This book explores Grahame's engagements with classical antiquity in The Wind in the Willows, including ancient epic, parody (Batrachomyomachia), and pastoral imagery. Irby demonstrates how subtle echoes - such as the structure into 12 books, arming scenes, epic catalogues, anabases and katabases, lying tales, Toad's "cleverness"-cumulatively suggest a link between The Wind in the Willows and classical literature. This study offers the first sustained treatment of classical allusions in The Wind in the Willows, considering the entire novel, not isolated scenes, building on existing scholarship to yield an interpretation through the lens of classical literature and its reception in Victorian and Edwardian England. This volume will provide a unique resource for students and scholars of classical reception and literature, as well as comparative literature, English literature, children's literature, gender studies, and Grahame's writing.

The Robber with the Witch's Head presents almost fifty new stories about demons and clever maidens and princes. Bursting with life, this is a storyteller's dream, full of adventure and magic, translated by Jack Zipes.

The book draws from literary, psychological, and sociological perspectives to discuss and to illustrate how these perspectives contribute to instructional practices in Young Adult Literature. The focus is on young adult identity development as it is integrated into reading literature and contributing to the young adult reader's personal growth. The suggestions for instruction range from complete lessons to mini-lessons as well as to student-developed lessons that encourage participation and responsibility of the student in his/her own learning. There is a section on integrating media, technology and literature in instruction. And finally, a look at implications and applications for assessment and curriculum.

The book draws from literary, psychological, and sociological perspectives to discuss and to illustrate how these perspectives contribute to instructional practices in Young Adult Literature. The focus is on young adult identity development as it is integrated into reading literature and contributing to the young adult reader's personal growth. The suggestions for instruction range from complete lessons to mini-lessons as well as to student-developed lessons that encourage participation and responsibility of the student in his/her own learning. There is a section on integrating media, technology and literature in instruction. And finally, a look at implications and applications for assessment and curriculum.

A modern-day Taming of the Shrew that concludes at a high school prom. An agoraphobic Olivia from Twelfth Night sending video dispatches from her bedroom. A time-traveling teenager finding romance in the house of Capulet. Shakespeare and Girls' Studies posits that Shakespeare in popular culture is increasingly becoming the domain of the adolescent girl, and engages the interdisciplinary field of Girls' Studies to analyze adaptation and appropriation of Shakespeare's plays in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Through chapters on film, television, young adult fiction, and web series aimed at girl readers and audiences, this volume explores the impact of girl cultures and concerns on Shakespeare's afterlife in popular culture and the classroom. Shakespeare and Girls' Studies argues that girls hold a central place in Shakespearean adaptation, and that studying Shakespeare through the lens of contemporary girlhoods can generate new approaches to Renaissance literature as well as popular culture aimed at girls and young people of marginalized genders. Drawing on contemporary cultural discourses ranging from Abstinence-Only Sex Education and Shakespeare in the US Common Core to rape culture and coming out, this book addresses the overlap between Shakespeare's timeless girl heroines and modern popular cultures that embrace figures like Juliet and Ophelia to understand and validate the experiences of girls. Shakespeare and Girls' Studies theorizes Shakespeare's past and present cultural authority as part of an intersectional approach to adaptation in popular culture.

This book reveals how the period's transforming identities affected by social, economic, religious, and national energies offers rich opportunities in which to analyze the relationship between identity and transformation. At the heart of this study is this question: what is the relationship between Victorian children's literature, its readers, and their psychic development? Ruth Y. Jenkins uses Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection to uncover the presence of cultural anxieties and social tensions in works by Kingsley, MacDonald, Carroll, Stevenson, Burnett, Ballantyne, Nesbit, Tucker, Sewell, and Rossetti.

