UC Berkeley Children's
Literature Working Group
Non sum qualis eram
The Children's Literature Working Group is currently on hiatus.
Past readings and events include:
2008-2009: Twenty-first-century Anglophone children's literature
December 3: Explaining Cultural Conflicts to the American Child Reader
Facilitator: Anna Brooks Creagh (Folklore)
- Ibtisam Barakat, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood (2007).
- Ying Chang Compestine, Revolution is Not a Dinner Party (2007).
- Russell Freedman, Who Was First? Discovering the Americas (2007).
- Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007).
November 5: Post-9/11 Children's Literature
- Susan Beth Pfeffer, Life as We Knew It (2008).
- Jennifer Armstrong and Nancy Butcher, Fire-Us #1: The Kindling (2002).
- Deric R. Budendorf, Quentel (2007)
- Alice Hoffman, Green Angel (2004).
October 15: Princess Culture
- Shannon Hale, Princess Academy (2005).
- Lauren Thompson, Ballerina Dreams: A True Story (2007).
- Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux (2003).
- Gail Carson Levine, Fairest (2006).
- Peggy Orenstein, "What's Wrong with Cinderella?" (The New York Times, 2006). link
- Kay Stone, "What Walt Disney Never Told Us" (The Journal of American Folklore, 1975). link to pdf
September 24, 2008: Twenty-first-century Medievalism
- Laura Amy Schlitz, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village (2007).
- Marcia Williams, Chaucer"s Canterbury Tales (2007).
- Avi, Crispin: The Cross of Lead (2002).
2007-2008: Children's literature and the canon
May 20, 2008: Elementary school curricula, library reading lists, and the canon recommended to children today
- Emery, Hannah. 2005. "Children's Literature: Classroom and Popular Dichotomies." From Popular Culture and the Child Author, unpublished manuscript. 23-40.
- Worthy, Jo, Megan Moorman and Margo Turner. 1999. "What Johnny Likes to Read is Hard to Find in School." Reading Research Quarterly. 34(1): 12-27.
- Chapman, Marilyn, Margot Filipenko, Marianne McTavish, and Jon Shapiro. 2007. "First Graders' Preferences for Narrative and/or Information Books and Perceptions of Other Boys' and Girls' Preferences." Canadian Journal of Education. 30(2):531-553.
- dePaola, Tomie. 2003. "Children's Choices for 2003." The Reading Teacher. 57(2):163-177.
- van Allsburg, Chris. 2003. "Teachers' Choices for 2003." The Reading Teacher. 57(3):271-278.
April 9, 2008: Girl cultures and the canon
- Paul, Lissa. "Feminism Revisited." Understanding Children"s Literature. Ed. Peter Hunt. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2005. 114-127.
- O"Keefe, Deborah. "Fluttery Girls, Bloody-Minded Boys: Where Girls Fit In." Good Girl Messages: How Young Women Were Misled by Their Favorite Books. New York: Continuum, 2000. 30-61.
- Nash, Ilana. "Introduction." American Sweethearts: Teenage Girls in Twentieth-Century Popular Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. 1-28.
- Nash, Ilana. "Radical Notions: Nancy Drew and Her Readers, 1930-1949." American Sweethearts: Teenage Girls in Twentieth-Century Popular Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. 29-70.
- Reimer, Mavis. ""These two irreconcilable things " art and young girls": The Case of the Girls" School Story." Girls, Boys, Books, Toys: Gender in Children"s Literature and Culture. Ed. Beverly Lyon Clark and Margaret R. Higonnet. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. 40-52.
- Kenschaft, Lori. "Just a Spoonful of Sugar?: Anxieties of Gender and Class in "Mary Poppins."" Girls, Boys, Books, Toys: Gender in Children"s Literature and Culture. Ed. Beverly Lyon Clark and Margaret R. Higonnet. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. 227-242.
- Garber, Marjorie. "Fear of Flying, or Why is Peter Pan a Woman?" Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Harper Collins, 1992. 165-185.
February 25, 2008 at 2 p.m.: Race, religion, and the Other
- Kenneth Kidd, "Prizing Children"s Literature: The Case of Newbery Gold," Children"s Literature 35 (2007) 166-90.
- Perry Nodelman, "The Other: Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children"s Literature," Children"s Literature Association Quarterly 17.1 (Spring 1992) 29-35.
