Portal:Children's literature

The Children's Literature Portal

Egyptian boys reading

Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are made for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader.

Children's literature can be traced to stories such as fairy tales that have only been identified as children’s literature in the eighteenth century, and songs, part of a wider oral tradition, that adults shared with children before publishing existed. The development of early children's literature, before printing was invented, is difficult to trace. Even after printing became widespread, many classic "children's" tales were originally created for adults and later adapted for a younger audience. Since the fifteenth century much literature has been aimed specifically at children, often with a moral or religious message. Children's literature has been shaped by religious sources, like Puritan traditions, or by more philosophical and scientific standpoints with the influences of Charles Darwin and John Locke. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are known as the "Golden Age of Children's Literature" because many classic children's books were published then. (Full article...)

Selected article

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful upon its release and has become a classic of modern American fiction. The novel is loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old. The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers, and a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explained the novel's impact by writing, "[i]n the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism." As a Southern Gothic novel and a bildungsroman, the primary themes of To Kill a Mockingbird involve racial injustice and the destruction of innocence, but scholars have also noted that Lee addresses the issues of class tensions, courage and compassion, and gender roles in the American Deep South. The book is widely taught in schools in English-speaking countries with lessons that emphasize tolerance and decry prejudice. Despite its themes, To Kill a Mockingbird has been the target of various campaigns to have it removed from public classrooms.

Selected picture

Beauty and the Beast illustrated by Walter Crane (1874)

In this month

• June 1908 – Publication of L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, which has since been translated into 20 languages and sold 50 million copies
• June 1938 – First appearance of Superman (pictured), in Action Comics
• 20 June 1941 - Armstrong Sperry awarded the Newbery Medal for Call It Courage
• 25 June 2006 – The Children's Party at the Palace, held in honor of the 80th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II held at Buckingham Palace Garden
• 26 June 1905 - Birth of Lynd Ward, illustrator of 200 juvenile and adult books and one of the founders of the American graphic novel

More anniversaries...

Selected quote

WikiProjects

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• Literature • Books • Novels

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• Wikipedia:WikiProject Children's literature

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Selected biography

Christopher Smart (11 April 1722 – 21 May 1771) was an English poet. He was a major contributor to two popular magazines and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was widely known throughout London. Smart was infamous for his role as "Mrs. Mary Midnight" and widespread accounts of his father-in-law, John Newbery, locking him away in a mental asylum for many years over Smart's supposed religious "mania". Even after Smart's eventual release, a negative reputation continued to pursue him as he was known for incurring more debt than he could pay off; this ultimately led to his confinement in debtor's prison until his death. Smart's two most widely-known works are A Song to David and Jubilate Agno, both at least partly written during his confinement in asylum. However, Jubilate Agno was not to be published until 1939 and A Song to David received mixed reviews until the 19th century. To his contemporaries, Smart was known mainly for his many contributions in the journals The Midwife and The Student, along with his famous Seaton Prize poems and his mock epic The Hilliad. Although he is primarily recognized as a religious poet, his poetry includes various other themes, such as his theories on nature and his promotion of English nationalism. Some of his most famous religious poetry is Hymns for the Amusement of Children, one of the first books of hymns expressly written for a juvenile audience.

Did you know...

• ... that Mary Augusta Dickerson found it inspirational to write her children's books inside a Pickle Barrel House (pictured)?
• ... that Phil Lynott was featured in a lunar ecliptic children's fairy tale which has been criticised by internet trolls?
• ...that the Rev. Teddy Boston was immortalized as "the Fat Clergyman" in The Railway Series of children's books by the Rev. W. V. Awdry?

Featured content

Featured articles

• Chinua Achebe
• Bronwyn Bancroft
• Enid Blyton
• The Coral Island
• Edmund Evans
• Ian Fleming
• The Fox and the Hound (novel)
• Anne Frank
• The Guardian of Education
• The Hardy Boys
• The Hunger Games (novel)
• Lad, A Dog
• Ursula K. Le Guin
• Lessons for Children
• Make Way for Ducklings
• Julianne Moore
• Baron Munchausen
• Original Stories from Real Life
• The Phantom Tollbooth
• Proserpine (play)
• Satyajit Ray
• Talbot Baines Reed
• Religious debates over the Harry Potter series
• J. K. Rowling
• Scoops (magazine)
• Mary Martha Sherwood
• The Story of Miss Moppet
• Tom Swift
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• J. R. R. Tolkien
• Sarah Trimmer
• A Wizard of Earthsea
• Mary Wollstonecraft

Featured lists

• Aurealis Award for best young adult novel
• Caldecott Medal
• S. E. Hinton bibliography
• Ursula K. Le Guin bibliography
• Madonna bibliography
• Newbery Medal
• Andre Norton Award
• Timeline of Mary Wollstonecraft

Categories

Select [►] to view subcategories

▼ Children's literature

► Children's literature by nationality

► Children's writers

► 18th-century children's literature

► 19th-century children's literature

► 20th-century children's literature

► 21st-century children's literature

► African children's literature

► Children's literary awards

► Children's literature bibliographies

► Children's books

► Child characters in literature

► Characters in children's literature

► Children's literature criticism

► Donaldson and Scheffler

► Fairy tales

► Children's book illustrators

► Children's libraries

► Children's magazines

► Children's literature organizations

► Plants in children literature

► Children's poetry

► Children's book publishers

► Children's short stories

► Works based on children's literature

► Children's literature stubs

Topics

Children's literature and Young adult literature

Children's literature: Book talk • Children's literature criticism • Children's literature periodicals • International Children's Digital Library • Native Americans in children's literature

Young adult literature: Gay teen fiction • Lesbian teen fiction • List of young adult authors • Young Adult Library Services Association

Associations and awards: Children's Book Council of Australia • CBCA book awards • Governor General's Literary Award for Children's Literature and Illustration • IBBY Canada • American Library Association • Association for Library Service to Children • Newbery Medal • Caldecott Medal • Golden Kite Award • Ezra Jack Keats Book Award • SCBWI • Sibert Medal • Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal • Batchelder Award • Coretta Scott King Award • Belpre Medal • Carnegie Medal • Kate Greenaway Medal • Nestlé Smarties Book Prize • Guardian Award • Hans Christian Andersen Award • Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award • Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators

Lists: List of children's classic books • List of children's literature authors • List of children's non-fiction writers • List of fairy tales • List of illustrators • List of publishers of children's books

Things you can do

Add {{Portal|Children's literature}} to the See also section of related articles. Tag the talk pages of related articles with {{WikiProject Children's literature}} Join WikiProject Children's literature and list yourself as a Participant in the project. Cleanup: A cleanup listing for this project is available. See also the list by category, the tool's wiki page and the index of WikiProjects. Deletion discussions: listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Literature Notability: Articles with notability concerns, listed at WikiProject Notability Rate the Unassessed articles in the Children's literature WikiProject. References: Add references to Unreferenced BLPs. Requested articles: Create a requested article on literature Stubs: Improve a stub-class article

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