Children’s literature provides a critical method of socialization and familiarization with gender roles, providing examples, boundaries, and limitations for gender identity construction. While extensive research has been done on how children’s literature depicts both traditional and non-traditional gender roles, very little research has been published on the cultural differences between literary representations. The aim of the present paper is to describe the representations of social roles of men and women in American, Czech, and Spanish children’s books published between 2010 (...) and 2020. Three best-selling children’s picture books from each year from each respective culture were selected and analyzed, culminating in a thematic analysis of ninety-nine books. Using inductive thematic analysis, the study found all three cultures to be conservative in their depictions of gender roles, with Czech books as the most likely to feature traditional gender roles. Spanish books are more, and American books are the most subversive in their depiction of gender roles, containing an increasing number of non-traditional elements over an examined time period. (shrink)

This article explores trends in the presence and centrality of males and females in American children's picture books in the twentieth century. Using the Children's Catalog as a population base and a time series analysis, we found that the imbalance in depicting males and females varies through the century in a curvilinear fashion. The earlier and later periods of the century show more egalitarian representations of females in titles and central roles. However, when stories involving only adults (...) or animal characters are considered, males become more prominent over time. Changes in literary themes and the position of women during this time span may be useful in developing a theory to account for these trends. (shrink)

The contribution offers some pedagogical reflections dedicated to the theme of tenderness in education through the exploration of a repertoire of excellent picture books published in the field of children’s publishing. The poetic investigation of the suggestions from the bibliographic corpus highlights ethical, aesthetic and pedagogical aspects of bodily imagery and experiences, linked to the sensitive, ethical and emotional dimension of education. The reflection interweaves perspectives from the pedagogy of the body with the interdisciplinary study of children’s literature and proposes (...) a pedagogical reflection, with didactic and formative repercussions, on the iconographic and narrative representations of the postures of care, play and the educational relationship. (shrink)

This essay evolved from my keynote address for the plenary session of the ASEAN Conference for Young Scientists 2019 organized by the ASEAN Secretariat, Vietnam Ministry of Science and Technology—whose main theme is sustainability science—organized at Hanoi-based Phenikaa University. It has also benefited from my advisory work for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The article proposes looking at children's literature, particularly the form of the picture book, as an educational resource for producing body awareness in school. Eight reading steps for as many bodily actions aimed at naming the body, activating it, getting to know it and moving it in space, on and off the pages; between grounding, listening, breathing, playing and moving, the rediscovery of gestures and anatomical truths invites to deepen self-knowledge as a preliminary act to the encounter and relationship (...) with the other and with the environment. The picture books by their specificities of short form and cross-over, offer, even in non-fiction production, the possibility of bringing attention back to the body dimension within the school and educational debate, where it lives today in a state of malaise and oblivion. Meaningful conversations, explorations and relationships flow from the pages of the albums: research on language as a tool that gives dignity and value to each person, and encounters with the artistic representation of the world as an infinite mirror of its multiplicity and variety, constitute valuable opportunities for an education that is aware of the wholeness of learners and teachers and the integrated, erotic and embodied dimension of their relationship. (shrink)

The relevance of the research is due to the interest of modern science in the successful experience of comprehending social reality and of social forecasting in forms nontrivial for systematic rational thinking. T topic is especially important in the context of global instability, in which human civilization has been living for the last decades. The main question is the possible existence of a critical philosophy in terms of the ideological pressure of the Soviet period. The author substantiates the hypothesis that (...) children’s literature could be a form of free development of philosophical thinking, permissible in these circumstances. The research is of practical value to humanities scholars studying Soviet and post-Soviet period Russian culture, literature, philosophy, regardless of their theoretical and ideological orientations, since it examines the philosophical aspects in the works by the Soviet children’s writer Nikolai Nosov, author of trilogy about Dunno (rus. Neznajka), and not well-known abroad. The article justifies the opinion that Nosov’s creative heritage is underestimated both in Russian and foreign humanities and not sufficiently analyzed. Through the analysis of N. Nosov’s texts, undertaken by Russian and foreign scholars and publicists (among which L. Abdel-Rahim and L. Karawan deserve a special mention), implicit social and philosophical ideas are revealed, and the basic social forecasting is determined in relation to the society of ‘developed socialism’. Marxist philosophy had a significant impact on N. Nosov’s worldview; however, the writer is alien to the ideological blinders of the dominant forms of Soviet philosophy. Nosov’s Marxism in the form of popular ‘children’s’ discourse suddenly finds itself able to effectively implement critical and prognostic function of philosophy. Being decades ahead of Soviet ideologists and philosophers in this respect, N. Nosov convincingly showed the problem nature of ‘developed socialism’. An important diagnosis of this society and a forecast for its future is possible ‘breakdown’ of the historical process (despite scientific and technical achievements) due to the insufficient level of culture and consciousness, the immaturity of social relations. (shrink)

A children's book frequently takes as its subject the moral growth of its protagonist. The Little House books of Laura Ingalls Wilder trace Laura's growth in moral awareness and moral development from early childhood through her first employment, courtship by Almanzo, and marriage. Laura's moral maturation is rich and multi-layered, but at the heart of the Little House books, and shaping their progression as one multi-volumed novel, is the theme of obedience giving way to autonomy, literally moral self-rule.

