Aujourd'hui, grace aux evolutions technologiques, la video sphere s'empare du patrimoine des contes. Le cinema, le dessin anime, la serie televisee et le jeu video offrent de larges possibilites de " transmedialite ". Les etudes ici rassemblees soulignent que ces differentes transpositions ont le merite de garder le genre du conte vivant permettant aux jeunes contemporains de decouvrir un patrimoine fondamental de l'humanite. Elles ont cependant d'autres buts en rapport avec le souci pregnant de rentabilite de notre societe de consommation ou avec la manipulation sociale d'un jeune public malleable. Il n'en reste pas moins que la plupart des createurs ont a coeur de mettre en scene le chemin initiatique emprunte par leurs heros afin de proposer a leurs spectateurs, auditeurs ou lecteurs des histoires pour grandir.

The dissemination of classical material to children has long been a major form of popularization with far-reaching effects, although until very recently it has received almost no attention within the growing field of classical reception studies. This volume explores the ways in which children encountered the world of ancient Greece and Rome in Britain and the United States over a century-long period beginning in the 1850s, as well as adults' literary responses to their own childhood encounters with antiquity. Rather than discussing the role of classics in education, it focuses on books read for enjoyment, and on two genres of children's literature in particular: the myth collection and the historical novel. The tradition of myths retold as children's stories is traced in the work of writers and illustrators from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Kingsley to Roger Lancelyn Green and Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire, while the discussion of historical fiction focuses particularly on the roles of nationality and gender in the construction of an ancient world for modern children. The book concludes with an investigation of the connections between childhood and antiquity made by writers for adults, including James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and H.D. Recognition of the fundamental role in children's literature of adults' ideas about what children want or need is balanced throughout by attention to the ways in which child readers have made such works their own. The formative experiences of antiquity discussed throughout help to explain why despite growing uncertainty about the appeal of antiquity to modern children, the classical past remains perennially interesting and inspiring.

When Hansel and Gretel try to eat the witch's gingerbread house in the woods, are they indulging their "uncontrolled cravings" and "destructive desires", or are they simply responding normally to the hunger pangs they feel after being abandoned by their parents? Challenging Bruno Bettelheim and other critics who read fairy tales as enactments of children's untamed urges, Maria Tatar argues that it is time to stop casting the children as villains. In this book she explores how adults mistreat children, focusing on adults not only as hostile characters in fairy tales themselves but also as real people who use frightening stories to discipline young listeners. After examining how fairy tales were converted into children's literature, the author investigates the acculturation of heroines in such stories as "Cinderella" and "Beauty and the Beast", and concludes with meditations on violence, cannibalism and conflicts between parents and children. Since the cultural stories we read to children in their "formative years" have a powerful influence on their lives, Tatar emphasizes the importance of interrogating and reinterpreting these bedtime tales.

No text better prepares you for evaluating, choosing, and sharing quality children's literature than Through the Eyes of a Child: An Introduction to Children's Literature. This streamlined eighth edition continues to provide a visually stunning, theoretically sound, comprehensive overview of children's literature. Sharpened focus on contemporary issues in the field, deepened coverage of biography and informational books, and newly integrated technology give this new edition added relevance in the changing field. In addition to the text's contemporary and valuable information on literature for younger readers, some of the brightest stars of children's literature lend their talents to the new edition, providing insight into the craft and addressing the changing needs of middle grades readers.