the powerful desire machines built into postmodern versions of 'Snow White,' 'Little Red Riding Hood,' 'Beauty and the Beast,' and 'Bluebeard,' Cristina Bacchilega's astute rereadings uncover intriguing mirrorings and revisions." * Ruth B. Bottigheimer, State University of New York at Stony Brook *
£21.59
University of Arizona Press The Documented Child
Book Synopsis
£24.29
University of Arizona Press The Documented Child
Book Synopsis
£72.00
University of Pittsburgh Press Latinoa Childrens and Young Adult Writers on the Art of Storytelling
Book SynopsisChildren's and young adult literature has become an essential medium for identity formation in contemporary Latino/a culture in the United States.Trade ReviewThese insightful, widely ranging interviews showcase the defining children’s and YA Latina/Latino writers and illustrators of our time. They speak about tapping the magic of story, taking risks, crafting identity: about crossing or defying or blurring the borders of language and experience. Aldama’s scholarship brings vital cultural and artistic realities to the page for the benefit of all those who care about young readers."" - Uma Krishnaswami, author of Book Uncle and Me""Alongside an elegant and thoughtful introduction, Aldama has provided us with a superbly illuminating set of interviews with some of this century’s most innovative and challenging writers. He sheds new light on the incredibly rich ideas and vision of Latino and Latina artists and writers and guides our reading with compelling questions."" - Mary Pat Brady, Cornell University""If you love stories, prepare for a very special treat. In this volume, you will encounter Latino/a authors and artists who tell the stories that led to their artistic creations—the long journeys they have taken to open a space for Latino work, for Latino voices, for Latino ways of engaging the world. In Aldama's deeply informative and moving interviews, we come face to face with the rich creative spirits that have given rise to a perfect feast of Latino/a children's and young adult fiction, nonfiction, and art"" - Andrea Lunsford, Emerita, Stanford University.""Aldama, along with all the authors included in this volume, have been reading and listening to stories told by young and old in homes, neighborhoods, and churches. This book reminds all of us to do the same and to consider the learning and reading lives of young people ordinarily left out of consideration in the literature of children and young adults. Creative depth, intellectual yearning, and vibrant imaginations shine through the wisdom of this book. Every reader should read these pages and take up the charge to spread this wisdom in every way possible."" - Shirley Brice Heath, Emerita, Stanford University
£38.95
Fordham University Press Theory for Beginners
Book SynopsisTheory for Beginners explores how philosophy and theory draw on childrenâs literature while also coming to resemble such in their strategies for cultivating the child and/or the beginner. Topics include the Philosophy for Children (P4C) movement, graphic guides such as Freud for Beginners, and childrenâs literature and/as queer theory.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Children’s Literature Otherwise | 1 1. Philosophy for Children | 25 2. Theory for Beginners | 58 3. Literature for Minors | 92 Acknowledgments | 135 Notes | 137 Works Cited | 163 Index | 185
£24.69
University of Hawaii Press Literature for Little Bodhisattvas
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£56.25
University of Missouri Press Imagination and the Arts in CS Lewis Journeying
Book Synopsis
£31.46
University of Missouri Press From Little Houses to Little Women
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£28.45
MP-ALA American Library Assoc Muslims in Story Expanding Multicultural
Book SynopsisOne of the root causes of Islamophobia is ignorance, often fuelled by stereotyped and negative portrayals of Muslims in media and popular culture. Muslims in Story is a timely and proactive approach to tackling this issue, by engendering friendships and empathy through quality children's and young adult literature.Table of Contents Foreword: Let’s Counter Islamophobia through Stories Acknowledgments Introduction Part I Why Counter Islamophobia through Stories? Chapter 1 An Overview of Muslims in America Chapter 2 Islamophobia and Its Impact Chapter 3 Using Literature to Create Long-Term Systemic Change Part II Reframing the Narrative through Curated Book Lists and Programming Ideas Chapter 4 Muslim Kids as Heroes: Connecting across Cultures Chapter 5 Inspiring Muslim Leaders and Thinkers: Showcasing Current and Historical Contributions Chapter 6 Celebrating Islam: Understanding Religious Practices and Traditions Chapter 7 Folktales from Islamic Traditions: Drawing Wisdom from Tall Tales Conclusion Appendix A Frequently Asked Questions on Islam Appendix B Suggested Guidelines to Evaluate Muslim Children’s Literature Appendix C Timeline of Muslims in America Appendix D Glossary: A Few Unfamiliar Words Appendix E Suggested Educational Resources Index
£43.20
