Bibliography of
Children's Literature Criticism

to accompany Perry Nodelman
and Mavis Reimer's

Pleasures of Children's Literature, 3d. ed.

Compiled by Perry Nodelman

As a means of encouraging readers to continue their dialogue with other readers' responses to texts, the first edition of The Pleasures of Children's Literature included a detailed listing of books and articles about the topics covered in the book. Many scholars working in the field of children's literature told us how useful they found this bibliography in their own work. But they also suggested that few of their undergraduate students needed or made use of these extensive listings. So when the expanded coverage of some particularly significant topics in the second edition made some deletions necessary, the bibliography seemed like the most obvious thing to cut. Nevertheless, it seemed a pity to get rid of a bibliography that so many people had found useful. What follows is a revised and updated version of it, for instructors to use themselves or to be shared with students.

By and large, the structure of what follows mirrors the structure of Pleasures: most of the headings are the titles of the various sections of the book. This means that we list critical texts not in relation to the specific literary texts they discuss but in terms of the issues they tackle or the theoretical stance they take. If you're looking for citations to discussions about a specific text or author, you can use the "Find" command in your web browser.

This is anything but a complete bibliography. There is nothing scientific or consistent about what titles we list or what journals we make reference to. While we've gone through the complete runs of key children's literature journals like Children's Literature, Lion and the Unicorn and Children's Literature Association Quarterly, our references to work published in other journals are not so complete. For instance: we only began to have access to the Australian journal Papers in 2001, and so we include no listings for work published in that journal earlier. The books and articles we do list are the ones we've happened to come across in our work as scholars of children's literature that relate to topics that strikes us as important or that we ourselves have found enjoyable, interesting, infuriating, stimulating, or otherwise provocative. Think of what we offer here not as a comprehensive index but as a place to begin research in specific topics relating to children's literature.

The Bibliography is very much a work in progress, with new items being added as they become known to us and we have the time to list them. Recent additions include:

As well, we've added new sections on cultural studies, childhood studies, queer studies, and "cross writing," and begun to list items in them.

We are always grateful for suggestions of relevant books and articles that we might consider adding. Please e-mail suggestions to:

perry.nodelman@uwinnipeg.ca

IN GENERAL

The International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature, ed. Peter Hunt (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), contains essays on a wide range of topics, from types of critical approaches to children's literature to descriptions of specific genres to discussion of the children's literature of specific countries. The key theoretical essays from this book are also found in Understanding Children's Literature, ed. Hunt (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).

WRITING, READING, TEACHING

WRITING

There's more discussion of the kind of exploratory writing we recommend in Chapter 1 in William Zinsser's Writing to Learn (New York: Perennial Library—Harper & Row, 1989). Further advice about how to do this kind of writing is offered in the section on "response statements" in Reading Texts: Reading, Responding, Writing, eds. Kathleen McCormack, Gary Waller, and Linda Flower (Lexington: Heath, 1987); this book also describes ways of developing deeper responses to literature and discusses how to move beyond response writing to finished writing, such as an essay.

READING

How to Read Children's Literature. For commentary on the ideas about reading for pleasure presented in the first chapter of Pleasures of Children's Literature, see William F. Touponce's "Children's Literature and the Pleasures of the Text," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 20.4 (Winter 1995-96): 175-182. For more on the pleasure of children's literature, see Perry Nodelman's "Pleasure and Genre: Speculations on the Characteristics of Children's Fiction," Children's Literature 28 (2000): 1-14 and the responses to it that follow:

Also on the ways in which adults read and evaluate children's literature: Nicholas Tucker's "Arthur Ransome and Problems in Literary Assessment,"  Children's Literature in Education 26.2 (1995): 97-105 and "Literary Critic Versus Expert Commentator: The Case of Katharine Tozer's Mumfie Marches On," Children's Literature in Education 26.4 (1995): 219-229; and Peter Hunt's "How Not to Read a Children's Book," Children's Literature in Education 26.4 (December 1995): 231-240.

Theories of Reader Response. The basic ideas of reader-response criticism, such as the concept of "the implied reader" introduced in Chapter 2 and the concepts of "gaps" and "consistency-building" that form the basis of the approach to reading outlined in Chapter 4, are discussed more fully in two books by Wolfgang Iser: The Implied Reader (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974) and The Act of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978). A more recent book by Iser is The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993). Two useful collections of essays about reader response are The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Participation, eds. Susan Suleiman and Inge Crosman (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980) and Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980). In The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978), a classic text first produced in 1938, Louise Rosenblatt outlines a persuasive theory of response and its application to teaching literature. In The Reader's Eye: Visual Imaging as Reader Response (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994), Ellen J. Esrock explores a variety of theories about mental imagery and concretization. As its subtitle suggests, Victor Nell's Lost in a Book (New Haven: Yale UP, 1988) discusses "the psychology of reading for pleasure." Michael Steig offers theoretical analyses of the experience of reading literary texts for both children and adults in Stories of Reading: Subjectivity and Literary Understanding (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989).

Children as Readers. Theoretical considerations of the nature of children's reading are found in:

Cochran-Smith is also the editor of a series of columns about empirical research into children's responses to literature that appears in various issues of the Children's Literature Association Quarterly:

See also Reinbert Tabbert and Kristin Wardetzky's "On the Success of Children's Books and Fairy Tales: A Comparative View of Impact Theory and Reception Research," Lion and the Unicorn 19.1 (June 1995): 1-19. In Young People Reading: Culture and Response (Milton Keynes and Philadelphia: Open UP, 1991), Charles Sarland discusses the reading of young people in the context of their experience of popular culture. Alison Newall's "Schoolyard Songs in Montreal: Violence as Response," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 19.3 (Fall 1994): 109-112, describes another form of children's response. For the response of adolescents, see:

Children as Implied Readers. Aidan Chambers discusses the implications of a "reader-response" approach for the reading and analysis of children's literature by adults in "The Reader in the Book," The Signal Approach to Children's Books, ed. Nancy Chambers (Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1980), 250-275. So do:

There is a special section of articles on reader response called "Literature and Child Readers" in Children's Literature Association Quarterly 4.4 (Winter 1980). Other important discussions of the child readers implied by texts include three articles in Children's Literature In Education 15.1 (1984):

Also useful are:

For the implied readers of young adult texts, see Anna Lawrence-Pietroni's "The Tricksters, The Changeover, and the Fluidity of Adolescent Literature, "Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.1 (Spring 1996): 34-39.

Responding, Understanding, Judging. Other stimulating discussions of aspects of children's behavior as readers include:

The repertoire implied by children's texts is discussed in:

See also the texts listed under Intertextuality.

Margaret Mackey has written a number of articles discussing aspects of response:

Case Studies: Real Children Reading. Quite a number of writers discuss the histories of individual children's responses to literature:

The now adult Anna Crago discusses her parents' use of her in research as described in Prelude to Literacy in "Little Anna and Big Anna," Signal 75 (September 1994): 177-181.

The articles in the Fall 1988 Children's Literature Association Quarterly (13.3) are about childhood reading experiences, including those of some real and some fictional children. In "'Plain' and 'Fancy' Laura: A Mennonite Reader of Girls' Books," Children's Literature in Education 16 (1988): 185-192, Laura Weaver discusses the inevitable bias her religious background brought to her own childhood reading; Madelon S. Gohlke describes one of her childhood reading experiences in "Re-reading The Secret Garden," College English 41.8 (April 1980): 894-902; and Roni Natov remembers one of hers in "The Stories We Need to Hear: The Reader and the Tale," Lion and the Unicorn 9 (1985): 11-18. Children's Literature in Education 28.1 (1995) contains a number of articles on the writers' childhood reading experiences, including Russell Hoban's "Wilde Pomegranates: The Ghost of a Room and the Soul of a Story," 19-29.

There are a number of carefully conceived reports of children's responses by Lawrence R. Sipe, including one that offers a highly useful categorization of the varieties of response:

Other work by Sipe includes:

For other descriptions of child and young adult readers, see:

TEACHING LITERATURE TO CHILDREN

The most stimulating books about the teaching of literary skills to children are the ones that express the widest knowledge of literary theory:

But the books we find most stimulating are by Aidan Chambers:

Also very useful is Andrew Stibbs's exploration of the ways in which literary theories such as structuralism and narratology suggest classroom activities: Reading Narrative as Literature: Signs of Life (Milton Keynes and Philadelphia: Open UP, 1991); although Stibbs focuses on work with older children, all his ideas could be used with younger ones.

Other useful books are:

Ron Jobe and Paula Hart offer descriptions of useful classroom activities in Canadian Connections: Experiencing Literature with Children (Markham: Pembroke, 1991); Jobe offers more in Cultural Connections: Using Literature to Explore World Cultures with Children (Markham: Pembroke, 1993). For work with picture books, see Barbara Z. Kiefer's The Potential of Picturebooks: From Visual Literacy to Aesthetic Understanding (Englewood Cliffs and Columbus: Merrill, 1995). Like Stibbs's Reading Narrative as Literature, a number of books discuss work with older children and young adults that can also be used with younger children:

In The Educated Imagination (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1964), Northrop Frye offers a view of what children should learn about literature. Glenna Davis Sloan presents an approach to children's literary education based on Frye's ideas in The Child as Critic: Teaching Literature in the Elementary and Middle Schools, 3d ed. (New York: Teachers College P, 1991). See also John Willinsky's "Frye Among (Postcolonial) Schoolchildren: The Educated Imagination," Canadian Children's Literature 79 (1995): 6-24; Jill May's Children's Literature and Critical Theory: Reading and Writing for Understanding (New York: Oxford UP, 1995) describes how theory can influence the ways in which children and students in children's literature courses understand the literary texts they read.

Of the various children's literature journals, Children's Literature in Education and the New Advocate devote the most attention to questions of teaching. For instance, New Advocate 14.3 (2001) is a special issue on using children's literature in the classroom. It includes:

Other recent New Advocate articles include:

"Teaching Literary Criticism in the Elementary Grades: A Symposium," ed. Jon C. Stott, originally appeared in Children's Literature in Education 12.4 (1981): 192-206; it is reprinted in Children and Their Literature, ed. May, 160-172. Other representative Children's Literature in Education articles include:

Articles about teaching used to appear fairly often in Children's Literature Association Quarterly; unfortunately, they have ceased to do so in recent years. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 12.3 (Fall, 1987) is a special issue devoted to the topic. Among other useful articles are:

A useful article on contemporary disputes about children and literature is Herbert Kohl's "Uncommon Differences: On Political Correctness, Core Curriculum and Democracy in Education," Lion and the Unicorn 16.1 (June 1992): 1-16. See also Mawuena Kossi Logan's "Labour Party Reforms Versus Imperialist Literary Practice," Lion and the Unicorn 25.3 (September 2001): 391-411.

Among other articles:

There are a number of other useful articles listed under Children and Poetry, below.

For a critique of practices in the teaching of reading the remove that emphasis from studying literature, see Gerald Coles's Misreading Reading: The Bad Science that Hurts Children (Portsmouth: Heineman, 2000).

For discussion of how texts themselves act as teachers, see:

Those interested in the overall use of children's literature in the education of young children should also consult journals devoted to that topic: Journal of Children's Literature and The New Advocate.

Culture, Ideology,
and Children's Literature

THEORY OF CULTURE AND IDEOLOGY

In Ideology: An Introduction (London and New York: Verso, 1991), Terry Eagleton offers stimulating discussions of a spectrum of ideological theories. Of these theories, our own approach to ideological issues has been most influenced by Louis Althusser's, as described in "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," Critical Theory since 1965, eds. Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle. (Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida and Florida State UP, 1986), 239-250. We've also learned much from Raymond Williams's Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977) and Pierre Bourdieu's The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia UP, 1993) and In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990). Fascinating interpretations of the meanings of specific cultural objects such as soap powder and cruises can be found in Roland Barthes's Mythologies (London: Cape, 1972); the last essay in this book, "Myth Today," offers a valuable overview.

