The Feminine Subject in Children's Literature

The Feminine Subject in Children's Literature PDF Author: Christine Wilkie-Stibbs
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136699929
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book builds upon and contributes to the growing academic interest in feminism within the field of children's literature studies. Christie Wilkie-Stibbs draws upon the work of Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Lacan in her analysis of particular children's literature texts to demonstrate how a feminist analysis opens up textual possibilities that may be applied to works of children's fiction in general, extending the range of textual engagements in children's literature through the application of a new poststructural critical apparati.

Girls, Boys, Books, Toys

Girls, Boys, Books, Toys PDF Author: Beverly Lyon Clark
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801865268
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
No previous collection of criticism has focused on gender in the broad range of children's literature. No previous collection has embraced both children's literature and material culture. Beverly Lyon Clark and Margaret R. Higonnet bring together twenty-two scholars to look closely at the complexities of children's culture. Girls, Boys, Books, Toys asks questions about how the gender symbolism of children's culture is constructed and resisted. What happens when women rewrite (or illustrate) nursery rhymes, adventure stories, and fairy tales told by men? How do the socially scripted plots for boys and girls change through time and across cultures? Have critics been blind to what women write about "masculine" topics? Can animal tales or doll stories displace tired commonplaces about gender, race, and class? Can different critical approaches—new historicism, narratology, or postcolonialism—enable us to gain leverage on the different implications of gender, age, race, and class in our readings of children's books and children's culture?

The Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature

The Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature PDF Author: M. O. Grenby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139828045
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Some of the most innovative and spell-binding literature has been written for young people, but only recently has academic study embraced its range and complexity. This Companion offers a state-of-the-subject survey of English-language children's literature from the seventeenth century to the present. With discussions ranging from eighteenth-century moral tales to modern fantasies by J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman, the Companion illuminates acknowledged classics and many more neglected works. Its unique structure means that equal consideration can be given to both texts and contexts. Some chapters analyse key themes and major genres, including humour, poetry, school stories, and picture books. Others explore the sociological dimensions of children's literature and the impact of publishing practices. Written by leading scholars from around the world, this Companion will be essential reading for all students and scholars of children's literature, offering original readings and new research that reflects the latest developments in the field.

Ways of Being Male

Ways of Being Male PDF Author: John Stephens
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135363919
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Given the substantial impact of feminism on children’s literature and culture during the last quarter century, it comes as no surprise that gender studies have focused predominantly on issues of female representation. The question of how the same patriarchal ideology structured representations of male bodies and behaviors was until very recently a marginal discussion. Now that masculinity has emerges as an overt theme in children’s literature and film, critical consideration of the subject is timely, if not long overdue Ways of Being Male addresses this new concern in an unprecedented collection of essays examining how contemporary debates about masculinity are reflected in fiction and film for young adults. An outstanding team of scholars elucidates the ways in which different versions of male identity are constructed and presented to young audiences. The contributors, drawn from a variety of academic disciplines, employ international discourses in literary criticism, feminism, social sciences, film theory, psychoanalytic criticism, and queer theory in their wide-ranging exploration of male representation. With its illuminating array of perspectives, this pioneering survey brings a long neglected subject into sharp focus.

Into the Closet

Into the Closet PDF Author: Victoria Flanagan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136777288
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Into the Closet examines the representation of cross-dressing in a wide variety of children’s fiction, ranging from picture books and junior fiction to teen films and novels for young adults. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the different types of cross-dressing found in children’s narratives, raising a number of significant issues relating to the ideological construction of masculinity and femininity in books for younger readers. Many literary and cultural critics have studied the cultural significance of adult cross-dressing, yet although cross-dressing representations are plentiful in children’s literature and film, very little critical attention has been paid to this subject to date. Into the Closet fills this critical gap. Cross-dressing demonstrates how gender is symbolically constructed through various items of clothing and apparel. It also has the ability to deconstruct notions of problematizing the relationship between sex and gender. Into the Closet is an important book for academics, teachers, and parents because it demonstrates how cross-dressing, rather than being taboo, is frequently used in children’s literature and film as a strategy to educate (or enculturate) children about gender.

Waking Sleeping Beauty

Waking Sleeping Beauty PDF Author: Roberta S. Trites
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587292394
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
The Sleeping Beauty in Roberta Seelinger Trites' intriguing text is no silent snoozer passively waiting for Prince Charming to energize her life. Instead she wakes up all by herself and sets out to redefine the meaning of “happily ever after.” Trites investigates the many ways that Sleeping Beauty's newfound voice has joined other strong female voices in feminist children's novels to generate equal potentials for all children. Waking Sleeping Beauty explores issues of voice in a wide range of children's novels, including books by Virginia Hamilton, Patricia MacLachlan, and Cynthia Voight as well as many multicultural and international books. Far from being a limiting genre that praises females at the expense of males, the feminist children's novel seeks to communicate an inclusive vision of politics, gender, age, race, and class. By revising former stereotypes of children's literature and replacing them with more complete images of females in children's books, Trites encourages those involved with children's literature—teachers, students, writers, publishers, critics, librarian, booksellers, and parents—to be aware of the myriad possibilities of feminist expression. Roberta Trites focuses on the positive aspects of feminism: on the ways females interact through family and community relationships, on the ways females have revised patriarchal images, and on the ways female writers use fictional constructs to transmit their ideologies to readers. She thus provides a framework that allows everyone who enters a classroom with a children's book in hand to recognize and communicate—with an optimistic, reality-based sense of “happily ever after”—the politics and the potential of that book.

Sexuality in Literature for Children and Young Adults

Sexuality in Literature for Children and Young Adults PDF Author: Paul Venzo
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000393445
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
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.

The Outside Child, In and Out of the Book

The Outside Child, In and Out of the Book PDF Author: Christine Wilkie-Stibbs
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135867119
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Christine Wilkie-Stibbs juxtaposes the narratives of literary and actual "outsider" children to explore how Western culture has imagined, defined, and dealt with various marginalized children, whether orphans, homeless, refugees, or victims of abuse.

The Feminine Mystique

The Feminine Mystique PDF Author: Betty Friedan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393322572
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 587

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Book Description
The book that changed the consciousness of a country—and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name," that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since. A national bestseller, with over 1 million copies sold.

Blueberries for Sal

Blueberries for Sal PDF Author: Robert McCloskey
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101654813
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
What happens when Sal and her mother meet a mother bear and her cub? A Caldecott Honor Book! Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk! Sal and her mother a picking blueberries to can for the winter. But when Sal wanders to the other side of Blueberry Hill, she discovers a mama bear preparing for her own long winter. Meanwhile Sal's mother is being followed by a small bear with a big appetite for berries! Will each mother go home with the right little one? With its expressive line drawings and charming story, Blueberries for Sal has won readers' hearts since its first publication in 1948. "The adventures of a little girl and a baby bear while hunting for blueberries with their mothers one bright summer day. All the color and flavor of the sea and pine-covered Maine countryside."—School Library Journal, starred review.