Academic literature on the topic 'Children's literature. Children's literature Children's literature'

My studies consider the genre of children's literature, specifically picture books, and their treatment of the topic of diabetes. I frame my argument with an examination of diabetes, the psychological effects of diabetes on the child, the need of thorough education about diabetes. I argue for the use of the picture book as an effect tool in educating and socializing the diabetic child. I first explore the implications of diabetes and the long term complications caused by one's poor control of the disease. I then explore the psychological ramifications of a chronic illness on the young child. Next I assert the need to combine the physiological and psychological factors of diabetes into a responsible text for children, one which both serves as an educating tool and a source of comfort in difficult times with the disease. I conclude my studies with critiques of existing materials in the limited genre and compare them to the story I have written for children about diabetes.<br>Master of Arts

Children’s Literature Grows Up proposes that there is a revolution occurring in contemporary children’s fiction that challenges the divide that has long existed between literature for children and literature for adults. Children’s literature, though it has long been considered worthy of critical inquiry, has never enjoyed the same kind of extensive intellectual attention as adult literature because children’s literature has not been considered to be serious literature or “high art.” Children’s Literature Grows Up draws upon recent scholarship about the thematic transformations occurring in the category, but demonstrates that there is also an emerging aesthetic and stylistic sophistication in recent works for children that confirms the existence of children’s narratives that are equally complex, multifaceted, and worthy of the same kind of academic inquiry that is afforded to adult literature. This project investigates the history of children’s literature in order to demonstrate the way that children’s literature and adult literature have, at different points in history, grown closer or farther apart, explores the reasons for this ebb and flow, and explains why contemporary children’s literature marks a reunification of the two categories. Employing J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels as a its primary example, Children’s Literature Grows Up demonstrates that this new kind of contemporary children’s fiction is a culmination of two traditions: the tradition of the readerly children’s book and the tradition of the writerly adult novel. With the fairy tales, mythologies, legends, and histories that contemporary writers weave into their texts, contemporary fictions for children incorporate previous defining characteristics of children’s fantasy literature and tap into our cultural memory; with their sophisticated style, complex narrative strategies, and focus on characterization, these new fictions display the realism and seriousness of purpose which have become the adult novel’s defining features. Children’s Literature Grows Up thus concludes that contemporary children’s fiction’s power comes from the way in which it combines story and art by bringing together both the children’s literature tradition and the tradition of the adult novel, as well as the values to which they are allied. Contemporary writers for children therefore raise the stakes of their narratives and change the tradition by moving beyond the expected conventions of their category.<br>Comparative Literature

This study focuses on the notion that adults’ response to children’s literature is profoundly different from that of children, and aims to identify a pattern in texts by which adults’ response can be systematically explained. The study suggests that adults respond to certain elements in the text that resonate with their assumptions about children’s literature. On this basis, the concept of adultness is introduced to refer to these textual elements, and the way in which they can be identified in the narrative is investigated. This study concentrates on literary books, mostly published after 1960, since the issues discussed are more directly relevant to literary works than to popular fiction or classic children’s literature. Brief surveys of historical development of children’s literature and changes in the social perceptions about the relationships between adults and children are undertaken in order to understand the backgrounds of adults’ assumptions about children’s literature. Discussions about adults’ perceptions of children’s literature today are also reviewed. Texts from a wide range of children’s literature are examined within the theoretical framework of narratology with a particular reference to the functions of the narrator. The examination has identified two types of adultness: direct adultness which is largely related to adults’ ideas about childhood, and indirect adultness which is related to adults’ interest in what may be relevant to the child readers of the book. The third type of adultness is termed as Haddon’s ring, which refers to the textual features that are used by authors to keep the narrative safe for child readers. It can be used without losing the narrative integrity or it can be used to manipulate the narrative development. The study concludes that adults’ response could be explained by referring to the three types of adultness. Adultness can be broadly understood in terms of the textual signs that indicate the presence of the mutual understanding between the author and the adult reader on what has been left out from the text and why the author has held it back.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2004.<br>Title from title page screen, viewed November 22, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Roberta Seelinger Trites (chair), Karen Coats, C. Anita Tarr. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-256) and abstract. Also available in print.