Ideology and Childhood. A number of resources are particularly helpful in revealing the ideological bases of our ideas of childhood and their influence on how children view themselves:

See also Perry Nodelman's "The Other: Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children's Literature," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 17.1 (Spring 1992): 29-35. Alida Allison discusses Nodelman's ideas in "What Would I Teach If I Had Only Six Months Left to Teach," Children's Literature in Education 24.4 (1993): 265-276. Another complex but valuable discussion of children and ideology is Henry A. Giroux's Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education (New York and London: Routledge, 1992). In Home Rules (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins, 1994), Dennis Wood and Robert J. Beck offer a fascinating survey of how the objects in one family's living room and the rule children learn about their use represent cultural values and define the world they live in.

Those interested in the application of ideological concerns to children's literature and children's reading should consult John Stephens's Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction (London and New York: Longman, 1992) and David Rudd's Culture Matters: A Communication Studies Approach to Children's literature (Sheffield: Hallam University, 1992). Clare Bradford refers extensively to Stephens in "Along the Road to Learn? Children and Adults in the Picture Books of John Burningham," Children's Literature in Education 25.4 (1994): 203-212. Less persuasive are Murray Knowles and Kirsten Malmkjaer's Language And Control In Children's Literature (London: Routledge, 1996) and Karín Lesnik-Oberstein's Children's Literature: Criticism and the Fictional Child (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1994). Also of use are:

For a view less informed by ideological theory, see Herbert Kohl's Should We Burn Babar? Essays on Children's Literature and the Power of Story (New York: New P, 1995). A useful book on a related topic is Michael W. Apple and Linda K. Christian-Smith's The Politics of the Textbook (New York and London: Routledge, 1991).

Lion and the Unicorn 14.1 (June 1990) is a special issue devoted to politics and ideology; it includes Jack Zipes's "Taking Political Stock: New Theoretical and Critical Approaches to Anglo-American Children's Literature in the 1980s" (7-22). Lion and the Unicorn 17.2 (December 1993) is a special issue devoted to theories of class in children's literature; it includes Valerie Krips's "A Notable Irrelevance: Class and Children's Fiction" (195-209). Other useful articles about class issues include:

For questions of class and economics, see Naomi Wood's "Gold Standards and Silver Subversions: Treasure Island and the Romance of Money," Children's Literature 26 (1998): 61-85. Jack Zipes approaches fairy tales from the context of ideologically oriented theories in Breaking the Magic Spell (Austin: U of Texas P, 1979) and Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (London: Heinemann, 1982). Lion and the Unicorn 3.2 (Winter 1979-1980) is devoted to essays about social issues in children's literature; Children's Literature Association Quarterly 11.2 (Summer 1986) contains essays about children's literature and society; and so does Stories and Society: Children's Literature in Its Social Context, ed. Dennis Butts (London: Macmillan, 1992).

Children's Literature Association Quarterly 24.1 (Spring 1999), a special issue on children's literature and religion edited by Naomi Wood, focuses on the ideological implications of religious doctrine. See also:

For questions of morality, see Claudia Mills's "The Structure of Moral Dilemma in Shiloh," Children's Literature 27 (1999): 185-197. Also about cultural issues are:

Children's Literature Association Quarterly 22.3 (Fall 97), edited by Mavis Reimer, is a special issue on violence and children's literature.

Childhood Studies. In recent years, a number of scholars have suggested that children's literature can best be understood in the context of a range of discourses about and for children in a spectrum of academic disciplines—so that conceptions of childhood should be studied in what might be called "childhood studies" or perhaps "children's studies." For discussions of ideas of this sort, see:

Lion and the Unicorn 25.2 (2001) is a special issue on "Children's Studies: Beginnings and Purposes" edited by Gertrud Lenzer; it includes, among others, Mary Galbraith's somewhat idiosyncratic "Hear My Cry: A Manifesto for an Emancipatory Childhood Studies Approach to Children's Literature," 187-205.

For some essential texts that might begin to define childhood studies, see The Children's Culture Reader, ed. Henry Jenkins (New York: New York UP, 1998).

HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD

The pioneering book about the history of childhood is Philippe Ariès's Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Vintage-Random House, 1962). The most radical criticism of theories like those of Ariès's is Linda Pollock's Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983). Pollock reprints original texts to support her theory in A Lasting Relationship: Parents and Children over Three Centuries (Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1987). Shulamith Shahar offers a more balanced view in Childhood in the Middle Ages (London and New York: Routledge, 1990). See also Barbara Hanawalt's Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (New York: Oxford UP, 1993). John Boswell's The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York: Pantheon, 1988) is a fascinating look at an intriguing topic. For the history of adolescence, see:

Useful books about specific important times in the history of ideas of childhood are:

For discussions of the history of girlhood, see:

For boys, see Kenneth Kidd's "Farming for Boys: Boyology and the Professionalization of Boy Work," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 20.4 (Winter 1995-96): 148-154—also see items listed below under Gender and Masculinity. In Pictures of Innocence: The History And Crisis Of Ideal Childhood (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998), Anne Higgonet provides a history of visual images of children and childhood; see also Michael Benton's "The Image of Childhood: Representations of the Child in Painting and Literature, 1700-1900," Children's Literature in Education 27.1 (1996): 35-60. For philosopher's views of childhood, see The Philosopher's Child: Critical Essays in the Western Tradition, eds. Susan M. Turner and Gareth B. Mathews (Rochester: U of Rochester P, 1998). For a view of the place of children's literature in the history of childhood see Perry Nodelman's "Inventing Childhood: Children's Literature in the Last Millennium," Journal of Children's Literature 26.1 (Spring 2000): 8-17.

HISTORY of CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

The classic survey of the history of British children's literature is F. J. Harvey Darton's Children's Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, first published in 1932; a revised version with additional material by Brian Alderson appeared in 1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP). For concise surveys, see Peter Hunt's An Introduction to Children's Literature (Oxford and New York: Opus-Oxford UP, 1994) and Children's Literature: An Illustrated History (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995). See also Frances Armstrong's "The Dollhouse as Ludic Space, 1690-1920," Children's Literature 24 (1996): 23-54. For a rather subjective literary history, see John Goldthwaite's The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and America (New York: Oxford UP, 1996). For a revisionist view of how children's literature developed, see John Morganstern's "The Rise of Children's Literature Reconsidered," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 26.2 (Summer 2001): 64-73. For a history of picture books, see three articles by Daivd Lewis: "The Picture Book: A Form Awaiting Its History," Signal 77 (May 1995): 99-112; "The Jolly Postman's Long Ride, or, Sketching a Picture-Book History," Signal 78 (September 1995): 178-192; and "Going Along with Mr. Gumpy: Polysystemy and Play in the Modern Picture Book," Signal 80 (May 1996): 105-119. Kirsten Drotner's English Children and Their Magazines, 1751-1945 (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1988) is a survey of a specific kind of writing for children. The Spring 1985 and Summer 1989 issues of Children's Literature Association Quarterly are devoted to historical children's literature, as are a number of the articles in Children's Literature in Education 14 (1986) and 17 (1989). The authors discussed in Children's Literature 25 (1997), a special issue on "Cross-Writing," almost all wrote prior to the twentieth century. Lion and the Unicorn 21.1 (January 1997) is a special issue on "forgotten authors"—those whose works are no longer widely known or read. For a variety of articles, see Aspects and Issues in the History of Children's Literature, ed. Mariua Nikolajeva (Ewestport: Greenwood, 1995). On the history of one specific kind of children's literature see Ruth Bottigheimer's The Bible for Children: From the Age of Gutenberg to the Present (New Haven: Yale UP, 1996) and Patricia Demers's Heaven Upon Earth: The Form of Moral and Religious Children's Literature to 1850 (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1993).

In "Passing on the Past: The Problem of Books that Are for Children and that Were for Children," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.4 (Winter 1996-97): 200-202, Peter Hunt makes the argument that texts for children produced in the past can no longer be considered children's literature. For responses, see:

Many works about the children's literature of specific places and periods contain "presentist" assumptions, and you should be wary of these. Nevertheless, useful information can be obtained from the following:

Beginnings. For discussions of the earliest times through the Middle Ages, there are:

Children's Literature Association Quarterly 23.1 (Spring 1998) is a special issue on medieval children's literature, and includes articles by Gillian Adams and others.

For the Renaissance and seventeenth century, consult Warren W. Wooden's Children's Literature of the English Renaissance, ed. Jeanie Watson (Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1986) and Gillian Adams's "The Medici Aesop: A Homosocial Renaissance Picture book," Lion and the Unicorn 23.3 (1999): 313-335.

The First Literature Exclusively for Children. For the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see:

Discussions of texts for children produced in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century include:

James Holt McGavran has edited two collections of articles on Romanticism and Children's Literature: Romanticism and Children's Literature in Nineteenth Century England (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1991) and Literature and the Child: Romantic Continuations, Postmodern Contestations (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1999).

Some of the most interesting discussions of children's books of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century are by Mitzi Myers. These include:

The Victorian and Edwardian Periods. For the nineteenth century, useful works include:

Children's Literature Association Quarterly 26.1 (Spring 2001) is a special issue devoted to the "golden age" of children's literature—the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

There are many other books and articles in journals not specifically focused on children's literature about specific texts by well-known children's writers of the nineteenth century such as Lewis Carroll and George Macdonald: these can easily be looked up in guides such as the MLA Annual Bibliography. Work about well-known writers for children of earlier periods can also be found elsewhere in this bibliography by using the "Find" command on your search engine.

American Children's Literature. For the history of children's literature in the U.S.A., see:

There are also numerous articles about texts by Mark Twain, Howard Pyle, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Louisa May Alcott—use the "Find" command in your web browser to search this bibliography and consult the MLA bibliography for articles in journals not focused specifically on children's literature.

Children's Literature Elsewhere. Here is a small sampling of work on European children's literature that has appeared in recent years in English language children's literature journals:

Lion and the Unicorn 20.2 (December 1996) has a special section consisting of four articles on Heinrich Hoffman's Struwelpeter.

For the development of children's literature outside of Europe and former European colonies, see:

For discussions of Australian, Canadian, and other children's literatures, see below under National Children's Literatures.

TEXTS OF EARLY CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Patricia Demers includes significant short texts and excerpts from longer ones in From Instruction to Delight: An Anthology of Children's Literature to 1850 (with Gordon Moyles; Toronto: Oxford UP, 1982) and A Garland from the Golden Age (Toronto: Oxford UP, 1983). A wider selection of more complete works can be found in the first seven volumes of Masterworks of Children's Literature, under the general editorship of Jonathan Cott (New York: Stonehill-Chelsea House, 1985). A still more extensive selection is the seventy-three volumes of Classics of Children's Literature, eds. Alison Lurie and Justin G. Schiller (New York: Garland, 1976-1979).

Selections of Victorian fantasies can be found in:

Editions of many individual books are also available; for instance, many nineteenth century children's novels are available as Penguin Puffin Classics or as Oxford English Classics.

Contemporary Childhood

There's a vast body of material about the lives of children in the contemporary world, produced by psychologists, sociologists, librarians, educators, and children's literature specialists. We list here only a few books that we've found particularly stimulating. 

Assumptions about Childhood. In For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (trans. Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum; New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980), Alice Miller reveals the cruelty inherent in still common ideas of child rearing. Books that deal with recent changes in our attitudes toward childhood include:

For anthropological views on dangers inherent in the adult construction of childhood, see Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Carolyn Sargent's Small Wars: the Cultural Politics of Childhood (Berkeley: U of California P, 1998). See also Judith Levine's Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 2002). In On Learning to Read: The Child's Fascination with Meaning (New York: Vintage-Random House, 1982), Bruno Bettelheim and Karen Zelan describe how assumptions about the limitations of children control the content of reading series. You might also consult Perry Nodelman's article, "The Other: Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children's Literature," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 17.1 (Spring 1992): 29-35 and Alan Richardson's "Nineteenth Century Children's Satire and the Ambivalent Reader," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 15.3 (Fall 1990): 122-126. For relationships between historical and contemporary constructions of childhood see the essays in Literature and the Child: Romantic Continuations, Postmodern Contestations, ed. James Holt McGavran (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1999).

