Reflections of Change: Children's Literature Since 1945

by Sandra L. Beckett

Overview

Over the past fifty years, children's literature has freed itself of many traditional restrictions and become a field of exciting innovations in both form and content. The new status of children's literature has been accompanied by an unprecedented growth in research on children's literature internationally. This volume explores the many changes that have taken place in the past half-century in children's literature, showing how those changes reflect our rapidly-changing world and attempt to prepare children for the new millennium. Among the issues discussed are the shifting boundaries between children's literature and adult literature, postmodern trends, paradigm shifts, national literatures, and the reconceptualization of the past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313301452
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/30/1997
Series:	Contributions to the Study of World Literature , #74
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)
Lexile:	1410L (what's this?)

About the Author

SANDRA L. BECKETT is Professor of French at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. She has served as the Vice-President of the International Research Society for Children's Literature (IRSCL). Her research focuses on contemporary French fiction for adults as well as children. She is the author of three books on Henri Bosco, and has recently completed a book entitled Les grands romanciers écrivent pour les enfants, 1945-1995. She has also published numerous articles on the contemporary French novel, as well as French and French-Canadian children's literature.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Reflections of Change
Theory and Children's Literature
Fear of Children's Literature: What's Left (or Right) After Theory? by Perry Nodelman
"Is This the Promised End…?": Fin de Siècle Mentality and Children's Literature by John Stephens
Ramona the Underestimated: The Everyday-Life Story in Children's Literature by Deborah Stevenson
Shifting Boundaries Between Children's and Adult Literature
The Disappearance of Children's Literature (or Children's Literature as Nostalgia) in the United States in the Late Twentieth Century by Jerry Griswold
Literature for All Ages? Literary Emancipation and the Borders of Children's Literature by Anne de Vries
The Changing Status of Children and Children's Literature by Eva-Maria Metcalf
Experimental Writing and Postmodern Trends
From Grand Narrative to Small Stories: New Narrative Structures in Recent Scandinavian Children's Literature by Åsfrid Svensen
The Status of Sequels in Children's Literature: The Long Secret and Beyond the Chocolate War by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
Gillian Cross' Wolf: An Exploration of Patterns and Polarities by Susan Clancy
Paradigm Shifts
Reflections of Change in Children's Book Titles by Maria Nikolajeva
High and Wild Magic, the Moral Universe, and the Electronic Superhighway: Reflections of Change in Susan Cooper's Fantasy Literature by Carole Scott
"Terror is Her Constant Companion": The Cult of Fear in Recent Books for Teenagers by Roderick McGillis
Suburban Scenarios in Simon French's All We Know: The Emergence of the Suburbs as the Spatial Framework for Australian Children's Fiction by Beverley Pennell
Reading Children's Literature Multiculturally by Daniel D. Hade
National Literatures
The Jourbaney Inward: Adolescent Literature in America, 1945-1995 by Anne Scott MacLeod
The Novel for Adolescents in Québec: Stereotypes and New Conventions by Danielle Thaler
Realistic Stories for Children in the Federal Republic of Germany 1970-1994: Features and Tendencies by Dagmar Grenz
Text and Context: Factors in the Development of Children's Literature in Taiwan 1945-1995, and the Emergence of Young Adult Literature by Shu-Jy Duan
Reconceptualizing the Past
An Awfully Big Adventure? Representations of the Second World War in British Children's Books of the 1960s and 1970s by Dieter Petzold
Topsy-Turvy World: New Trends in Modern Russian Children's Literature by Olga MÄeots
Children's Literature in Totalitarian and Post-totalitarian Society by Vincas Auryla
Selected Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This book includes 21 short essays selected from papers presented at the 12th Biennial Congress of the International Research Society for Children's Literature, held in Stockholm in 1995. The essays cast a wide net, and each reader is certain to find at least a few of interest. Broken into six sections, they examine changes since World War II relating to: (1) the development of children's literature theory; (2) the shifting boundaries between children's and adult literature; (3) the effects of postmodernism on the content and forms of children's literature; (4) the emergence of new types of literature for young people, such as horror and multicultural literature; (5) aspects of children's and young adult literature in the United States, Quebec, Germany, and Taiwan; and (6) a reconceptualization of the past, specifically with regard to literature in totalitarian and post-totalitarian societies and to British children's books of WWII. According to the editor's introduction, as a result of all these changes, "children's literature has become more complex, more ambiguous, more noncommittal, but also more interesting, more colorful, more diversified." This is a recommended purchase both for scholarly collections and for practitioners who want to take time out from their demanding daily schedules to read about children's and young adult literature.--Ann D. Carlson, Dominican University, River Forest, IL

School Library Journal

Papers from a 1995 conference reflect on the changes that have taken place in children's literature and children's literature theory and criticism since 1945, with sections on theory and children's literature, shifting boundaries between children's and adult literature, experimental writing and postmodern trends, paradigm shifts, national literatures, and reconceptualizing the past. Some topics include the cult of fear in recent books for teenagers, and new trends in modern Russian children's literature. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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