This Element looks at the publishing history of the genre, girls' literature, in the United States spanning 1850-1940. The genre is set in context, beginning with an examination of the early American women's literature that preceded girls' literature. Then the Element explores several sub-genres of girls' literature, the family story, orphan story, school story, as well as African American girls' literature. Underpinning each of these stories is the bildungsroman, which overwhelmingly ends with girls 'growing down' to marry and raise children, following the ideals outlined in the cult of domesticity.

Ce volume explore la double question des pouvoirs de la litterature de jeunesse et de ses modalites formelles. Pourquoi parler ici de pouvoirs au pluriel de cette litterature? Car l'on a tres souvent tendance a la reduire a sa vocation pedagogique en vertu de laquelle elle continue de faire l'objet de diverses manipulations. Certes, toute litterature, qu'elle soit adressee aux adultes ou au jeune public, remplit la fonction de plaire et d'instruire. Toutefois, en ce qui concerne la litterature de jeunesse, l'aspect didactique est mal compris, ce qui donne lieu a une vision excessivement simplificatrice de cette production. Cet ouvrage s'attache a montrer que la fonction instructive de l'oeuvre pour la jeunesse, a l'instar de la litterature generale, se manifeste sous des formes complexes et variees: meditations sur l'existence humaine, engagement, projet axiologique, constructions memorielles, ambition therapeutique, renouvellement des procedes esthetiques.

Die Studie widmet sich der Bedeutung von (angehenden) Fachkraften fur kindliche Rezeptionsprozesse im institutionalisierten Kontext der Elementar- und Kindheitspadagogik. Dabei wertet die Autorin das unterschatzte Medium Bilderbuch auf, dessen verengte Wahrnehmung oftmals den didaktischen Mehrwert auch auf Seiten der padagogischen Fachkrafte ubersieht. Auf wissenschaftlicher Ebene fokussiert die Studie eine empirisch fundierte Theoriebildung zur Rolle von Fachkraften im kindlichen Rezeptionsprozess von Bilderbuchern. Mithilfe von Daten- und Methodentriangulation wirft die Autorin einen mehrperspektivischen Blick auf stabile Seh- und Rezeptionsgewohnheiten und damit verbundene handlungswirksame Theorien von Erwachsenen uber den Gegenstand und dessen Vermittlung im institutionellen Kontext. Den praktischen Ertrag bildet die Konzeption von Modulen zur wissenschaftlichen Weiterbildung und in der akademischen Ausbildung.

This book calls for a re-imagining of global picture book history: with the former Soviet Union at the centre of this narrative web. The result of an unusual collaboration between India and Lithuania, the book looks at two different global impacts of the Soviet picture book enterprise. At a particular period in Indian history, cheaply available Soviet picture books, in English and vernacular translations, changed the way Indian children read. This was part of the Soviet Union's efforts to spread 'socialist' culture across the world. Meanwhile, a different and more problematic kind of cultural 'globalization' was underway in the regions governed by the Soviet State, and Lithuania is a rich case in point.A sumptuous and unusual archive of art has been mined to go with this history: from socialist realist art to classic examples of the Lithuanian primitive-modern, many of the images in the book are featured in an English language publication for the first time.

Lutz Hubner und Sarah Nemitz gehoeren zu den erfolgreichsten Akteuren des deutschsprachigen Gegenwartstheaters, wurden aber bislang von der literaturwissenschaftlichen Forschung kaum beachtet, wie dieser Band aufzeigt. Er widmet sich ausschliesslich den Jugendtheaterstucken des Autorenpaares. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit werden Form und AEsthetik der Texte erfasst, und zwar Handlung, Figuren, Nebentexte und Musik. Im zweiten Teil werden die Jugenddramen nach thematischen Gesichtspunkten untersucht. Diese koennen als Adoleszenz- und All-Age-Literatur gelten, zumal die Dramen in Jugendtheatern und im Schauspiel aufgefuhrt werden. Auch Genderdiskurse sowie Intertextualitat und Intermedialitat unterstutzen den hermeneutischen Prozess. Alle Jugenddramen koennen der realistischen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur zugeordnet werden. Eine Schulbuchanalyse schliesst die Untersuchung ab.

