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
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: