Literature for Children, 5 op

This course provides a selective introduction to children’s literature – from picture books to young adult fiction – and theoretical approaches to it. Considering different historical understandings of children and childhood, the course will explore how writing for children has responded to these understandings while aiming to instruct, influence and entertain young readers. Furthermore, we will investigate how children’s texts continue to take part in social and ideological debates, and how these texts often move from ostensible simplicity towards complexity, ambiguity and ambivalence. Throughout the course, we will pay close attention to questions of genre and audience, issues of class and gender, and forms of interaction between the verbal and the visual. The first half of the course will be mostly devoted to classics of children’s literature, while the second half will move our focus closer to the present day.