Descriptions of Children. Two acute observers of children are Robert Coles in The Moral Life of Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986) and The Political Life of Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), and Vivian Gussin Paley in a number of fascinating books:

In Philosophy and the Young Child (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980) and Dialogues with Children (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984), Gareth B. Matthews describes philosophical conversations he has had with young children.

PIAGET and OTHER
DEVELOPMENTAL THEORISTS

Piaget. Piaget outlined his ideas about childhood in an extensive series of books. Some relevant ones are The Language and Thought of the Child (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965); Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962); and The Psychology of the Child (New York: Basic, 1969).

Piaget and Children's Literature. Almost any discussion of children and the reception of literature published in the last fifty years reveals Piaget's influence; two works that do so in a rigorous way are Arthur N. Applebee's Child's Concept of Story: Age Two to Seventeen (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978) and Nicholas Tucker's Child and the Book: A Psychological and Literary Exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981). Neil Philip reviews this book, and Tucker responds to the review, in Children's Literature in Education 12 (1981): 160-167.

Neo-Piagetians and Piaget's Critics. In recent years, developmental psychologists have often focused their work on variations of Piagetian thinking that focus less than he did on individual development and more on the significance of social contexts; see, for instance:

(Also see titles listed in the next section in relation to Vygotsky.) Books critical of various aspects of Piaget's theories are:

Ideological critiques focusing on the historical and cultural basis of developmental thinking include three important books:

The Stainton Rogers's article "Word Children," in Children in Culture: Approaches to Childhood, ed. Karin Lesnik-Oberstein (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998, 178-203), is an excellent summary. Carol Gilligan offers a powerful and influential feminist critique of developmental theories in her work, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theories and Women's Development (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982).

Other Developmental Theories. Even though Piaget's ideas have had the most influence on our ideas about children and literature, other psychological theories of development have had a strong effect. Among these are Lawrence Kohlberg's stage theory of moral development, described in a number of essays collected in The Philosophy of Moral Development (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981) and L. S. Vygotsky's Thought and Language (Cambridge: MIT P and Wiley, 1962), which adds to Piaget's interest in internal cognitive structures a focus on a child's development through social interactions. For more on Vygotsky, see Contexts for Learning: Sociocultural Dynamics in Children's Development, eds. Ellice A. Forman, Norris Minick, and C. Addison Stone (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993). Erik Erikson's theories of stages of identity development, explained in his Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1950), have had an impact on the study of literature and adolescence.

CENSORSHIP

One of the subjects mentioned in the chapter of Pleasures of Children's Literature on assumptions about childhood, the censorship of children's books, has evoked heated discussion. Attempts to censor children's books in schools or libraries are reported almost daily in newspapers. An overview of the issues surrounding censorship can be found in:

See also a series of articles published in Children's Literature Association Quarterly, edited by Amy McClure:

Other stimulating discussions are found in:

Mark West surveys censorship cases in Children, Culture and Controversy (Hamden: Archon, 1988), and Lee Burress does so in Battle of the Books: Literary Censorship in the Public Schools, 1950-1985 (Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1989). In Children's Literature in Hitler's Germany: The Cultural Policy of National Socialism (Athens: Ohio State UP, 1984), Christa Kamenetsky offers a detailed discussion of censorship in a particular place and time. A provocative article about an important American case is Joan Delfattore's "Religious Implications of Children's Literature as Viewed by Religious Fundamentalists: The Mozert Case," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 14.1 (Spring 1989): 9-13; see also Delfattore's What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America (New Haven: Yale UP, 1992). In his gripping book Storm in the Mountains: A Case Study of Censorship, Conflict and Consciousness (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1988), James Moffett provides a detailed description of a case he himself was involved in; and in Censorship Goes to School (Markham: Pembroke, 1992), David Booth offers both general guidelines and a description of the many attempts to censor the textbook series he helped to edit. Perry Nodelman discusses an interesting example of hidden censorship that he discovered himself in "The Case of the Disappearing Jew," Children's Literature in Education 10 (1979): 44-48. In "Censorship in Children's Paperbacks," Children's Literature in Education 11 (1980): 180-191, Jessica Yates presents evidence of a number of similar acts of unacknowledged censorship in paperback editions. Canadian Children's Literature 68 (1992), a special issue on censorship, contains fourteen provocative articles, including Dave Jenkinson's "Gentle Sinners: A Book More Sinned Against Than Sinning," 52-70, and Perry Nodelman's "We Are All Censors," 121-133; see also Jenkinson's "Good Libraries Don't: The Censorship of Canadian Picture Books," in Canadian Children's Literature 70 (1993): 42-56. Para.doxa 2.3-4 (1996) is a special issue on censorship; it includes articles about censorship of children's books internationally. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 22.3 (Fall 97), edited by Mavis Reimer, is a special issue on violence and children's literature. So, too, is Lion and the Unicorn 24.3 (September 2000), edited by Elizabeth Goodenough. See also Herbert Kohl's Should We Burn Babar? Essays on Children's Literature and the Power of Story (New York: New P, 1995). For discussion of religious objections to the Harry Potter series, see:

For discussion of the controversy surrounding Carolivia Herron's Nappy Hair, see:

NONFICTION and HISTORICAL FICTION

Nonfiction. Discussion of nonfiction can be found in:

Lion and the Unicorn 6 (1982) is devoted to essays about "Informational Books for Children." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 10.4 (1987) has a special section devoted to analyses of the artistry of nonfiction texts.

Discussions of the "art" of nonfiction—its aesthetic qualities—are:

This last piece includes a list of noteworthy nonfiction selected by Milton Meltzer. Meltzer presents an interesting case of his own in "The Possibilities of Nonfiction: A Writer's View," Children's Literature in Education 11 (1980): 110 and 116, and "Where Do All the Prizes Go? The Case for Nonfiction," Children and Their Literature, ed. May: 92-97.

History. In America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage-Random House, 1979), Frances Fitzgerald shows how American history is rewritten periodically in relation to social and political shifts. Helpful essays on nonfiction about history include:

Miller writes about fiction set in the same period in "'The Rhythm of a Tongue': Literary Dialect in Rosemary Sutcliff's Novels of the Middle Ages for Children," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 19.1 (Spring 1994): 25-31, and in "'Thy Speech is Strange and Uncouth': Language in the Children's Historical Novel of the Middle Ages," Children's Literature in Education 23 (1995): 71-90. For more on this subject, see:

In fact, much writing about history for children is in the form of historical fiction: Caroline Hunt discusses both fiction and nonfiction in "U.S. Children's Books about the World War II Period: From Isolationism to Internationalism, 1940-1990," Lion and the Unicorn 18.2 (December 1994): 190-208, and Perry Nodelman discusses nonfiction as fiction in "History as Fiction: The Story in Hendrik Willem Van Loon's Story of Mankind," Lion and the Unicorn 14 (June 1990): 70-86. See also:

For discussion of historical fiction in the context of historiographical theory, see Joseph Zornado's "A Poetics of History: Karen Cushman's Medieval World," Lion and the Unicorn 21.2 (April 1997): 251-266; and Roderick McGillis's "The Opportunity to Choose a Past: Remembering History," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 25.1 (Spring 2000): 49-55.

For discussions of children's fiction and nonfiction about the Holocaust, see:

Canadian Children's Literature 95 (1999) is a special issue: Children of the Shoah: Holocaust Literature and Education. It includes:

Biography. Biography is the subject of nine essays in Lion and the Unicorn 4.1 (1980). Other stimulating essays about it include:

For discussions of autobiography:

Science. For discussions of nonfiction about science, see:

Children's Literature Association Quarterly 19.4 (Winter 1994-1995) contains a number of articles about texts dealing with ecology, including Millicent Lenz's "Am I My Planet's Keeper? Dante, Ecosophy, and Children's Books" (159-164) and Mary Harris Veeder's "Children's Books on Rain Forests: Beyond the Macaw Mystique" (165-169). For texts about menstruation, see:

CULTURAL STUDIES and
THE FIELD OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Cultural Studies. Cultural studies approaches place literary and, especially, media texts in the context of the cultural forces surrounding them, in terms both of how the texts express cultural forces and how they in turn act on the culture. There tends to be a focus on the agency of readers and audiences—their ability to derive their own meanings from the texts they engage with. Much cultural studies work is based in the theorist Gramsci's concept of hegemony; see An Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935 (New York: Schocken, 1988). For some key texts, see:

For cultural studies approaches to literary and media texts for children:

For efforts to locate children's literature studies within studies of the culture of childhood—a version of a cultural studies approach—see the items listed above under Childhood Studies.

The Field. Children's literature might be understood as what Pierre Bourdieu calls a "field"—see Bourdieu's The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia UP, 1993)—or as what semiotic theorists Roman Jacobson and Yuri Lotman call a system—see Zohar Shavit's Poetics of Children's Literature (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1986) and Maria Nikolajeva's Children's Literature Comes of Age: Toward a New Aesthetic (New York and London: Garland, 1996). For discussion of how the system or field of children's literature is constituted, see Hans-Heino Ewers's "The Limits of Literary Criticism of Children's and Young Adult Literature," Lion and the Unicorn 19.1 (June 1995): 77-94. For a discussion using some of Bourdieu's concepts, see Mark Wolff's "Western Novels as Children's Literature in Nineteenth-Century France," Mosaic 34.2 (June 2001): 87-102.

For children's literature in the context of educational policy, see Gretchen R. Galbraith's Reading Lives: Reconstructing Childhood, Books, and School in Britain, 1870-1920 (New York: St. Martin's, 1997).

For the business of publishing and its impact on children's literature, see:

For a discussion using some of Bourdieu's concepts, see Mark Wolff's "Western Novels as Children's Literature in Nineteenth-Century France," Mosaic 34.2 (June 2001): 87-102.

Media and Popular Culture as Contexts
for Children's Literature

Discussions of various aspects of popular culture can be found in:

Television is the particular focus in:

For discussions of popular culture for children see:

There are also a number of articles about media texts and popular culture in The Children's Culture Reader, ed. Henry Jenkins (New York: New York UP, 1998). Jack Zipes discusses fantasy in the mass media in Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales (Austin: U of Texas P, 1979). Television and toys are the specific focus of Marcia Kinder's Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: U of California P, 1991).

On toys, see:

For articles on a variety of literary and media texts, see Girls, Boys, Books, Toys: Gender in Children's Literature, ed. Beverly Lyon Clark and Margaret R. Higgonet (Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1999). On girls' culture, see Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth Century American Girls' Culture, ed. Sherrie A. Inness (New York: New York UP, 1998).

For the business of publishing and its impact on children's literature, see:

Lion and the Unicorn 17.1 (June 1993) is a special issue on "the dumbing down of children's literature"; it includes Sharon Shaloo's "'Get with the Program!': The Mass- and Direct-Marketing of Children's Literature" (3-14).

