The Mythology of the Animal Farm in Children's Literature: Over the Fence analyzes the ways in which myths about farmed animals' lives are perpetuated in children's materials. Specifically, this book investigates the use of five recurring thematic devices in about eighty books for young children published during the past five decades. The close readings of texts and images draw on a wide range of fields, including animal theory, psychoanalytic and Marxian literary criticism, child development theory, histories of farming and domestication, and postcolonial theory. In spite of the underlying seriousness of the project, the material lends itself to humorous and not overly heavy-handed explications that provide insight into the complex workings of a literary genre based on the covering up of real animal lives.

An estimated 1 in 110 children in the United States has autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although the public awareness of autism has grown significantly, teens are not as educated about this subject as they should be. When accurately and positively presented, literature has been shown to help the classmates of those with ASD better understand the disorder. Increased familiarity with the subject will, in turn, help foster acceptance. In Autism in Young Adult Novels: An Annotated Bibliography, Marilyn Irwin, Annette Y. Goldsmith, and Rachel Applegate identify and assess teen fiction with autism content. In the first section, the authors analyze how characters with ASD are presented. Where do they live and go to school? Do they have friends? Do they have good relationships with their family? How are they treated by others? The authors also consider whether autism is accurately presented. This discussion is followed by a comprehensive bibliography of books that feature a character identified as being on the autism spectrum. The novels reviewed in this volume date as far back as the late 1960s and include works published in the last few years. As more and more authors of young adult fiction become sensitive to ASD, they are featuring such characters in their novels, creating more realistic works for their readers. This study will help librarians and others collect, choose, evaluate, and use these works to educate young adults.

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.

One of the most significant transformations in literature for children and young adults during the last twenty years has been the resurgence of comics. Educators and librarians extol the benefits of comics reading, and increasingly, children's and YA comics and comics hybrids have won major prizes, including the Printz Award and the National Book Award. Despite the popularity and influence of children's and YA graphic novels, the genre has not received adequate scholarly attention. Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults is the first book to offer a critical examination of children's and YA comics. The anthology is divided into five sections: structure and narration; transmedia; pedagogy; gender and sexuality; and identity, that reflect crucial issues and recurring topics in comics scholarship during the twenty-first century. The contributors are likewise drawn from a diverse array of disciplines-English, education, library science, and fine arts. Collectively, they analyze a variety of contemporary comics, including such highly popular series as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Lumberjanes; Eisner award-winning graphic novels by Gene Luen Yang, Nate Powell, Mariko Tamaki, and Jillian Tamaki; as well as volumes frequently challenged for use in secondary classrooms, such as Raina Telgemeier's Drama andSherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. With contributions by: Eti Berland, Rebecca A. Brown, Christiane Buuck, Joanna C. Davis-McElligatt, Rachel Dean-Ruzicka, Karly Marie Grice, Mary Beth Hines, Krystal Howard, Aaron Kashtan, Michael L. Kersulov, Catherine Kyle, David E. Low, Anuja Madan, Meghann Meeusen, Rachel L. Rickard Rebellino, Rebecca Rupert, Cathy Ryan, Joe Sutliff Sanders, Joseph Michael Sommers, Marni Stanley, Gwen Athene Tarbox, Sarah Thaller, Annette Wannamaker, and Lance Weldy.

If there is one trend in children's and YA literature that seems to be enjoying a steady rise in popularity, it is the expansion of the YA dystopian genre. While the genre has been lauded for its potential to expand horizons, promote critical thinking, and foster social awareness and activism, it has also come under scrutiny for its promotion of specific ideologies and its often sensationalist approach to real-world problems. In an examination of six YA dystopian texts spanning more than twenty years of development of the genre, this book explores the way in which posthumanist ideologies in particular are deployed or resisted in these texts as a means of making sense of the specific challenges which young people confront in the twenty-first century.

