The Oxford Handbook of Children's Literature

Description

The Oxford Handbook of Children's Literature is at once a literary history, an introduction to various theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches, a review of genres, and a selection of original, cutting-edge, and interdisciplinary critical essays on canonical and popular works for children in the Anglo-American tradition.

• Offers the most wide-ranging, in-depth assessment of children's literature available.
• Features contributions from the most renowned scholars working in the field.
• Covers both familiar and unfamiliar texts, including everything from The Cat in the Hat to His Dark Materials.

About the Author(s)

Edited by Julia Mickenberg, Associate Professor of American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, and Lynne Vallone, Professor and Chair of Childhood Studies, Rutgers University

Julia Mickenberg is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Learning from the Left: Children's Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics in the United States and coeditor of Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature. Lynne Vallone is Professor and Chair of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University, the first Ph.D.-granting department of Childhood Studies in the United States. She is the author of Becoming Victoria and Disciplines of Virtue: Girls' Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

Table of Contents

Introduction-Julia Mickenberg and Lynne Vallone
I. Adults and Children
1. The Fundamentals of Children's Literature Criticism: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871). Peter Hunt
2. Randall Jarrell's The Bat Poet (1964): Poets, Children, and Readers in an Age of Prose. Richard Flynn
3. Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad Together (1979) as a Primer for Critical Literacy. Teya Rosenberg
4. Blending Genres and Crossing Audiences: Harry Potter (1997-2007) and the Future of Literary Fiction. Karin Westman
II. Pictures and Poetics
5. Wanda's Wonderland: Wanda Gág and Her Millions of Cats (1928). Nathalie op de Beeck
6. A Cross-Written Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes' The Dreamkeeper (1932). Katharine Capshaw Smith
7. Dumbo (1941), Disney, and Difference: Walt Disney Productions and Film as Children's Literature. Nicholas Sammond
8. Redrawing the Comic Strip Child: Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts (1950-52, 1959-60) as Cross-Writing. Charles Hatfield
9. The Cat in the Hippie: Dr. Seuss, Nonsense, the Carnivalesque, and the Sixties Rebel (The Cat in the Hat [1957]). Kevin Shortsleeve
10. Wild Things and Wolf Dreams: Maurice Sendak, Picturebook Psychologist (Where the Wild Things Are [1963]). Kenneth Kidd
11. Re-imagining the Monkey King in Comics: Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese (2006). Lan Dong
III. Reading History/Learning Race and Class
12. Froggy's Little Brother (1875): Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Writing for Children and the Politics of Poverty. Kimberley Reynolds
13. History in Fiction: Contextualization as Interpretation in Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped (1886). M.O. Grenby
14. Tom Sawyer (1876), Audience and American Indians. Beverly Lyon Clark
15. Living with the Kings: Class, Taste, and Family Formation in Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1881). Kelly Hager
16. A Daughter of the House: Discourses of Adoption in L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, (1908). Mavis Reimer
17. Where in America Are You, God? Judy Blume, Margaret Simon and American National Identity (Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret [1970]). June Cummins
18. Let Freedom Ring: Land, Liberty, Literacy and Lore in Mildred Taylor's Logan Family Novels (1975-2001). Michelle Martin
19. 'What are Young People to Think'?: The Subject of Immigration and the Immigrant Subject in Francisco Jiménez's The Circuit (1997). Philip Serrato
IV. Innocence and Agency
20. 'My Book and Heart Shall Never Part': Reading, Printing, and Circulation in the New England Primer (1688-90). Courtney Weikle-Mills
21. Castaways: Swiss Family Robinson (1812, 1814), Child Book-Makers, and the Possibilities of Literary Flotsam. Karen Sánchez-Eppler
22. Tom Brown and the Schoolboy Crush: Boyhood Desire, Hero-worship, and the Boys' School Story (Tom Brown's Schooldays [1857]). Eric Tribunella
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23. Peter Pan (1904) as Children's Theater: The Issue of Audience. Marah Gubar. Peter Pan (1904) as Children's Theater: The Issue of Audience.
24. Jade (1969) and the Tomboy Tradition. Claudia Nelson
25. Happily Ever After: Free to Be L You and Me (1972), Second-Wave Feminism, and 1970s American Children's Culture. Leslie Paris
26. Paradise Refigured: Innocence and Experience in His Dark Materials (1995-2000). Naomi Wood

Reviews

"Any institution with children's literature classes will definitely want a copy, but given the resonant approaches and wide applicability, there's much here for people teaching any of these texts or for those looking for new ways to enrich a literary syllabus." - Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books