In this collection of fourteen essays, Anne Scott MacLeod locates
and describes shifts in the American concept of childhood as those
changes are suggested in nearly two centuries of children's
stories. A social historian and literary critic of genuine insight,
MacLeod has helped to pioneer an approach to American culture
through the children's literature that arises from it: "When I read
books written for children", MacLeod comments in her preface, "I
look for author's views, certainly, but I also try to discover what
the culture is saying about itself, about the present and the
future, and about the nature and purposes of
childhood....Children's books don't mirror their culture, but they
do always, no matter how indirectly, convey some of its central
truths". Most of the essays concern domestic novels for children -
stories set more or less in the time of their publication and meant
for adolescent and teen readers. Some essays also draw creatively
on childhood memoirs, travel writings that contain foreigners'
observations of American children, and other studies of children's
literature. MacLeod looks beyond the books to their unwritten
subtexts - to the interplay between writers' adherence to
conventions, their own memories of youth, and their adult concerns.
She probes as well the tension between the literal, superficial
images and themes of the stories and the realities of the
surrounding culture. Beading across historical periods, MacLeod
traces changes in our attitudes toward children and shows how they
have paralleled or departed from the characteristic tone of each
era. The topics on which she writes range from the recently
politicized marketplace for children's books to thereestablishment
(and reconfiguration) of the family in the latest children's
fiction to the ways that literature challenges or enforces the
idealization of children. MacLeod sometimes considers a single
author's canon, as when she discusses the feminism of the Nancy
Drew mystery series or the Orwellian vision of Robert Cormier. At
other times, she looks at a variety of works within a particular
period, for example, Jacksonian America, the post-World War II
decade, or the 1970s. MacLeod examines anew books that she feels
have been too quickly dismissed - the Horatio Alger stories, for
example - and finds fresh, intriguing ways to view the work of such
well-known writers as Louisa May Alcott, Beverly Cleary, and Paul
Zindel. Five of the essays in American Childhood have never before
been published; four of the remaining essays have been
substantially revised and expanded since they first appeared. All
are a testament to the revelatory powers of children's literature
and to our deep emotional investment in young people.
General
Imprint: |
University of Georgia Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
February 1996 |
First published: |
February 1996 |
Authors: |
Anne Scott MacLeod
|
Dimensions: |
144 x 217 x 20mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
256 |
Edition: |
New Ed |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8203-1803-5 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-8203-1803-5 |
Barcode: |
9780820318035 |
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