Children’s literature was first published in the eighteenth century at a time when the philosophical ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on education and childhood were being discussed. Ironically, however, the first generation of children’s literature (by Maria Edgeworth et al) was incongruous with Rousseau’s ideas since the works were didactic, constraining and demanded passive acceptance from their readers. This instigated a deficit or reductionist model to represent childhood and children’s literature as simple and uncomplicated and led to children’s literature being overlooked (...) and its contribution to philosophical discussions being undermined. Although Rousseau advocates freeing the child to develop, he does not feel that reading fiction promotes child development, which is a weakness in an otherwise strong argument for educational reform. Yet, rather ironically, the second generation of children’s writers, from Lewis Carroll onwards, more truly embraced Rousseau’s broader philosophical ideas on education and childhood than their predecessors, encouraging and freeing readers to imagine, reflect and actively engage in ontological enquiry. The emphasis had changed with the child being embraced in education and society as active participant rather than passive or disengaged recipient. Works deemed to be seminal to the canon of children’s literature such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan and The Chronicles of Narnia challenge readers to work through conflicts many of which can be identified retrospectively as exhibiting postmodern characteristics. By exploring moral and spiritual dilemmas in their writing, Carroll, Barrie and Lewis’s works can be regarded as contributing to discussions on theodical postmodernism. The successes of The Lord of the Rings and Narnia films suggest that there is an interest in exploring moral dilemmas, fulfilling a need (perhaps for tolerance and understanding) in society at large. Children’s literature has an almost divine power to restore, to repair and to heal, all characteristics of theodical postmodernism but differing from the more widely held conception of postmodernism which pulls apart, exacerbates and exposes. Children’s literature therefore offers a healthy and constructive approach to working through moral dilemmas. In their deconstruction of childhood, these authors have brought children’s literature closer to aspects of enquiry traditionally found in the domain of adult mainstream literature. As the boundaries between childhood and adulthood become more fluid, less certain, debate is centring around whether the canon of children’s literature itself has become redundant or meaningless since there are no longer any restrictions on which subjects can be treated in children’s literature. Despite the fact that children’s literature clearly engages with difficult issues, it continues to be left out of the critical equation, not given serious attention, disregarded as simplistic and ignored in contemporary philosophical discussions concerning morality, postmodernism and the future of childhood. With children’s literature coming closer to mainstream literature, and exhibiting prominent features of postmodernism, however, it is only a matter of time before philosophical discussions actively engage with children’s literature and recognise its contribution to the resolution and reconciliation of ontological dilemmas. When this occurs, philosophy and children’s literature will re-engage, enriching contemporary investigations of existence, ethics and knowledge and fruitfully developing thought in these areas. This paper aims to contribute to this process. (shrink)

This article looks at Maughn Rollins Gregory and Megan Jane Laverty’s Gareth B. Matthews, The Child’s Philosopher (2022), specifically considering how Matthews conceptualized philosophy and how he found philosophy in children’s literature.

Using a queer theory and disrupting heteronormativity framework, we applied a model lesson in the elementary methods course to understand preservice teachers’ experiences with LGBTQ individuals and families and their beliefs about utilizing children׳s literature portraying LGBTQ families in the elementary classroom. Participants reported a range of personal experiences with LGBTQ individuals and families and relatively positive responses to the family text set presented but wavered on LGBTQ themed books due to perceived conflict, religious beliefs, and ideas about what is (...) appropriate content for young learners. A discussion of the findings also includes preservice teachers’ intentions for future teaching related to LGBTQ topics. Implications for teacher education and social studies education are explored. (shrink)

Demystifying Black American slavery through Dr. Seuss' The 5,000 fingers of Dr. T -- Understanding our dysfunctional U.S. congress in Dr. Seuss' If I ran the circus: the end of civility and bipartisanship -- Analyzing U.S. presidential leadership in Dr. Seuss' The king's stilts -- Assessing the U.S. criminal justice system in Dr. Seuss' If I ran the zoo -- Dr. Seuss' I had trouble in getting to Solla Sollew and decoding the American bureaucracy -- Deciphering the U.S. (...) illegal immigration problem in Dr. Seuss' Horton hears a Who -- Condeming absolute power in Dr. Seuss' Yertle the turtle: A cry for freedom and democracy in China -- Implications of modern-day Cold-War in Dr. Seuss' The butter battle book -- Environmental politics in Dr. Seuss' The Lorax: The need for sustainability -- Explaining American spirituality and religious politics in Dr. Seuss' Horton hatches the egg -- American popular culture and the politics of race in Dr. Seuss' The sneetches -- The new realities and politics of aging in Dr. Seuss' You're only old once: A book for obsolete children -- Conclusion -- Bibliography. (shrink)

