ABSTRACT

This landmark volume is the first to bring together leading scholarship on children’s and young adult literature from three intersecting disciplines: Education, English, and Library and Information Science. Distinguished by its multidisciplinary approach, it describes and analyzes the different aspects of literary reading, texts, and contexts to illuminate how the book is transformed within and across different academic figurations of reading and interpreting children’s literature.

  • Part one considers perspectives on readers and reading literature in home, school, library, and community settings.
  • Part two introduces analytic frames for studying young adult novels, picturebooks, indigenous literature, graphic novels, and other genres. Chapters include commentary on literary experiences and creative production from renowned authors and illustrators.
  • Part three focuses on the social contexts of literary study, with chapters on censorship, awards, marketing, and literary museums.

The singular contribution of this Handbook is to lay the groundwork for colleagues across disciplines to redraw the map of their separately figured worlds, thus to enlarge the scope of scholarship and dialogue as well as push ahead into uncharted territory.

part |3 pages

The Reader

chapter |16 pages

Children Reading at Home

An Historical Overview

chapter |12 pages

Questioning the Value of Literacy

A Phenomenology of Speaking and Reading in Children

chapter |13 pages

Readers, Texts, and Contexts in the Middle

Re-imagining Literature Education for Young Adolescents

chapter |16 pages

Reading Literature in Secondary School

Disciplinary Discourses in Global Times

chapter |16 pages

Imagining a Writer's Life

Extending the Connection between Readers and Books

part |2 pages

The Book

chapter |2 pages

Point of Departure

chapter |15 pages

Folklore in Children's Literature

Contents and Discontents

chapter |12 pages

African American Children's Literature

Researching Its Development, Exploring Its Voices

chapter |13 pages

A Burgeoning Field or a Sorry State

U.S. Poetry for Children, 1800–Present

chapter |10 pages

Nonfiction Literature for Children

Old Assumptions and New Directions

chapter |12 pages

Genre as Nexus

The Novel for Children and Young Adults

chapter |15 pages

Young Adult Literature

Growing Up, In Theory

chapter |12 pages

Reading Indigeneity

The Ethics of Interpretation and Representation

part |130 pages

The World Around

chapter |3 pages

Point of Departure

chapter |12 pages

Censorship

Book Challenges, Challenging Books, and Young Readers

chapter |13 pages

Spinning Off

Toys, Television, Tie-Ins, and Technology

chapter |17 pages

Listening for the Scratch of a Pen

Museums Devoted to Children's and Young Adult Literature