This book is a literary analysis of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan in all its different versions -- key rewritings, dramatisations, prequels, and sequels -- and includes a synthesis of the main critical interpretations of the text over its history. A comprehensive and intelligent study of the Peter Pan phenomenon, this study discusses the book's complicated textual history, exploring its origins in the Harlequinade theatrical tradition and British pantomime in the nineteenth century. Stirling investigates potential textual and extra-textual sources for Peter Pan, the critical tendency to seek sources in Barrie's own biography, and the proliferation of prequels and sequels aiming to explain, contextualize, or close off, Barrie's exploration of the imagination. The sources considered include Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson's Starcatchers trilogy, Regis Loisel's six-part Peter Pan graphic novel in French (1990-2004), Andrew Birkin's The Lost Boys series, the films Hook (1991), Peter Pan (2003) and Finding Neverland (2004), and Geraldine McCaughrean's "official sequel" Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006), among others.

Representing Agency in Popular Culture: Children and Youth on Page, Screen and In-Between addresses the intersection of children's and youth's agency and popular culture. As scholars in childhood studies and beyond seek to expand understandings of agency, power, and voice in children's lives, this book places popular culture and representation as central to this endeavor. Core themes of family, gender, temporality, politics, education, technology, disability, conflict, identity, ethnicity, and friendship traverse across the chapters, framed through various film, television, literature, and virtual media sources. Here, childhood is considered far from homogeneous and the dominance of neoliberal models of agency is questioned by intersectional and intergenerational analyses. This book posits there is vast power in popular culture representations of children's agency, and interrogation of these themes through interdisciplinary lenses is vital to furthering knowledge and understanding about children's lives and within childhood studies.

During the early colonial encounter, children's books were among the first kinds of literature produced by US writers introducing the new colony, its people, and the US's role as a twentieth-century colonial power to the public. Subsequently, youth literature and media were important tools of Puerto Rican cultural and educational elite institutions and Puerto Rican revolutionary thought as a means of negotiating US assimilation and upholding a strong Latin American, Caribbean national stance. In Side by Side: US Empire, Puerto Rico, and the Roots of American Youth Literature and Culture, author Marilisa Jimenez Garcia focuses on the contributions of the Puerto Rican community to American youth, approaching Latinx literature as a transnational space that provides a critical lens for examining the lingering consequences of US and Spanish colonialism for US communities of color. Through analysis of such texts typically outside traditional Latinx or literary studies as young adult literature, textbooks, television programming, comics, music, curriculum, and youth movements, Side by Side represents the only comprehensive study of the contributions of Puerto Ricans to American youth literature and culture, as well as the only comprehensive study into the role of youth literature and culture in Puerto Rican literature and thought. Considering recent debates over diversity in children's and young adult literature and media and the strained relationship between Puerto Rico and the US, Jimenez Garcia's timely work encourages us to question who constitutes the expert and to resist the homogenization of Latinxs, as well as other marginalized communities, that has led to the erasure of writers, scholars, and artists.

Out of Reach: The Ideal Girl in American Girls' Serial Literature traces the journey of the ideal girl through American girls' series in the twentieth century. Who is the ideal girl? In what ways does the trope of the ideal girl rely on the exclusion and erasure of Othered girls? How does the trope retain its power through cultural shifts? Drawing from six popular girls' series that span the twentieth century, Kate G. Harper explores the role of girls' series in constructing a narrow ideal of girlhood, one that is out of reach for the average American girl reader. Girls' series reveal how, over time, the ideal girl trope strengthens and becomes naturalized through constant reiteration. From the transitional girl at the turn of the century in Dorothy Dale to the "liberated" romantic of Sweet Valley High, these texts provide girls with an appealing model of girlhood, urging all girls to aspire to the unattainable ideal. Out of Reach illuminates the ways in which the ideal girl trope accommodates social changes, taking in that which makes it stronger and further solidifying its core.

Saints are currently undergoing a resurrection in middle grade and young adult fiction, as recent prominent novels by Socorro Acioli, Julie Berry, Adam Gidwitz, Rachel Hartman, Merrie Haskell, Gene Luen Yang, and others demonstrate. Cyborg Saints: Religion and Posthumanism in Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction makes the radical claim that these holy medieval figures are actually the new cyborgs in that they dethrone the autonomous subject of humanist modernity. While young people navigate political and personal forces, as well as technologies, that threaten to fragment and thingify them, saints show that agency is still possible outside of the humanist construct of subjectivity. The saints of these neomedievalist novels, through living a life vulnerable to the other, attain a distributed agency that accomplishes miracles through bodies and places and things (relics, icons, pilgrimage sites, and ultimately the hagiographic text and its reader) spread across time. Cyborg Saints analyzes MG and YA fiction through the triple lens of posthumanism, neomedievalism, and postsecularism. Cyborg Saints charts new ground in joining religion and posthumanism to represent the creativity and diversity of young people's fiction.

Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction: Travel, Technology, Time intersects considerations about children's and youth's agency with the popular culture genre of science fiction. As scholars in childhood studies and beyond seek to expand understandings of agency in children's lives, this collection places science fiction at the heart of this endeavor. Retellings of the past, narratives of the present, and new landscapes of the future, each explored in science fiction, allow for creative reimaginings of the capabilities, movements, and agency of youth. Core themes of generation, embodiment, family, identity, belonging, gender, and friendship traverse across the chapters and inform the contributors' readings of various film, literature, television, and virtual media sources. Here, children and youth are heterogeneous, and agency as a central analytical concept is interrogated through interdisciplinary, intersectional, intergenerational, and posthuman analyses. The contributors argue that there is vast power in science fiction representations of children's agency to challenge accepted notions of neoliberal agency, enhance understandings of agency in childhood studies, and further contextualize agency in the lives, voices, and cultures of youth.

In this book, Blackford historicizes the appeal of the Persephone myth in the nineteenth century and traces figurations of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades throughout girls literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She illuminates developmental patterns and anxieties in E. T. A. Hoffmann s Nutcracker and Mouse King, Louisa May Alcott s Little Women, Emily Bronte s Wuthering Heights, J. M. Barrie s Peter and Wendy, Frances Hodgson Burnett s The Secret Garden, E. B. White s Charlotte s Web, J. K. Rowling s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Stephenie Meyer s Twilight, and Neil Gaiman s Coraline. The story of the young goddess s separation from her mother and abduction into the underworld is, at root, an expression of ambivalence about female development, expressed in the various Neverlands through which female protagonists cycle and negotiate a partial return to earth. The myth conveys the role of female development in the perpetuation and renewal of humankind, coordinating natural and cultural orders through a hieros gamos (fertility coupling) rite. Meanwhile, popular novels such as Twilight and Coraline are paradoxically fresh because they recycle goddesses from myths as old as the seasons. With this book, Blackford offers a consideration of how literature for the young squares with broader canons, how classics flexibly and uniquely speak through novels that enjoy broad appeal, and how female traditions are embedded in novels by both men and women."

Drawing on over thirty years of teaching children's literature and education, including special topics courses on pedagogical imagery in popular media, the author has drawn those two enterprises together to apply an educational perspective to several giants in the canon of children's literature. Albritton finds and explores images of teaching and learning in Lewis Carroll's two Alice novels, a selection of tales by Beatrix Potter, both play and novel versions of Peter Pan, Kenneth Grahamme's The Wind in the Willows, selected stories featuring Winnie-the-Pooh, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Hobbit, and the first three of J.K. Rowling's novels featuring the young wizard in training, Harry Potter. Through these works, the author finds traces of Plato, Rousseau, Dewey, and Vygotsky, portrayals of growth mindset and high stakes testing, and evidence of the pedagogical power of inquiry, teacher personality, and project-based learning. Albritton's intention is to give equal play to each analytical focus, resulting in a richer appreciation for the literature and a deeper understanding of the theory.

