Children's Literature: A Very Short Introduction

• Considers how children's literature has helped to shape and direct ideas about culture, society and childhood
• Looks at different types of children's literature from picture books and explicit young adult fiction to computer games and eBooks
• Raises questions about the future of children's literature; what shape should it take?
• Ideal starting point for anyone studying children's literature, or who is simply interested in understanding why it is so popular with students, and why adults are now reading children's books
• Explores the crossover with adult fiction, considering how far negative depictions of the future for children may contribute to a lack of social vision
• Part of the bestselling Very Short Introductions series - over three million copies sold worldwide

Readership: General readers as well as undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students in English Literature, especially those studying Children's Literature and Childhood Studies

Kimberley Reynolds, Professor of Children's Literature, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University

Kimberley Reynolds is Professor of Children's Literature in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University. She was President of the International Research Society for Children's Literature (2003 - 2007). Recent publications include Radical Children's Literature: Future Visions and Aesthetic Transformations (2007), winner of the Children's Literature Association Book Award in 2009, and Children's Literature Studies: A Research Handbook (forthcoming 2011).

Introduction: What is children's literature?
1: An outline history of publishing for children
2: Why and how are children's books studied?
3: Transforming the texts of childhood
4: Genres and generations - and the case of the family story
5: Visions of the future
6: Ethical debates in children's literature
Afterword
References
Further reading
Index