Iconicity is a fundamental property of spoken and signed languages. However, quantitative analysis of sound-meaning association in Chinese has not been extensively developed, and little is known about the impact of sound symbolism in children’s literature. As sound symbolism is supposed to be a universal cognitive phenomenon, this research seeks to investigate whether iconic structures of Mandarin are embodied in native Chinese speakers’ language experience. The paper describes a case study of Chinese storybooks with the goal of testing whether phonosemantic (...) association is prominent between name sounds and character features. A quantitative method was used to investigate the distribution of different phonological units in character denomination depending on their physical and emotional traits. The results show that phonemes and syllable combination patterns are closely related to perceivable character features. By comparing schematic mapping in Chinese with other languages, the study illuminates a cross-linguistic tendency in addition to a Chinese-specific iconic relation between sound and meaning. (shrink)

This essay explores how moral discourse can have dogmatic tendencies. In exemplifying how it is possible to move beyond such tendencies, this essay turns to the Norwegian picture book Garmann's Summer. The essay not only suggests a vision of moral thinking, but also aims to demonstrate the role that literature, and particularly children's literature, can play in moral discourse, particularly in philosophy. The picture book's elaborations on the difficulties children can face when starting school show both what ethics beyond (...) moral concepts can be and the role that literature and art can have in moral thinking. The essay aims to show that moral work may consist in acknowledging difficulties and that all of their complexities have a role to play in the lives of real human beings. Accordingly, the essay is not a philosophical interpretation of a children's book, but an attempt to read a children's book to do philosophy. (shrink)

As the future of human development increasingly hinges on the need for sustainable education and science, this essay re-examines the imminent threats to humankind and the relevance of achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to science-technology research among today’s young scientists. It also discusses some socio-political and economic challenges to achieving sustainability and argues that developing sustainability science is difficult but not impossible. The hope lies in our current efforts to build productive and creative scientific communities through nurturing (...) youth engagement with science and the scientific mindset. (shrink)

