Course Description

Children's books are complicated objects that deserve to be taken seriously on a number of different levels, both as artistic texts and as documents of their time. We will therefore take a multi-pronged approach to our texts: we will read these books carefully and closely, using some of the formal tools developed for literary analysis by Slavic theorists (Mikhail Bakhtin, Vladimir Propp, Viktor Shklovsky, Tzvetan Todorov), and we will consider more contemporary analyses and critiques of these works (by scholars such as Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, Dr. Debbie Reese [Nambe Pueblo], and Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas). We will also pay particular attention to the development of the children’s literature industry in the United States and to the current state of children’s publishing. Readings will include children's novels by writers like Louise Erdrich, Laura Ingalls Wilder, L. Frank Baum, Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Elizabeth Acevedo, as well as numerous critical and theoretical articles. I hope to invite several of our authors to visit us this semester!