Portal:Children's literature

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

Introduction

A mother reads to her children, depicted by Jessie Willcox Smith in a cover illustration of a volume of fairy tales written in the mid to late 19th century.

Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are enjoyed by 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 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. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is known as the "Golden Age of Children's Literature", because many classic children's books were published then.

Selected article

The Adventures of Tintin is a comic book series created by Belgian artist Hergé. The series first appeared in 1929 in a children's supplement to the French-language Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. Set in a painstakingly researched world closely mirroring reality, The Adventures of Tintin presents colourful characters in distinctive, well-realised settings. The hero of the series is the eponymous Tintin, a young reporter and traveller aided in his adventures by his faithful dog Snowy. The success of the series saw serialised strips collected into albums, spun into a successful magazine, and adapted for both film and theatre. The series is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, with translations published in over 50 languages and more than 200 million copies of the books sold to date. The comic strip series has long been admired for its clean, expressive drawings, done in Hergé's signature ligne claire style. The Adventures of Tintin straddles a variety of genres, from mysteries to political thrillers to science fiction. Stories always feature slapstick humour, offset in later albums by sophisticated satire and political and cultural commentary.

...Archive/Nominations

More...

Selected biography

Mary Martha Sherwood was a prolific and influential writer of children's literature in 19th-century Britain. She composed over 400 books, tracts, magazine articles, and chapbooks; among the most famous are The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1814), The History of Henry Milner (1822–37), and The History of the Fairchild Family (1818–47). Many of Sherwood's books were bestsellers and she has been described as "one of the most significant authors of children's literature of the nineteenth century." Her depictions of domesticity and Britain's relationship with India likely shaped the opinions of many young British readers. However, her works fell from favor as a different style of children's literature came into fashion during the late 19th century, one exemplified by Lewis Carroll's playful and nonsensical Alice in Wonderland.

...Archive/Nominations

More...

In this month

March 2009 – Margaret Mahy was commemorated as one of the Twelve Local Heroes in Christchurch, New Zealand in honor of her children's writings
2 March 1904 - Birth of Theodor Seuss Geisel (pictured), American writer and cartoonist who was most widely known for his children's books written under the pen name, Dr. Seuss
4 March 1743 - Birth of Johann David Wyss, best known for his novel The Swiss Family Robinson
27 March 1982 - Death of Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, head of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a company which produced the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Bobbsey Twins books throughout the 20th century
30 March 1820 - Birth of Anna Sewell, most famous for her novel Black Beauty

More anniversaries...

Selected quote

The day drew near when the infant must be christened. The king wrote all the invitations with his own hand. Of course somebody was forgotten. Now it does not generally matter if somebody is forgotten, only you must mind who. Unfortunately, the king forgot without intending to forget; and so the chance fell upon the Princess Makemnoit, which was awkward. For the princess was the king's own sister; and he ought not to have forgotten her. But she had made herself so disagreeable to the old king, his father, that he had forgotten her in making his will; and so it was no wonder that her brother forgot her in writing his invitations.

— George MacDonald, The Light Princess

...Archive/Nominations

More...

Selected images

A Tagore illustration of a Hindu myth
J. K. Rowling, 2010
The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) is a canonical piece of children's literature and one of the best-selling books ever published.
A late 18th-century reprint of Orbis Pictus by Comenius, the first children's picture book.
The New England Primer
Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm (left) and Jakob Grimm (right) from an 1855 painting by Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann
A mother reads to her children, depicted by Jessie Willcox Smith in a cover illustration of a volume of fairy tales written in the mid to late 19th century.
Walter Crane's chromolithograph illustration for The Frog Prince, 1874.
The Story of Mankind (1921) by Hendrik van Loon, 1st Newbery Award winner
Roald Dahl
Postal stamp of Russia celebrating children's books.
1900 edition of the controversial The Story of Little Black Sambo
An early Mexican hornbook pictured in Tuer's History of the Horn-Book, 1896.