This paper investigates critically the approaches to picturebooks as used in the history of philosophy for children movement. Our concern with picturebooks rests mainly on Morteza Khosronejad's broader criticism that children's literature has been treated instrumentally by early founders of P4C, the consequence of which is abolishing the independent voice of this literature. As such it demands that we scrutinize the position of children's literature in the history of this educational program, as well as other genres and forms, (...) including picturebooks as a highly valued artistic-literary form to educationalists. In our inquiry, we probe, therefore, the transition of approaches to picturebooks concomitantly with the investigation of the transition of approaches to children's literature. This research evinces that some later scholars and practitioners of P4C have departed significantly not only from Lipman's approach to children's literature and picturebooks, but also from his conceptualization of childhood and philosophy for children. Meanwhile, it demonstrates that in spite of P4C scholars' taking effective steps to address children's literature in general and picturebooks in particular, there are some steps for them to take in order to fully recognize this literature as an independent branch of knowledge and picturebooks as artistic-literary unique works. While revealing the limitations and paradoxes that P4C scholars continue to deal with, in this article, we see Khosronejad's earlier idea as a suggestion to overcome the instrumentalization of children's literature and picturebooks in P4C. Fundamental dialogue with children's literature theorists particularly those of picturebooks will open new horizons to the realization of our suggestion. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 136-140. In early 2011, Cow Heavy Books published The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature , a compendium of catalog 'blurbs' for non-existent desired or ideal texts. Along with Erinrose Mager, I edited the project, in a process that was more like curation as it mainly entailed asking a range of contemporary writers, theorists, and text-makers to send us an entry. What resulted was a creative/critical hybrid anthology, a small book in which each page opens (...) to a new iteration of textual desire. These texts explore the material possibilities of the book. Somewhat parallel to the call of N. Katherine Hayles who, in her book Writing Machines , urges literary theorists to take up the practice of Medium Specific Analysis (to account for the way the medium in which it is presented conditions or at least bears on a literary text). I see in the imagined works of The Official Catalog a call for the innovative writers of today to become Medium-Responsive. This would mean thinking through the specific (materially constrained) possibilities offered by the media in which texts are presented, and in thinking of the literary text as a kind of art in the greater context of other arts and the book as a medium situated within the context of many other media. In doing so, the contemporary writer refutes the chorus of critics who lament the death of the book by consistently reinvigorating literary innovation. The following are selections from The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature that show possible paths for (thinking about) new writing that engages with its medium. —Ben Segal, Editor THE CUBE Even the most radical non-linear texts have tended to exploit or subvert only the sequential possibilities of print—from the continuous loop of Joyce's Finnegans Wake to the shuffled cards of Marc Saporta's Composition No. 1 —but The Cube takes such multiplicities to an entirely new level. Set in a grid, the book's words can be read conventionally, across the page, as well as down each column—with either route making complete grammatical sense. But they can also be read as stacked strata and mined like lexical core samples through the layered pages of the book. Each path tells the same story from a different perspective (the narrative, naturally, hinges on the potential outcomes of a throw of cubed dice). By opening up the z-axis to reading in this way, The Cube recognizes the book as a three-dimensional sculptural space. Taking its lead from Armand Schwerner's (If Personal) and Raymond Queneau's Cent mille milliards de poèmes , The Cube reads like a experiment by Christian Bök precision printed by Emily McVarish. Craig Dworkin is the editor, most recently, of The Consequence of Innovation: 21st Century Poetics (Roof Books, 2008), The Sound of Poetry/The Poetry of Sound , with Marjorie Perloff (U. Chicago Press, 2009), and Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing , with Kenneth Goldsmith (Northwestern UP, 2010). He teaches at the University of Utah. HE GOES In He Goes , we read notes, letters and e-mails from a scholar father to his novelist daughter. We read of the father's musings on Beckett, on Pinter, on Anne Frank; his description of a woman hanging laundry from a line. We read about his journey toward dying, followed by a brief, third person account of his death, and his obituary. Then a long series of blank pages that demand to be read in real time, non-sentence by non-sentence, blank page by blank page. Finally—and it is here that this peculiar little book begins to soar—the dead father writes to his as-of-yet-still-living daughter. He does not write from death. He does not write from life. The words unprint, unstamp, unkindle. Still, they require no translation. The father "writes" (for lack of a better word) about the serendipitous, the commonplace; he recommends another book. He jokes. He asks his daughter how her stomach is. He says forget about presence in absence, darling; screw words as memorial and the guys in garbage cans and loss as redemption and I can't go on I must go on. He goes, "Love, Fodder." He goes, "incidentally." He goes, "I thought you might like to know." Elizabeth Graver is the author of a story collection, Have You Seen Me? , and three novels: Unravelling ; The Honey Thief ; and Awake . Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories , Best American Essays , and Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards . She teaches at Boston College. THE PAPER ARCHIVIST A stunning package and a triumph of imagination, The Paper Archivist at times looks to be less a book than an abstract expressionist painting. Softly bound, its contents unfold to a single sheet of uneven thickness and texture—a canvas splattered with colored lines, stickers, broken sentences, and nonsense pictographs. But by following the directions to fold, dip, smell, rub, scratch, and tear the sheet according to the contingencies of the weather and using only the objects at hand, the reader slowly brings the forces hidden in the noise into a glorious sculptural convergence, processing a different story and shape each time. This is the rare book that continues to stir, whirl, and pop on every new reading. Sean Higgins blogs at BOMBlog where he is responsible for the column Volumes and Territories, as well as Ghost Island , a fledgling collaborative intellectual collective. THE SLOW BOOK The Slow Book , written by an anonymous author at the dawn of literacy, on a minor planet (otherwise notable only as the source of that exceptionally hardy, not very tasty grain called “shef” sowed on hostile planets as an early step to colonization), and encoded into a series of punctures on a strip of copper coiled inside a clever device, something between a player piano and an old-fashioned film projector, is being released into print, as was the author’s intention, at a rate of one word per century (local time). Each word is, across the Forty Galaxies, agreed to be uncannily apt for the century in which it appears—even “of,” in a century during which