The Routledge Companion to Children's Literature

337 Pages·2010·1.419 MB·English

by  David Rudd

T R C
HE OUTLEDGE OMPANION TO
C ’ L
HILDREN S ITERATURE
The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literatureis a vibrant and authoritative
exploration of children’s literature in all its manifestations. It features a series of
essays written by expert contributors who provide an illuminating examination
of why children’s literature is the way it is. Topics covered include:
• the history and development of children’s literature
• various theoretical approaches used to explore the texts
• questions of gender and sexuality along with issues of race and ethnicity
• realism and fantasy as two prevailing modes of storytelling
• picture books, comics and graphic novels as well as ‘young adult’ fiction
and the ‘crossover’ novel
• media adaptations and neglected areas of children’s literature.
The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literaturecontains suggestions for fur-
ther reading throughout, plus a helpful timeline and a substantial glossary of key
terms and names, both established and more cutting-edge. This is a comprehen-
sive and up-to-date guide to an increasingly complex and popular discipline.
David Rudd is Professor of Children’s Literature at the University of Bolton,
UK. He was on the awarding panel for the Children’s Laureate 2007 and his
books include A Communication Studies Approach to Children’s Literature
(1992) and Enid Blyton and the Mystery of Children’s Literature (2000).
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T R C
HE OUTLEDGE OMPANION
C ’ L
TO HILDREN S ITERATURE
Edited by
David Rudd
First published 2010
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 (8th Floor)
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2010 David Rudd for selection and editorial matter; individual
contributors for their contributions
Typeset in Times New Roman by Book Now Ltd, London
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The Routledge companion to children’s literature / edited by David Rudd.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Children’s literature—History and criticism—Handbooks, manuals, etc.
2. Children—Books and reading—Handbooks, manuals etc.
I. Rudd, David, 1950—
PN1009.AIR68 2010
809'89282—dc22
2009045445
ISBN10: 0–415–47270–9 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–415–47271–7 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–88985–1 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–47270–8 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–47271–5 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–88985–5 (ebk)
C
ONTENTS
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgements xi
Editor’s introduction xiii
Part I: Essays on children’s literature 1
1 The development of children’s literature 3
David Rudd
2 ‘Criticism is the theory of literature’: theory is the
criticism of literature 14
Roderick McGillis
3 Gender studies 26
Victoria Flanagan
4 Race, ethnicity and colonialism 39
Clare Bradford
5 Narratology 51
John Stephens
6 Realism 63
Lucy Pearson and Kimberley Reynolds
7 Fantasy 75
Karen Coats
8 Young adult fiction and the crossover phenomenon 87
Rachel Falconer
9 Picturebooks, comics and graphic novels 100
Mel Gibson
v
CONTENTS
10 Media adaptations 112
Margaret Mackey
11 Sidelines: some neglected dimensions of children’s literature
and its scholarship 125
Evelyn Arizpe and Morag Styles with Abigail Rokison
Part II: Names and terms 139
Part III: Timeline 259
Part IV: Resources 277
Bibliography 279
Index 306
vi
C
ONTRIBUTORS
Part I – Chapter authors
Evelyn Arizpeis a lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Glasgow.
She has published widely in the areas of literacy, reader response to picture-
books and children’s literature. She is co-author, with Morag Styles, of Children
Reading Pictures: Interpreting Visual Texts (2003) and Reading Lessons from
the Eighteenth Century: Mothers, Children and Texts (2006); and co-editor of
Acts of Reading: Teachers, Texts and Childhood(2009).
Clare Bradford is Professor of Literary Studies at Deakin University,
Melbourne, Australia. She has published six books and over 60 essays on
children’s literature, focusing on the interplay between children’s texts and the
cultural discourses which inform them. Her book Reading Race(2001) won the
IRSCL Award and the ChLA Book Award, and her Unsettling Narratives
(2007) was the ChLA Honor Book.
Karen Coats is Professor of English at Illinois State University. She is author
of Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire, and Subjectivity in
Children’s Literature (2004); and co-editor of The Gothic in Children’s
Literature: Haunting the Borders (2007) and The Handbook of Research in
Children’s and Young Adult Literature (2010).
