Bums, Poops, and Pees: A Scholarly Examination of Why Children Love and Adults Censor the Scatological in Children’s Books

Author(s):  
Ann Curry

Interviews with Canadian children’s public librarians reveal that they believe fiction and non-fiction scatological content has an important place in library collections, that children have an intellectual freedom right to access this material, and that adults have many misconceptions about the role of library collections and the development of juvenile humour.Des entrevues auprès de bibliothécaires jeunesses au Canada révèlent qu’ils croient que le contenu scatologique dans les documents de fiction et de non-fiction a sa place dans les collections en bibliothèque, que les enfants ont un droit intellectuel d’accès à ce type de matériel et que les adultes ont de nombreuses fausses idées quant au rôle des collections en bibliothèque et au développement d’un sens de l’humour juvénile.

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Joosen

Compared to the attention that children's literature scholars have paid to the construction of childhood in children's literature and the role of adults as authors, mediators and readers of children's books, few researchers have made a systematic study of adults as characters in children's books. This article analyses the construction of adulthood in a selection of texts by the Dutch author and Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner Guus Kuijer and connects them with Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's recent concept of ‘childism’ – a form of prejudice targeted against children. Whereas Kuijer published a severe critique of adulthood in Het geminachte kind [The despised child] (1980), in his literary works he explores a variety of positions that adults can take towards children, with varying degrees of childist features. Such a systematic and comparative analysis of the way grown-ups are characterised in children's texts helps to shed light on a didactic potential that materialises in different adult subject positions. After all, not only literary and artistic aspects of children's literature may be aimed at the adult reader (as well as the child), but also the didactic aspect of children's books can cross over between different age groups.


2002 ◽  
Vol 103 (7/8) ◽  
pp. 267-272
Author(s):  
Michael Ryan

This article uses a narrative to describe the way in which one project, centred round the restoration of a collection of historic children’s books, developed into a much wider international project. It looks at the managerial issues and some of the technical issues concerned and draws a number of conclusions about how such projects can be developed. In particular it looks at the role of partnership, project management and the frequently under‐appreciated role of publicity and promotion. It examines the ways in which project partners need to agree criteria and methods of working, as well as the key role played by specialist staff and various supporting organisations.


1970 ◽  
Vol 42 (117) ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Anna Karlskov Skyggebjerg

SECOND WORLD WAR NARRATED FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNGSTERS. INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY IN NEW DANISH LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN | Children’s books about the Second World War have been written and published ever since it ended. One would perhaps imagine that the ever-increasing distance from it would mean a waning interest, but that does not seem to be the case. Over the last few years, a whole range of remarkable children’s books have appeared in Denmark. New things can still be written about this period, and the time gap can be said to have had the effect of freeing up material. This should not be taken as meaning that newer books are less reliable, historically speaking, but rather that they present the period in a new light. In this article a number of recent Danish novels will be discussed with respect to how they deal with history. It is not the intention to try to make non-fiction out of historical novels for children, which would mean reading the books in a manner which was at variance with the genre they belong to, but one of the premises of the article is that the historical novel is to be understood as a form of discourse lying somewhere between history and pure fiction. The historical novel is seen as a piece of fiction presenting one or several interpretations of a given period of history by setting its story in a particular context.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-205
Author(s):  
Philip Gaydon ◽  
Phil Gaydon

An interview with Anne Fine with an introduction and aside on the role of children’s literature in our lives and development, and our adult perceptions of the suitability of childhood reading material.Since graduating from Warwick in 1968 with a BA in Politics and History, Anne Fine has written over fifty books for children and eight for adults, won the Carnegie Medal twice (for Goggle-Eyes in 1989 and Flour Babies in 1992), been a highly commended runner-up three times (for Bill’s New Frock in 1989, The Tulip Touch in 1996, and Up on Cloud Nine in 2002), been shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award (the highest recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children’s books, 1998), undertaken the positon of Children’s Laureate (2001-2003), and been awarded an OBE for her services to literature (2003). Warwick presented Fine with an Honorary Doctorate in 2005.Philip Gaydon’s interview with Anne Fine was recorded as part of the ‘Voices of the University’ oral history project, co-ordinated by Warwick’s Institute of Advanced Study.


Author(s):  
Angus Phillips

Trade publishing at Oxford University Press included those titles aimed at a broader audience, including general non-fiction, illustrated histories and encyclopedias, World’s Classics, and children’s books. Originally a separate operation of the London Business, overseas trade publishing later devolved to the branches while domestic trade titles were amalgamated into the Oxford academic lists. Trade titles involved a higher level of risk, deeper discounts to booksellers, larger author royalty payments, and investment in marketing and sales. The Press gradually minimized these risks by introducing greater oversight from the Delegates on manuscript selection, and by reducing the number of individual titles and concentrating on series. The chapter highlights the significant series and individual trade titles from across the Press, and considers the trade list both in its interaction with OUP’s wider academic and scholarly interests and within the context of commercial trade publishing.


2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
AILEEN FYFE

The eighteenth-century commodifications of childhood and the sciences overlapped in the production of science books for children. This article examines a children's book written by two members of the Unitarian circle around Warrington Academy in the 1790s, and contrasts it with a Church of England work. The analysis reveals the extent to which religious differences could affect parental attitudes to the natural world, reason, the uses of the sciences, and the appropriate way to read and discuss books. Although the sciences were admitted as suitable for children, the issues of the subjects to be chosen, the purposes they were intended for, and the pedagogical methods by which they were presented, were still contested. This article also goes beyond the usual studies of children's books by focusing on non-fiction, and by emphasizing readers and use, rather than authors or publishers. Yet producing a history of reading based entirely on actual readers will be exceedingly difficult, so this article suggests an alternative, by combining accounts of actual readers' experiences with attitudes towards practices like orality and discussion.


Knygotyra ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 199-217
Author(s):  
Oksana Petrenko

This article sheds light on the first research attempt to establish the biblio­graphic and statistical accounting of the books that were published in Ukraine in the 19th century. Besides, the article has analysed the begin­ning of the institutionalization of the children’s books’ publishing statis­tics in Ukraine. The author seeks to answer the question of who was at the origin of the formation of the children’s books’ publishing statistics. Library and museum funds became reliable sources of attribution of the children’s books’ publishing statistics in Ukraine. The results of received data on old-printed children’s books have been studied, systematised and compared with the data of other old-printed books that were found in other library collections. According to this, there is the conclusion about the primacy or repetition in the bibliographies of old-printed children’s books that became the basis for creating a summary table. This article of­fers insights into the chronology of publishing children’s books in Ukraine from the beginning of their publishing to the start of the state registra­tion of publications.


Author(s):  
Svetlana A. Bekmurzaeva

The Role of children's libraries and children's literature in socialization of the growing generation of 1920th in Saratov and Astrakhan regions is given in this work. Basing on the analysis of a wide range of the sources, a lot of which have been introduced into the scientific usage for the first time, the major directions of libraries work are characterized, the forms and methods of their activities, the ways of distribution of children's books and the control for fulfillment of the party decisions are described. Features of functioning controllable model of the Soviet structure such as libraries being an important part of the system, called to execute mission of political enlightenment and youth education are researched.


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