Expanding outward from previous scholarship on gender, queerness, and heteronormativity in children's literature, this book offers fresh insights into representations of sex and sexuality in texts for young people. In this collection, new and established scholars examine how fiction and non-fiction writing, picture books, film and television and graphic novels position young people in relation to ideologies around sexuality, sexual identity, and embodiment. This book questions how such texts communicate a sense of what is possible, impossible, taboo, or encouraged in terms of being sexual and sexual being. Each chapter is motivated by a set of important questions: How are representations of sex and sexuality depicted in texts for young people? How do these representations affect and shape the kinds of sexualities offered as models to young readers? And to what extent is sexual diversity acknowledged and represented across different narrative and aesthetic modes? This work brings together a diverse range of conceptual and theoretical approaches that are framed by the idea of sexual becoming: the manner in which texts for young people invite their readers to assess and potentially adopt ways of thinking and being in terms of sex and sexuality.

Communist Propaganda at School is based on an analysis of reading primers from the Soviet bloc and recreates the world as presented to the youngest schoolchildren who started their education between 1949 and 1989 across the nine Eastern European countries. The author argues that those first textbooks, from their first to last pages, were heavily laden with communist propaganda, and that they share similar concepts, techniques and even contents, even if some national specificities can be observed. This volume reconstructs the image of the world presented to schoolchildren in the first books they were required to read in their school life, and argues that the image was charged with communist propaganda. The book is based on the analysis of over sixty reading primers from nine countries of the Soviet bloc: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia from the period. Written with simplicity and straightforwardness, this book will be a valuable resource, not only to international academics dealing with the issues of propaganda, censorship, education, childhood and everyday life under communism in Eastern and Central Europe, but can also academics dealing with education under communism or with the content of primary education. It also brings educational experiences of the Soviet bloc to international researchers, in particular to researchers of education under totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.

What is a princess story? In this subgenre, newly defined in The Princess Story, the protagonist either is a princess or is attempting to become one: the girl transforms into or identifies herself as a princess through marriage or through discovered identity, or both. Princess lessons often accompany this transformation, lessons that not only educate the fictional girl but also the reader. Cultural expectations and anxieties about the roles of girls and women are transmitted through princess stories, and the dialogic nature of feminism and patriarchy, forces for progress and forces for tradition, can be explored through their study. In this book, feminism and progress are embodied by the first, second, and third wave of feminist princess stories; patriarchy and tradition are represented by Disney Studios' princess stories. All of these stories influenced their readers, some of whom grew up to write their own princess stories, stories that reflected and - they hoped - furthered their ideological goals. Princess stories of the early 2000s are compelling in that they tensely balance romance and feminist assumptions. Anyone interested in folklore studies, feminist studies, children's literature, Disney studies, film adaptations, psychology, sociology, or theories of child development will find The Princess Story: Modeling the Feminine in Twentieth-Century American Fiction and Film essential reading. When contemplating the changes made by feminists to American culture, no one figure is as worth examining as the fictional princess, and no book has yet approached the topic as thoroughly as this one.

Essays by Ian Andrews, Roland Boer, Heidi Brush, Angela Hubler, Cynthia Anne McLeod, Carl F. Miller, Jana Mikota, Mervyn Nicholson, Jane Rosen, Sharon Smulders, Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Anastasia Ulanowicz, Naomi Wood A significant body of scholarship examines the production of children's literature by women and minorities, as well as the representation of gender, race, and sexuality. But few scholars have previously analyzed class in children's literature. This definitive collection remedies that by defining and exemplifying historical materialist approaches to children's literature. The introduction of Little Red Readings lucidly discusses characteristics of historical materialism, the methodological approach to the study of literature and culture first outlined by Karl Marx, defining key concepts and analyzing factors that have marginalized this tradition, particularly in the United States. The thirteen essays here analyze a wide range of texts--from children's bibles to Mary Poppins to The Hunger Games--using concepts in historical materialism from class struggle to the commodity. Essayists apply the work of Marxist theorists such as Ernst Bloch and Fredric Jameson to children's literature and film. Others examine the work of leftist writers in India, Germany, England, and the United States. The authors argue that historical materialist methodology is critical to the study of children's literature, as children often suffer most from inequality. Some of the critics in this collection reveal the ways that literature for children often functions to naturalize capitalist economic and social relations. Other critics champion literature that reveals to readers the construction of social reality and point to texts that enable an understanding of the role ordinary people might play in creating a more just future. The collection adds substantially to our understanding of the political and class character of children's literature worldwide, and contributes to the development of a radical history of children's literature.

