Originally published in 1996. A detailed analysis of the art of children's literature covering world literature for children, children's literature as a canonical art form, the history of children's literature from a semiotic perspective, and epic, polyphony, chronotope, intertextuality, and metafiction in children's literature.

Edited by Morag Styles and written by an interational team of acknowledged experts, this series provides jargon-free, critical discussion and a comprehensive guide to literary and popular texts for children. Each book introduces the reader to a major genre of children's literature, covering key authors, major works and contexts in which those texts are published. Margaret Meek and Victor Watson provide a profound and revealing examiniation of the treatment of personal development, maturation and rites of passage in literature written for children and adolescents. Including a broad survey of the theme across a number of genres and an in-depth analysis of the work of key writers, the authors work towards an answer to the question "What is a classic?" Margaret Meek is Reader Emeritus at the Institute of Education in London. Victor Watson is Assistant Director of Research at Homerton College, Cambridge.

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.

Beatrix Potter was one of the inventors of the contemporary picture book, and her small novels published at the turn of the twentieth century are still available and popular today. Writing in Code is the first book-length study of Potter's work, and it covers the entire oeuvre, examining all facets of her work in relation to her private life. Daphne Kutzer reveals the depth of the symbolism in Potter’s work and relates this to the issues of the author's own development as an independent woman and writer, and her struggles with domesticity, Unitarianism, and the socio-political issues in late-19th and early-20th century England. Weaving the subtle themes inscribed in Potter's own stories with the concerns and temperament of the author who wrote them, Kutzer exemplifies literary criticism as it can illuminate the breadth of allusion in children's literature.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

How Picturebooks Work is an innovative and engaging look at the interplay between text and image in picturebooks. The authors explore picturebooks as a specific medium or genre in literature and culture, one that prepares children for other media of communication, and they argue that picturebooks may be the most influential media of all in the socialization and representation of children. Spanning an international range of children's books, this book examine such favorites as Curious George and Frog and Toad Are Friends, along with the works of authors and illustrators including Maurice Sendak and Tove Jansson, among others. With 116 illustrations, How Picturebooks Work offers the student of children's literature a new methodology, new theories, and a new set of critical tools for examining the picturebook form.