Portal:Children's literature

The Children's Literature Portal

How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. In addition to conventional literary genres, modern children's literature is classified by the intended age of the reader, ranging from picture books for the very young to young adult fiction for those nearing maturity.

Children's literature can be traced to traditional stories like fairy tales, which have only been identified as children's literature since the eighteenth century, and songs, part of a wider oral tradition, which 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...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

edit

Selected article

Proserpine is a verse drama written for children by the English Romantic writers Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Composed in 1820 while the Shelleys were living in Italy, it is often considered a partner to the Shelleys' play Midas. Proserpine was first published in the London periodical The Winter's Wreath in 1832. The drama is based on Ovid's tale of the abduction of Proserpine by Pluto. Mary Shelley's version focuses on the female characters. In a largely feminist retelling from Ceres's point of view, Shelley emphasises the separation of mother and daughter and the strength offered by a community of women. Ceres represents life and love, and Pluto represents death and violence. The genres of the text also reflect gender debates of the time. Percy contributed in the lyric verse form traditionally dominated by men; Mary created a drama with elements common to early 19th-century women's writing: details of everyday life and empathetic dialogue. Proserpine is part of a female literary tradition which, as feminist literary critic Susan Gubar describes it, has used the story of Ceres and Proserpine to "re-define, to re-affirm and to celebrate female consciousness itself". However, the play has been both neglected and marginalised by critics.

More selected articles...

More...

edit

Selected picture

Credit: Der Struwwelpeter

Der Struwwelpeter (1845) is a series of illustrated moral tales by Heinrich Hoffman. The above poem translates as:

"Just look at him! there he stands,

With his nasty hair and hands.

See! his nails are never cut;

They are grimed as black as soot;

And the sloven, I declare,

Never once has combed his hair;

Anything to me is sweeter

Than to see Shock-headed Peter."

More selected pictures...

More...

edit

In this month

July – Carnegie Medal awarded to the best children's book published in the United Kingdom
July 2000 – A children's literature section is created on The New York Times bestseller list as a result of the popularity of Harry Potter
6 July 1942 – Anne Frank, whose diary became a popular children's work, went into hiding
9 July 1713 – Baptism of John Newbery (work pictured), the first publisher to make children's literature in Britain successful
14 July 1890 – Death of Dhan Gopal Mukerji, whose book Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon won the Newbery Medal in 1928

More anniversaries...

edit

Selected quote

Trees are all different, as you know, and I am sure some tiresome person must have told you that there are no two blades of grass exactly alike. But in the streets, where the blades of grass don't grow, everything is like everything else. This is why children who live in towns are so extremely naughty. They do not know what is the matter with them, and no more do their fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, tutors, governesses, and nurses; but I know. And so do you now. Children in the country are naughty sometimes, too, but that is for quite different reasons.

— E. Nesbit, Five Children and It

More selected quotes...

More...

edit

WikiProjects

Parent projects

Literature • Books • Novels

Main project

Wikipedia:WikiProject Children's literature

Related projects

Artemis Fowl • Discworld • Fablehaven • Harry Potter • Inheritance Cycle • Lemony Snicket • Redwall • Oz

What are WikiProjects?

edit

Selected biography

J. D. Salinger was a 20th-century American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye (pictured), as well as his reclusive nature. He has not published an original work since 1965 and has not been interviewed since 1980. Raised in the Bronx, Salinger began writing short stories while in secondary school, and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948 he published the critically-acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his subsequent work. In 1951 Salinger released his novel, The Catcher in the Rye, an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield was influential, especially among adolescent readers. The novel remains widely read, selling around 250,000 copies a year. The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to public attention and scrutiny: Salinger became reclusive, publishing new work less frequently. He followed Catcher with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953), a collection of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924," appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965. Afterwards, Salinger struggled with unwanted attention, including a legal battle in the 1980s with biographer Ian Hamilton and the release in the late 1990s of memoirs written by two people close to him: Joyce Maynard, an ex-lover; and Margaret Salinger, his daughter. In 1996, a small publisher announced a deal with Salinger to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924" in book form, but amid the ensuing publicity, the release was indefinitely delayed.

More selected biographies...

More...

edit

Did you know...

...that Lamb Chop (pictured) is a fictional sheep that was created by comedian and ventriloquist Shari Lewis and first appeared on the children's television show Captain Kangaroo in 1957?
...that the US children's television series Romper Room aired for over forty years?
...that Yucca Mountain Johnny is a cartoon character created to explain nuclear waste disposal to children, and has attracted controversy, being compared to Joe Camel?

More did you know...

edit

Featured content

Featured articles

Featured lists

edit

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

edit

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

edit

Related portals

edit

Wikimedia

Literature on Wikinews	Literature on Wikiquote	Choosing High Quality Children's Literature on Wikibooks	Children's literature on Wikisource	Literature on Wiktionary	Children's literature on Wikimedia Commons
News	Quotations	Manuals & Texts	Texts	Definitions	Images & Media