the highest value was attached to fidelity, whether to ideals, worlds, or romantic love; even “the,” which governed two centuries, one extraordinarily materialistic, during which advances in propulsion and navigation accelerated the exchange of exceptional objects between the remotest planets of the Forty, and one in which the central concern, both of philosophers and the common man, was whether, in an age of rapidly proliferating hypothetical worlds, anyone or anything concretely existed at all. Even those words published long before interstellar contact can be seen in retrospect to have transgalactic pertinence. As a result, attempts to abstract the machine from its publishers, Hobson & Hui, in order to “predict the future” for insight or gain by “fast- forwarding” the copper strip have been many and ingenious. While, in centuries of skepticism (“maybe”), or of unrest (“go”) the book has been nearly forgotten, in others it seems to haunt every thought, every deed, despite the fact that the subject of The Slow Book is still unclear. So far only a few sentences exist in print; everyone knows them, can quote them, offer the standard exegeses and assorted heresies; yet certainties are the stuff of adolescence; mature readers are forced to acknowledge that these sentences are probably only a preamble to the main argument. They contain no proper nouns, nor can we identify any definite theme. There is even disagreement about their tone, whether coolly ironic, as some insist, or ardent. The appearance of an unusual grammatical case, sometimes called the future pluperfect continuous, used to describe events that at some future point will have always been true (but are not yet)—hitherto known to appear only in the synthetic dogmas of the Thanatographical Society, and in certain highly circumscribed religious contexts—has suggested to some scholars that the Slow Book was originally intended for ritual use, but the proximity of the usage to a term designating a small hand plow that, as Pott and Mielcke have convincingly shown, would have borne a distinctly obscene double meaning in its culture of origin in the author’s time, argues otherwise. It is likewise unclear whether the situation that seems to be—with teasing incompleteness—sketched out in these few lines is intended as an illustration of general principles, a case study, a dramatic scene, or an extended metaphor. In short, we have no idea what The Slow Book is about. In our own time, we believe that it is almost certainly a work of fiction, but that may be because we live in the century of “if”. In each age, perhaps, we see the book we most need to read. Some have dared to suggest that the metal strip is blank until, with millennial fanfare, it advances into its new position, that no ur-text exists, that the book itself is brought into being—written—by our need. But that is exactly the sort of thing we would believe, in 7645. Shelley Jackson is the author of the story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy , the novel Half Life , and hypertexts including Patchwork Girl . The recipient of a Howard Foundation grant, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2006 James Tiptree Jr Award, she has also written and illustrated several children's books, including The Old Woman and the Wave ; Sophia, the Alchemist's Dog ; and Mimi's Dada Catifesto . Her stories and essays have appeared in Conjunctions , McSweeney's , The Paris Review , and Cabinet Magazine . In 2004 she launched her project SKIN , a story published in tattoos on 2095 volunteers. THE BOOK OF SOUNDS The Book of Sounds is just that: a book of sounds made when letters are construed in new ways to bring forth out of the alphabet new forms of speech. A book meant to be read out loud, The Book of Sounds is not unlike Laurie Anderson's O Superman or Brian Eno's Music for Airports in its attempt to make music out of the most primary and simplest of methods. It breaks language down to its barest bones and makes out of the page a drum that has never before been beaten upon. Peter Markus is the author of a novel, Bob, or Man on Boat (Dzanc Books) as well as two books of short fiction, Good, Brother and The Singing Fish , both of which were published by Calamari Press. A new collection of stories, We Make Mud , is now available from Dzanc Books. PARADISE OF THE BLIND by Celan Solen Although the reclusive Celan Solen published his first and only book in 1963—paying out-of-pocket for a limited edition of the slim collection No One May Have the Same Knowledge Again —he remained in American obscurity for almost three decades. In 1992 a micro-press in Istanbul brought out No One in Turkish. A German translation followed in 1995. Soon it became clear in literary circles Solen was a world-class (if highly unclassifiable) artist—lyrical, dense, enigmatic—who could undo the conventional short story in 397 words by inventing impossible worlds housed in impossible whirls (in “Small Sadnesses,” a single chartreuse tree frog in Borneo unknowingly holds time together by its very presence in the universe, while each letter of its tale refers, not to itself, but to the one preceding it in the alphabet). By his disappearance last year, Solen was considered master by a generation of writers and critics (except, alas, for those gentlemen in the Swedish Academy). Imagine, then, that generation’s delight at the discovery, locked away in the author’s safe-deposit box, of his second and final composition. Had Lynch’s Lost Highway been book instead of film, and had it been penned by Beckett at his least certain, revised by Barthelme at his most formally deranged, and typeset by Derrida at his most semiotically catastrophic, the result might have been something like Paradise of the Blind : interlacing narratives of a man composed of borrowed organs (whose most cheerless and difficult to locate, god, could only have been invented by an empty heart), a nonexistent medieval painting blamed for the ruin of future hope, and the spread of a philosophy that holds earth a mistake constantly recurring in the dream of a fish lying on the floor of the Atlantic (if the fish wakes, our world winks off)—all contained in a text packed with typed-over passages, torn postcards, poems that can be deciphered only when held up to a mirror, pages ornamented with trompe-l'œil paperclips and coffee stains and buzzing houseflies, some busy with illegible runes that dissolve when exposed to light, three that smell like roses or lemons (depending on whether a man or woman is reading), two that stain with the bloody fingerprints of the those who handle them, one that ignites when brushed with breath, thirteen sewn from baby skin, one that moans when touched, and one that screams—yet all without mass, unimaginable, and invisible. Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative fiction, including, most recently, the novels Calendar of Regrets (2010) and Head in Flames (2009). He teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. SUPERSTRUCTURE! by Barbara D'Albi As soon as I opened the third drawer of Barbara D'Albi's wooden novel, everything became hopeless. Now in Ithaca, there was no going back. And it wasn't just the intricate series of shelves, hinged doors and locked drawers which D'Albi layered into the book, no, lo, I was constructed anew by the story. Who else but D'Albi to imagine a God who becomes a carpenter and gets killed?! And makes it good! You want stories? D'Albi is a skyscraper, built with planes and levers. Momentarily I wondered where I could shelve this book, and then I thought: no matter; I couldn't put it down. Adam Robinson lives in Baltimore, where he runs Publishing Genius. He is the author of Adam Robison and Other Poems and Say, Poem. 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Ben Gorman reviews Philosophy in Children’s Literature by Peter R. Costello.