On texts of children's literature as they appear in various media, see:

Margarent Mackey has written a number of pieces in this area:

Canadian Children's Literature 91/2 (1998) is a special issue on the commodification of Anne of Green Gables. It includes:

The relationships between children's literature and popular culture are also the subject of special sections in the Spring 1982 Children's Literature Association Quarterly, in the Summer 1987 Children's Literature Association Quarterly, and of the articles in Lion and the Unicorn 11.2 (1987). The Lion and the Unicorn material includes Leo Zanderer's "Popular Culture, Childhood, and the New American Forest of Postmodernism" (7-33). Lion and the Unicorn 12.2 (1988) includes Peggy A. Bulger's "Princess of Power: Socializing Our Daughters Through TV, Toys, and Tradition" (178-192). There are four essays on "Children's Literature and the Media" in Children's Literature in Education 9 (1981); a special section on the same topic can be found in the Fall 1982 Children's Literature Association Quarterly. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 22.1 (Spring 1997), edited by Anne Morey, is a special issue on the historical and ideological contexts of children's media texts. Also useful is Susan Willis's "Gender as Commodity," South Atlantic Quarterly 86.4 (Fall 1987): 403-421. Charles Sarland's Young People Reading: Culture and Response describes the impact of popular culture on the reading of adolescents, as do his "Attack of the Teenage Horrors: Theme and Meaning in Popular Fiction," Signal 73 (January 1994): 49-61 and "Revenge of the Teenage Horrors: Pleasure, Quality and Canonicity in (and out of) Popular Series Fiction," Signal 74 (May 1994): 113-131. See also Perry Nodelman's "Ordinary Monstrosity: The World of Goosebumps," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 22.3 (Fall 1997): 118-125.

Film Theory and Critical Analysis. Some useful introductions to film theory and criticism are:

More theoretical works are Seymour Chatman's Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1978), and Christian Metz's Language and Cinema (The Hague: Mouton, 1974) and The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986).

Children's Movies. Movies for children, especially versions of children's novels, are the subject of:

See also:

Lion and the Unicorn 20.1 (June 1996), a special issue on children's films, includes eight articles on a variety of films.

Disney. The movies produced by the Walt Disney studios are the subject of:

For specific films, see:

For a reading of a Disney amusement park ride related to a movie, see Jason Isaac Mauro's "Disney's Splash Mountain: Death Anxiety, the Tar Baby, and Rituals of Violence," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 22.3 (Fall 1997): 113-117. For other aspects of Disney materials see John Somers's "Stories in Cyberspace", Children's Literature in Education 26.4 (December 1995): 197-209.

On a related topic is Phyllis Bixler's "Secret Garden 'Misread': The Broadway Musical as Creative Interpretation," Children's Literature in Education 22 (1994): 101-123. For more on this musical, also see Margaret Mackey's "Strip Mines in the Garden; Old Stories, New Form," Children's Literature in Education 27.1 (1996): 03-22. For discussion of TV versions, see:

Reading Against a Text

For a dialogue about some issues raised by reading against texts, see Marianne Micros's "My Books are My Children: An Interview with Welwyn Wilton Katz," Canadian Children's Literature 90 (1998): 51-65, and a series of responses to it by Conrelia Hoogland, Adrienne Kertzer, and Perry Nodelman, Canadian Children's Literature 94 (1999): 73-103. A number of the books and articles listed above under Ideology and Childhood offer readings that surface unconscious meanings of texts of children's literatures: see especially the books by John Stephens and Jack Zipes and Lion and the Unicorn 17.2 (December 1993), a special issue on theories of class in children's literature. 

CONSTRUCTIONS of CHILDHOOD

Many of the texts listed above in relation to the history of children's literature discuss how texts construct specific versions of childhood—so do many of the texts listed below in terms of their constructions of girlhood, boyhood, race and ethnicity, and so on. Some specifically interesting work in this area includes:

Work that refers to this last collection includes:

FEMINIST APPROACHES

The best introductions to the many varieties of feminist criticism are selections of essays:

Writing and Sexual Difference, ed. Elizabeth Abel (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982)

The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory, ed. Elaine Showalter (New York: Pantheon, 1985)

Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, eds. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1991).

About Children's Literature. Feminist approaches to children's literature are the subject of:

A special section in the Winter 1982 Children's Literature Association Quarterly and in Lion and the Unicorn 15.2 (December 1991) are devoted to gender issues. See also:

This last piece gave rise to a response: Jean Perrot's "Written from the International Androgynous!! A Plea for Our Common Hide (and Seek!)," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 14.3 (Fall 1989): 139-141. Among the articles in Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts and Contexts, eds. Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweikart (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986) is Elizabeth Segel's "'As the Twig is Bent … ': Gender and Childhood Reading." See also Deborah Thacker's "Feminine Language and the Politics of Children's Literature," Lion and the Unicorn 25.1 (January 2001): 3-16 and John Stephens's "Gender, Genre and Children's Literature," Signal 79 (January 1996): 17-30.

Feminist Readings. The essays in Children's Literature in Education 17 (1989) offer feminist approaches to specific texts. So do the essays in Children's Literature Association Quarterly 18.4 (Winter 1993-94); these focus on issues relating to mothers and daughters. Also about mothers and/or daughters are:

There are a number of readings of well-known texts by women writers. On Alcott, see:

On Burnett, see:

On Wilder, see:

See also Shirley Foster and Judy Simons's What Katy Read: Feminist Re-Readings of 'Classic' Stories for Girls (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1995).

On fairy tales and fantasy, see:

Other readings of particular texts include:

A large body of feminist writing on Montgomery is listed below under Critiques of Individual Writers of Fiction.

Claudia Nelson's "Beast Within: Winnie-the-Pooh Reassessed," Children's Literature in Education 21.1 (1990): 17-22 reads as if it may or may not be a parody of an extreme feminist approach (the author informs us it was intended to be parodic). Carol A. Stanger's "Winnie the Pooh Through a Feminist Lens," Lion and the Unicorn 11.2 (1987): 34-50 is more clearly serious in its intentions.

GENDER and MASCULINITY

R. W. Connell's Masculinities (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1995) is an especially useful overview of ideas about masculinity; so too is Michael Kimmel's Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Free Press, 1996). See also:

For some discussions of boys and the historical construction of masculinity, see:

For some popular discussions of contemporary boyhood, see:

But readers of such texts should consider what Kenneth Kidd has to say about them in " Boyology in the Twentieth Century," Children's Literature 28 (2000): 44-72.

Stimulating discussions of how adult texts depict and engender ideas of masculinity can be found in:

Texts about masculinity in children's fiction include:

Children's Literature Association Quarterly 18.3 (Fall 1993) includes a special section on fathers and sons in children's literature, including Naomi Wood's thought-provoking "Suffer the Children: The Problem of the Loving Father in At the Back of the North Wind" (112-119). Canadian Children's Literature 76 (1994) is a special issue on masculinity; it includes Roderick McGillis's "Master Teague, What Is Your Story?: Male Negotiation in Fiction for Children" (6-21), which discusses, among others, Perry Nodelman's novel The Same Place But Different. Nodelman has also written some articles on masculinity:

For a discussion of how media texts construct children's views of masculinity, see Roderick McGillis's "Learning to Read, Reading to Learn; or Engaging in Critical Pedagogy," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 22.3 (Fall 1997): 126-132.

SEXUALITY and QUEER STUDIES

A useful general guide is Annamarie Jagose's Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York UP, 1996). Some key theoretical texts are:

See also:

An early groundbreaking article is Virginia L. Wolf's "The Gay Family in Literature for Young People," Children's Literature in Education 20.1 (March 1989): 51-58. Lion and the Unicorn 23.3 (September 1999) is a special issue on sexuality and children's literature, edited by Kenneth Kidd. Canadian Children's Literature 80 (1995) is a special issue on sex in young adult literature. It includes Perry Nodelman's "Bad Boys and Binaries: Mary Harker on Diana Wieler's Bad Boy," 34-40. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 23.3 (Fall 1998) is a special issue on Lesbian/Gay Literature For Children And Young Adults. It includes:

See also:

Among a selection of articles on sexuality in The Children's Culture Reader, ed. Henry Jenkins (New York: New York UP, 1998) are Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's "How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay," 231-240 and Valerie Walkerdine's "Popular Culture and the Eroticization of Little Girls," 254-264. See also the items listed below under Subjectivity and the Body.

RACE and MULTICULTURALISM

In recent years, there's been a vast explosion of material related to multiculturalism in education; you should have no trouble finding material to read on this popular topic, including guidelines and bibliographies of multicultural literary texts for children. But we caution you to approach them all with some wariness and with some careful thought about the assumptions they may be making about race, tolerance, and reading. In what follows we focus on a few texts we've found helpful ourselves.

Theory. In Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), Edward Said provides a groundbreaking theory of how European cultures constructed their images of those they colonized; most theoretical discussions of literary representations of race have emerged from this important text. Some important ones are:

For discussions of appropriation, see:

For the view that fiction writing is always an attempt to understand what it is to be an "other," see Roderick McGillis's "Self, Other, and Other Self: Recognizing the Other in Children's Literature," Lion and the Unicorn 21.2 (April 1997): 215-229.

Multiculturalism and Children's Literature. For a discussion of multiculturalism in the context of "political correctness," see Lion and the Unicorn 16.1 (June 1992), a special issue on political correctness and cultural literacy; it includes Donnarae MacCann's "Multicultural Books and Interdisciplinary Inquiries," 43-56. For a dialogue about some issues raised by multicultural approaches to texts, see Maqrianne Micros's "My Books are My Children: An Interview with Welwyn Wilton Katz," Canadian Children's Literature 90 (1998): 51-65, and a series of responses to it by Cornelia Hoogland, Adrienne Kertzer, and Perry Nodelman, Canadian Children's Literature 94 (1999): 73-103. Cross-Culturalism in Children's Literature, eds. Susan R. Gannon and Ruth Anne Thompson (West Lafayette: ChLA Publications, 1989) contains selected papers from the 1987 Children's Literature Association conference. Lion and the Unicorn 11.1 (1987) includes essays devoted to the literature of American minorities and has pieces on children's texts about Jews, Chinese-Americans, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 16.2 (Summer 1991) contains a special section on cross-culturalism that focuses on children's literature and colonialism. See also:

Multi-Cultural Readings. Donnarae MacCann and Opal Moore offer thought-provoking opinions in a series of articles in Children's Literature Association Quarterly under the heading of Cultural Pluralism; these include:

MacCann is also author of White Supremacy in Children's Literature: Characterizations of African-Americans, 1830-1900 (New York: Garland, 1998), and editor of The Black American in Books for Children, 2d. ed. (Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1985) and of Lion and the Unicorn 25.3 (September 2001), a special issue on anti-racism and children's literature.

The Children's Literature Association Quarterly series continues with:

A key text on literature by African Americans is Dianne Johnson's Telling Tales: The Pedagogy and the Promise of African-American Literature for Youth (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1990); Johnson also wrote "'I See Me in the Book': Visual Literacy and African-American Children's Literature," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 15.1 (Spring 1990): 10-13. On a related topic, see Ann M. Trousdale and Janie S. Everett's "Me and Bad Harry: Three African American Children's Response to Fiction," Children's Literature in Education 25.1 (1994): 1-15. Another revealing examination is Rudine Sims's Shadow and Substance: Afro-American Experience in Contemporary Children's Fiction (Urbana: NCTE, 1982).

For representations of Africans, see:

For representations of African Americans (and Canadians), see:

For representations of Asians, Asian Americans (and Canadians, etc.), see:

Discussion of similar issues in regard to portrayals of aboriginal North Americans can be found in:

Elspeth Ross's "Children's Books on Contemporary North American Indian/Native/M„tis Life: A Selected Bibliography of Books and Professional Reading Materials," Canadian Children's Literature 61 (1991): 29-43, is a useful guide; so is Beverly Slapin and Dora Seale's Through Indian Eyes: Native Experience in Books for Children (Philadelphia: New Society, 1992). We also recommend Norman J. Williamson's "'Indian Tales': Are They Fish or Fowl?" Children's Literature Association Quarterly 12.2 (Summer 1987): 70-73. A useful guide to both children's and adult literature is Penny Petrone's Native Literature in Canada: From the Oral Tradition to the Present (Toronto: Oxford UP, 1990). See also Heather Scutter's "Writing the Childhood Self: Australian Aboriginal Autobiographies, Memoirs, and Testimonies," Lion and the Unicorn 25.2 (April 2001): 226-241.

