Comparative Children's Literature

PMLA ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 126 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emer O'Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Book Industry ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Children's Book ◽  
Natural Site ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Striking Change ◽  
Children's Culture

The most striking change in children's culture, including children's literature, over the last few decades has been its commercialization and globalization (O'Sullivan, Comparative Children's Literature 149–52). The children's book industry in the United States, the leading market, is increasingly dominated by a handful of large media conglomerates whose publishing operations are small sections of their entertainment businesses. As a consequence, as Daniel Hade observes, “the mass marketplace selects which books will survive, and thus the children's book becomes less a cultural and intellectual object and more an entertainment looking for mass appeal” (511). The influence of these multimedia giants is immense: manufacturing mass-produced goods for children, they sell their products beyond the borders of individual countries, further changing and globalizing what were once regionally contained children's cultures. As a discipline that engages with phenomena that transcend cultural and linguistic borders and also with specific social, literary, and linguistic contexts, comparative children's literature is a natural site in which to tease out the implications of these recent developments.

Middle-Class Victorian Street Arabs: Modern Re-creations of the Baker Street Irregulars

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Cheetham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Street Children ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Upward Shift

In three of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories there are brief appearances of the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of ‘street Arabs’ who help Holmes with his investigations. These children have been re-imagined in modern children's literature in at least twenty-seven texts in a variety of media and with writers from both Britain and the United States. All these modern stories show a marked upward shift in the class of the Irregulars away from the lower working class of Conan-Doyle's originals. The shift occurs through attributing middle-class origins to the leaders of the Irregulars, through raising the class of the Irregulars in general, and through giving the children life environments more comfortable, safe, and financially secure than would have been possible for late-Victorian street children. Because of the variety in texts and writers, it is argued that this shift is not a result of the conscious political or ideological positions of individual writers, but rather reflects common unconscious narrative choices. The class-shift is examined in relation to the various pressures of conventions in children's literature, concepts of audience, and common concepts of class in society.

Philosophy for Children

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-57
Author(s):  
Kenneth B. Kidd
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Progressive Education ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Children's Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Philosophy For Children ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
Matthew Lipman

Emphasizing the contributions of Matthew Lipman and Gareth Matthews, Chapter 1 examines the P4C movement, which promotes the idea that both children and children’s literature have philosophical tendencies. For P4C, to think philosophically means to think both critically and creatively. This vision of philosophy aligns with a similar understanding of theory. P4C got its start in the United States and has since spread to other countries and continents. At one point there were reportedly 5,000 P4C programs in the United States alone. P4C is enjoying a recent resurgence and continues to be influential worldwide. Chapter 1 examines the evolving use of children’s literature in P4C, as a way of understanding the mutualities of children’s literature and philosophy. P4C has helped to establish children’s literature as philosophical and ethical engagement, linking it with progressive education and children’s rights. It promises also to keep philosophy fresh for practitioners and the larger public. Contemporary PwC (philosophy with children) gives priority to the use of picturebooks.

Asian American Children’s Literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Park Dahlen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Children's Book ◽  
Asian Diaspora

Asian American children’s literature includes books of many different genres that depict some aspect of the Asian diaspora. In total, the books should depict the breadth and depth of Asian diasporic experiences. Children’s books published in the early 20th century include mostly folktales, while books published after the 1965 Immigration Act tend to include contemporary fiction, poetry, and biographies. They address topics such as immigration and acculturation as well as capture landmark moments and experiences in Asian American history, such as the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and the transnational, transracial adoption of Asian children to the United States. Books published at the turn of the 20th century have broached newer topics, such as mixed-race identities, and are written in a variety of genres including fantasy. As noted by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, the number of books by and/or about Asian Americans published is disproportionate to the total number of books published each year and to the population of Asians in the Americas. Also some Asian American writers continue to publish on topics unrelated to their identities. Academic researchers, practitioners, and writers have addressed various aspects of how this body of literature represents Asian Americans, mostly noting distortions and erasure and offering suggestions for improvement, emerging topics, and engagement with young people.

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