John Wiley and Sons Ltd A Companion to Childrens Literature
Book SynopsisA COMPANION TO CHILDREN''S LITERATURE A collection of international, up-to-date, and diverse perspectives on children''s literary criticism A Companion to Children''s Literature offers students and scholars studying children''s literature, education, and youth librarianship an incisive and expansive collection of essays that discuss key debates within children''s literature criticism. The thirty-four works included demonstrate a diverse array of perspectives from around the world, introduce emerging scholars to the field of children''s literature criticism, and meaningfully contribute to the scholarly conversation. The essays selected by the editors present a view of children''s literature that encompasses poetry, fiction, folklore, nonfiction, dramatic stage and screen performances, picturebooks, and interactive and digital media. They range from historical overviews to of-the-moment critical theory about children's books from across the glTable of ContentsNotes on Contributors x Introduction xviiKaren Coats, Deborah Stevenson, and Vivian Yenika-Agbaw Part I: Early Works 1 1 Juvenile Nonfiction before the Golden Age of Anglo-American Children's Literature 3Ivy Linton Stabell 2 The Beginnings of Fiction for Children 14Claudia Nelson 3 Folklore in Children's Literature 26Debra Mitts-Smith 4 The Victorian Picturebook 39Hannah Field 5 The Child-Centered Universe of Nineteenth-Century Children's Nonfiction 58Elizabeth Massa Hoiem Part II: Twentieth-Century Developments 71 6 Developments in Fiction for Children 73Mary Jeanette Moran 7 Developments of Picturebooks 84Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer 8 Walt Disney and the Fairy Tale 96Paula T. Connolly 9 Stay Tuned: A Political History of Saturday Morning Cartoons 105Peter C. Kunze 10 Live-Action Films for Children 118Kathy Merlock Jackson 11 BreakBeat and the New Auditory Avant-garde -- for Children! (Or, That New-fangled Noise the Kids Are All Going On About) 129Michael Heyman and Joseph T. Thomas, Jr. 12 Children's Literature of the Anglophone Caribbean 144Sujin Huggins Part III: Contemporary Trends and Texts 155 13 Children's Information Books: Initiatives and Trends 157Elizabeth Bush 14 Contemporary Trends in Fiction for Children 168Thaddeus Andracki 15 Contemporary Poetry for Children: Toward Diversity, Complexity, and Innovation 179Rachel Conrad 16 Picturebook Futures 193Evelyn Arizpe and Emma McGilp 17 Postmodern Fairy Tales 207Cherie Allan 18 Theatre and Playwriting for Young Audiences 218Nicole B. Adkins 19 The Portrayal of Girlhoods in Graphic Narratives for Children 232Elizabeth Marshall 20 Playing Children's Literature: Games in and the Gamification of Books for Kids 242Gretchen Papazian 21 Digital Children's Literature: Current Understandings and Future Directions 258Dani Kachorsky Part IV: Ways of Reading 271 22 Critical Multiculturalism and Children's Literature: Trends and Possibilities 273Vivian Yenika-Agbaw 23 Cultural Diversity and Social Justice: Readings from the South 287Macarena García González 24 Black Critical Theory in Children's Literary Analysis: Why It Matters 299Roberta Price Gardner 25 Critical Discourse Studies and the Scholarship of Children's Literature 314Rebecca Rogers and Doris Villarreal 26 Disability 330Elizabeth A. Wheeler 27 Growing Up Together: Children's Literature and Women's Studies 341Susan Larkin 28 Read, Write, Play, Review: Young Children's Connected Reading Communities 352Marianne Martens 29 Posthumanism 364Zoe Jaques 30 Narrative Theory and Children's Literature 376Mike Cadden 31 Animal Studies 390Rachel Falconer 32 Trauma Studies 403Adrienne Kertzer 33 Censorship and Children's Literature 414Emily J.M. Knox 34 The Commodification, "Diversification," and Walliams-fication of the British Children's Book Market 426Melanie Ramdarshan Bold Index 441
£130.50
Johns Hopkins University Press No Kids Allowed
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
£68.42
Johns Hopkins University Press No Kids Allowed
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
£27.45
University of Texas Press Picturing Childhood
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
£63.00
University of Texas Press Picturing Childhood
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
£19.79
New York University Press The Dark Fantastic
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 *
£66.60
New York University Press Empires Nursery
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
£27.54
New York University Press Coloring into Existence
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
£62.90
New York University Press Coloring into Existence
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
£22.79
New York University Press Keywords for Childrens Literature Second Edition
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 *
£62.90
University of Toronto Press Beowulf as Childrens Literature
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
£49.50
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Conversations with Maurice Sendak
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.
