Poetics of Children's Literature

Poetics of Children's Literature PDF Author: Zohar Shavit
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820334812
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Since its emergence in the seventeenth century as a distinctive cultural system, children's literature has had a culturally inferior status resulting from its existence in a netherworld between the literary system and the educational system. In addition to its official readership—children—it has to be approved of by adults. Writers for children, explains Zohar Shavit, are constrained to respond to these multiple systems of often mutually contradictory demands. Most writers do not try to bypass these constraints, but accept them as a framework for their work. In the most extreme cases an author may ignore one segment of the readership. If the adult reader is ignored, the writer risks rejection, as is the case of popular literature. If the writer utilizes the child as a pseudo addressee in order to appeal to an adult audience, the result can be what Shavit terms an ambivalent work. Shavit analyzes the conventions and the moral aims that have structured children's literature, from the fairy tales collected and reworked by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm—in particular, “Little Red Riding Hood”—through the complex manipulations of Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, to the subversion of the genre's canonical requirements in the chapbooks of the eighteenth century, and in the formulaic Nancy Drew books of the twentieth century. Throughout her study Shavit, explores not only how society has shaped children's literature, but also how society has been reflected in the literary works it produces for its children.

Poetics of Children's Literature

Poetics of Children's Literature PDF Author: Zohar Shavit
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820334812
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book

Book Description
Since its emergence in the seventeenth century as a distinctive cultural system, children's literature has had a culturally inferior status resulting from its existence in a netherworld between the literary system and the educational system. In addition to its official readership—children—it has to be approved of by adults. Writers for children, explains Zohar Shavit, are constrained to respond to these multiple systems of often mutually contradictory demands. Most writers do not try to bypass these constraints, but accept them as a framework for their work. In the most extreme cases an author may ignore one segment of the readership. If the adult reader is ignored, the writer risks rejection, as is the case of popular literature. If the writer utilizes the child as a pseudo addressee in order to appeal to an adult audience, the result can be what Shavit terms an ambivalent work. Shavit analyzes the conventions and the moral aims that have structured children's literature, from the fairy tales collected and reworked by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm—in particular, “Little Red Riding Hood”—through the complex manipulations of Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, to the subversion of the genre's canonical requirements in the chapbooks of the eighteenth century, and in the formulaic Nancy Drew books of the twentieth century. Throughout her study Shavit, explores not only how society has shaped children's literature, but also how society has been reflected in the literary works it produces for its children.

The Poetics of Childhood

The Poetics of Childhood PDF Author: Roni Natov
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113572170X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Random House Book of Poetry for Children

The Random House Book of Poetry for Children PDF Author: Jack Prelutsky
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0394850106
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
The most accessible and joyous introduction to the world of poetry! The Random House Book of Poetry for Children offers both funny and illuminating poems for kids personally selected by the nation's first Children's Poet Laureate, Jack Prelutsky. Featuring a wealth of beloved classic poems from the past and modern glittering gems, every child who opens this treasury will finda world of surprises and delights which will instill a lifelong love of poetry. Featuring 572 unforgettable poems, and over 400 one-of-a-kind illustrations from the Caldecott-winning illustrator of the Frog and Toad series, Arnold Lobel, this collection is, quite simply, the perfect way to introduce children to the world of poetry.

The Aesthetics of Children's Poetry

The Aesthetics of Children's Poetry PDF Author: Katherine Wakely-Mulroney
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317045548
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
This collection gives sustained attention to the literary dimensions of children’s poetry from the eighteenth century to the present. While reasserting the importance of well-known voices, such as those of Isaac Watts, William Blake, Lewis Carroll, Christina Rossetti, A. A. Milne, and Carol Ann Duffy, the contributors also reflect on the aesthetic significance of landmark works by less frequently celebrated figures such as Richard Johnson, Ann and Jane Taylor, Cecil Frances Alexander and Michael Rosen. Scholarly treatment of children’s poetry has tended to focus on its publication history rather than to explore what comprises – and why we delight in – its idiosyncratic pleasures. And yet arguments about how and why poetic language might appeal to the child are embroiled in the history of children’s poetry, whether in Isaac Watts emphasising the didactic efficacy of “like sounds,” William Blake and the Taylor sisters revelling in the beauty of semantic ambiguity, or the authors of nonsense verse jettisoning sense to thrill their readers with the sheer music of poetry. Alive to the ways in which recent debates both echo and repudiate those conducted in earlier periods, The Aesthetics of Children’s Poetry investigates the stylistic and formal means through which children’s poetry, in theory and in practice, negotiates the complicated demands we have made of it through the ages.

Considering Children's Literature

Considering Children's Literature PDF Author: Andrea Schwenke Wyile
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 1551116049
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
“The study of children’s literature is not just about children and the books said to be for them; it is also about the societies and cultures from which the literature comes, and it is about the assumptions and ideas we hold about children and childhood. For adults, reading children’s literature is ultimately both an act of nostalgia and of self-examination. When we consider children’s literature, we must include ourselves in the equation: What kinds of readers are we? How do we relate to books and stories? To what degree should we impose our experience upon others? Reading children’s literature actively can lead to all kinds of remarkable (and sometimes unsettling) revelations about ourselves and our society.” — from the Introduction Considering Children’s Literature is a collection of previously published essays on a variety of topics that inform the study of children’s literature. Exploring issues such as censorship, the canon, the meanings of fairy tales, and the adaptation of children’s literature into film, the essays in this anthology are as diverse as they are illuminating. Along with authors like Natalie Babbitt and Margaret Mahy, teachers, scholars, and publishers of children’s books are also contributors. Accessible and comprehensive, this book will appeal to anyone interested in children’s literature.

Irish Children’s Literature and the Poetics of Memory

Irish Children’s Literature and the Poetics of Memory PDF Author: Rebecca Long
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350167266
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Focusing on the mythological narratives that influence Irish children's literature, this book examines the connections between landscape, time and identity, positing that myth and the language of myth offer authors and readers the opportunity to engage with Ireland's culture and heritage. It explores the recurring patterns of Irish mythological narratives that influence literature produced for children in Ireland between the nineteenth and the twenty-first centuries. A selection of children's books published between 1892, when there was an escalation of the cultural pursuit of Irish independence and 2016, which marked the centenary of the Easter 1916 rebellion against English rule, are discussed with the aim of demonstrating the development of a pattern of retrieving, re-telling, remembering and re-imagining myths in Irish children's literature. In doing so, it examines the reciprocity that exists between imagination, memory, and childhood experiences in this body of work.

Types of Children's Literature

Types of Children's Literature PDF Author: Walter Barnes
Publisher: IndyPublish.com
ISBN: 9781404358249
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description


Types of Children's Literature

Types of Children's Literature PDF Author: Walter Barnes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Children's literature
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description


Children's Literature

Children's Literature PDF Author: Barbara Stoodt
Publisher: Macmillan Education AU
ISBN: 9780732940126
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description


The Politics and Poetics of Irish Children's Literature

The Politics and Poetics of Irish Children's Literature PDF Author: Nancy Watson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Although the work of many contemporary Irish writers for children is often complex and sophisticated there is currently very little critical analysis to do it justice. The aim of this book is to redress that situation and to prove that the best writing for children is no less complex and well written than the best adult fiction and offers valuable material for theoreticians. With a detailed examination of selected texts by six Irish writers for children, the book explores the reciprocal relationship between the different time and place of the child reader and the complexity and multiplicity of the world of the adult writer. It suggests that putting the different forms of experience in dialogue with each other promotes a new understanding because it allows for other points of view and other ways of seeing. This book also suggests that the way in which these writers implement the potential of the child reader's different perspective refutes the idea of the 'impossible' relation between adult and child. The opening chapter explores the attempt to re-create childhood and adolescence in a range of Irish memoir and fiction.