Children's Literature

This critical guide provides a concise yet comprehensive history of British andNorth American children's literature from its seventeenth-century origins to thepresent day.Each chapter focuses on one of the main genres of children's literature: fables, fantasy, adventure stories, moral tales, family stories, the school story, andpoetry. M. O. Grenby shows how these forms have evolved over three hundredyears as well as asking why most children's books, even today, continue to fallinto one or other of these generic categories. Why, for instance, has fantasybeen so appealing to both Victorian and twenty-first-century children? Are thereligious and moral stories written in the eighteenth century really so differentfrom the teenage problem novels of today? The book answers questions likethese with a combination of detailed analysis of particular key texts and a broadsurvey of hundreds of children's books, both famous and forgotten.Key Features- The first concise history of children's literature to be published for more thana decade- Extensive coverage of children's literature, across genres, continents andfrom the beginnings of the form to Harry Potter and Philip Pullman- Links close reading of texts with the historical and cultural context of theirproduction and reception