Now in its fourth edition, this popular textbook introduces prospective and practicing English teachers to current methods of teaching literature in middle and high school classrooms. This new edition broadens its focus to cover important topics such as critical race theory; perspectives on teaching fiction, nonfiction, and drama; the integration of digital literacy; and teacher research for ongoing learning and professional development. It underscores the value of providing students with a range of different critical approaches and tools for interpreting texts. It also addresses the need to organize literature instruction around topics and issues of interest to today's adolescents. By using authentic dilemmas and contemporary issues, the authors encourage preservice English teachers and their instructors to raise and explore inquiry-based questions that center on the teaching of a variety of literary texts, both classic and contemporary, traditional and digital. New to the Fourth Edition: Expanded attention to digital tools, multimodal learning, and teaching online New examples of teaching contemporary texts Expanded discussion and illustration of formative assessment Revised response activities for incorporating young adult literature into the literature curriculum Real-world examples of student work to illustrate how students respond to the suggested strategies Extended focus on infusing multicultural and diverse literature in the classroom Each chapter is organized around specific questions that preservice teachers consistently raise as they prepare to become English language arts teachers. The authors model critical inquiry throughout the text by offering authentic case narratives that raise important considerations of both theory and practice. A companion website, a favorite of English education instructors, http://teachingliterature.pbworks.com, provides resources and enrichment activities, inviting teachers to consider important issues in the context of their current or future classrooms.

'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking-Glass' are two of the most famous, translated and quoted books in the world. But how did a casual tale told by Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), an eccentric Oxford mathematician, to Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, grow into such a phenomenon? Peter Hunt cuts away the psychological speculation that has grown up around the 'Alice' books and traces the sources of their multi-layered in-jokes and political, literary and philosophical satire. He first places the books in the history of children's literature - how they relate to the other giants of the period, such as Charles Kingsley - and explores the local and personal references that the real Alice would have understood. Equally fascinating is the rich texture of fragments of everything from the 'sensation' novel to Darwinian theory - not to mention Dodgson's personal feelings - that he wove into the books as they developed. Richly illustrated with manuscripts, portraits, Sir John Tenniel's original line drawings and contemporary photographs, this is a fresh look at two remarkable stories, which takes us on a guided tour from the treacle wells of Victorian Oxford through an astonishing world of politics, philosophy, humour - and nightmare.

When Harry Potter first boards the Hogwarts Express, he journeys to a world which Rowling says has alchemy as its "internal logic." The Philosopher's Stone, known for its power to transform base metals into gold and to give immortality to its maker, is the subject of the conflict between Harry and Voldemort in the first book of the series. But alchemy is not about money or eternal life, it is much more about the transformations of desire, of power and of people-through love. Harry's equally remarkable and ordinary power to love leads to his desire to find but not use the Philosopher's Stone at the start of the series and his wish to end the destructive power of the Elder Wand at the end. This collection of essays on alchemical symbolism and transformations in Rowling's series demonstrates how Harry's work with magical objects, people, and creatures transfigure desire, power, and identity. As Harry's leaden existence on Privet Drive is transformed in the company of his friends and teachers, the Harry Potter novels have transformed millions of readers, inspiring us to find the gold in our ordinary lives.

