Author(s): Seth Lerer

Books About Books | Children

Ever since children have been taught to read, there has been children's literature. Its history is inseparable from the history of childhood, as children are indelibly molded by the tales they hear and read - stories they will one day share with their own sons and daughters."Children's Literature" charts the makings of the Western literary imagination from "Aesop's fables" to "Mother Goose", from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" to "Peter Pan", from "Where the Wild Things Are" to "Harry Potter". Seth Lerer here explores the iconic books, ancient and contemporary alike, that have forged a lifelong love of literature in young readers during their formative years. Along the way, Lerer also looks at the changing environments of family life and human growth, schooling and scholarship, and publishing and politics in which children found themselves changed by the books they read. This ambitious work appraises a broad trajectory of influences - including Shakespeare's plays, John Locke's theories of education, Darwin's "Origin of Species", and the Puritan tradition - which have each shaped children's literature through the ages as well.The only single-volume work to capture the rich and diverse history of children's literature in its full panorama, this extraordinary book reveals why J.

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