Children’s Literature by Seth Lerer

I’m a beginner in terms of children’s literature criticism. However, I’m learning a lot from Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer, and I thought I’d bring you on the journey with me. Links below are to discussions on Rebecca Reads. (Books and authors in bold means I have already read the title; I may reread them for this project.) Also, view the series via the Seth Lerer’s Reader’s History tag.

Introduction

Toward a New History of Children’s Literature

• Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
• Other book to read: Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon by Leonard S. Marcus

Chapter 1

Speak, Child: Children’s Literature in Classic Antiquity

• The Iliad as Children’s literature?
• Books to read:The Iliad by Homer;The Odyssey by Homer;The Aeneid by Virgil; Confessions by St. Augustine

Chapter 2

Ingenuity and Authority: Aesop’s Fables and Their Afterlives

• Who Really Wrote Aesop’s Fables? [Thoughts on Author Agendas]
• Book to read: Fables by Marie de France

Chapter 3

Court, Commerce, and Cloister: The Literatures of Medieval Childhood

• Good Masters, Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schiltz
• Abecedaria (aka, Alphabet Books)
• Lullabies

Chapter 4

From Alphabet to Elegy: The Puritan Impact on Children’s Literature

• Death in Children’s Literature: Love You Forever Robert N. Munsch
• Death/War in Children’s Literature: Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes and My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier
• Books to Read: Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan;The New England Primer; Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin; Other writings by Benjamin Franklin; Clarissa by Samuel Richardson; Divine Songs by Isaac Watts

Chapter 5

Playthings of the Mind: John Locke and Children’s Literature

• Pat the Bunny and Other Interactive Books [John Locke's enduring legacy]
• Books to Read: Little Goody Two-Shoes (a novel); The Governess by Sarah Fielding; Adventures of a Bank-Note by Thomas Bridges

Chapter 6

Canoes and Cannibals: Robinson Crusoe and Its Legacies

• Robinson Crusoe Adaptations for Children (plus Details)
• Books to Read: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe; Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson; Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift; The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne; David Copperfield by Charles Dickens; Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Stendak; Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

Chapter 7

From Islands to Empires: Storytelling for a Boy’s World

• Books to Read:

Chapter 8

On beyond Darwin: From Kingsley to Seuss

• Books to Read:

Chapter 9

Ill-Tempered and Queer: Sense and Nonsense, from Victorian to Modern

• Books to Read:

Chapter 10

Straw into Gold: Fairy-Tale Philology

• Books to Read:

Chapter 11

Theaters of Girlhood: Domesticity, Desire, and Performance in Female Fiction

• Books to Read:

Chapter 12

Pan in the Garden: The Edwardian Turn in Children’s Literature

• Books to Read:

Chapter 13

Good Feeling: Prizes, Libraries, and the Institutions of American Children’s Literature

• Books to Read:

Chapter 14

Keeping Things Straight: Style and the Child

• Books to Read:

Chapter 15

Tap Your Pencil on the Paper: Children’s Literature in an Ironic Age

• Books to Read:

Epilogue

Children’s Literature and the History of the Book

• Books to Read:

Thoughts on the book as a whole (project on hold).