"Inklings" nannte sich eine Gruppe von Schriftstellern und Geisteswissenschaftlern in Oxford, deren bekannteste Mitglieder J.R.R. Tolkien und C.S. Lewis waren. Die Inklings-Gesellschaft e.V. widmet sich seit 1983 dem Studium und der Verbreitung der Werke dieser und ihnen nahestehender Autoren sowie der Analyse des Phantastischen in Literatur, Film und Kunst allgemein. Ihre Jahrestagungen werden in Jahrbuchern dokumentiert. Dieser Band enthalt 12 Vortrage der Tagung "The Inheritance of the Inklings", die 2012 in Wetzlar stattfand und sich mit neuesten Entwicklungen in der phantastischen Literatur und anderen Medien beschaftigte, sowie 5 weitere Beitrage und zahlreiche Rezensionen. "Inklings" was the name of a group of Oxford scholars and writers; its best-known members were J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. The German Inklings-Gesellschaft, founded in 1983, is dedicated to the discussion and dissemination of the works of these authors and of writers commonly associated with them and to the study of the fantastic in literature, film and the arts in general. The proceedings of the annual Inklings conferences are being published in yearbooks. This volume contains 12 papers presented at the 2012 conference in Wetzlar, "The Inheritance of the Inklings". They explore recent developments in fantasy fiction and other media. In addition, there are 5 general articles and numerous reviews.

What does it mean to become a reader? What are the challenges and opportunities of engaging children in reading for pleasure in the 21st century? This book explores the ways in which reading for pleasure is changing in the era of globalisation, multiculturalism and datafication. Raising the next generation of engaged readers requires knowledge of the enduring characteristics of engagement and markers of quality in books and e-books. In addition, in order to develop new insights into children's experience of reading on and off screen, nuanced understandings of psychological and socio-cultural research are offered. The cross-disciplinary examination integrates key research from educational psychology, new literacies, multimodality and socio-cultural perspectives and explores consequences for practice. An authoritative guide - it invites graduates, researchers and teachers to participate in the authors' interdisciplinary dialogue about reading for pleasure.

As undergraduate and graduate courses in children's literature become more established and numerous, there is an intense need for a textbook that offers aesthetic rather than educational approaches to children's literature. This work fills that void by providing students of children's literature with a comprehensible and easy-to-use analytical tool kit, showing through concrete demonstration how each tool might best be used. The chapters are organized around familiar and easily recognized features of literary texts (e.g. author, genre, character). Theoretical issues are illustrated by specific texts from the North American children's literature canon. The book explores the particular aesthetics of children's fiction and the ways critical theory may be applied to children's texts, while remaining accessible to a college readership without prior specialized knowledge of literary theory. Each chapter includes a short introduction to a specific theoretical approach (e.g. semiotics, feminist, psychoanalytic), an example of its application to a literary text, a number of activities (study questions, reading exercises), and suggestions for further explorations.

Mit der Behandlung literarischer Texte im Schulunterricht werden Wertvorstellungen vermittelt, deren Wahrnehmung und Verstandnis von entwicklungspsychologischen Voraussetzungen abhangig ist. Die Geltungsanspruche dieser Handlungsimperative koennen in einer Lerngruppe unterschiedlich wirksam sein und zu Kontroversen fuhren - das 4-Phasen-Modell von Kreft sichert hier den methodischen Rahmen fur eine geleitete Erschliessung von normativen Textinhalten. Dennoch erwirbt weniger als ein Viertel eines Jahrgangs eine literar-asthetische Kompetenz, es wird deshalb ein Kurssystem nach finnischem oder neuseelandischem Vorbild vorgeschlagen.

Published to mark the centenary of Roald Dahl's (Welsh) birth, Roald Dahl: Wales of the Unexpected breaks new ground by revealing the place of Wales in the imagination of the writer known as 'the world's number one storyteller'. Exploring the complex conditioning presence of Wales in his life and work, the essays in this collection dramatically defamiliarise Dahl and in the process render him uncanny. Importantly, Dahl is encountered whole - his books for children and his fiction for adults are read as mutually invigorating bodies of work, both of which evidence the ways in which Wales, and the author's Anglo-Welsh orientation, demand articulation throughout the career. Recognising the impossibility of constructing a monolithic 'Welsh' Dahl, the contributors explore the compound and nuanced ways in which Wales signifies across the oeuvre. Roald Dahl: Wales of the Unexpected takes Dahl studies into new territory in terms of both subject and method, showing the new horizons that open up when Dahl is read through a Welsh lens. Locating Dahl in illuminating new textual networks, resourcefully offering fresh angles of entry into classic Dahl texts, rehabilitating neglected Dahl texts, and analysing the layered genesis of (seemingly) familiar works by excavating the manuscripts, this innovative volume brings Dahl 'home' in order to render him invigoratingly unhomely. The result is not a parochialisation of Dahl, but rather a new internationalisation.

Young adult fantasy (YA fantasy) brings together two established genres - young adult fiction and fantasy fiction - and in so doing amplifies, energises, and leverages the textual, social, and industrial practices of the two genres: combining the fantastic with adolescent concerns; engaging passionate online fandoms; proliferating quickly into series and related works. By considering the texts alongside the way they are circulated and marketed, this Element aims to show that the YA fantasy genre is a dynamic formation that takes shape and reshapes itself responsively in a continuing process over time.

This anthology explores the multitude of evidence for recognisable fairy tales drawn from sources in the much older cultures of the ancient world, appearing much earlier than the 17th century where awareness of most fairy tales tends to begin. It presents versions of Cinderella, The Emperor's New Clothes, Snow White, The Frog Prince and a host of others where the similarities to familiar 'modern' versions far outweigh the differences. Here we find Cinderella as a courtesan, Snow White coming to a tragic end or an innocent heroine murdering her sisters. We find an emperor's new clothes where the flatterers compare him to Alexander the Great, or a pair of adulterers caught in a magic trap. Tantalising fragments suggest that there is more to be discovered: we can point to a Sleeping Beauty where the girl takes on the green colouring of the surrounding wood, or we encounter a Rumpelstiltskin connected to a mystery cult. The overall picture suggests a much richer texture of popular tale as a fascinating new legacy of antiquity. This volume breaks down the traditional barriers between Classical Mythology and the fairy tale, and will be an invaluable resource for anyone working on the history of fairy tales and folklore.

Scholars and professionals interested in the study and engagement with young people will find this project relevant to deepening their understanding of reading practices with comics and graphic novels. Comics reading has been an understudied experience despite its potential to enrich our exploration of reading in our currently saturated media landscape. This Element is based on seventeen in-depth interviews with teens and young adults who describe themselves as readers of comics for pleasure. These interviews provide insights about how comics reading evolves with the readers and what they consider a good or bad reading experience. Special attention is paid to the place of female readers in the comics community and material aspects of reading. From these readers, one begins to understand why comics reading is something that young people do not 'grow out of' but an experience that they 'grow with'.

Evolutionary theory sparked numerous speculations about human development, and one of the most ardently embraced was the idea that children are animals recapitulating the ascent of the species. After Darwin's Origin of Species, scientific, pedagogical, and literary works featuring beastly babes and wild children interrogated how our ancestors evolved and what children must do in order to repeat this course to humanity. Exploring fictions by Rudyard Kipling, Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles Kingsley, and Margaret Gatty, Jessica Straley argues that Victorian children's literature not only adopted this new taxonomy of the animal child, but also suggested ways to complete the child's evolution. In the midst of debates about elementary education and the rising dominance of the sciences, children's authors plotted miniaturized evolutions for their protagonists and readers and, more pointedly, proposed that the decisive evolutionary leap for both our ancestors and ourselves is the advent of the literary imagination.

This book explores how alarmist social discourses about 'cruel' young people fail to recognize the complexity of cruelty and the role it plays in child agency. Examining representations of cruel young people in popular texts and popular culture, the collected essays demonstrate how gender, race, and class influence who gets labeled 'cruel' and which actions are viewed as negative, aggressive, and disruptive. It shows how representations of cruel young people negotiate the violence that shadows polite society, and how narratives of cruelty and aggression are used to affirm, or to deny, young people's agency.

The potential of video games as storytelling media and the deep involvement that players feel when they are part of the story needs to be analysed vis-a-vis other narrative media. This book underscores the importance of video games as narratives and offers a framework for analysing the many-ended stories that often redefine real and virtual lives.