£23.96
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Conversations with Madeleine LEngle
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.
£77.35
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Becoming Ezra Jack Keats
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.
£21.25
University Press of Mississippi Jack Kent
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
£71.09
University Press of Mississippi Jack Kent
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.
£19.90
Stanford University Press Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish
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.
£92.80
Stanford University Press Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish
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.
£23.79
University of Minnesota Press Who Writes for Black Children?: African American
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
£23.39
University of Minnesota Press Tales of Wonder: Retelling Fairy Tales through
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
£26.99
University of Minnesota Press A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the
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
£72.00
University of Minnesota Press A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the
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
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter
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
£30.60
Modern Language Association of America Teaching Young Adult Literature
Book SynopsisThanks to the success of franchises such as The Hunger Games and Twilight, young adult literature has reached a new level of prominence and popularity. Teens and adults alike are drawn to the genre's coming-of-age themes, fast pacing, and vivid emotional portrayals. The essays in this volume suggest ways high school and college instructors can incorporate YA texts into courses in literature, education, library science, and general education.The first group of essays explores key issues in YA literature, situates works in cultural contexts, and addresses questions of text selection and censorship. The second section discusses a range of genres within YA literature, including both realistic and speculative fiction as well as verse narratives, comics, and film. The final section offers ideas for assignments, including interdisciplinary and digital projects, in a variety of courses.Trade ReviewAlthough I've been teaching young adult literature for over twenty years, I have found in this volume many new and useful suggestions that I would love to incorporate in my classes.""--Alice L. Trupe, Bridgewater College ""I am eager to use this volume. It works well not only as a teaching guide but also as a book about the field and its broader pedagogical and cultural dimensions.""--Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida
£34.81
University Press of Mississippi Cradle and All: A Cultural and Psychoanalytic Study of Nursery Rhymes
Book SynopsisFrom earliest childhood the nursery rhyme, one of the most captivating genres in our popular culture, has transmitted powerful messages to the child who hears it. These meanings may not be the ones adults perceive or intend, for such didactic precepts as the beneficial need of self-control, social order, and academic responsibility also can be weighted with the sadistic, angry connotations that lie deep in the human spirit. In Cradle and All nursery rhymes are shown to be both the instruments that tell children of the mortal hunger for the forces in the natural world that oppose them. Thus in bearing a double load of meanings, nursery rhymes remove the blinders and push children toward the life of contrasts that abound in their culture. This fascinating examination of the pervasive influence of nursery rhymes reveals patterns of psychological and cultural meaning in a broad range of rhymes, grouping them according to basic subject matter: animal rhymes, courtship and marriage rhymes, lullabies and amusements, and didactic rhymes. Combining the tools of psychoanalysis, literary criticism, folklore studies, cultural history, and cultural anthropology, Cradle and All explores meanings and motives that lie deep in many rhymes that are the fundamental literature of the nursery. This illuminating study also assesses attempts to sanitize rhymes by removing elements that some deem as needlessly violent, antisocial, and sexist. Cradle and Allis unique in its analytical treatment of a large number of rhymes grouped in broad subject areas. In its diverse and comprehensive approach it will appeal to all who enjoy the lore of childhood literature.
£19.96
University of South Carolina Press Art Smart, Science Detective: The Case of the
Book SynopsisThree friends prepare for an alien invasion with aluminum foil, peanut butter, and science.When Art and his friends—Robbie, Jason, and Amy—are having a sleepover, they decide to use Art’s telescope for some stargazing. They are shocked to see a purple spaceship hurtling toward Earth. While his parents think his imagination is getting the best of him, Art thinks Earth is at risk of an alien invasion. What should he do? Should Art and his fellow science detectives alert the authorities, or should they take matters into their own hands?When the local police don’t seem concerned about Art’s report, the kids decide to apply their knowledge of science and critical thinking skills to prepare for the impending attack. They need a plan—and fast!What transpires as they gear up for the spaceship’s arrival will amuse and educate. Art Smart, Science Detective will appeal to budding scientists and even reluctant young readers as it answers burning questions such as “How close is science fiction to real life?” and “Can peanut butter really keep your brain safe from an alien assault?” This entertaining journey through the science of the sky is easily incorporated into middle-grade science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics courses.
