As undergraduate and graduate courses in children's literature become more established and numerous, there is an intense need for a textbook that offers aesthetic rather than educational approaches to children's literature. This work fills that void by providing students of children's literature with a comprehensible and easy-to-use analytical tool kit, showing through concrete demonstration how each tool might best be used. The chapters are organized around familiar and easily recognized features of literary texts (e.g. author, genre, character). Theoretical issues are illustrated by specific texts from the North American children's literature canon. The book explores the particular aesthetics of children's fiction and the ways critical theory may be applied to children's texts, while remaining accessible to a college readership without prior specialized knowledge of literary theory. Each chapter includes a short introduction to a specific theoretical approach (e.g. semiotics, feminist, psychoanalytic), an example of its application to a literary text, a number of activities (study questions, reading exercises), and suggestions for further explorations.
Author
Maria Nikolajeva is an academic hailing from Russia, whose chief focus is on literary theory and the study of children's books. "I was born in Russia, and I moved to Sweden in 1981. Until 2008 I was a Professor of Comparative Literature at Stockholm University, Sweden. Now I am a Professor and Chair at the University of Cambridge, UK, which is about the highest an academic can get. ... Some highlights (of my career) include a Fulbright Grant at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; a Fellowship at the International Youth Library in Munich and H. W. Donner Visiting Chair at Åbo Akademi. In 2006 I was also made Honorary Professor at the University of Worcester, UK. In 1993-97 I was President of the International Research Society for Children's Literature. However, the crown of my success is the International Brothers Grimm Award 2005 from the Osaka Institute for Children's Literature, given for a life-time achievement in children's literature research. I have written and edited twenty scholarly books and about three hundred articles and reviews. I have also published two young adult novels, two picturebooks, a cookbook and a memoir. My current research project is on literary cognitivism. I have been a visiting lecturer all over the world: Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, Australia and South Africa. I am married to Staffan Skott, who is a Swedish writer and journalist. We have five children and ten grandchildren. My current hobbies are gardening, pottery, star gazing, papermaking and miniature making, and I also enjoy cooking and eating a good meal. Believe it or not, but I do read for pleasure sometimes. My favorite book is Winnie-the-Pooh. Recently, I have been re-reading classics, such as Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, Cervantes' Don Quixote and Melville's Moby-Dick."
- from Academia.edu
