Childrens Literature

1
Childrens Literature

• an extremely brief introduction

2
What do we expect of childrens lit?

• Have a didactic function teach social behaviours
  and codes.
• Include a moral a mini-exercise in ethics.
• Use animals as characters.
• Create a fantasy world will be similar to our
  own, but endowed with special powers, magic, etc.
• Include illustrations pictographic narrative as
  well as written narrative.

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Characteristics of childrens literature

• Didactic function
• Literature as a social experience teach rules of
  belief, morals, etc.
• Aspects of orature, including
• Use of humour to make a point often non-linear.
• Conversational voice for the narrator.
• Retellings in different ways, by different
  voices.
• Use of common masterplots and character types.
• Nursery rhymes (songs or lyrical poems) Mother
  Goose (first English versions from 1700).

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Characteristics of childrens literature

• Use of animals
• Tradition of fable, especially beast fable.
• Fables of Aesop (6th c. BCE) added to by
  successive generations of authors include a
  moral (eg., Slow but steady wins the race).
• Medieval beast fables, popular in oral and early
  printed versions eg., William Caxtons Reynarte
  the Fox in 1481.
• Earliest illustrated books are in this tradition
  eg., version in 1701 .

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Characteristics of childrens literature

• Fantasy world
• Classical and renaissance myth, legend and epic
  eg., Homers Odyssey.
• Seventeenth-century travel narratives tales of
  strange encounters in foreign places emerges out
  of colonial encounter.
• Jonathan Swifts Gullivers Travels (1726)
  Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe (1791). Both are
  social satires both are retold in
  nineteenth-century childrens versions.
• Brothers Grimm, Grimms Fairy Tales (1812,
  German) collection of older tales, many of them
  oral. Fairy tale coined in eighteenth century.
• Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland
  (1865), first novel written for children.

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Characteristics of childrens literature

• Inclusion of illustrations
• Earliest books for children are educational
  (hornbooks) and religious.
• Chapbooks (named after chapmen, itinerant
  pedlars) popular from sixteenth century
  chapbooks include versions of nursery rhymes,
  poetry, folk tales, etc., not necessarily printed
  for children.
• Childrens books, especially illustrated,
  proliferate in nineteenth century eg., Tales
  from Shakespeare (1878).
• First comic book in 1897, The Yellow Kid in
  McFaddens Flats.