£11.35
Information Age Publishing Storybridge to Second Language Literacy: The
Book SynopsisStorybridge to Second Language Literacy makes a case for using authentic children’s literature—alternately also referred to as `stories’ or `real books’—as the medium of instruction in teaching English to young learners, particularly in contexts where children must access general curriculum subjects in English. The author first proposes theoretical foundations for the argument that illustrated children’s books are superior to traditional language teaching courses in the primary school. She builds the case around the motivational power of stories, the language and content of quality children’s literature, and the potential of literature to contribute to development of second language academic literacy. She then reviews research of the past thirty years that clearly supports her claim. Finally, she uses transcripts from real classrooms to illustrate how teachers in diverse contexts make use of stories. Through the classroom vignettes, a practical model of literature-based instruction emerges that is adaptable to a wide range of primary school teaching contexts, including English as a second language contexts in core-English countries.Storybridge to Second Language Literacy compiles in one volume solid theoretical foundations for story-based instruction, research evidence of the past thirty years supporting the approach (not currently available in a single source), and extensive classroom vignettes illustrating diverse practical applications (not lesson plans).This makes the book valuable for anyone in the field of young learner ELT.MA students in TESOL will find the book useful and will develop an understanding of why and how literature-based instruction works and develop insight to guide their practice. Members of TESOL Elementary Education, EFL, and Bilingual Education SIGs, and IATEFL Young Learner SIG will be interested in the volume. Instructors of teacher development courses should also find the proposed volume a valuable addition to assigned readings. Each chapter is followed by `Think about it’ questions and `Try it out’ suggestions.
£47.45
Information Age Publishing Storybridge to Second Language Literacy: The
Book SynopsisStorybridge to Second Language Literacy makes a case for using authentic children’s literature—alternately also referred to as `stories’ or `real books’—as the medium of instruction in teaching English to young learners, particularly in contexts where children must access general curriculum subjects in English. The author first proposes theoretical foundations for the argument that illustrated children’s books are superior to traditional language teaching courses in the primary school. She builds the case around the motivational power of stories, the language and content of quality children’s literature, and the potential of literature to contribute to development of second language academic literacy. She then reviews research of the past thirty years that clearly supports her claim. Finally, she uses transcripts from real classrooms to illustrate how teachers in diverse contexts make use of stories. Through the classroom vignettes, a practical model of literature-based instruction emerges that is adaptable to a wide range of primary school teaching contexts, including English as a second language contexts in core-English countries.Storybridge to Second Language Literacy compiles in one volume solid theoretical foundations for story-based instruction, research evidence of the past thirty years supporting the approach (not currently available in a single source), and extensive classroom vignettes illustrating diverse practical applications (not lesson plans).This makes the book valuable for anyone in the field of young learner ELT.MA students in TESOL will find the book useful and will develop an understanding of why and how literature-based instruction works and develop insight to guide their practice. Members of TESOL Elementary Education, EFL, and Bilingual Education SIGs, and IATEFL Young Learner SIG will be interested in the volume. Instructors of teacher development courses should also find the proposed volume a valuable addition to assigned readings. Each chapter is followed by `Think about it’ questions and `Try it out’ suggestions.
£87.40
University of Massachusetts Press Commercializing Childhood: Children's Magazines,
Book SynopsisLong before activists raised concerns about the dangers of commercials airing during Saturday morning cartoons, America's young people emerged as a group that businesses should target with goods for sale. As print culture grew rapidly in the nineteenth century, enterprising publishers raced to meet the widespread demand for magazines aimed at middle- and upper-class children, especially those whose families had leisure time and cultural aspirations to gentility. Advertisers realized that these children represented a growing market for more than magazines, and the editors chose stories to help model good consumer behavior for this important new demographic.In this deeply researched and engaging book, Paul B. Ringel combines an analysis of the stories in nineteenth-century American children's magazines with the backstories of their authors, editors, and publishers to explain how this hugely successful industry trained generations of American children to become genteel consumers. Ringel demonstrates how these publications, which were read in hundreds of thousands of homes, played to two conflicting impulses within American families: to shield children from commercial influences by offering earnest and moral entertainment and to help children learn how to prosper in an increasingly market-driven society.
