Introducing Children's Literature

From Romanticism to Postmodernism

Deborah Cogan Thacker, Jean Webb

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134629756
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literaturkritik

Introducing Children's Literature is an ideal guide to reading children's literature through the perspective of literary history. Focusing on the major literary movements from Romanticism to Postmodernism, Thacker and Webb examine the concerns of each period and the ways in which these concerns influence and are influenced by the children's literature of the time.
Each section begins with a general chapter, which explains the relationship between the major issues of each literary period and the formal and thematic qualities of children's texts. Close readings of selected texts follow to demonstrate the key defining characteristics of the form of writing and the literary movements.
Original in its approach, this book sets children's literature within the context of literary movements and adult literature. It is essential reading for students studying writing for children. Books discussed include:
*Louisa May Alcott's Little Women
* Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies
*Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland
*Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz
*Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden
*P.L.Travers' Mary Poppins
*E.B.White's Charlotte's Web
*Philip Pullman's Clockwork.

Index

Adams, Richard: Watership Down 7

adult fiction: Modernist articulation of childhood 102, 105; Victorian focus on childhood 42, 51

adult/child relationship: and author/child reader relationship 3, 13, 76–7, 79, 81, 112, 135, 139; defamiliarisation of in The Borrowers 134; postmodern concern with 146, 148

adults: fin de siècle fascination with childhood 75; nineteenth-century debates about children 13–14; as readers of children's books 6–7, 41–2, 45, 51, 54, 146, 147; readership of A.A. Milne's books 75, 78, 103–4; separation from children's experience 55, 101

adventure stories 53, 54, 83, 91, 108; Rowling's homage to 147; Twain's ironic approach 49

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain) 49, 52, 102

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain) 49, 51

Aesop's fables 19, 143

aesthetic concerns: relevance of children's literature 2, 3, 15, 73, 150; Romanticism 4, 5, 14

African folk literature 8

Ahlberg, Allan and Janet: Each, Peach, Pear Plum 158; Jolly Postman series 143

Alcott, Bronson 33

Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women 10, 23, 25, 33–8, 51

Alderson, Brian 56

Alger, Horatio (Jr): impact on Baum 86–7; Ragged Dick 54

Alice in Wonderland (Carroll) 3, 46, 48, 50, 63–9

Alice to the Lighthouse (Dusinberre) 2, 106

allegory: Pilgrim's Progress and Little Women 34–5

Allsburg, Chris Van: The Mysteries of Harris Burdick 148

allusion: in Carroll's Alice books 142; in Pullman's Clockwork 155

The Amber Spyglass (Pullman) 6–7, 148

America: ‘as child’ 51; Baum's views and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 85, 86–7, 88–9, 90; disappearance of notion of childhood 147; fin de siècle mood 74; gradual eroding of Romanticism 52; positive aspect of Modernism 106; values of home and self-determination 54, 85, 89, 109, 123; writers’ anxiety about Gilded Age 84, 87, 89

American children's literature: celebratory tone in early twentieth century 83–4; challenging of adult and commercial values 49; and childlike apprehension of nature 22–3; connections with British children's literature 8–9, 10, 15; development of 15–16; impact of world events in 1950s 110; in interwar period of economic hardship 109; postmodern subversion of fairy tales 143, see also Transcendentalism

American literature: accusation of childishness 9, 51...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction—DEBORAH THACKER
• SECTION ONE Romanticism
• SECTION TWO Nineteenth-Century Literature
• SECTION THREE The Fin De Siècle
• SECTION FOUR Modernism
• SECTION FIVE Postmodernism
• Bibliography
• Index