Democracy in Picturebooks from Sweden and the United States, 2000-2020 explores democracy-themed picturebooks written for children between the ages of three and ten. With multiple analyses of picturebooks throughout the twenty-first century, the authors illustrate how picturebooks can play a vital role in the development of children's perceptions about the different principles of democracy. From a holistic perspective, these books can be seen as the starting point for socializing children who will come to lead and participate in democratic societies themselves. The multi-pronged approach in this research introduces: (a) concepts underlying the role of picturebooks in familiarizing children with concepts about democracy, (b) research methods for picturebook analyses, (c) exploration of specific exemplar picturebooks that address democratic principles, (d) how picturebooks link democracy with human qualities, (e) utilizing democracy-themed picturebooks in the home and the school. This project holds the promise of promoting meaningful instruction of democracy through the use of picturebooks.

This invaluable guide enables librarians as well as patrons and teachers to identify the best books for high school readers out of the thousands published each year. Now in its third edition, this essential resource supplies information on more than 11,000 in-print titles-most of which have been recommended in at least two reviewing journals-suitable for high school and public libraries. With its simple, thematic organization and user-friendly subject terms, it makes finding the right book easy-for librarians, teachers, and parents alike. And its inclusion of thousands of non-fiction titles helps today's educators meet the Common Core standards. This updated edition of Best Books for High School Readers, Grades 9-12 remains an indispensable resource for identifying the right book for an individual high school student's preferences, needs, or interests, and for creating reading lists for curricular and thematic library programs. It is also an essential tool for evaluating and developing the library collection. The entries provide annotations with succinct plot summaries, ISBNs, book length, price, reading level, and review citations; and indicate Lexile levels, as well as titles that are available in audio format or as an eBook version. Supplies concise, lively annotations and review citations on everything from literary classics and non-fiction titles to graphic novels Provides quick access to information for both library staff and patrons with thematic, curriculum-oriented organization and clear subject breakdowns Indicates which books are also available in audio format and in eBook format-valuable information for collection development and reading specialists Identifies award-winning and series titles

This genre guide to graphic novel reading interests helps librarians and teachers choose titles appropriate for children and 'tweens. Librarians and teachers know how important graphic novels can be in engaging young readers and even getting reluctant readers interested in books. Graphic Novels for Young Readers: A Genre Guide for Ages 4-14 identifies and describes the growing number of graphic novels that are suitable for and popular with readers ages 6-14. Taking a genre approach, the book organizes approximately 400 titles, most of them published in the last five years, according to genre, subgenre, and theme. It describes series and lists bibliographic information for each title. Also included are subjects and read-alikes, as well as designations of awards. A great readers' advisory tool, this guide can also be used for collection development in school and public libraries.

This important new book is the first monograph on children's poetry written between 1780 and 1830, when non-religious children's poetry publishing came into its own. Introducing some of the era's most significant children's poets, the book shows how the conventions of children's verse and poetics were established during the Romantic era.

Contributions by Lauren R. Carmacci, Keridiana Chez, Kate Glassman, John Granger, Marie Schilling Grogan, Beatrice Groves, Tolonda Henderson, Nusaiba Imady, Cecilia Konchar Farr, Juliana Valadao Lopes, Amy Mars, Christina Phillips-Mattson, Patrick McCauley, Jennifer M. Reeher, Jonathan A. Rose, and Emily Strand Despite their decades-long, phenomenal success, the Harry Potter novels have attracted relatively little attention from literary critics and scholars. While popular books, articles, blogs, and fan sites for general readers proliferate, and while philosophers, historians, theologians, sociologists, psychologists, and even business professors have taken on book-length studies and edited essay collections about Harry Potter, literature scholars, outside of the children's books community, have paid few serious visits to the Potterverse. Could it be that scholars are still reluctant to recognize popular novels, especially those with genre labels "children's literature" or "fantasy," as worthy subjects for academic study? This book challenges that oversight, assembling and foregrounding some of the best literary critical work by scholars trying to move the needle on these novels to reflect their importance to twenty-first-century literate culture. In Open at the Close, contributors consciously address Harry Potter primarily as a literary phenomenon rather than a cultural one. They interrogate the novels on many levels, from multiple perspectives, and with various conclusions, but they come together around the overarching question: What is it about these books? At their heart, what is it that makes the Harry Potter novels so exceptionally compelling, so irresistible to their readers, and so relevant in our time?