On aboriginal Australian literature, see John Murray's "Multiple Voices and Reconciliation: Code-Switching in Young Adult Texts about Indigenous Australians," CREArTA 2.1 (Winter 2001): 49-60.

For Hispanic American children's literature, see "'Some Words are Messengers/Hay Palabras Mensajeras: Interpreting Sociopolitical Themes in Lantino/a Children's Literature," New Advocate 15.1 (2002): 35-47. For a discussion of books about multi-racial children, see Karen Sands-O'Connor's "Why Are People Different?: Multiracial Families in Picture Books and the Dialogue of Difference," Lion and the Unicorn 25.3 (September 2001): 412-426. Rhonda Brock-Servais's "Intracultural Travel or Adventures at Home in The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm," Children's Literature in Education 32.3 (2001): 155-165 is about a novel set in a multicultural country.

COLONIALISM and POSTCOLONIALISM

A key collection is Voices of the Other: Children's Literature and the Postcolonial Context, ed. Roderick McGillis (New York and London: Garland, 1999). Children's Literature Association Quarterly 16.2 (Summer 1991) contains a special section on cross-culturalism that focuses on children's literature and colonialism. Canadian Children's Literature 79 (1995) is a special issue on postcolonialism and Canadian children's literature.

Also about colonialism are:

For alternative views of literature and colonialism, see:

For other historically oriented discussions see Claudia Mills's "Toward Global Community: The Twins Series of Lucy Fitch Perkins," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 18.1 (Spring 1993): 4-9; John Stephens's "Advocating Multiculturalism: Migrants in Australian Children's Literature after 1972," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 15.4 (Winter 1990): 180-185; and Caroline Hunt's "Dick and Jane, the Newbery Medal, and the Politics of Geography," Journal of Children's Literature 20.2 (1994): 85-92.

NATIONAL CHILDREN'S LITERATURES

Text, Culture and National Identity in Children's Literature, ed. Jean Webb (Helsinki: NORDINFO, 2000) is a collection of articles on national identity. So is Children's Literature and National Identity, ed. Margaret Meek (Stoke on Trent and Sterling: Trentham, 2001)—it contains a number of discussions of the Englishness of British books. See also the works listed below under specific countries, especially:

For children's literature written in languages other than English, the best source of information is the journal Bookbird. It includes, for instance, special sections on Eastern Europe (32.1[1994]) and on sexuality in books for children from different countries (32.2 [1994]). See also:

Children's Literature Association Quarterly 20.3 (Fall 1995) is a special issue on international children's literature. For useful insights into how children's literature develops differently in the context of different historical forces, see:

For the way children's literature develops in formerly colonized countries, see Clare Bradford's "The End of Empire? Colonial and Postcolonial Journeys in Children's Books," Children's Literature 29 (2001): 198-218. The articles in Lion and the Unicorn 19.1 (June 1995), a special issue on European children's literature theory edited by J. D. Stahl, reveal the differing attitudes to children's literature that underlie national differences in the literature itself.

Translation. For discussions of national differences and their relation to translation problems and translation theory, see:

Children's Literature and National Identity, ed. Margaret Meek (Stoke on Trent and Sterling: Trentham, 2001), contains a number of discussions of translation, including Emer O'Sullivan's "Alice in Different Wonderlands," 11-21 (on German translations of Carroll).

U. S. A. For a discussion of national characteristics as mirrored in American children's literature, see Paul Nathanson's Over the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz as a Secular Myth of America (Albany: State U of New York P, 1991) and Jerry Griswold's Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America's Classic Children's Books (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992). See also:

U. K. For British children's literature, see Valerie Krips's The Presence of the Past: Memory, Heritage, and Childhood in Postwar Britain (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000).

Canada. For discussions of Canadian children's books, the best resource is the journal Canadian Children's Literature. Work that has appeared in this journal focused on questions of national identity includes two special issues entitled "What's Canadian About Canadian Children's Literature": 86 and 87 (1997). The articles in these issues include:

Other relevant articles include:

See also:

Australia. For a history, see Maurice Saxby's Offered to Children: A History of Australian Children's Literature, 1841-1941 (Sydney: Scholastic, 1998). For discussion of Australian texts, the best resource is the journal Papers. For discussion of Australian national identity and children's literature, see:

SUBJECTIVITY and the BODY

Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 1990) is a book with wide-ranging implications for the study of children's literature. On the construction of childhood subjectivity, a central text is John Stephens's Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction (London and New York: Longman, 1992). See also:

For young adult fiction, see Robyn McCallum's Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: The Dialogic Construction of Subjectivity (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1999).

Discussions of ways in which adults develop subjectivity and body consciousness in children along lines suggested by theorists like Michel Foucault and Judith Butler include:

On related aspects of Foucaultian thought, see:

For further discussion of the body, see David Gooderham's "'These Little Limbs ': Defining the Body in Texts for Children," Children's Literature in Education 27.4 (1996): 227-241 and Kate Lawson's "Adolescence and the Trauma of Maternal Inheritance in L. M. Montgomery's Emily of New Moon," Canadian Children's Literature 94 (1999): 21-41. Canadian Children's Literature 80 (1995) is a special issue on sex in young adult literature. It includes:

For a discussion of menstruation in young adult fiction, see Ginette Landreville's "Images de la Puberte a Travers des Heroines Preadolescentes: Essai Thematique et Comparatif a Partier de Cinq Romans pour la Jeunesse," Canadian Children's Literature 88 (1997): 36-569.

Children's Literature and
the Literary Repertoire

INTERTEXTUALITY

For discussions of intertextual relationships between texts of children's literature see especially John Stephens's and Robin McCallum's Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children's Literature (New York: Garland, 1998). Also useful are:

There are a number of discussions of the relationships between Caroll's Alice books and texts before and after them:

For more on intertextual connections, also see the sections below on Variation and Variations of Fairy Tales and Myths in Literature.

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE as a GENRE

On genre in general, see Alastair Fowler's Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982). Another useful book is John G. Cawelti's Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1976). The characteristics of children's literature as a genre are Jacqueline Rose's central concern in The Case of Peter Pan: Or the Impossibility of Children's Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1984). This is a controversial and provocative book; deciphering its dense jargon is well worth the effort. Some of Rose's arguments (especially about children's literature as an act of colonization) are developed further in Perry Nodelman's "Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children's Literature," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 17.1 (Spring 1992): 29-35. See also Alan Riach's "Treasure Island and Time," Children's Literature in Education 27.3 (1996): 181-193. Other important books are:

For a review of McGillis, see Gillian Adams's "The Nimble Critic," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 24.4 (Winter 1999-2000): 201-204. For a dialogue on the subject of characteristics of the genre, see Perry Nodelman's "Pleasure and Genre: Speculations on the Characteristics of Children's Fiction," Children's Literature 28 (2000): 1-14 and the responses to it that follow:

Also suggestive are:

Zohar Shavit's Poetics of Children's Literature (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1986) is a less successful attempt to determine the general attributes of children's literature, and it is marred by many historical inaccuracies. Shavit is the editor of a special issue of Poetics Today (13.1 [1992]) devoted to theoretical aspects of children's literature.

In "Fiction for Children: Some Essential Differences," Writers, Critics and Children, ed. Geoff Fox (New York: Agathon, 1976), Myles McDowell makes some useful suggestions. So do:

Particularly perceptive are Charles Sarland's "Chorister Quartet" and Aidan Chambers's "Reader in the Book"; both can be found in The Signal Approach to Children's Books, ed. Nancy Chambers (Harmondsworth: Kestrel, 1980). A number of significant articles are gathered in two collections edited by Peter Hunt: Children's Literature: The Development of Criticism (London and New York: Routledge, 1990) and Literature for Children: Contemporary Criticism (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). The articles in Infant Tongues: The Voice of the Child in Literature, eds. Elizabeth Goodenough, Mark A. Heberle, and Naomi Sokoloff (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1994) focus on how the language of children is represented in texts for children and for adults.

Narrative Theory. Because stories and storytelling are so central to children's literature, narrative theory may offer clues to the nature of the genre as a whole. That is Peter Hunt's suggestion in "Narrative Theory and Children's Literature," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 9.4 (Winter 1984-1985): 191-194. Many of the articles in the Fall 1985 issue of Studies in the Literary Imagination (18.2), devoted to the subject of children's literature and narrative theory, have provoked stimulating dialogue in commentaries by Phyllis Bixler, Children's Literature in Education 18.1 (1987): 54-62; Nancy Huse, Children's Literature Association Quarterly 12.1 (Spring 1987): 51-53; and Margaret Higgonet, Children's Literature in Education 17 (1989): 143-150. An important book exploring this approach is Barbara Wall's The Narrator's Voice: The Dilemma of Children's Fiction (London: Macmillan, and New York: St. Martin's P, 1991). On the subject of the narrator's voice, a stimulating article is Rod McGillis's "The Embrace: Narrative Voice and Children's Books," Canadian Children's Literature 63 (1991): 24-40. There is also a somewhat uneven but useful collection of articles: The Voice of the Narrator in Children's Literature: Insights from Writers and Critics, eds. Charlotte Otten and Gary D. Schmidt (New York: Greenwood P, 1989). See also:

Ashraf H. A. Rushdy's "'The Miracle of the Web': Community, Desire, and Narrativity in Charlotte's Web," Lion and the Unicorn 15 (December 1991): 35-60, is an insightful analysis of this book in terms of narrative theory. For approaches to visual art in terms of narrative theory, see:

For discussions of narrative as an aspect of psychological development see:

Cross-Writing. One significant line of inquiry about the characteristics of children's literature relates to the possibility that it has two implied audiences—children and adults—and is thus a form of "cross-writing." Theorists who espouse variations of this position include Zohar Shavit in Poetics of Children's Literature (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1986) and Barbara Wall in The Narrator's Voice: The Dilemma of Children's Fiction (London: Macmillan, and New York: St. Martin's P, 1991). Children's Literature 25 (1997) is a special issue on cross-writing, edited by U. C. Knoepflmacher and Mitzi Myers; see the editor's introduction, "'Cross-Writing' and the Reconceptualizing of Children's Literary Studies," vii-xvii. The issue includes:

Other work in this area includes:

Pastoral, Nostalgia, etc. Other books and articles deal less centrally with the characteristics of children's literature as a genre but make useful suggestions about it. These include:

There are various texts about the pastoral and mythic dimensions of children's literature:

See also Valerie Krips's The Presence of the Past: Memory, Heritage, and Childhood in Postwar Britain (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000).

In "Never Going Home: Reflections on Reading, Adulthood, and the Possibilities of Children's Literature," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 18.1 (Spring 1993): 36-39, Michael Steig casts doubt on the possibility that children's literature can be defined; this article is followed by a response from Perry Nodelman (40-44).

A brief summary of trends in the theory of children's literature can be found in Alan Richardson's "Nineteenth Century Children's Satire and the Ambivalent Reader," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 15.3 (Fall 1990): 122-126. Kar¹n Lesnik-Oberstein's Children's Literature: Criticism and the Fictional Child (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1994) is a study of theorists and critics of children's literature, focusing around the idea of the constructed child. In "The Construction of Children," Signal 76 (January 1995): 5-19, Margaret Meek offers a critique of Lesnik-Oberstein's position, as does Perry Nodelman in "Hatchet Job," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.1 (Spring 1996): 42-45.

The Evolution of Children's Literature. The view that children's literature has changed significantly in recent years is expressed in Eliza Dresang's Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (New York and Dublin: H. Wilson, 1999); her "The Resilient Child and Contemporary Children's Literature: Surviving Personal Violence," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 22.3 (Fall 1997): 133-141; and, in a different form, in Maria Nikolajeva's Children's Literature Comes of Age: Toward a New Aesthetic (New York and London: Garland, 1996) and "Exit Children's Literature?" Lion and the Unicorn 22.2 (April 1998): 221-236.