How is academia portrayed in children's literature? This Element ambitiously surveys fictional professors in texts marketed towards children. Professors are overwhelmingly white and male, tending to be elderly scientists who fall into three stereotypes: the vehicle to explain scientific facts, the baffled genius, and the evil madman. By the late twentieth century, the stereotype of the male, mad, muddlehead, called Professor SomethingDumb, is formed in humorous yet pejorative fashion. This Element provides a publishing history of the role of academics in children's literature, questioning the book culture which promotes the enforcement of stereotypes regarding intellectual expertise in children's media. The Element is also available, with additional material, as Open Access.

This Element traces the varied and magical history of Christmas publications for children. The Christmas book market has played an important role in the growth of children's literature, from well-loved classics to more ephemeral annuals and gift books. Starting with the eighteenth century and continuing to recent sales successes and picturebooks, Christmas Books for Children investigates continuities and new trends in this hugely significant part of the children's book market.

Provides a unique snapshot of themes and trends within popular fiction in the twenty-first centuryThis groundbreaking collection captures the state of popular fiction in present day. It features twenty new essays on key authors associated with a wide range of genres and sub-genres, providing chapter-length discussions of major post-2000 works of contemporary popular fiction. The lively, accessible and academically rigorous essays presented here cover a wider range of established popular fiction genres such as fantasy, horror and the romance, as well as more niche areas such as Domestic Noir, Steampunk, the New Weird, Nordic Noir and Zombie Lit. The collection will primarily appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students but general readers may also find the focus on many of today's most prominent and influential authors to be of interest.Key FeaturesProvides students with a timely and accessible overview of current trends within contemporary popular fictionIncludes timely reassessments of recent fiction by established figures such as Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Larry McMurtry, Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling, Jodi Picoult, China Mieville, Grant Morrison, Terry Pratchett and Nora Roberts as well as consideration of authors who have emerged more recently, amongst them Stephenie Meyer, Gillian Flynn, E.L. James, Hugh Howey, Cherie Priest, and Max BrooksIncludes supplementary material such recommended further reading at the end of each chapter

An enchanting biography of J. M. Barrie, the man who created Peter Pan and his Lost Boys "For an insightful exploration of Barrie and the boys who inspired him, nothing rivals [this book]."-Norman Allen, Smithsonian Magazine J. M. Barrie, Victorian novelist, playwright, and author of Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, led a life almost as magical and interesting as as his famous creation. Childless in his marriage, Barrie grew close to the five young boys of the Llewelyn Davies family, ultimately becoming their guardian and devoted surrogate father when they were orphaned. Andrew Birkin draws extensively on a vast range of material by and about Barrie, including notebooks, memoirs, and hours of recorded interviews with the family and their circle, to describe Barrie's life and the wonderful world he created for the boys. Originally published in 1979, this enchanting and richly illustrated account is reissued with a new preface to mark the release of Neverland, the film of Barrie's life, and the upcoming centenary of Peter Pan. "A psychological thriller . . . one of the year's most complex and absorbing biographies."-Gerald Clarke, Time "A terrible and fascinating story."-Eve Auchincloss, Washington Post

In den zuruckliegenden zwei Jahrzehnten ist in Deutschland intensive Theoriearbeit zur Gattung des Adoleszenzromans geleistet worden. Was jedoch aussteht, ist eine intensive Auseinandersetzung mit dem in der Forschung haufig diffus verwendeten Begriff des "postmodernen Adoleszenzromans". Deshalb widmet sich diese Arbeit ausfuhrlich der Debatte um Kunst und Literatur der Postmoderne sowie der haufig recht vagen Diskussion uber "postmoderne" Lebenswelten Jugendlicher. Auf der Grundlage einer Gattungstheorie des Adoleszenzromans zwischen 1900 und 2000 wird ein Analyserahmen entwickelt, nach dem ausgewahlte Werke im Kontext der Postmoderne untersucht werden. Ziel ist es, die verschiedenen gattungs- und jugendkulturspezifischen Auspragungen des postmodernen Jugendromans herauszuarbeiten.

The collection proposes inventive research strategies for the study of the affective and fluctuating dimensions of cultural life. It presents studies of nightclubs, YouTube memes, political provocations, heritage sites, blogging, education development, and haunting memories.