Photography in Children’s Literature is the first study that examines the wide array of artistic techniques, topics, and genres used within photographic books for children. Covering a time period from the 1870s to the 1980s, the collection offers multifaceted insights into changing perceptions of children and childhood during an era when the world changed in unprecedented ways. More than sixty full-color illustrations demonstrate an impressive variety of genres, from ABC books, concept books, and country portraits to photo reportage and poetry. By discussing photographic books from ten countries and three continents, the collection offers an international scope, providing a glimpse into the production and reception of photography in children’s literature in a range of contexts and cultures. Photographic books for children thus open up new vistas for scholars interested in an interdisciplinary and transnational investigation of children’s literature, text and images, across the centuries.

Metaphysics of Children's Literature is the first sustained study of ways in which children's literature confronts metaphysical questions about reality and the nature of what there is in the world. In its exploration of something and nothing, this book identifies a number of metaphysical structures in texts for young people-such as the ontological exchange or nowhere in extremis-demonstrating that their entanglement with the workings of reality is unique to the conditions of children's literature. Drawing on contemporary children's literature discourse and metaphysicians from Heidegger and Levinas, to Bachelard, Sartre and Haraway, Lisa Sainsbury reveals the metaphysical groundwork of children's literature. Authors and illustrators covered include: Allan and Janet Ahlberg, Mac Barnett, Ron Brooks, Peter Brown, Lewis Carroll, Eoin Colfer, Gary Crew, Roald Dahl, Roddy Doyle, Imme Dros, Sarah Ellis, Mem Fox, Zana Fraillon, Libby Gleeson, Kenneth Grahame, Armin Greder, Sonya Hartnett, Tana Hoban, Judy Horacek, Tove Jansson, Oliver Jeffers, Jon Klassen, Elaine Konigsburg, Norman Lindsay, Geraldine McCaughrean, Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris, Edith Nesbit, Mary Norton, Jill Paton Walsh, Philippa Pearce, Ivan Southall, William Steig, Shaun Tan, Tarjei Vesaas, David Wiesner, Margaret Wild, Jacqueline Woodson and many others.

In this volume, Jan Susina examines the importance of Lewis Carroll and his popular Alice books to the field of children’s literature. From a study of Carroll’s juvenilia to contemporary multimedia adaptations of Wonderland, Susina shows how the Alice books fit into the tradition of literary fairy tales and continue to influence children’s writers. In addition to examining Carroll’s books for children, these essays also explore his photographs of children, his letters to children, his ill-fated attempt to write for a dual audience of children and adults, and his lasting contributions to publishing. The book addresses the important, but overlooked facet of Carroll’s career as an astute entrepreneur who carefully developed an extensive Alice industry of books and non-book items based on the success of Wonderland, while rigorously defending his reputation as the originator of his distinctive style of children’s stories.

From the villainous beast of “Little Red Riding Hood” and “The Three Little Pigs,” to the nurturing wolves of Romulus and Remus and Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, the wolf has long been a part of the landscape of children’s literature. Meanwhile, since the 1960s and the popularization of scientific research on these animals, children’s books have begun to feature more nuanced views. In Picturing the Wolf in Children’s Literature, Mitts-Smith analyzes visual images of the wolf in children’s books published in Western Europe and North America from 1500 to the present. In particular, she considers how wolves are depicted in and across particular works, the values and attitudes that inform these depictions, and how the concept of the wolf has changed over time. What she discovers is that illustrations and photos in works for children impart social, cultural, and scientific information not only about wolves, but also about humans and human behavior. First encountered in childhood, picture books act as a training ground where the young learn both how to decode the “symbolic” wolf across various contexts and how to make sense of “real” wolves. Mitts-Smith studies sources including myths, legends, fables, folk and fairy tales, fractured tales, fictional stories, and nonfiction, highlighting those instances in which images play a major role, including illustrated anthologies, chapbooks, picture books, and informational books. This book will be of interest to children’s literature scholars, as well as those interested in the figure of the wolf and how it has been informed over time.

Provides articles covering children's literature from around the world as well as biographical and critical reviews of authors including Avi, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, and Anno Mitsumasa.

This practitioner-oriented introduction to literature for children ages 5–12 covers the latest trends, titles, and tools for choosing the best books and materials as well as for planning fun and effective programs and activities. The third edition of Children's Literature in Action provides an activity-oriented survey of children's literature for undergraduate and graduate students seeking licensure and degrees that will lead to careers working with children in schools and public libraries. Author Sylvia M. Vardell draws on her 30 years of university teaching and extensive familiarity with the major textbooks in the area of children's literature to deliver something different: a book that focuses specifically on the perspective and needs of the librarian, with emphasis on practical action and library applications. Its contents address seven major genres: picture books, traditional tales, poetry, contemporary realistic fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, and informational books. Each chapter includes practical applications for the educator who shares books with children and who develops literature-based instruction. Chapters are enriched by author comments, collaborative activities, featured books, special topics, and activities including selected awards and celebrations, historical connections, recommended resources, issues for discussion, and assignment suggestions. This new edition incorporates the 2018 AASL National School Library Standards.

Considering children’s literature as a powerful repository for creating and proliferating cultural and national identities, this monograph is the first academic study of children’s literature in translation from the Western Balkans. Marija Todorova looks at a broad range of children’s literature, from fiction to creative non-fiction and picture books, across five different countries in the Western Balkans, with each chapter including detailed textual and visual analysis through the predominant lens of violence. These chapters raise questions around who initiates and effectuates the selection of children’s literature from the Western Balkans for translation into English, and interrogate the role of different stakeholders, such as translators, publishers and cultural institutions in the representation and construction of these countries in translated children’s literature, both in text and visually. Given the combination of this study’s interdisciplinary nature and Todorova’s detailed analysis, this book will prove to be an essential resource for professional translators, researchers and students in courses in translation studies, children’s literature or area studies, especially that of countries in the Western Balkans. .