CHARACTERISTICS of CHILDREN'S FICTION

Formula in Children's Fiction. Many articles explore the ways in which children's fiction combines formula and distinctive qualities:

For discussions of fairy and folk tale patterns in fiction, see:

There are also a number of articles about specific texts listed later under "Variations of Fairy Tales and Myths in Literature." Discussions of other story patterns common in children's fiction include:

For formulaic patterns in children's movies, see Joel D. Chaston's "The 'Ozification' of American Children's Fantasy Films: The Bluebird, Alice in Wonderland, and Jumanji," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 2.1 (Spring 1997): 13-20.

Home. The significance of concepts of home in children's and young adult fiction is the subject of:

Consideration of home in children's fiction might be enriched by theoretical discussions of space, especially Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). Also useful are:

On the spaces of children's literature, see Susan E. Honeyman's "Childhood Bound: In Gardens, Maps, and Pictures," Mosaic 34.2 (June 2001): 117-132.

On a topic related to home/away patterns is Sarah Gilead's "Magic Abjured: Closure in Children's Fantasy Fiction," PMLA 106.2 (March 1991): 277-293. For discussion of related issues, see Valerie Krips's The Presence of the Past: Memory, Heritage, and Childhood in Postwar Britain (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000).

Bachelard. On a related topic, a number of critics make uses of the philosopher Gaston Bachelard's concept of "felicitous space" as central to children's fiction:

Joyce Thomas discusses Bachelard in relation to fairy tales in "Woods and Castles, Towers and Huts: Aspects of Setting in the Fairy Tale," Children's Literature in Education 17.2 (1986): 126-134. In "Bosco and Le Clezio: Elemental Institutions," Mosaic 34.2 (June 2001): 103-115, Lynn Penrod focuses on other aspects of Bachelard's work.

Variation. For a discussion of variations within a text, see Perry Nodelman's "Text as Teacher: The Beginning of Charlotte's Web." Children's Literature 13 (1985): 109-27. For discussions of variations amongst texts, see the items listed above under Intertextuality and below under Series and Variations of Fairy Tales and Myths in Literature. See also:

For discussion of versions and variations of a well-known classic, see Bj˜rn Sundmark's Alice's Adventures in the Oral-Literary Continuum (Lund, Sweden: Lund UP, 1999) and Alternative Alices: Visions and Revisions of Lewis Caroll's Alice Books, ed. Carolyn Sigler (Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1997).

KINDS of CHILDREN'S FICTION

Chapters outlining the history of a number of types of children's fiction, including school stories, fantasy, and adventure, appear in Stories in Society: Children's Literature in Its Social Context, ed. Dennis Butts (London: Macmillan, 1992).

Fantasy. Theoretical books about fantasy include:

A rather impressionistic and unscholarly text on children's fantasy is John Goldthwaite's The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and America (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996). Articles that offer speculations on the nature of fantasy include:

See also the articles on Time Slip Fantasies listed below.

Children's science fiction is the subject of:

Perry Nodelman presents his theoretical views in "Out There in Children's Science Fiction: Forward into the Past," Science Fiction Studies 37 (November 1985): 285-296. There are few studies of individual SF novels, but see:

Adventure. Provocative theoretical books about the nature of adventure stories are Paul Zweig's Adventurer: The Fate of Adventure in the Western World (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1974) and John G. Cawelti's Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture(Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976). Margery Fisher's Bright Face of Danger: An Exploration of the Adventure Story (Boston: Horn Book, 1986) focuses on texts for children. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 8.3 (Fall 1983) contains a number of essays about adventure stories, including William Blackburn's interesting "Mirror in the Sea: Treasure Island and the Internalization of Juvenile Romance," 7-12. In Children's Literature in Education 13 (1982): 115-121, Judith Armstrong writes "In Defence of Adventure Stories."

Animal Stories. In Animal Land: The Creatures of Children's Fiction (New York: Morrow, 1975), Margaret Blount discusses animal stories. John Goldthwaite's "Black Rabbit," Signal 47 (May 1985): 86-111 and 48 (September 1985): 148-167, discusses the influence of Uncle Remus stories in the development of animal fantasy. Ann Royal Newman surveys the topic "Images of the Bear in Children's Literature," Children's Literature in Education 18.3 (1987): 131-138. See also:

In "Advocating Environmentalism: The Voice of Nature in Contemporary Children's Literature," Children's Literature in Education 27.3 (1996): 143-152, Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor discusses books in which Nature itself speaks.

Books About Dolls and Toys. In On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1984), Susan Stewart offers a complex theory of fiction about miniatures. The most important book about children's fiction involving toys is Lois R. Kuznets's When Toys Come Alive: Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis and Development (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1994). Also useful are:

Historical Fiction and Time Slip Fantasies. Discussion of Historical Fiction can be found listed above in the nonfiction section, along with an explanation of why they are there rather than here. See also Valerie Krips's The Presence of the Past: Memory, Heritage, and Childhood in Postwar Britain (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000). Many of the novels Krips discusses are time slip fantasies; on these, see also:

Series. The most widely read American series books, including those about Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, were produced by the Stratemeyer syndicate. These texts are discussed in:

See also:

Bobbie Ann Mason's The Girl Sleuth (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1995). David Rudd's "Five Have a Gender-ful Time: Blyton, Sexism, and the Infamous Five," Children's Literature in Education 26.3 (September 1995): 185-196 and Enid Blyton and the Mystery of Children's Literature (New York: St. Martins, 2000) are about a popular British writer of series fiction. For further discussion of British series, see Victor Watson's Reading Series Fiction: From Arthur Ransome to Gene Kemp (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2000). Lion and the Unicorn 18.1 (June 1994) contains ten articles about various aspects of the Nancy Drew books. On horror series, see:

Tim Morris's You're Only Young Twice: Children's Literature and Film (Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2000) also contains a discussion of Goosebumps.

Two provocative general studies are Ann Scott McLeod's "Secret in the Trash Bin: On the Perennial Popularity of Juvenile Series Books," Children's Literature in Education 15.3 (1984): 127-140, and Gary D. Schmidt's "See How They Grow: Character Development in Children's Series Books," Children's Literature in Education 18.2 (1987): 34-43. Kathleen Chamberlain's "The Bobbsey Twins Hit the Trail; Or, Out West with Children's Series Fiction, " Children's Literature Association Quarterly 17.1 (Spring 1992): 9-15, is more focused. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 14.4 (Winter 1989) contains a number of essays on series books, in a section edited by Schmidt. See also:

School Stories. Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig's You're a Brick, Angela (London: Gollancz, 1976) is "a new look at girls' fiction from 1839-1975." Jeffery Richard's Happiest Days: The Public Schools in English Fiction (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1988) is about school stories, as are:

For discussion of The Encyclopedia of School Stories, eds. Rosemary Auchmuty and Joy Wotton (London: Aldgate, 2000), see:

Papers 11.2 (2001) includes a number of articles on school in children's and young adult fiction, including:

Young Adult Fiction. For a consideration of whether or not young adult fiction is a distinct genre, see Caroline Hunt's "Young Adult Literature Evades the Theorists," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.1 (Spring 1996): 4-11, and Patricia Head's "Robert Cormier and the Postmodernist Possibilities of Young Adult Fiction," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.1 (Spring 1996): 28-33. In Literature for Today's Young Adults (Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1980 and later editions), Kenneth L. Donelson and Alleen Pace Nilsen offer a comprehensive overview. So, too, does Michael Cart in From Romance to Realism: 50 Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature (New York: Harpercollins, 1996). An important critical text is Robyn McCallum's Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: The Dialogic Construction of Subjectivity (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1999). Lion and the Unicorn 2.2 (Fall 1978) contains a number of essays about the adolescent novel. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.1 (Spring 1996) is a special issue on adolescent literature, edited by Roberta Seelinger Trites. Anna O. Soter's Young Adult Literature and the New Literary Theories: Developing Critical Readers in Middle School (New York and London: Teachers College P, 1999) contains a number of readings of specific texts. See also:

Several texts discuss the novelist Robert Cormier, including:

Linda K. Christian-Smith's Becoming a Woman Through Romance (New York: Routledge, 1990) is about teen romances. See also Virginia Schaefer Carroll's "Re-reading the Romance of Seventeenth Summer," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.1 (Spring 1996): 12-19.

Postmodern Texts for Children. In recent years, a number of articles have discussed ways in which contemporary texts written for children express aspects of postmodern style and thought. These include:

See also Eliza Dresang's Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (New York and Dublin: H. Wilson, 1999).

Critiques of Individual Writers of Fiction. Volume 1 of Touchstones: Reflections on the Best in Children's Literature, ed. Perry Nodelman (West Lafayette: ChLA Publications, 1985), contains critical essays on each of the twenty-eight novels or series of novels named by the Children's Literature Association as touchstones for children's literature.

For those interested in rich critical dialogue, the nine essays about specific works of children's fiction in Children's Literature Association Quarterly 11.1 (Spring 1986) include three on Anne of Green Gables; these and a number of others are included in Such a Simple Little Tale: Critical Responses to L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, ed. Mavis Reimer (Metuchen, NJ: ChLA and Scarecrow P, 1992). Discussions of Anne and other texts by L. M. Montgomery can also be found in:

There are five articles about Wind in the Willows in Children's Literature in Education 16 (1988). Other articles on this book include:

Children's Literature in Education 22 (1994) includes Bonnie Garden's "Inner Family of The Wind in the Willows," 43-57 and Cynthia Marshall's "Bodies and Pleasures in The Wind in the Willows," 58-69, as well as comments by Garden and Marshall on each other's work. A brief search of children's literature journals will turn up numerous other articles about this widely discussed book.

As a search through the contents of this bibliography will reveal, other texts that are popular subjects of critical attention are Alcott's Little Women, Burnett's The Secret Garden, White's Charlotte's Web, and Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.

Other insightful articles on specific fictional texts are:

On the Harry Potter series, see:

Except for authors like Carroll and Twain who have been widely read by adults, there are relatively few books devoted to the critical analysis of specific authors of children's fiction. One is Neil Philip's Fine Anger: A Critical Introduction to the Work of Alan Garner (New York: Philomel, 1981). Two useful books in the Twayne series of critical biographies are Phyllis Bixler's Frances Hodgson Burnett (Boston: Twayne, 1984) and Lois Kuznets's Kenneth Grahame (Boston: Twayne, 1987). This series continues to publish volumes of varying usefulness devoted to a variety of children's writers, from Sarah Fielding to Arnold Lobel. See also the relevant volumes in the Twayne Mastwork series, such as:

Critical Theory

Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983) is an excellent overview of the critical theories outlined in Chapter 9; it's especially valuable because Eagleton takes an aggressively political stance that encourages readers to enter into a dialogue with him. A more recent overview is Literary Theory Today, eds. Peter Collie and Helga Geyer-Ryan (Ithaca and New York: Cornell UP, 1990). Those interested in getting a flavor of the work of many different theorists might look at anthologies like The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, ed. David H. Richter (New York: Bedford-St. Martin's, 1989) or Critical Theory since 1965, eds. Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle (Talahassee: Florida State UP, 1986). Critical Terms for Literary Study, eds. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990), offers understandable essays devoted to key terms in literary theory such as "ideology," "interpretation," and "canon." For more concise overviews of many topics, see The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, eds. Michael Groden and Martin Kreisworth (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994). For discussions of controversies surrounding contemporary theory (such as "political correctness"), see Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature, ed. David Richter (Boston: Bedford, 1994).