In this contribution, we focus on teaching and assessment in school-based activities involving the oral transmission of texts at school entry in multilingual contexts. We analyze activities involving listening and oral exchanges between five-year-olds and their teacher about the comprehension of children's literature. Our analyses show that the challenge of oral interactions in the professionalization of teachers lies in the delimitation of a common, shared space for speech between the teacher and the class collective, and that the story-character system (...) provides a framework for structuring these interactions in heterogeneous, multilingual contexts. (shrink)

This research analyzes global children's literature from the National Council for Social Studies Notable Trade book lists from the past three years. The authors studied primary level texts that were either written by or about people and cultures from outside the United States. Using critical content analysis, the authors identified what aspects of global citizenship these books promote. The authors also analyzed the texts for dangers of representation as presented through various stereotypes or problematic tropes. This research critiques the (...) NCSS Notable Trade book lists to provide social studies educators with guidance in selecting and using international and global children's literature. Findings suggest NCSS recommended trade books promote a Cosmopolitan discourse (Gaudelli, 2009) and a soft approach (Andreotti, 2006) to Global Citizenship Education. We offer both nuanced critiques of specific books as well as guidance for teachers, librarians and organizations for selecting texts. (shrink)

This book seeks to join the ongoing, interdisciplinary approach to children’s literature by means of sustained readings of individual texts by means of important works in the history of philosophy. Its inclusion of authors from both various departments—philosophy, literature, religion, and education—and various countries is an attempt to show how traditional boundaries between disciplines might become more permeable and how philosophy offers important insights to this interdisciplinary, critical conversation.

Exploring the ethical questions posed by, in, and about children’s literature, this collection examines the way texts intended for children raise questions of value, depict the moral development of their characters, and call into attention shared moral presuppositions. Even as children’s literature has evolved in opposition to its origins in didactic Sunday school tracts and moralizing fables, authors, parents, librarians, and scholars remain sensitive to the values conveyed to children through the texts they choose to share with them.

In this paper, I argue that the pervasive whiteness of children’s literature contributes to the cultivation of racial biases and stereotypes while impeding the cultivation of compassion toward others. Furthermore, it makes many of the valuable goods associated with literature less accessible to children of color than to white children. Therefore, when possible, consumers have a moral obligation to purchase books that include multidimensional characters of color, and act wrongly when they purchase only books that do not. I respond to (...) the objection that because pervasive whiteness of children’s literature is a collective problem that produces collective harm, consumers are not blameworthy for their individual purchases. (shrink)

This essay applies a plausible model for moral growth to examples of secular and religious children’s literature. The point is that moral maturation, given this model, requires imaginary worlds on both secular and religious presuppositions. Trying to guide a child’s reading toward either religious or secular books rather than toward good literature is shown therefore to miss the mark of good parenting.

This essay applies a plausible model for moral growth to examples of secular and religious children’s literature. The point is that moral maturation, given this model, requires imaginary worlds on both secular and religious presuppositions. Trying to guide a child’s reading toward either religious or secular books rather than toward good literature is shown therefore to miss the mark of good parenting.

This paper examines the complexity and fluidity of maternal identity through an examination of narratives about "real motherhood" found in children's literature. Focusing on the multiplicity of mothers in adoption, I question standard views of maternity in which gestational, genetic and social mothering all coincide in a single person. The shortcomings of traditional notions of motherhood are overcome by developing a fluid and inclusive conception of maternal reality as authored by a child's own perceptions.

