Reading the Art in Caldecott Award Books is a practical and easy-to-use reference handbook explaining what makes the art in Caldecott Medal and Honor books distinguished. It is a useful manual for librarians, teachers, and others who want to better understand picture book illustration. This book includes many useful components: *Short entries about fifty-six books *Information on styles and media *Artistic analysis of the illustrations *Appendixes on selected sources for further reading, Randolph Caldecott Medal terms and criteria, bibliography of entries, and a list of Caldecott winners *Glossary of art terms * Indexes of author-illustrator-title, media, and style This book, used as a handbook in conjunction with Caldecott Award books, provides readers with ready-to-use information they can share with children and others, while helping to build confidence in one's ability to talk about art in all picture books.

Reading the Art in Caldecott Award Books is a practical and easy-to-use reference handbook explaining what makes the art in Caldecott Medal and Honor books distinguished. It is a useful manual for librarians, teachers, and others who want to better understand picture book illustration. This book includes many useful components: *Short entries about fifty-six books *Information on styles and media *Artistic analysis of the illustrations *Appendixes on selected sources for further reading, Randolph Caldecott Medal terms and criteria, bibliography of entries, and a list of Caldecott winners *Glossary of art terms * Indexes of author-illustrator-title, media, and style This book, used as a handbook in conjunction with Caldecott Award books, provides readers with ready-to-use information they can share with children and others, while helping to build confidence in one's ability to talk about art in all picture books.

Black Authors and Illustrators of Books for Children and Young Adults is a biographical dictionary that provides comprehensive coverage of all major authors and illustrators - past and present. As the only reference volume of its kind available, this book is a valuable research tool that provides quick access for anyone studying black children's literature - whether one is a student, a librarian charged with maintaining a children's literature collection, or a scholar of children's literature. The Fourth Edition of this renowned reference work illuminates African American contributions to children's literature and books for young adults. The new edition contains updated and new information for existing author/illustrator entries, the addition of approximately 50 new profiles, and a new section listing online resources of interest to the authors and readers of black children's literature.

Focusing upon contemporary young adult literature, this collection features an academic look at the use of the classic fairy tale and its Gothic elements in the creation of both new tales and retellings of classic stories.

While Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are often credited with inventing American environmental writing, Matthew Wynn Sivils argues that the works of these Transcendentalists must be placed within a larger literary tradition that has its origins in early Republic natural histories, Indian captivity narratives, Gothic novels, and juvenile literature. Authors such as William Bartram, Ann Eliza Bleecker, and Samuel Griswold Goodrich, to name just a few, enabled the development of a credibly American brand of proto-environmental fiction. Sivils argues that these seeds of environmental literature would come to fruition in James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers, which he argues is the first uniquely environmental American novel. He then connects the biogeographical politics of Cooper's The Prairie with European anti-Americanism; and concludes this study by examining how James Kirke Paulding, Thomas Cole, and James Fenimore Cooper imaginatively addressed the problem of human culpability and nationalistic cohesiveness in the face of natural disasters. With their focus on the character and implications of the imagined American landscape, these key works of early environmental thought contributed to the growing influence of the natural environment on the identity of the fledgling nation decades before the influences of Emerson's Nature and Thoreau's Walden.

This book provides a new critical methodology for the study of landscapes in children's literature. Treating landscape as the integration of unchanging and irreducible physical elements, or topoi, Carroll identifies and analyses four kinds of space sacred spaces, green spaces, roadways, and lapsed spaces that are the component elements of the physical environments of canonical British children s fantasy. Using Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising Sequence as the test-case for this methodology, the book traces the development of the physical features and symbolic functions of landscape topoi from their earliest inception in medieval vernacular texts through to contemporary children's literature. The identification and analysis of landscape topoi synthesizes recent theories about interstitial space together with earlier morphological and topoanalytical studies, enabling the study of fictional landscapes in terms of their physical characteristics as well as in terms of their relationship with contemporary texts and historical precedents. Ultimately, by providing topoanalytical studies of other children s texts, Carroll proposes topoanalysis as a rich critical method for the study and understanding of children s literature and indicates how the findings of this approach may be expanded upon. In offering both transferable methodologies and detailed case-studies, this book outlines a new approach to literary landscapes as geographical places within socio-historical contexts."