Rachel Falconer is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at the
University of Sheffield, where she teaches crossover literature at undergraduate
and MA level. Her book The Crossover Novel: Contemporary Children’s Fiction
and Its Adult Readership was published in 2009. She has also published more
widely on a range of contemporary writers and theorists.
Victoria Flanagan is a lecturer in children’s literature at Macquarie
University in Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on gender representa-
tion in children’s literature and film, with a particular focus on transgressive
and non-normative gender expression. Her first book, Into the Closet: Cross-
Dressing and the Gendered Body in Children’s Literature and Film, was
published in 2007.
vii
CONTRIBUTORS
Mel Gibson, PhD, is a UK National Teaching Fellow and senior lecturer at the
University of Northumbria, where her teaching, research and publishing focuses
on visual literacies. She has explored texts, issues and audiences around comics,
manga, anime, picture books and graphic novels since 1993, both in academic
contexts and through supporting the work of libraries, schools and other organi-
zations in understanding and promoting these media.
Roderick McGillis teaches in the English Department at the University of
Calgary. Recent publications include He Was Some Kind of a Man: Masculinities
in the B Western (2009) and the novel Les pieds devant(2007). He recently par-
ticipated in the MLA radio programme What’s the Word(Children’s Poetry, 2009).
Margaret Mackey is a professor in the School of Library and Information
Studies at the University of Alberta. Her most recent books are Mapping
Recreational Literacies (2007) and a new edition of Literacies across Media
(2007). She has published widely in the area of young people and their varied lit-
eracies and literatures.
Lucy Pearsonrecently completed a PhD at Newcastle University on the publish-
ing of literature for children and teenagers in the 1960s and 1970s. Her research
interests include publishing, new media and culture, and fandom studies.
Kimberley Reynolds is Professor of Children’s Literature in the School of
English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University. She was
President of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (2003–
7). Recent publications include her monograph Radical Children’s Literature:
Future Visions and Aesthetic Transformations in Juvenile Fiction(2007) and the
co-edited Children’s Literature Studies: A Handbook to Research(forthcoming).
Abigail Rokison began her career as a professional actor, subsequently under-
taking a PhD in the English Faculty at Cambridge University. She now lectures
in English and Drama in the Education Faculty there. Her monograph
Shakespearean Verse Speakingwas published in 2009. She is currently Chair of
the British Shakespeare Association.
David Rudd is Professor of Children’s Literature at the University of Bolton,
where he runs an MA on Children’s Literature and Culture. He has published
two monographs on children’s literature, both mixing reader response with the-
ory – A Communication Studies Approach to Children’s Literature (1992) on
Roald Dahl, and Enid Blyton and the Mystery of Children’s Literature (2000) –
and some 100 articles.
John Stephens is Emeritus Professor in English at Macquarie University,
Sydney, Australia. He is author of Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction
viii
CONTRIBUTORS
(1992); co-author of Retelling Stories, Framing Culture (1998) and New World
Orders in Contemporary Children’s Literature; and editor of Ways of Being
Male, besides authoring about 100 articles and two other books. He is a former
IRSCL president and editor of International Research in Children’s Literature.
In 2007 he received the International Brothers Grimm Award.
Morag Styles is Reader in Children’s Literature at Cambridge University and
Fellow of Homerton College. She lectures internationally on children’s literature,
poetry, the history of reading and visual literacy. She is author of From the
Garden to the Street: An Introduction to 300 Years of Poetry for Children (1998);
co-author of Children Reading Pictures: Interpreting Visual Texts (2003); and
Reading Lessons from the Eighteenth Century: Mothers, Children and Texts
(2006); and co-editor of Acts of Reading: Teachers, Texts and Childhood (2009).
Part II – Names and terms
Anne-Marie Bird [AMB]
Clare Bradford [CB]
Karen Coats [KC]
Nolan Dalrymple [ND]
Victoria de Rijke [VdR]
Rachel Falconer [RF]
Victoria Flanagan [VF]
Peter Hunt [PH]
Andrea L. Immel [ALI]
Maria Lassén-Seger [MLS]
Roderick McGillis [RM]
Kate McInally [KMc]
Kerry Mallan [KM]
Karen Sands O’Connor [KSO]
Lucy Pearson [LP]
Pat Pinsent [PP]
Mavis Reimer [MR]
Kimberley Reynolds [KR]
David Rudd [DR]
ix