LITS 2400: Children's Literature : History & Art

This critical guide provides a concise yet comprehensive history of British and North American children's literature from its seventeenth-century origins to the present day.

Children's Literature captures the rich and diverse history of children's literature in its full panorama, this extraordinary book reveals why J. R. R. Tolkien, Dr. Seuss, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Beatrix Potter, and many others, despite their divergent styles and subject matter, have all resonated with generations of readers.

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. The final section introduces key critical interpretations from different perspectives on issues including innocence, gender, fantasy, psychoanalysis and ideology.

This book describes and analyzes the different aspects of literary reading, texts, and contexts to illuminate how the book is transformed within and across different academic figurations of reading and interpreting children's literature.

In ten succinct chapters, Marina Warner guides us through the rich world of fairy tale, from Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel to Snow White and Pan's Labyrinth. Exploring pervasive themes of folklore, myth, the supernatural, imagination, and fantasy, Warner highlights the impact of the genre on human understanding, history, and culture.

The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature provides an indispensable and fascinating reference guide to the world of children's literature. Its 3,500 entries cover every genre from fairy tales to chapter books; school stories to science fiction; comics to children's hymns.

Original artwork and materials explore children's literature and its impact in society and culture over time.

A biography of the American illustrator for children exploring his life and work. Includes many samples of his work.

This lavishly illustrated book features over 280 of Steig's drawings, many of them previously unpublished, and examines every aspect of his work, from the "Small Fry" cartoons, his earliest submissions to the New Yorker, and haunting symbolic drawings of the late 1930s and 1940s, to his later, bitingly funny cartoons and celebrated books for children.

While illustration has often been marginalized in the world of fine art, the vibrant interplay among paintings, prints, comic books, graphic novels, iconic 20th-century films, and cartoons in Wiesner's art gives evidence to the complexity of the American tradition of picture book illustration.

This valuable resource features the colorful biographies of 72 illustrators and artists whose works are considered among the best in the world. Told in the artists' own words, these biographies offer fascinating insights into their lives, and feature a sample illustration from one of their favorite books.

A pioneering study of a unique narrative form, Words about Pictures examines the special qualities of picture books--books intended to educate or tell stories to young children.