In this new book, Julie Cross examines the intricacies of textual humor in contemporary junior literature, using the tools of literary criticism and humor theory. Cross investigates the dialectical paradoxes of humor and debunks the common belief in oppositional binaries of simple versus complex humor. The varied combinations of so-called high and low forms of humor within junior texts for young readers, who are at such a crucial stage of their reading and social development, provide a valuable commentary upon the culture and values of contemporary western society, making the book of considerable interest to scholars of both children s literature and childhood studies.

Cross explores the ways in which the changing content, forms and functions of the many varied combinations of humor in junior texts, including the Lemony Snickett series, reveal societal attitudes towards young children and childhood. The new compounds of seemingly paradoxical high and low forms of humor, in texts for developing readers from the 1960s onwards, reflect and contribute to contemporary society s hesitant and uneven acceptance of the emergent paradigm of children s rights, abilities, participation and empowerment. Cross identifies four types of potentially subversive/transgressive humor which have emerged since the 1960s which, coupled with the three main theories of humor relief, superiority and incongruity theories enables a long-overdue charting of developments in humor within junior texts. Cross also argues that the gradual increase in the compounding of the simple and the complex provide opportunities for young readers to play with ambiguous, complicated ideas, helping them embrace the complexities and contradictions of contemporary life."

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."

This volume presents key contributions to the study of ecocriticism in Nordic children's and YA literary and cultural texts, in dialogue with international classics. It investigates the extent to which texts for children and young adults reflect current environmental concerns. The chapters are grouped into five thematic areas: Ethics and Aesthetics, Landscape, Vegetal, Animal, and Human, and together they explore Nordic representations and a Nordic conception, or feeling, of nature. The textual analyses are complemented with the lived experiences of outdoor learning practices in preschools and schools captured through children's own statements. The volume highlights the growing influence of posthumanist theory and the continuing traces of anthropocentric concerns within contemporary children's literature and culture, and a non-dualistic understanding of nature-culture interaction is reflected in the conceptual tool of the volume: The Nature in Culture Matrix.

The eruption of rural distress in Ireland and the foundation of the Land League in 1879 sparked a number of novels, stories and plays forming an immediate response to what became known as the Irish Land war. These works form a literary genre of their own and illuminate both the historical events themselves and the material conditions of reading and writing in late nineteenth-century Ireland. Divisions into 'us' and 'them' were convenient for political reasons, but the fiction of the period frequently modifies this alignment and draws attention to the complexity of the land problem. This collection includes studies of canonical land war novels, publication channels, collaborations between artists and authors, literary conventions and the interplay between personal experience and literary output. It also includes unique resources such as a reprinted letter by the author Mary Anne Sadlier and a reproduction of Rosa Mulholland's little-known play Our Boycotting. The book concludes with a detailed bibliography of land war fiction between 1879 and 1916, which should inspire further reading and research into the genre.

Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children s Literature examines distinguished classics of children s literature both old and new including L. Frank Baum s Oz books, Laura Ingalls Wilder s Little House series, J. K. Rowling s Harry Potter novels, Lemony Snicket s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Stephenie Meyer s Twilight series to explore the queer tensions between innocence and heterosexuality within their pages. Pugh argues that children cannot retain their innocence of sexuality while learning about normative heterosexuality, yet this inherent paradox runs throughout many classic narratives of literature for young readers. Children s literature typically endorses heterosexuality through its invisible presence as the de facto sexual identity of countless protagonists and their families, yet heterosexuality s ubiquity is counterbalanced by its occlusion when authors shield their readers from forthright considerations of one of humanity s most basic and primal instincts.

The book demonstrates that tensions between innocence and sexuality render much of children s literature queer, especially when these texts disavow sexuality through celebrations of innocence. In this original study, Pugh develops interpretations of sexuality that few critics have yet ventured, paving the way for future scholarly engagement with larger questions about the ideological role of children's literature and representations of children's sexuality.

Tison Pugh is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Queering Medieval Genres and Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature and has published on children s literature in such journals as Children s Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Marvels and Tales."

Transcending Boundaries: Writing for a Dual Audience of Children and Adults is a collection of essays on twentieth-century authors who cross the borders between adult and children's literature and appeal to both audiences. This collection of fourteen essays by scholars from eight countries constitutes the first book devoted to the art of crosswriting the child and adult in twentieth-century international literature. Sandra Beckett explores the multifaceted nature of crossover literature and the diverse ways in which writers cross the borders to address a dual readership of children and adults. It considers classics such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Pinocchio, with particular emphasis on post-World War II literature. The essays in Transcending Boundaries clearly suggest that crossover literature is a major, widespread trend that appears to be sharply on the rise.