Featuring close readings of selected poetry, visual texts, short stories and novels published for children since 1945 from Naughty Amelia Jane to Watership Down, this is the first extensive study of the nature and form of ethical discourse in British children's literature. Ethics in British Children's Literature explores the extent to which contemporary writing for children might be considered philosophical, tackling ethical spheres relevant to and arising from books for young people, such as naughtiness, good and evil, family life, and environmental ethics. Rigorously engaging with influential moral philosophers, from Aristotle through Kant and Hegel, to Arno Leopold, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, and Lars Svendsen, this book demonstrates the narrative strategies employed to engage young readers as moral agents.

Girls' Series Fiction and American Popular Culture examines the ways in which young female heroines in American series fiction have undergone dramatic changes in the past 150 years, changes which have both reflected and modeled standards of behavior for America's tweens and teen girls. Though series books are often derided for lacking in imagination and literary potency, that the majority of American girls have been exposed to girls' series in some form, whether through books, television, or other media, suggests that this genre needs to be studied further and that the development of the heroines that girls read about have created an impact that is worthy of a fresh critical lens. Thus, this collection explores how series books have influenced and shaped popular American culture and, in doing so, girls' everyday experiences from the mid nineteenth century until now. The collection interrogates the cultural work that is performed through the series genre, contemplating the messages these books relay about subjects including race, class, gender, education, family, romance, and friendship, and it examines the trajectory of girl fiction within such contexts as material culture, geopolitics, socioeconomics, and feminism.

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 1939, Aleksandr Volkov (1891-1977) published Wizard of the Emerald City, a revised version of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Only a line on the copyright page explained the book as a "reworking" of the American story. Readers credited Volkov as author rather than translator. Volkov, an unknown and inexperienced author before World War II, tried to break into the politically charged field of Soviet children's literature with an American fairy tale. During the height of Stalin's purges, Volkov adapted and published this fairy tale in the Soviet Union despite enormous, sometimes deadly, obstacles. Marketed as Volkov's original work, Wizard of the Emerald City spawned a series that was translated into more than a dozen languages and became a staple of Soviet popular culture, not unlike Baum's fourteen-volume Oz series in the United States. Volkov's books inspired a television series, plays, films, musicals, animated cartoons, and a museum. Today, children's authors and fans continue to add volumes to the Magic Land series. Several generations of Soviet Russian and Eastern European children grew up with Volkov's writings, yet know little about the author and even less about his American source, L. Frank Baum. Most Americans have never heard of Volkov and know nothing of his impact in the Soviet Union, and those who do know of him regard his efforts as plagiarism. Erika Haber demonstrates how the works of both Baum and Volkov evolved from being popular children's literature and became compelling and enduring cultural icons in both the US and USSR/Russia, despite being dismissed and ignored by critics, scholars, and librarians for many years.

The Shelf2Life Children's Literature and Fiction Collection is a charming set of pre-1923 nursery rhymes, fairy tales, classic novels and short stories for children and young adults. From a tardy white rabbit, spirited orphan and loyal watchdog to a dreamer named Dorothy, this collection presents an assortment of memorable characters whose stories light up the pages. The young and young at heart will delight in magical tales of fairies and angels and be captivated by explorations of mysterious islands. The Shelf2Life Children's Literature and Fiction Collection allows you to open a door into a world of fantasy and make-believe where imaginations can run wild.

Featuring close readings of commonly studied texts, this book takes students of Children's Literature through the key works, their contexts and critical and popular afterlives. "Children's Literature in Context" is a clear, accessible and concise introduction to children's literature and its wider contexts. It begins by introducing key issues involved in the study of children's literature and its social, cultural and literary contexts. Close readings of commonly studied texts including Lewis Carroll's Alice books, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", "The Lion", "The Witch and the Wardrobe", the "Harry Potter" series and the "His Dark Materials" trilogy highlight major themes and ways of reading children's literature. A chapter on afterlives and adaptations explores a range of wider cultural texts including the film adaptations of "Harry Potter", "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Golden Compass". The final section introduces key critical interpretations from different perspectives on issues including innocence, gender, fantasy, psychoanalysis and ideology. 'Review, Reading and Research' sections give suggestions for further reading, discussion and research. Introducing texts, contexts and criticism, this is a lively and up-to-date resource for anyone studying children's literature. Texts and Contexts is a series of clear, concise and accessible introductions to key literary fields and concepts. The series provides the literary, critical, historical context for texts and authors in a specific literary area in a way that introduces a range of work in the field and enables further independent study and reading.