The most ambitious attempts to apply literary theory to children's literature are Peter Hunt's Criticism, Theory and Children's Literature (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991) and Roderick McGillis's The Nimble Reader: Literary Theory and Children's Literature (New York: Twayne and London et al.: Prentice Hall, 1996). See also Mcgillis's "The Delights Of Impossibility: No Children, No Books, Only Theory," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 23.4 (Winter 1998-99): 202-208. For a conservative response to work on children's literature in the light of theory, see Fred Inglis's "Promising Happiness: The Good Writer, the Perfect Reader, the Obedient Consumer," Children's Literature in Education 27.1 (1996): 61-71.

Jill May's Children's Literature and Critical Theory: Reading and Writing for Understanding (New York: Oxford UP, 1995) describes how theory can influence the ways in which children and students in children's literature courses understand the literary texts they read. So, too, does Lissa Paul's Reading Otherways (Stroud: Thimble, 1998). See also Anna O. Soter's Young Adult Literature and the New Literary Theories: Developing Critical Readers in Middle School (New York and London: Teachers College P, 1999). For a discussion of how a consideration of how children's literature may throw light on theory itself, rather than vice versa, see Deborah Thacker's "Disdain or Ignorance: Theory and the Absence of Children's Literature," Lion and the Unicorn 24.1 (January 2000): 1-17.

PSYCHOANALYTICAL APPROACHES

Psychoanalytical Texts. The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay (New York: Norton, 1989), is an excellent introduction to Freud's ideas. For Jung, a good introduction is The Portable Jung, ed. Joseph Campbell (New York: Viking, 1971). For Lacan, a standard text is Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977). Jane Gallop offers some much-needed help with Lacan's complex ideas in Reading Lacan (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985). For a discussion of the child as represented in psychoanalysis and in adult literature, see Virginia Blum's Hide and Seek: The Child Between Psychoanalysis and Fiction (Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1995).

About Children's Literature. Opening Texts: Psychoanalysis and the Culture of the Child, eds. Joseph H. Smith and William Kerrigan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985), includes a number of essays on children's literature. In Narratives of Love and Loss: Studies in Modern Children's Fiction (London: Verso, 1987), Margaret and Michael Rustin present readings of texts that make use of an eclectic blend of psychoanalytical and sociological approaches. As its subtitle suggests, Lucy Rollins's Cradle and All (Jackson and London: UP of Mississippi, 1992) is "a cultural and psychoanalytical study of nursery rhymes." See also Lucy Rollins and Mark I. West's Psychoanalytic Responses to Children's Literature (Jefferson: McFarland, 1999). Children's Literature in Education 18 (1990) contains a number of essays using psychological approaches and a response section that offers discussions of the validity of this sort of reading. Canadian Children's Literature 72 (1993), a special issue on psychoanalytical approaches, contains Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh's "Mapping the Dark Country: Psychoanalytical Perspective in Young Adult Literature," 6-23. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 25.2 (Summer 2000) is another special issue on psychoanalytical approaches. For a critique of psychoanalytic readings, see Jack Zipes's "The Twists and Turns of Psychoanalytic Criticism: A Response to Paul Nonnekes," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 25.4 (Winter 2000-01): 214-219.

Freudian Readings. Freudian discussions of children's literature include:

Jerry Griswold's Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America's Classic Children's Books (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992) represents a post-Freudian approach. A less clearly Freudian approach to hidden sexual content is Ulf Boethius's "'Us is Near Bein' Wild Things Ourselves': Procreation and Sexuality in The Secret Garden," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 22.4 (Winter 1997-98): 188-195. For anti-Freudian readings of texts of children's literature, see Joseph Zornado's "Swaddling the Child in Children's Literature," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 22.3 (Fall 1997): 105-112.

Jungian Readings. Among Jungian readings are:

Lacanian Readings. In "Another Kick at La/can: 'I Am a Picture,'" Children's Literature Association Quarterly 20.1 (Spring 1995): 42-46, Roderick McGillis offers both a clear overview of Lacan and a reading of Janet Lunn's The Root Cellar. For an ingenious overview of the various implications of Lacanian thinking in reading and understanding children's literature, see Karen Coats's "Lacan with Runt Pigs," Children's Literature 27 (1999): 105-128. For a variety of Lacanian approaches to texts of children's literature see:

Kristeva. For work based in the psychoanalytical ideas of Julia Kristeva, see:

On abjection, see:

Other Psychoanalytical Approaches. For attachment theory, see Mary Galbraith's "'Good Night, Nobody' Revisited: Using An Attachment Perspective To Study Picture Books About Bedtime," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 23.4 (1998-99): 172-180; for a different view of the issues discussed here, see Judith P. Robertson's "Sleeplessness in the Great Green Room: Getting Way Under the Covers with Goodnight Moon," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 25.4 (Winter 2000-01): 203-213. See also Galbraith's "What Must I Give Up in Order to Grow Up? The Great War and Childhood Survival Strategies in Transatlantic Picture Books," Lion and the Unicorn 24.3 (September 2000): 357-359 and "Hear My Cry: A Manifesto for an Emancipatory Childhood Studies Approach to Children's Literature," Lion and the Unicorn 25.2 (April 2001): 187-205.

Bibliotherapeutic Approaches. Discussions of children's literature that recommend bibliotherapy—the use of fictional texts in helping children understand and deal with their problems—have a psychological focus, but tend to make shallow assumptions both about psychology and about the ways in which we read and respond to texts. Among texts with such an approach are:

In "The Other Deaths in Bridge to Terabithia," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 16.4 (1991-1992): 238-241, Joel D. Chaston argues that Katharine Paterson's novel is a critique of bibliotherapy.

ARCHETYPAL APPROACHES

Northrop Frye's magnum opus is Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957). Articles about children's literature that take a Fryean approach include:

Virginia Wolf presents archetypal analyses in:

Also of interest is John Willinsky's "Frye Among (Postcolonial) Schoolchildren: The Educated Imagination," Canadian Children's Literature 79 (1995): 6-24. See also the item listed above under Jungian Readings.

STRUCTURALIST APPROACHES

Claude Levi-Strauss's structural approach as applied to anthropology and mythology is described in The Savage Mind (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1966) and The Raw and the Cooked (New York: Harper & Row, 1969). A particularly useful piece is "The Structural Study of Myth," Structural Anthropology (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1967), 202-228.

The application of structuralist ideas to literature is outlined in Jonathan Culler's Structuralist Poetics (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975) and Robert Scholes's Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction (New Haven: Yale UP, 1974). Culler and Scholes offer descriptions of the work of a number of European structuralists. Among the most interesting are Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (Austin: U of Texas, 1970), and Roland Barthes, especially his S/Z (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974) and The Pleasure of the Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1975). For semiotics, see On Signs, ed. Marshall Blonsky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1985).

Structural approaches to children's literature are the subject of a special section of the Fall 1982 Children's Literature Association Quarterly. Peter Neumeyer offers "A Structural Approach to the Study of Literature for Children," based on Propp (Elementary English 44.8 [December 1977]: 883-87). Another Proppian analysis is Larry Devries's "Literary Beauties and Folk Beasts: Folktale Issues in Beauty and the Beast," an appendix to Betsy Hearne's Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale (Chicago and London: U of Chicago, 1989). In "Maurice Sendak's Ritual Cooking of the Child in Three Tableaux: The Moon, Mother, and Music," Children's Literature in Education 18 (1990): 68-86, Jean Perrot offers a reading of Sendak modelled on L„vi-Strauss's Raw and the Cooked. Jonathan Culley uses L„vi-Strauss's methodology in "Roald Dahl—It's about Children and It's for Children—But Is It Suitable?" Children's Literature in Education 22.1 (1991): 59-73 and Andrew Stibbs uses it in "Deconstructing Burglars: Formal Analysis as a Pedagogic Jemmy," Children's Literature in Education 25.4 (1994): 213-225. Maria Nikolajeva's The Magic Code: The Use of Magical Patterns in Fantasy for Children (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1988) is a structural approach to fantasy.

NARRATIVE THEORY

All kinds of approaches to narrative are outlined in Wallace Martin's Recent Theories of Narrative (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986). Another guide is Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan's Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London: Methuen, 1983). Peter Brooks's Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984) is a particularly relevant text. Uses of narrative theory in the analysis of children's literature are the subject of:

See also Peter Hunt's "Narrative Theory and Children's Literature," the Fall 1985 issue of Studies in the Literary Imagination, and the other texts listed above under Children's Literature as a Genre.

POST-STRUCTURALIST APPROACHES

Post-structural theories center on the work of Jacques Derrida. Those who wish to undergo an unusual experience should read his complex prose in Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976), Writing and Difference (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978), or Dissemination (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981). For an organized overview that communicates all of Derrida's ideas but none of his tone or spirit, there is Jonathan Culler's On Deconstruction (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982). For articles that relate to deconstructive theory, see:

For a view of reading related to the pleasure of deconstructive practices, see William F. Touponce's "Children's Literature and the Pleasures of the Text," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 20.4 (Winter 1995-96): 175-182.

For an introduction to what is called "the new historicism"—a blend of literary practices that emerge from Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, deconstruction, and political and cultural analysis as practiced by Michel Foucault—see The New Historicism, ed. H. Aram Veeser (New York: Routledge, 1989). Stuart Culver takes a new historicist approach in "Growing Up in Oz," American Literary History 4.4 (Winter 1999): 607-28 and "What Manikins Want: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows," Representations 21 (Winter 1988): 97-116. In "Readers of Oz: Young and Old, Old and New Historicist," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.3 (Fall 1996): 111-119, D. David Westbrook offer a critique of Culver's new historicist conclusions. Westbrook's piece is one of a number of articles in Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.3 (Fall 1996), a special issue on children's literature and the new historicism. Articles that focus on placing texts in the context of cultural discourse also include:

In the wake of deconstructive theories, views of narrative as multi-voiced and carnivalesque, as developed earlier in the twentieth century by the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, have become newly popular. For work in these areas, see:

THE CANON

While interest in this topic has lessened lately, there has been a great deal of controversy about the literary canon—the group of texts once considered to be particularly worthy of study. Some provocative essays on this subject are collected in Canons, ed. Robert von Hallberg (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984). Frank Kermode has interesting insights into canonical works, in both The Classic: Literary Images of Permanence and Change (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983) and Forms of Attention (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985).

For a discussion of the idea of a canon in relation to children's literature, see "Matthew Arnold, a Teddy Bear, and a List of Touchstones," Perry Nodelman's introduction to Touchstones: Reflections on the Best in Children's Literature, ed. Perry Nodelman, vol. 1 (West Lafayette: ChLA Publications, 1985). The essays in this and the two other volumes of the series discuss the picture books, novels, and collections of tales named as touchstones for children's literature by a committee of the Children's Literature Association. In Children's Literature in the Blackwell Guide to Literature series (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), Peter Hunt offers his selection of "key texts." See also:

Types of Children's Literature

POETRY

For a discussion of what children's poetry is, see Glenna Sloan's "But Is It Poetry?" Children's Literature in Education 32.1 (2001): 45-56. Discussion of some important children's poets, and a variety of opinions about children and poetry, can be found in Touchstones: Reflections on the Best in Children's Literature, ed. Perry Nodelman, vol. 2 (West Lafayette: ChLA Publications, 1987). Lion and the Unicorn 4.2 (Winter 1980-1981) is a special issue devoted to children's poetry. A discussion of books considered for the Signal Poetry award (given for volumes of poetry published in Britain) has appeared annually in the May issue of Signal for a number of years; it often includes penetrating comments on a variety of books. Children's Literature Association Quarterly used to publish a column devoted to children and poetry; some that offer either useful models of analysis or commentary on controversial issues are:

Among other articles are:

For a history, see Morag Styles's From the Garden to the Street: Three Hundred Years of Poetry for Children (Herndon: Cassell Academic, 1997).