In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites us (...) to reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers. (shrink)

This study examined linguistic patterns in mothers’ reports about their toddlers’ involvement in everyday household work, as a way to understand the parental ethnotheories that may guide children’s prosocial helping and development. Mothers from two cultural groups – US Mexican-heritage families with backgrounds in indigenous American communities and middle-class European American families – were interviewed regarding how their 2- to 3-year-old toddler gets involved in help with everyday household work. The study’s analytic focus was mothers’ responses to interview (...) questions asking about the child’s efforts to help with a variety of everyday household work tasks. Results showed that mothers responded with linguistic patterns that were indicative of ethnotheoretical assumptions regarding children’s agency and children’s prosocial intentions, with notable contrasts between the two cultural groups. Nearly all US Mexican-heritage mothers reported children’s contributions and participation using linguistic forms that centered children’s agency and prosocial initiative, which corresponds with extensive evidence suggesting the centrality of both children’s autonomy and supportive prosocial expectations in how children’s helpfulness is supported in this and similar cultural communities. By contrast, middle-class European American mothers frequently responded to questions about their child’s efforts to help with linguistic forms that “pivoted” to either the mother as the focal agent in the child’s prosocial engagement or to reframing the child’s involvement to emphasize non-help activities. Correspondence between cultural differences in the linguistic findings and existing literature on socialization of children’s prosocial helping is discussed. Also discussed is the analytic approach of the study, uncommon in developmental psychology research, and the significance of the linguistic findings for understanding parental ethnotheories in each community. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the uniqueness of the aesthetic reading of children’s literature and child hermeneutics as foundations for reading education. The first section examines Louise Rosenblatt’s transactional model of aesthetic reading and Wolfgang Iser’s phenomenological approach, as well as their theoretical implications for reader-response criticism. The paper’s second section focuses on some more recent reader-response criticism research directions, which investigate postmodern picturebooks whose proposals within the educational scene have generated conflicting opinions. However, empirical studies (...) that have investigated the point of view from which real children authentically live the experience of reading have demonstrated the surprising ability of younger readers to fathom and interpret these ambitious narratives, which invite readers into an experience that enhances interpretive resourcefulness. The characteristics of this variety of books reveal an implicit trust in the hermeneutic potential of younger readers, which contradicts the deep-rooted idea that continues to paint them as incapable of artistic-aesthetic experiences and unable to express their own hermeneutics. (shrink)

Canadian children’s literature rarely depicts characters labelled with intellectual disabilities, yet when it does it often remains mired in stereotypes that recycle prevalent myths and misconceptions. Even as more recent literature attempts to push back against such stereotypes, it nevertheless predominantly remains caught in these dangerous representational repertoires. This article offers a brief history of Canadian literary depictions of intellectual disability and a critique of the Canadian publishing spheres. Through a critical analysis of Lorna Schultz Nicholson’s book Fragile Bones, we (...) discuss the limits of representation of intellectual disability in children’s fiction. We also offer a critique of the ableist publishing climate in Canada and suggest that structural barriers prevent disabled writers from entering the literary marketplace on an equal playing field. These barriers to publishing lead to the vast underrepresentation of disabled authors and the misrepresentation of disability in general and intellectual disability in particular in Canadian children’s literature. (shrink)

In the following Kepler suggests a number of different readings of Carroll’s Alice books that would be useful to those attempting to integrate philosophy into an existing curriculum.

RESUMO A literatura digital articula novas maneiras de construção de uma experiência estética e emocional aos leitores na infância. Este artigo reflete acerca da emoção e da afetividade na literatura digital por meio da análise de três aplicativos literários voltados a crianças. Para lidar com o complexo fenômeno da experiência afetiva e emocional na leitura digital, um referencial teórico interdisciplinar é proposto, relacionando a fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty à semiótica social multimodal de Kress e van Leeuwen. O corpus inclui os aplicativos (...) Little Red Riding Hood, da produtora Nosy Crow, The Monster at the End of This Book, de Jon Stone e Michael Smollin, e Macaco de chapéu, de Chris Haughton. A análise indica como os diferentes recursos semióticos são utilizados na representação das emoções e na sugestão de tensão emocional ao leitor infantil, tendo como centralidade a questão da corporeidade e a relação intrínseca entre os corpos e a experiência emocional. (shrink)