Storybridge to Second Language Literacy makes a case for using authentic children's literature- alternately also referred to as 'stories' or 'real books'-as the medium of instruction in teaching English to young learners, particularly in contexts where children must access general curriculum subjects in English. The author first proposes theoretical foundations for the argument that illustrated children's books are superior to traditional language teaching courses in the primary school. She builds the case around the motivational power of stories, the language and content of quality children's literature, and the potential of literature to contribute to development of second language academic literacy. She then reviews research of the past thirty years that clearly supports her claim. Finally, she uses transcripts from real classrooms to illustrate how teachers in diverse contexts make use of stories. Through the classroom vignettes, a practical model of literature-based instruction emerges that is adaptable to a wide range of primary school teaching contexts, including English as a second language contexts in core-English countries. Storybridge to Second Language Literacy compiles in one volume solid theoretical foundations for story-based instruction, research evidence of the past thirty years supporting the approach (not currently available in a single source), and extensive classroom vignettes illustrating diverse practical applications (not lesson plans).This makes the book valuable for anyone in the field of young learner ELT. MA students in TESOL will find the book useful and will develop an understanding of why and how literature-based instruction works and develop insight to guide their practice. Members of TESOL Elementary Education, EFL, and Bilingual Education SIGs, and IATEFL Young Learner SIG will be interested in the volume. Instructors of teacher development courses should also find the proposed volume a valuable addition to assigned readings. Each chapter is followed by 'Think about it' questions and 'Try it out' suggestions.

An established introductory textbook that provides students with a guide to developments in children's literature over time and across genres. This stimulating collection of critical essays written by a team of subject experts explores key British, American and Australian works, from picture books and texts for younger children, through to graphic novels and young adult fiction. It combines accessible close readings of children's texts with informed examinations of genres, issues and critical contexts, making it an essential practical book for students. This is an ideal core text for dedicated modules on Children's literature which may be offered at the upper levels of an undergraduate literature or education degree. In addition it is a crucial resource for students who may be studying children's literature for the first time as part of a taught postgraduate degree in literature or education. New to this Edition: - Revised and updated throughout in light of recent children's books and the latest research - Includes new coverage of key topics such as canon formation, fantasy and technology - Features an essay on children's poetry by the former Children's Laureate, Michael Rosen

Young adults often struggle with confusion or guilt because they perceive themselves as different from others, especially their peers. For some of these individuals, the arts can help them cope with adolescent turmoil, allowing them to express their emotions in poems, stories, painting, songs, and other creative outlets. Sensitive teachers and parents know how important it is for young people to realize that they are not alone in their quest for self-knowledge and finding their way in the world. It can make a difference when readers find something in a book that helps them understand more about who they are and helps them understand others. In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Adult: The Arts in Young Adult Literature, Lois Thomas Stover and Connie S. Zitlow examine books in which the coming-of-age for young adults is influenced by the arts. Stover and Zitlow consider the connection between the arts and a young person s developing sense of self, the use of art to cope with loss and grief, and how young adults can use art to foster catharsis and healing. The young people in these books either identify as artists or use the arts in intentional ways to explore their identities. They often have artistic gifts that make them stand outside the norms of teenage life, yet those gifts also help them find a sense of community. Artists considered in this book include painters, photographers, sculptors, actors, directors, choreographers, dancers, composers, musicians, graffiti artists, and others. The books discussed also explore the ways adults can nurture the artist s development and understand the way young people sometimes use the arts to form their unique identity. Included is an annotated bibliography organized by art discipline, as well as an appendix about using the arts pedagogically, making Portrait of the Artist as a Young Adult a valuable resource for educators, parents, librarians, and young adults."

Adaptations of canonical texts have played an important role throughout the history of children's literature and have been seen as an active and vital contributing force in establishing a common ground for intercultural communication across generations and borders. This collection analyses different examples of adapting canonical texts in or for children's literature encompassing adaptations of English classics for children and young adult readers and intercultural adaptations of children's classics across Europe. The international contributors assess both historical and transcultural adaptation in relation to historically and regionally contingent concepts of childhood. By assessing how texts move across age-specific or national borders, they examine the traces of a common literary and cultural heritage in European children's literature.