Contributions by Megan De Roover, Jennifer Harrison, Sarah Jackson, Zoe Jaques, Nada Kujund?Yi?c, Ivana Milkovi?c, Niall Nance-Carroll, Perry Nodelman, David Rudd, Jonathan Chun Ngai Tsang, Nicholas Tucker, Donna Varga, and Tim Wadham One hundred years ago, disparate events culminated in one of the most momentous happenings in the history of children's literature. Christopher Robin Milne was born to A. A. Milne and his wife; Edward Bear, a lovable stuffed toy, arrived on the market; and a living, young bear named Winnie settled in at the London Zoo. The collaboration originally begun by the Milnes, the Shepards, Winnie herself, and the many toys and personalities who fed into the Pooh legend continued to evolve throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to become a global phenomenon. Yet even a brief examination of this sensation reveals that Pooh and his adventures were from the onset marked by a rich complexity behind a seeming simplicity and innocence. This volume, after a decades-long lull in concentrated Pooh scholarship, seeks to highlight the plurality of perspectives, modes, and interpretations these tales afford, especially after the Disney Corporation scooped its paws into the honeypot in the 1950s. Positioning Pooh: Edward Bear after One Hundred Years argues the doings of Pooh remain relevant for readers in a posthuman, information-centric, media-saturated, globalized age. Pooh's forays destabilize social certainties on all levels-linguistic, ontological, legal, narrative, political, and so on. Through essays that focus on geography, language, narrative, characterization, history, politics, economics, and a host of other social and cultural phenomena, contributors to this volume explore how the stories open up discourses about identity, ethics, social relations, and notions of belonging. This first volume to offer multiple perspectives from multiple authors on the Winnie-the-Pooh books in a single collection focuses on and develops approaches that bring this classic of children's literature into the current era. Essays included not only are of relevance to scholars with an interest in Pooh, Milne, and the ""golden age"" of children's literature, but also showcase the development of children's literature scholarship in step with exciting modern developments in literary theory.

The goal of the book is to investigate mediating practices used in translation of children's and young adults' fiction, focusing on transfer of contents considered controversial or unsuitable for young audiences. It shows how the macabre and cruelty, swear words and bioethical issues have been affected in translation across cultures and times. Analysing selected key texts from Grimms' tales and Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter to Roald Dahl's fiction, it shows that mediating approaches, sometimes infringing upon the integrity of source texts, are still part of contemporary translation practices. The volume includes contributions of renowned TS scholars and practitioners, working with a variety of approaches from descriptive translation studies and literary criticism to translation pedagogy and museum studies. "The angle of looking into the topics is fresh and acute and I whole-heartedly recommend the book for readers from scholars to parents and school-teachers, for all adults taking a special interest in and cherishing children and their literature". Riitta Oittinen, Tampere University, Finland

Die Beitrage des Bandes erkunden die Moeglichkeiten und Bedingungen kultureller Diversitat und Alteritatserfahrungen in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Es wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie sich in kinderliterarischen Texten die Heranfuhrung an das Fremde vollzieht und kulturelle Vielfalt eingeubt wird, oder aber die Begegnung mit anderen Kulturen kanalisiert, instrumentalisiert und ideologisiert wird. Die Beitrage diskutieren Rezeptionsbarrieren aufgrund kultureller Asymmetrien und Tabu-Themen sowie Ideologisierung der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Eroertert werden Purifikationen in der UEbersetzung, Graphic Novels und illustrierte Kinderbucher im Kulturtransfer sowie der Status von Kinderliteratur zwischen National- und Weltliteratur.

The purpose of the book is to emphasize the role of some women writers (who lived from 19th century to the present) who have devoted a large part of their editorial production to the field of children's literature. Specifically, the research aims at highlighting how the female contribution has modified the antiquated structures and categories used within the literature for childhood. These writers proposed in their books dissonant and divergent characters compared to the custom of having courageous boys and silent and submissive girls as protagonists. Finally, the pedagogical value of some topics that appear repeatedly in their works is emphasized in order to make them fully usable at an educational level. The chapters also offer a comparative look at some European realities thanks to the scientific contribution of researchers from various geographical and scientific areas such as Italy, Slovenia, Russia, Greece, Austria, Germany, Poland, Portugal, UK and USA.