Reading Children’s Literature (a Critical Introduction)

By (author) Hintz Carrie; By (author) Eric Tribunella
Short description/annotation
Offers insights into the major discussions and debates currently animating the field of children''s literature. Informed by recent scholarship and interest in cultural studies and critical theory, this is a compact core text that introduces students to the historical contexts, genres, and issues of children''s literature.
Description
Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction offers insights into the major discussions and debates currently animating the field of children''s literature. Informed by recent scholarship and interest in cultural studies and critical theory, it is a compact core text that introduces students to the historical contexts, genres, and issues of children’s literature. A beautifully designed and illustrated supplement to individual literary works assigned, it also provides helpful apparatus that makes it a complete resource for working with children’s literature both during and after the course.

The second edition includes a new chapter on children''s literature and popular culture (including film, television, and merchandising) and has been updated throughout to reflect recent scholarship and new offerings in children’s media.
Table of contents

• PREFACE
• What Distinguishes this Book?
• How this Book Is Organized
• What’s New
• INTRODUCTION FOR STUDENTS
• Common Assumptions about Children’s Literature
• What It Means to Read Critically
• Reading Closely
• Considering Literary History and Forms
• Examining Historical and Cultural Contexts
• Using Critical and Theoretical Concepts and Approaches
• Why Read Children’s Literature Critically?
• Dual Address and Complexity
• Linguistic and Narrative Complexity
• Didacticism and the Lessons of Children’s Literature
• The Transmission of Cultural Values
• Subversive or Hegemonic?
• Pleasure and Unpleasure
• CHAPTER 1: HISTORICIZING CHILDHOOD
• Historical Models of Childhood
• The Romantic Child
• The Sinful Child
• The Working Child
• The Sacred Child
• The Child as Radically Other
• The Developing Child
• The Child as Miniature Adult
• Using Models of Childhood to Read Critically
• The Uncertain Boundaries of Childhood
• Child Crime
• Child Sex
• Child Soldiers
• Child Embodiment and Disability
• Child Privilege and Race
• Children’s Literature and the History of Childhood
• Reading Critically: The History of Childhood
• Anne of Green Gables
• Explorations
• Review
• Reflect
• Investigate
• Suggested Readings
• Approaches to Teaching Anne of Green Gables
• CHAPTER 2: THE EARLY HISTORY OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
• Questions of Definition
• Defining Literature
• Defining Children’s Literature
• Children’s Literature as Genre
• The “Birth” of Children’s Literature?
• John Newbery
• Newbery’s Contemporaries: Thomas Boreman and Mary Cooper
• Sarah Fielding and the First Children’s Novel?
• General-Audience and Crossover Works
• Aesop’s Fables
• Chapbooks
• Folk and Fairy Tales
• Mixed-Age Works as Children’s Classics
• Instructional Works and Didactic Literature
• Textbooks
• Religious Works
• The Sunday School and Evangelical Movements
• The Rational Moralists
• Didactic Poetry and Fiction
• The Golden Age
• The Growth of the Children’s Literature Industry
• The Crossover Appeal of Golden Age Books
• The Tensions that Define Children’s Literature
• The Second Golden Age
• Reading Critically: The History of Children’s Literature
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Explorations
• R