- Frantz Fanon, from Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove, 1967) 141-54, 161-4.
- W.E.B. DuBois, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings," in The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin-Signet, 1995) 43-53.
- Supplement to Fanon and DuBois: classic scenes of racial misidentification from Zora Neale Hurston"s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and James Weldon Johnson"s Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912).
- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The Master"s Pieces: On Canon Formation and the African-American Tradition," in Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (New York: Oxford UP, 1992) 17-42.
- Ann M. Trousdale, "A Submission Theology for Black Americans: Religion and Social Action in Prize-Winning Children"s Books about the Black Experience in America," Research in the Teaching of English 24.2 (May 1990), 117-40.
- Recommended Primary Reading: Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), Lynn Reid Banks, The Indian in the Cupboard (1980), Virginia Hamilton, The House of Dies Drear (1968), Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976), H.A. and Margret Rey, Curious George (1941)
February 4, 2008: Picture books and the Caldecott
- Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are.
- "Picture Books," in The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005, pp. 1051-1059.
- "Words and Pictures," in Crosscurrents of Children's Literature: An Anthology of Texts and Criticism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007, pp. 707-714.
- Perry Nodelman, "The Relationship of Words and Pictures," in Crosscurrents, pp. 714-729.
- John Rowe Townsend, "Picture Books in Bloom: U.S.A>," in Written for Children: An Outline of English-Language Children's Literature. New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1983, pp. 308-320.
- Maurice Sendak, "Randolph Caldecott," in Crosscurrents, pp. 733-734.
- "Randolph Caldecott," in Crosscurrents, pp. 741-742.
- From the American Library Association website: "About the Caldecott Medal," "Caldecott Terms & Criteria," and "Caldecott Medal Winners and Honor Books, 1938-Present."
December 5, 2007: Fairy tales
- Variants of "Sleeping Beauty."
- Yeago, Karen. "Nursery Politics: Sleeping Beauty or the Acculturation of a Tale." The Translation of Children's Literature: A Reader. Ed. Gillian Lathey. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters, 2006. 175-189.
- Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization. Original printing, 1983. New York: Methuen, 1988. 1-59.
- Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Knopf, 1975. 1-19, 225-236.
- Knoepflmacher, U. C. "Repudiating 'Sleeping Beauty'." Girls, Boys, Books, Toys: Gender in Children's Literature and Culture. Ed. Beverly Lyon Clark and Margaret R. Higonnet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. 1-24.
November 14, 2007: 19th-century American children's literature
- Excerpts from Leslie Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel (1960; rev.
ed. 1966).
- Excerpts from Gillian Avery, Behold the Child (1994).
- "Bad Boys: Tom Bailey and Tom Sawyer" and "Good Democrats: Ragged Dick and Little Lord Fauntleroy" from Anne Scott MacLeod, American Childhood (1994).
- "Banned in Concord: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Classic American Literature" from Myra Jehlen, Readings on the Edge of Literature (2002).
- Excerpts from Beverly Lyon Clark, Kiddie Lit (2003).
- Catharine R. Stimpson, "Reading for Love: Canons, Paracanons, and Whistling Jo March" (1990).
October 24, 2007: 19th-century British children's literature
- Jacqueline Rose, "Introduction," The Case of Peter Pan, Or, The Impossibility of Children's Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1984): 1-11.
- U. C. Knoepflmacher, "Entering Childland: The Double Perspectives of Generation and Sex," Ventures into Childland: Victorians, Fairy Tales, and Femininity
(Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998): 1-34
- Maria Edgeworth, "The Purple Jar" and "The Birthday Present" (1798).
- F. J. Harvey Darton, "The Theorists: Thomas Day, the Edgeworths, and French Influence," Children's Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, 3rd ed.,
revised by Brian Alderson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982): 140-155.
- George MacDonald, "The Light Princess" (1863).
- U. C. Knoepflmacher, "Mixing Levity and the Grave: MacDonald's 'The Light Princess,'" Ventures into Childland, 116-149.
- Thomas Hughes, selections from Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857).
- John Rowe Townsend, "The World of School," Written for Children: An Outline of English-Language Children's Literature (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1983): 111-119.
- Robert Louis Stevenson, selections from A Child's Garden of Verses (1885).