Responding to the increasingly powerful presence of dystopian literature for young adults, this volume focuses on novels featuring a female protagonist who contends with societal and governmental threats at the same time that she is navigating the treacherous waters of young adulthood. The contributors relate the liminal nature of the female protagonist to liminality as a unifying feature of dystopian literature, literature for and about young women, and cultural expectations of adolescent womanhood. Divided into three sections, the collection investigates cultural assumptions and expectations of adolescent women, considers the various means of resistance and rebellion made available to and explored by female protagonists, and examines how the adolescent female protagonist is situated with respect to the groups and environments that surround her. In a series of thought-provoking essays on a wide range of writers that includes Libba Bray, Scott Westerfeld, Tahereh Mafi, Veronica Roth, Marissa Meyer, Ally Condie, and Suzanne Collins, the collection makes a convincing case for how this rebellious figure interrogates the competing constructions of adolescent womanhood in late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century culture.

At the same time that 1970s feminist psychoanalytic theorists like Jean Baker Miller and Nancy Chodorow were challenging earlier models that assumed the masculine psyche as the norm for human development and mental/emotional health, writers such as Anne Sexton, Olga Broumass, and Angela Carter were embarked on their own revisionist project to breathe new life into fairy tales and classical myths based on traditional gender roles. Similarly, in the 1990s, second-wave feminist clinicians continued the work begun by Chodorow and Miller, while writers of fantasy that include Terry Windling, Tanith Lee, Terry Pratchett, and Catherynne M. Valente took their inspiration from revisionist authors of the 1970s. As Schanoes shows, these two decades were both particularly fruitful eras for artists and psychoanalytic theorists concerned with issues related to the development of women's sense of self. Putting aside the limitations of both strains of feminist psychoanalytic theory, their influence is undeniable. Schanoes's book posits a new model for understanding both feminist psychoanalytic theory and feminist retellings, one that emphasizes the interdependence of theory and art and challenges the notion that literary revision involves a masculinist struggle with the writer's artistic forbearers.

This volume of essays, which originated in the inaugural Dublin Gastronomy Symposium held in the Dublin Institute of Technology in June 2012, offers fascinating insights into the significant role played by gastronomy in Irish literature and culture. The book opens with an exploration of food in literature, covering figures as varied as Maria Edgeworth, James Joyce, Charles Dickens, Enid Blyton, John McGahern and Sebastian Barry. Other chapters examine culinary practices among the Dublin working classes in the 1950s, offering a stark contrast to the haute cuisine served in the iconic Jammet's Restaurant; new trends among Ireland's 'foodie' generation; and the economic and tourism possibilities created by the development of a gastronomic nationalism. The volume concludes by looking at the sacramental aspects of the production and consumption of Guinness and examining the place where it is most often consumed: the Irish pub.

As we approach the seventieth anniversary of the first appearance of Mary Poppins, interest in P. L. Travers' most famous creation is still strong and the time is right for a reassessment of a work that is rich in meaning for child and adult readers alike. This book attempts to analyse some of the reasons behind the longevity and the ongoing appeal of the Mary Poppins material, with particular reference to intertextuality and the presence of what Freud described as "the uncanny". By comparing and contrasting the Mary Poppins material with previous texts, it can be seen that Travers has been drawing, consciously and subconsciously, on the great myths and archetypes of the collective human storytelling experience. The idea therefore emerges that the Mary Poppins stories touch on some fundamental aspect of the psyche - an aspect where the symbiosis of security and fear, the familiar and the unknown, are made manifest to the reader, whether as children finding their way into adulthood or as adults recalling their beginnings.

This book studies children's and young adult literature of genocide since 1945, considering issues of representation and using postcolonial theory to provide both literary analysis and implications for educating the young. Many of the authors visited accurately and authentically portray the genocide about which they write; others perpetuate stereotypes or otherwise distort, demean, or oversimplify. In this focus on young people's literature of specific genocides, Gangi profiles and critiques works on the Cambodian genocide (1975-1979); the Iraqi Kurds (1988); the Maya of Guatemala (1981-1983); Bosnia, Kosovo, and Srebrenica (1990s); Rwanda (1994); and Darfur (2003-present). In addition to critical analysis, each chapter also provides historical background based on the work of prominent genocide scholars. To conduct research for the book, Gangi traveled to Bosnia, engaged in conversation with young people from Rwanda, and spoke with scholars who had traveled to or lived in Guatemala and Cambodia. This book analyses the ways contemporary children, typically ages ten and up, are engaged in the study of genocide, and addresses the ways in which child survivors who have witnessed genocide are helped by literature that mirrors their experiences.