£23.70
University of Massachusetts Press Fame Is Not Just for the Fellas: Female Renown
Book SynopsisBetween 1932 and 1958, thousands of children read volumes in the book series Childhood of Famous Americans. With colorful cover art and compelling—and often highly fictionalized—narrative storylines, these biographies celebrated the national virtues and achievements of famous women like Betsy Ross, Louisa May Alcott, and Amelia Earhart. Employing deep archival research, Gregory M. Pfitzer examines the editorial and production choices of the publisher and considers the influence of the series on readers and American culture more broadly.In telling the story of how female subjects were chosen and what went into writing these histories for young female readers of the time, Pfitzer illustrates how these books shaped children's thinking and historical imaginations around girlhood using tales from the past. Utilizing documented conversations and disagreements among authors, editors, readers, reviewers, and sales agents at Bobbs-Merrill, "Fame is Not Just for the Fellas" places the series in the context of national debates around fame, gender, historical memory, and portrayals of children and childhood for a young reading public—charged debates that continue to this day.
£65.45
University of Massachusetts Press The Education of Things: Mechanical Literacy in
Book Synopsis By the close of the eighteenth century, learning to read and write became closely associated with learning about the material world, and a vast array of games and books from the era taught children how to comprehend the physical world of “things.” Examining a diverse archive of historical periodicals, grammar books, toys, machinery displays, and literature from Maria Edgeworth, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Anna Letitia Barbauld, The Education of Things attests that material culture has long been central to children’s literature. Elizabeth Massa Hoiem argues that the combination of reading and writing with manual tinkering and scientific observation promoted in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain produced new forms of “mechanical literacy,” competencies that were essential in an industrial era. As work was repositioned as play, wealthy children were encouraged to do tasks in the classroom that poor children performed for wages, while working-class children honed skills that would be crucial to their social advancement as adults.Trade ReviewReading and learning about the physical world go hand in hand in Hoiem’s fascinating archive, and her focus on working-class children as well as middle-class ones redresses the bias toward the latter in much children’s literature criticism." - Hannah Field, author of Playing with the Book: Victorian Movable Picture Books and the Child Reader"The Education of Things is an important contribution to the study of children’s literature and the history of education—as well as to histories of object-based knowledge. Hoiem’s creative, multidisciplinary approach makes connections among fields that are often considered separately, making this a particularly exciting and novel intervention." - Sarah Anne Carter, author of Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sense of the Material WorldTable of Contents List of Illustrations Preface Introduction Chapter 1 What Children Grasp The Tangible Properties of Objects Chapter 2 Moving Bodies Manual Labor and Children’s Play in Mechanical Philosophy Books Chapter 3 “The Empire of Man over Material Things” Children’s Books on Manufacturing and Trade Chapter 4 Self-Governing Machines Automata and Autonomy in Maria Edgeworth’s Fiction Chapter 5 “Knowledge That Shall Be Power in Their Hands” Radical Grammars for Working-Class Readers Conclusion William Lovett’s Case of Moveable Type Notes Index
£24.26
University of Massachusetts Press The Education of Things: Mechanical Literacy in
Book SynopsisBy the close of the eighteenth century, learning to read and write became closely associated with learning about the material world, and a vast array of games and books from the era taught children how to comprehend the physical world of “things.” Examining a diverse archive of historical periodicals, grammar books, toys, machinery displays, and literature from Maria Edgeworth, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Anna Letitia Barbauld, The Education of Things attests that material culture has long been central to children’s literature. Elizabeth Massa Hoiem argues that the combination of reading and writing with manual tinkering and scientific observation promoted in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain produced new forms of “mechanical literacy,” competencies that were essential in an industrial era. As work was repositioned as play, wealthy children were encouraged to do tasks in the classroom that poor children performed for wages, while working-class children honed skills that would be crucial to their social advancement as adults.Trade ReviewReading and learning about the physical world go hand in hand in Hoiem’s fascinating archive, and her focus on working-class children as well as middle-class ones redresses the bias toward the latter in much children’s literature criticism." - Hannah Field, author of Playing with the Book: Victorian Movable Picture Books and the Child Reader"The Education of Things is an important contribution to the study of children’s literature and the history of education—as well as to histories of object-based knowledge. Hoiem’s creative, multidisciplinary approach makes connections among fields that are often considered separately, making this a particularly exciting and novel intervention." - Sarah Anne Carter, author of Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sense of the Material World
£72.25