- Anne Eaton, "Poetry for Children in the Nineteenth Century," A Critical History of Children's Literature (New York: Macmillan, 1953): 286-295.
September 26, 2007: Children's literature before 1800
September 9, 2007: Revisiting Harry Potter: How do we read the complete series?
September 5, 2007: preliminary planning meeting
2006-2007: Spunky girls and girl fiction
May 3, 2007: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
April 5, 2007: The Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce and Juniper by Monica Furlong
- "Judging a Book by Its Cover: Publishing Trends in Young Adult Literature" by Cat Yampbell, from The Lion and the Unicorn 29.3 (2005), 348-372.
(Fulltext)
- "Louisa May Alcott, William T. Adams, and the Rise of Gender-Specific Series Books" by Sarah A. Wadsworth, from The Lion and the Unicorn 25.1 (2001), 17-46.
(Fulltext)
- Interview with Tamora Pierce from Locus (May 2002). (Excerpts)
March 1, 2007: Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George and Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
February 1, 2007: The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- "Cinderella, Marie Antoinette, and Sara: Roles and Role Models in A Little Princess" by Elisabeth Rose Gruner, from The Lion and the Unicorn 22.2 (1998), 163-187.
(Fulltext)
January 18, 2007: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- "The Story of Jo: Literary Tomboys, Little Women, and the Sexual-Textual Politics of Narrative Desire" by Karin Quimby, from GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay
Studies 10.1 (2003), 1-22. (Fulltext)
- "Reading for Love: Canons, Paracanons, and Whistling Jo March" by Catharine R. Stimpson, from New Literary History 21:4 (Autumn 1990), 957-976.
(Fulltext)
- "The Borders of Ethical, Erotic, and Artistic Possibilities in Little Women" by Ann B. Murphy, from Signs 15:3 (Spring 1990), 562-585.
(Fulltext)
- "'Here Little, and Hereafter Bliss'": Little Women and the Deferral of Greatness" by Frances Armstrong, from American Literature 64:3 (Sept. 1992), 453-474.
(Fulltext)
- "Resentful Little Women: Gender and Class Feeling in Louisa May Alcott" by Stephanie Foote, from College Literature 32:1 (2005), 63-85.
(Fulltext)
December 6, 2006: special guest lecture by Prof. Seth Lerer on "Theatres of Girlhood"
November 29, 2006: Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
- "A Fellowship of Innocence" by Victor Watson, from Reading Series Fiction. London: Routledge, 2000.
- "History and the Politics of Play in T. S. Eliot's 'The Burial of the Dead' and Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons" by Jerry Phillips and Ian Wojcik Andrews,
from The Lion and the Unicorn 14:1 (June 1990), 53-69. (Fulltext)
- "Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons: Escape to a Lost Paradise" by Peter Hunt, from Touchstones, vol. 1, ed. Perry Nodelman. West Lafayette: Children's Lit.
Assoc., 1985.
- "Arthur Ransome and the Conservation of the English Lakes" by Karen Welberry, from Wild Things: Children's Culture and Ecocriticism, ed Sidney I. Dobrin and
Kenneth B. Kidd. Detroit, MI: Wayne State UP, 2004.
- "'The island come true': Peter Pan, Wildcat Island, and the Lure of the Real" by Anna Bogen, from Treasure Islands: Studies in Children's Literature, ed. Mary
Shine Thompson and Celia Keenan. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006, 53-61.