Virginia Euwer Wolff 's profoundly moving young adult literature includes the explorations of mental slowness in Probably Nick Swansen, musical giftedness in The Mozart Season, racial prejudice against the Japanese in Bat 6, and culminating in her Make Lemonade Trilogy Make Lemonade, True Believer, and a work yet in progress, about the compassionate persistence of a young teen struggling to escape inner city poverty. The first chapter introduces author Virginia Euwer Wolff, an Oregonian by birth, and, after several years on the East Coast to attend Smith College, then following her husband's theatrical career, by choice. Her knowledge of and interest in both music and theater are evident in her writing, as she explores various aspects of language to catch the rhythms and tones of her characters and to present their stories with the immediacy of dramatic performances. Her writing also reflects her literary expertise, honed by years of teaching and critical reading. The five following chapters each provides a literary and/or cultural context for each of Wolff's novels for young people, discusses the characters in terms of the plot and style, analyzes particularly literary elements as appropriate, and summarizes critical response. The point of each chapter is to attract readers and enrich their experience of each work. Reid has not only analyzed each novel and researched salient aspects independently, but also submitted a draft to the critical response of Virginia Euwer Wolff, which results in a more accurate book than many similar critiques. Young readers, teachers, and professionals in the field of young adult literature should find this survey and analysis of Wolff's books useful in their work and valuable as an aid to thoughtful reading. Readers of ALL ages will enjoy Wolff's work and benefit from this literary analysis.

Woodson's seventh grade English teacher returned her first short story to her with the comment, "You are the real thing." This work explores how Woodson became "the real thing," why she deserves to be acknowledged as one of the finest writers for young adults today, who her literary mentors have been, and how her family history has helped to shape her as an artist, beginning with the success of her first novel, Last Summer with Maizon. Its appearance in 1990 marked Woodson's arrival on the literary scene for young adults. Over the past decade, Woodson has made a steady contribution to the field, providing quality literature for both younger and older adolescents and tackling difficult themes in the process. Additionally, Woodson has published numerous short stories, essays and commentaries, a novel for adults, and children's picture books. In 1994, she compiled A Way Out of No Way: Writings About Growing Up Black in America, a collection of excerpts of writers from Baldwin to Bambura. These writers inspired her as a young reader and continue to be role models for her as she herself uses the art of writing to provide a "way out of no way" for other young readers, pointing a "beautiful black finger toward a holy, holy place" (p. 3). As Woodson has taken an increasing number of risks with her themes, she has also continued to develop as an artist. Her body of work makes a distinctive contribution to the young adult literary world and clearly demonstrates both the writer's commitment to young adults and her ability to continue to grow as a writer; this volume includes a critical analysis of how Woodson's life and work intertwine and of the themes and her own goals as a writer and artist. As Woodson herself notes," I feel compelled to write against stereotypes, hoping people will see that some issues know no color, class, sexuality. . . . I write from the very depth of who I am, and in this place there are all of my identities."

Booktalking Nonfiction: 200 Sure-Fire Winners for Middle and High School Readers will provide an introduction to selecting and writing booktalks for nonfiction books with a focus on unique informational texts and biographies and autobiographies. A booktalk is a summary of a book presented in a way that would interest someone in reading the book described. Why non-fiction? Because the Common Core Standards Initiative, which most states have adopted, requires that 70% of the materials students read be from the category of informational texts it is especially important to focus on nonfiction when sharing books with students. Here s everything you need to do just that. Chapters cover selecting, writing, preparing, and presenting booktalks, special tips for high-interest, low-level books, and using non-fiction in the library and the classroom. Two hundred ready-to-present booktalks arranged by genre are also included. Genres include animals, famous people, sports, crime and serial killers, movies and television, religion, war, history, and the supernatural."

This collection explores the significance of New York City in children's literature, stressing literary, political, and societal influences on writing for young people from the twentieth century to the present day. Contextualized in light of contemporary critical and cultural theory, the chapters examine the varying ways in which children's literature has engaged with New York City as a city space, both in terms of (urban) realism and as an 'idea', such as the fantasy of the city as a place of opportunity, or other associations. The collection visits not only dominant themes, motifs, and tropes, but also the different narrative methods employed to tell readers about the history, function, physical structure, and conceptualization of New York City, acknowledging the shared or symbiotic relationship between literature and the city: just as literature can give imaginative 'reality' to the city, the city has the potential to shape the literary text. This book critically engages with most of the major forms and genres for children/young adults that dialogue with New York City, and considers such authors as Margaret Wise Brown, Felice Holman, E. L. Konigsburg, Maurice Sendak, J. D. Salinger, John Donovan, Shaun Tan, Elizabeth Enright, and Patti Smith.