This book review evaluates Kenneth B. Kidd's Theory for Beginners: Children's Literature as Critical Thought, focusing specifically on Kidd's exploration of the symbiotic relationship between children's literature, philosophy, and critical theory.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Prelude to the Special Issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education on Children’s LiteratureEllen Handler Spitz, Guest Editor (bio)When Professor Pradeep A. Dhillon, editor of the Journal of Aesthetic Education, suggested to me one day that I might guest edit a special issue of the journal devoted to the topic of children’s literature, my initial reticence was toppled and my sense of resolve buoyed as I began to fantasize (...) with billowing excitement about just how this might be done. First, I dreamt up the image of guest editor as bountiful hostess—setting out delectable dishes in an elegantly appointed banquet before the readers of this journal. That metaphor faded, however, despite Maria Tatar’s eloquent reminder to us in these pages that gastronomy has frequently and salubriously been juxtaposed with reading. I could not help worrying (even though children vociferously protest the logic of this problem) that one cannot have one’s cake and eat it too. Therefore, switching to music, I began to imagine the editor as conductor of a highly select ensemble of musicians, all gifted with glorious well-seasoned voices. They might perform a concert (recorded for posterity, of course) of pieces aimed at an audience of those who care passionately about aesthetics, education, literature, and above all about children, and at those who, perhaps with tenderness, still recall their own childhood reading.But how to accomplish this in practical terms? Well, I reasoned, I would simply invite a group of distinguished senior scholars who, having achieved their reputations in related fields and having written on other subjects as well, have published highly significant works pertaining to children’s literature. Each person would contribute a composition in his or her own voice, and there would be complete freedom, carte blanche, no holds barred—the only constraint being page numbers. Would the results turn out to be harmony or cacophony? Well, I speculated, if each voice were finely tuned, resonant, and clear, whether treble or bass, forte or pianissimo, the outcome—although [End Page 1] unpredictable in terms of specifics—would, unquestionably, be musical. But that, dear reader, is ultimately for you to judge, for you have now heard precisely how this issue came into being and will, we hope, read on. Each author I asked responded to my call with alacrity and, in his or her original style and tone, made my task as conductor a perfect pleasure.We offer you a work in three parts. First, you will encounter two melodious and euphonious pieces, contributed respectively by Marina Warner (“Out of an Old Toy Chest”) and Maria Tatar (“From Bookworms to Enchanted Hunters: Why Children Read”). Here, the overarching themes of children’s play and make believe are set up, analyzed, and explored. Playing and reading are placed side by side, as well as reasons why children love to read and how they are variously exhorted, extolled, and even occasionally excoriated by adults for doing so.Our second movement consists of three apparently unrelated motifs, contributed in turn by Gareth Matthews (“Philosophical Adventures in the Lands of Oz and Ev”), Seth Lerer (“Style and the Mole: Domestic Aesthetics in The Wind in the Willows”), and myself (“Ethos in Steig’s and Sendak’s Picture Books: The Connected and the Lonely Child”). Actually, however, these essays are not unrelated, for each motif arises from a particular mode of interpretation grounded in turn in philosophy, in literary history and theory, and in psychology. The works considered are all by notable writers for children: L. Frank Baum, Kenneth Grahame, William Steig, and Maurice Sendak.For our grand finale, we offer two sonorous, seriously challenging contributions, one by Jack Zipes (“Why Fantasy Matters Too Much”) and the other by Eliza T. Dresang and Bowie Kotrla (“Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth”). These works grapple with contemporary matters, with fantasy, with technology, and with “radical change” as these can be discerned in the literature, imagery, and general cultural lives of today’s and even, quite possibly, of tomorrow’s children. Gesturing toward the future even more strikingly, we conclude this work with a flourishing coda in the actual voice of a living child... (shrink)

Drawing upon a classical cultural studies perspective and employment of participant observation in the socio-cultural scene of Anglo-western Islamic children’s literature in Britain and North Ameri...

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

Background Parental refusal of routine childhood vaccination remains an ethically contested area. This systematic review sought to explore and characterise the normative arguments made about parental refusal of routine vaccination, with the aim of providing researchers, practitioners, and policymakers with a synthesis of current normative literature. Methods Nine databases covering health and ethics research were searched, and 121 publications identified for the period Jan 1998 to Mar 2022. For articles, source journals were categorised according to Australian Standard Field of Research (...) codes, and normative content was analysed using a framework analytical approach. Results Most of the articles were published in biomedical journals (34%), bioethics journals (21%), and journals that carry both classifications (20%). Two central questions dominated the literature: (1) Whether vaccine refusal is justifiable (which we labelled ‘refusal arguments’); and (2) Whether strategies for dealing with those who reject vaccines are justifiable (‘response arguments’). Refusal arguments relied on principlism, religious frameworks, the rights and obligations of parents, the rights of children, the medico-legal best interests of the child standard, and the potential to cause harm to others. Response arguments were broadly divided into arguments about policy, arguments about how individual physicians should practice regarding vaccine rejectors, and both legal precedents and ethical arguments for vaccinating children against a parent’s will. Policy arguments considered the normative significance of coercion, non-medical or conscientious objections, and possible reciprocal social efforts to offset vaccine refusal. Individual physician practice arguments covered nudging and coercive practices, patient dismissal, and the ethical and professional obligations of physicians. Most of the legal precedents discussed were from the American setting, with some from the United Kingdom. Conclusions This review provides a comprehensive picture of the scope and substance of normative arguments about vaccine refusal and responses to vaccine refusal. It can serve as a platform for future research to extend the current normative literature, better understand the role of cultural context in normative judgements about vaccination, and more comprehensively translate the nuance of ethical arguments into practice and policy. (shrink)