November 1, 2006: Anne of Green Gables and Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery
- "Bosom Friends: Lesbian Desire in L.M. Montgomery's Anne Books" by Laura Robinson, from Canadian Literature 180 (Spring 2004), 12-28. (Fulltext)
- "A Righteous War? L.M. Montgomery's Depiction of the First World War in Rilla of Ingleside" by Amy Tector, from Canadian Literature 179 (Winter 2003), 72-86. (Fulltext)
- "Why Anne Makes Us Dizzy: Reading Anne of Green Gables from a Gender Perspective" by Julia McQuillan and Julie Pfeiffer, from Mosaic 34:2 (June 2001), 17-32. (Fulltext)
- "'Dragged at Anne's Chariot Wheels': L.M. Montgomery and the Sequels to Anne of Green Gables" by Carole Gerson, from Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 35:2 (Fall 1997), 143-159. (Fulltext)
October 4, 2006: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
2005-2006: Children's literature and medievalism
March 10, 2006: Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
- "From Elfland to Hogwarts, or the Aesthetic Trouble with Harry Potter" by John Pennington, from The Lion and the Unicorn 26:1 (2002), 78-97. (Project Muse)
- "The Liberty Tree and the Whomping Willow: Political Justice, Magical Science, and Harry Potter" by Noel Chevalier, from The Lion and the Unicorn 29:3 (2005), 397-415. (Project Muse)
- "Is There a Text in This Advertising Campaign?: Literature, Marketing, and Harry Potter" by Philip Nel, from The Lion and the Unicorn 29:2 (2005), 236-267. (Project Muse)
February 17, 2006: His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
- "Fantasizing It As It Is: Religious Language in Philip Pullman's Trilogy, His Dark Materials" by David Gooderham, from Children's Literature 31 (2003), 155-175 (Project Muse)
January 17, 2006: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
- "World's End Imagery: How William Morris and C. S. Lewis Imagined the Medieval North" by Jonathan Himes, from Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 44:3 (2003), 304-10 (Literature Online)
- "Children and Other Talking Animals" by John Morgenstern, from The Lion and the Unicorn 24:1 (2000), 110-127 (Project Muse)
- "Disdain or Ignorance? Literary Theory and the Absence of Children's Literature" by Deborah Thacker, from The Lion and the Unicorn 24:1 (2000), 1-17 (Project Muse)
- "Women, Sex, and Power: Circe and Lilith in Narnia" by Jean E. Graham, from Children's Literature Association Quarterly 29:1-2 (2004), 32-44 (PN1008.2.C48).
- "The Problem of Susan" by Neil Gaiman (JPG)
- "Prisoner of Narnia: How C.S. Lewis Escaped" by Adam Gopnik, from The New Yorker (Nov. 21, 2005)
- "The Dark Side of Narnia" by Philip Pullman, from The Guardian (Oct. 1, 1998)
- "For the Love of Narnia" by Michael Nelson, from The Chronicle of Higher Education (Dec. 2, 2005)
December 6, 2005: The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper
- "Reading the Signs of Light: Anglo Saxonism, Education, and Obedience in Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising" by Michael D. C. Drout, from The Lion and the Unicorn 21:2 (1997), 230-250 (Project Muse)
- "Magical Medievalism and the Fairy Tale in Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising Sequence" by Peter Goodrich, from The Lion and the Unicorn 12:2 (1998), 165-177 (PCI Full Text)
- "Re-Enchanting the World: Education, Wisdom, and Imagination" by Albert J. Raboteau, from Cross Currents: The Journal of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life 45:3 (1995), 392-402 (MAIN BR1.C73)
- "Finding One's Place in the Fantastic: Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising" by Valerie Krips, from Functions of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Thirteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, ed. Joe Sanders, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995, 169-175 (MAIN PN56.F34.I58 1992)
November 1, 2005: Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones
- "The Heroic Ideal" by Diana Wynne Jones, from The Lion and the Unicorn 13:1 (1989), 129-40
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- "Inventing the Middle Ages" by Diana Wynne Jones, from a lecture given at Nottingham University, 1997
- "Tam Lin, Fair Janet, and the Sexual Revolution: Traditional Ballads, Fairy Tales, and Twentieth-Century Children's Literature" by Martha Hixon, from Marvels and Tales 18:1 (2004), 67-92
- Various versions of the ballad of Tam Lin
- "Thomas the Rhymer", anon. 17th c., from The Oxford Book of English Verse, ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch, 1910
- "Temporary Kings" from The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer, 1922
- "East of the Sun and West of the Moon", a Norwegian folktale
- A Diana Wynne Jones Bibliography
- A Diana Wynne Jones wiki
- Some other modern fiction based on the Tam Lin story: Tam Lin by Pamela Dean, The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope, The Queen of Spells by Dahlov Ipcar, Tam Lin by Jane Yolen, An Earthly Knight by Janet McNaughton, Tam Lin by Susan Cooper
Children's-literature-related calls for papers (from UPenn)
The UC Berkeley Children's Literature Working Group is sponsored by the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities.
Last edited by Arcadia Falcone, arcadia at berkeley dot edu, 5/1/08