Although L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published one hundred years ago, literary critics and historians continue to discover new approaches to the fantastic world of Oz. The second in a new series of anthologies sponsored by the Children's Literature Association, this collection of essays represents some of the most interesting of these new approaches. Beginning with a glance back over the entire history of research and commentary on the Oz books, this work is organized in three main sections. Essays in the "Origins of Oz" examine Frank Baum's personal history and unlock the mystery of one of the most bizarre episodes in the Oz books. "The World of Oz" looks at three very different aspects of Baum's world: its concept of home and family, its sense of humor, and its relationship to its young readers. "Oz on Screen" features both the silent films Baum produced himself and MGM's classic movie The Wizard of Oz.

Fantasy conjures up images of witches, fairies, dark woods, magic wands and spells, time travel, ghosts, and dragons. Each of us defines fantasy in a personal way, based on our life stories, experiences, hopes, dreams, and fears. Fantasy Literature for Children and Young Adults, helps teachers and students of literature to develop their own understandings of this broad genre in order to evaluate and promote the joy of fantasy in their classrooms. An excellent teaching tool, the discussions are organized around three categories of fantasy literature, including fairy/folktale; mixed fantasy (which includes journey, transformation, talking animal, and magic); and heroic-ethical; and they are supported by well-chosen examples of representative authors, critics, and theorists. With the assumption that the reader has no special knowledge of fantasy literature but has some previous exposure to the study of literature for children and young adults, this book focuses on reviewing texts that illustrate particular types of fantasy literature. The authors have an extensive knowledge of both classic and contemporary children's and YA titles, and they offer many insightful observations and details that make a book a particularly good classroom choice. Literature allows us to discuss controversial issues without making judgments; it allows us the opportunity to "experience" another time and space by providing a new lens through which to view; and it offers us a multitude of ways to come to appreciate and embrace the world of fantasy. Fantasy Literature for Children and Young Adults will help teachers and other readers to deepen their knowledge, appreciation, and pedagogical understandings of fantasy literature.

The essays in this collection address the relationship between children and cultural memory in texts both for and about young people. The collection overall is concerned with how cultural memory is shaped, contested, forgotten, recovered, and (re)circulated, sometimes in opposition to dominant national narratives, and often for the benefit of young readers who are assumed not to possess any prior cultural memory. From the innovative development of school libraries in the 1920s to the role of utopianism in fixing cultural memory for teen readers, it provides a critical look into children and ideologies of childhood as they are represented in a broad spectrum of texts, including film, poetry, literature, and architecture from Canada, the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, India, and Spain. These cultural forms collaborate to shape ideas and values, in turn contributing to dominant discourses about national and global citizenship. The essays included in the collection imply that childhood is an oft-imagined idealist construction based in large part on participation, identity, and perception; childhood is invisible and tangible, exciting and intriguing, and at times elusive even as cultural and literary artifacts recreate it. Children and Cultural Memory in Texts of Childhood is a valuable resource for scholars of children's literature and culture, readers interested in childhood and ideology, and those working in the fields of diaspora and postcolonial studies.

Lucy Pearson's lively and engaging book examines British children's literature during the period widely regarded as a 'second golden age'. Drawing extensively on archival material, Pearson investigates the practical and ideological factors that shaped ideas of 'good' children's literature in Britain, with particular attention to children's book publishing. Pearson begins with a critical overview of the discourse surrounding children's literature during the 1960s and 1970s, summarizing the main critical debates in the context of the broader social conversation that took place around children and childhood. The contributions of publishing houses, large and small, to changing ideas about children's literature become apparent as Pearson explores the careers of two enormously influential children's editors: Kaye Webb of Puffin Books and Aidan Chambers of Topliner Macmillan. Brilliant as an innovator of highly successful marketing strategies, Webb played a key role in defining what were, in her words, 'the best in children's books', while Chambers's work as an editor and critic illustrates the pioneering nature of children's publishing during this period. Pearson shows that social investment was a central factor in the formation of this golden age, and identifies its legacies in the modern publishing industry, both positive and negative.