The Bat Poet. Considerable attention has been focused on one book about poetry for children: Randall Jarrell's TheBat Poet (New York: Macmillan, 1963). It is discussed in:

As these critics note, The Bat Poet is both a good story and an excellent introduction to the writing and reading of poetry. Another fine introduction is a carefully constructed anthology edited by X. J. and Dorothy Kennedy, Knock at a Star: A Child's Introduction to Poetry (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982).

Nursery Rhymes. Nursery rhymes have a special history and raise special questions. Iona and Peter Opie's fascinating Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1951; 2d ed., 1997) offers complete histories of many rhymes. Lucy Rollins provides readings of rhymes in Cradle and All: A Cultural and Psychoanalytical Study of Nursery Rhymes (Jackson and London: U P of Mississippi, 1992). Children's Literature Association Quarterly 19.3 (Fall 1994) contains a special section on nursery rhymes and children's songs.

Nonsense. Susan Stewart's Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextuality in Folklore and Literature (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980) offers a theoretical analysis of the structure of nonsense, including nonsense verse. See also:

Children and Poetry. Two important books about the subject of introducing children to the reading and writing of poetry are Kenneth Koch's Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? Teaching Great Poetry to Children (New York: Random House, 1973) and Myra Cohn Livingston's Child as Poet: Myth or Reality (Boston: Horn Book, 1984). Livingston is highly critical of Koch. Livingston is also the author of Climb into the Bell Tower: Essays on Poetry (New York: Harper and Row, 1990).

Other useful discussions of children's experiences of poetry are:

Drama. Canadian Children's Literature 85 (1997) is a special issue on Drama and Theatre for Young People. So is Children's Literature Association Quarterly 9.3 (Fall 1984).

PICTURE BOOKS

Theories of Art and Perception. There is a more extensive discussion of the approach to picture books we have outlined in Chapter 11 of Pleasures of Children's Literature in another book by Perry Nodelman: Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children's Picture Books (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1988). Paul G. Arakelian offers a critique of Nodelman's approach in "Minnows into Whales: Integration Across Scales in the Early Styles of Dr. Seuss," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 18.1 (Spring 1993): 18-22; so does Brian Alderson in "Picture Book Anatomy," Lion and the Unicorn 14 (December 1990): 108-114. For more on techniques of picture book narrative see:

In writing Words about Pictures, Nodelman drew on a large body of art theory, especially:

More recent work includes:

The Philosophy of the Visual Arts, ed. Philip Alperson (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992), is an excellent collection of key texts. Useful books specifically about the theory of illustration include:

The journal Word and Image is devoted to studies of the relationships between text and illustration. No. 2.2 (April-June 1986) specifically examines children and illustration. In Research into Illustration: An Approach and a Review (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984), Evelyn Goldsmith concisely summarizes much of the psychological research into the perception of visual images as it might apply to children's response to pictures.

Children and Picture Books. In addition to Words about Pictures, studies devoted to children's picture books are:

For a history of picture books, see three articles by David Lewis:

See also Matthew Eve's "From Better Little Books to Baby Puffins: The Phenomenon of Small English Illustrated Children's Books for Use In and Out of Air-Raid Shelters—1939-1948," Children's Literature in Education 31.2 (2000): 125-143.

A number of children's literature journals have devoted special issues to the topic of picture books. These include:

Children's Literature 19 (1991), another special picture book issue, includes:

Two consecutive issues of Canadian Children's Literature are devoted to picture books: 70 (1993) and 71 (1993); 70 includes:

Perry Nodelman's "Illustrators of Munsch" is in 71, 5-25. Image and Maker, eds. Peter Neumeyer and Harold Darling (La Jolla: Green Tiger, 1984), a collection of essays about children's illustration, includes Stephen Canham's "What Manner of Beast? Illustrations of 'Beauty and the Beast.'" Another exploration of this topic is found in Betsy Hearne's Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale (Chicago and London: U of Chicago, 1989). See also Linnea Hendrickson's "The View from Rapunzel's Tower," Children's Literature in Education 31.4 (2000): 209-223, on different versions of "Rapunzel."

Other texts that provide a variety of theoretical approaches to children's picture books are:

Readings of picture books from a psychoanalytic perspective are provided in:

Specific Illustrators. Volume 3 of Touchstones: Reflections on the Best of Children's Literature, ed. Perry Nodelman (West Lafayette: ChLA Publications, 1989), contains a number of essays devoted to specific celebrated picture books and illustrators. Discussions of individual books that might act as models for analyses of other books include several fine articles by Jane Doonan:

Other interesting pieces are:

For discussions of Beatrix Potter, see:

See also Margaret Mackey's The Case of Peter Rabbit: Changing Conditions of Literature for Children (New York and London: Garland, 1998) on adaptations of Peter Rabbit in a variety of media.

For discussions of the work of Maurice Sendak, see:

Alphabet Books. Articles on alphabet books include:

Comic Books and Graphic Novels. For discussions of the ways in which comic books convey stories (some of which might apply also to picture books), see:

Relevant articles include:

FAIRY TALES

Fairy Tale Versions

The many versions of fairy tales available in libraries and bookstores vary both in authenticity and in quality. For accurate renderings of the tales as originally presented, we recommend Angela Carter's versions of Perrault (New York: Bard Avon, 1977) and Ralph Manheim's versions of the Grimm tales (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977). Both capture aspects of the tone of the original texts that are missing in most other translations. For reliable versions of Norwegian tales, Italian tales, or tales of a number of other countries and cultures, the best sources are the many volumes of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library, a series of collections each of which includes tales from one specific country or ethnic group. In Favorite Folktales from Around the World (New York: Pantheon, 1986), Jane Yolen presents an entertaining selection of tales from Pantheon volumes.

Critical Analyses

Appreciations of the central fairy tale collections can be found in Volume 2 of Touchstones: Reflections on the Best in Children's Literature, listed above under "Poetry." A special section devoted to fairy tales appears in Children's Literature Association Quarterly (Summer 1982); it includes an extensive bibliographic guide to fairy tale criticism by Roderick McGillis. Lion and the Unicorn 12.2 (1988) is devoted to articles about fairy tales. For a critique of some important theorists, see Perry Nodelman's "Hidden Meaning and the Inner Tale: Deconstruction and the Interpretation of Fairy Tales," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 15.3 (Fall 1990): 143-148.

Tales as Folklore. Folklorists' approaches to the tales are introduced in World Folktales: A Scribner Resource Collection, eds. Atelia Clarkson and Gilbert B. Cross (New York: Scribner, 1980). Variant versions of one central tale from around the world and essays about them can be found in Cinderella: A Casebook, ed. Alan Dundes (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1982). See also:

A romanticized view of the tales based on folkloristic approaches but integrating other analyses is Max L¸thi's often persuasive Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1976). Children's Literature Association Quarterly 11.3 (Fall 1986) is devoted to the connections between children's literature and folklore, as is Lion and the Unicorn 24.2 (April 2000), ed. C. W. Sullivan III. Children's Literature in Education 17.1 (1986) contains Catherine Storr's "Folk and Fairy Tale," 63-69, and Gillian Klein's "Is Going Two Days Now the Pot Turned Down," 53-61. For a Proppian analysis of versions of Inuit tales, see Francoise Lepage's "Originalitie et Tradition dans Le Contes doe Mon Iglou de Maurice Metayer," Canadian Children's Literature 84 (1996): 17-28. On questions of appropriation, see:

See also Anna Smol's "The 'Savage' and the 'Civilized': Andrew Lang's Representation of the Child and the Translation of Folklore," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.4 (Winter 1996-97): 177-183 and Sharon Black, Thomas Wright, and Lynnette Erickson's "Polynesian Folklore: An Alternative to Plastic Toys," Children's Literature in Education 32.2 (2001): 125-137.

Psychoanalytical Approaches. In The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Knopf, 1976), Bruno Bettelheim presents psychoanalytic interpretations of a number of tales. Among many responses to this controversial book are:

A number of books by Marie Louise von Franz take a Jungian approach:

Also somewhat Jungian is Joyce Thomas's Inside the Wolf's Belly: Aspects of the Fairy Tale (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic P, 1989). A psychoanalytical approach using the theories of Otto Rank is Victor Laurent Tremblay's "Who Bewitched the Witch?" Canadian Children's Literature 72 (1993): 38-48. For a Lacanian view, see Carole Scott's "Magical Dress: Clothing and Transformation in Folk Tales," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.4 (Winter 1996-97): 151-157. For a discussion of how children use fairy tales, see Donald Haase's "Children, War, and the Imaginative Space of Fairy Tales," Lion and the Unicorn 24.3 (September 2000): 360-377.

Historical and Cultural Approaches. For some early history, see Graham Anderson's Fairytale in the Ancient World (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). There are many revealing discussions of the Grimm tales and others in the context of history and culture, including:

There are a number of books about fairy tales by Jack Zipes, including:

Zipes's Don't Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England (New York: Methuen, 1986) is both a collection of tales and a number of articles related to them. Anne Wilson offers a critical response to Zipes in "The Civilizing Process in Fairy Tales," Signal 44 (May 1984): 81-87. Perry Nodelman does the same in "And the Prince Turned into a Peasant and Lived Happily Ever After," Children's Literature in Education 11 (1983): 171-174, and in a review in Children's Literature Association Quarterly 9.2 (Summer 1984): 81-82. Zipes responds to the latter in Children's Literature Association Quarterly 9.3 (Summer 1984): 131-132.

In Fairy Tale Romance: The Grimms, Basile, and Perrault (Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1991), James M. McGlathery focuses, in a rather unconvincing way, on how the tales depict erotic passion. We particularly recommend Maria Tatar's Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987) and Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992). Tatar combines a consideration of both historical and psychoanalytical contexts with a rich interpretive appreciation of the tales. For the connection between fairy tales and children's literature, see also Bernd Dolle-Werinkauff's "Nineteenth-century Fairy Tale Debates and the Development of Children's Literature Criticism in Germany," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 24.4 (1999-2000): 166-173.

Variations of Fairy Tales and Myths in Literature

Betsy Hearne discusses variations on one particular tale in Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale (Chicago and London: U of Chicago, 1989). In "Rivalry, Rejection, and Recovery: Variations of the Cinderella Story," Children's Literature in Education 21.2 (1990): 99-107, John Gough discusses books modelled on the Cinderella pattern. Marilyn Fain Apseloff discusses "Three Little Pigs" variations in "The Big Bad Wolf: New Approaches to an Old Folk Tale," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 15.3 (Fall 1990): 135-137. Linnea Hendrickson discusses different picture book versions of "Rapunzel" in "The View from Rapunzel's Tower," Children's Literature in Education 31.4 (2000): 209-223. For variations of an Andersen tale, see Rhoda Zuk's "The Little Mermaid: Three Political Fables," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 22.4 (Winter 1997-98): 166-174. Virginia A. Walter discusses various illustrations to one tale in "Hansel and Gretel as Abandoned Children: Timeless Images for a Postmodern Age," Children's Literature in Education 23.4 (1992): 203-214. See also C. W. Sullivan III's "Narrative Expectations: The Folklore Connection," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 15.2 (Summer 1990): 52-55 and Sitting at the Feet of the Past: Retelling the North American Folktale for Children, eds. Gary D. Schmidt and Donald R. Hettinga (Westport: Greenwood, 1992). For variations on fairy tales in different media see Jack Zipes's Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children and the Culture Industry (New York and London: Routledge, 1997) and the items listed above in the section on Disney films.

Discussions of the relationships between fairy tales or myths and particular literary texts include:

Canadian Children's Literature 73 (1994) contains a number of articles about variations on fairy tales and myth, including Cornelia Hoogland's "Real 'Wolves in Those Bushes': Readers Take Dangerous Journeys with Little Red Riding Hood," 7-21; Anna E. Altmann's "Parody and Poesis in Feminist Fairy Tales," 22-31; and Maria Nikolajeva's "Stages of Transformation: Folklore Elements in Children's Novels," 48-54.

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