Ethics in British Children's Literature

Ethics in British Children's Literature

Author: Lisa Sainsbury

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-08-29

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1441190775

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Featuring close readings of selected poetry, visual texts, short stories and novels published for children since 1945 from Naughty Amelia Jane to Watership Down, this is the first extensive study of the nature and form of ethical discourse in British children's literature. Ethics in British Children's Literature explores the extent to which contemporary writing for children might be considered philosophical, tackling ethical spheres relevant to and arising from books for young people, such as naughtiness, good and evil, family life, and environmental ethics. Rigorously engaging with influential moral philosophers, from Aristotle through Kant and Hegel, to Arno Leopold, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, and Lars Svendsen, this book demonstrates the narrative strategies employed to engage young readers as moral agents.


Book Synopsis Ethics in British Children's Literature by : Lisa Sainsbury

Download or read book Ethics in British Children's Literature written by Lisa Sainsbury and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring close readings of selected poetry, visual texts, short stories and novels published for children since 1945 from Naughty Amelia Jane to Watership Down, this is the first extensive study of the nature and form of ethical discourse in British children's literature. Ethics in British Children's Literature explores the extent to which contemporary writing for children might be considered philosophical, tackling ethical spheres relevant to and arising from books for young people, such as naughtiness, good and evil, family life, and environmental ethics. Rigorously engaging with influential moral philosophers, from Aristotle through Kant and Hegel, to Arno Leopold, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, and Lars Svendsen, this book demonstrates the narrative strategies employed to engage young readers as moral agents.

Ethics and Children's Literature

Ethics and Children's Literature

Author: Claudia Mills

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-13

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1317141393

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Exploring the ethical questions posed by, in, and about children’s literature, this collection examines the way texts intended for children raise questions of value, depict the moral development of their characters, and call into attention shared moral presuppositions. The essays in Part I look at various past attempts at conveying moral messages to children and interrogate their underlying assumptions. What visions of childhood were conveyed by explicit attempts to cultivate specific virtues in children? What unstated cultural assumptions were expressed by growing resistance to didacticism? How should we prepare children to respond to racism in their books and in their society? Part II takes up the ethical orientations of various classic and contemporary texts, including 'prosaic ethics' in the Hundred Acre Wood, moral discernment in Narnia, ethical recognition in the distant worlds traversed by L’Engle, and virtuous transgression in recent Anglo-American children’s literature and in the emerging children’s literature of 1960s Taiwan. Part III’s essays engage in ethical criticism of arguably problematic messages about our relationship to nonhuman animals, about war, and about prejudice. The final section considers how we respond to children’s literature with ethically focused essays exploring a range of ways in which child readers and adult authorities react to children’s literature. Even as children’s literature has evolved in opposition to its origins in didactic Sunday school tracts and moralizing fables, authors, parents, librarians, and scholars remain sensitive to the values conveyed to children through the texts they choose to share with them.


Book Synopsis Ethics and Children's Literature by : Claudia Mills

Download or read book Ethics and Children's Literature written by Claudia Mills and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the ethical questions posed by, in, and about children’s literature, this collection examines the way texts intended for children raise questions of value, depict the moral development of their characters, and call into attention shared moral presuppositions. The essays in Part I look at various past attempts at conveying moral messages to children and interrogate their underlying assumptions. What visions of childhood were conveyed by explicit attempts to cultivate specific virtues in children? What unstated cultural assumptions were expressed by growing resistance to didacticism? How should we prepare children to respond to racism in their books and in their society? Part II takes up the ethical orientations of various classic and contemporary texts, including 'prosaic ethics' in the Hundred Acre Wood, moral discernment in Narnia, ethical recognition in the distant worlds traversed by L’Engle, and virtuous transgression in recent Anglo-American children’s literature and in the emerging children’s literature of 1960s Taiwan. Part III’s essays engage in ethical criticism of arguably problematic messages about our relationship to nonhuman animals, about war, and about prejudice. The final section considers how we respond to children’s literature with ethically focused essays exploring a range of ways in which child readers and adult authorities react to children’s literature. Even as children’s literature has evolved in opposition to its origins in didactic Sunday school tracts and moralizing fables, authors, parents, librarians, and scholars remain sensitive to the values conveyed to children through the texts they choose to share with them.

Children's Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Children's Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Kimberley Reynolds

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2011-10-06

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 0191620122

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Children's literature takes many forms - works adapted for children in antiquity, picture books and pop-ups - and now includes the latest online games and eBooks. This vast and amorphous subject is both intimately related to other areas of literary and cultural investigation but also has its own set of concerns, issues and challenges. From familiar authors including Beatrix Potter and Roald Dahl, classic books such as Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, and The Secret Garden, to modern works including Harry Potter and the Twilight series, thisVery Short Introduction provides an overview of the history of children's literature as it has developed in English, whilst at the same time introducing key debates, developments, and figures in the field. Raising questions about what shape the future of literature for children should take, and exploring the crossover with adult fiction, Reynolds shows that writing for children - whether on page or screen - has participated in shaping and directing ideas about culture, society and childhood. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.


Book Synopsis Children's Literature: A Very Short Introduction by : Kimberley Reynolds

Download or read book Children's Literature: A Very Short Introduction written by Kimberley Reynolds and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-10-06 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children's literature takes many forms - works adapted for children in antiquity, picture books and pop-ups - and now includes the latest online games and eBooks. This vast and amorphous subject is both intimately related to other areas of literary and cultural investigation but also has its own set of concerns, issues and challenges. From familiar authors including Beatrix Potter and Roald Dahl, classic books such as Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, and The Secret Garden, to modern works including Harry Potter and the Twilight series, thisVery Short Introduction provides an overview of the history of children's literature as it has developed in English, whilst at the same time introducing key debates, developments, and figures in the field. Raising questions about what shape the future of literature for children should take, and exploring the crossover with adult fiction, Reynolds shows that writing for children - whether on page or screen - has participated in shaping and directing ideas about culture, society and childhood. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Terror and Counter-Terror in Contemporary British Children’s Literature

Terror and Counter-Terror in Contemporary British Children’s Literature

Author: Blanka Grzegorczyk

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-10

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 1351385380

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The widespread threat of terrorist and counter-terrorist violence in the twenty-first century has created a globalized context for social interactions, transforming the ways in which young people relate to the world around them and to one another. This is the first study that reads post-9/11 and 7/7 British writing for the young as a response to this contemporary predicament, exploring how children’s writers find the means to express the local conditions and different facets of the global wars around terror. The texts examined in this book reveal a preoccupation with overcoming various forms of violence and prejudice faced by certain groups within post-terror Britain, as well as a concern with mapping out their social relations with other groups, and those concerns are set against the recurring themes of racist paranoia, anti-immigrant hostility, politicized identities, and growing up in countries transformed by the effects of terror and counter-terror. The book concentrates on the relationship between postcolonial and critical race studies, Britain’s colonial legacy, and literary representations of terrorism, tracing thematic and formal similarities in the novels of both established and emerging children’s writers such as Elizabeth Laird, Sumia Sukkar, Alan Gibbons, Muhammad Khan, Bali Rai, Nikesh Shukla, Malorie Blackman, Claire McFall, Miriam Halahmy, and Sita Brahmachari. In doing so, this study maps new connections for scholars, students, and readers of contemporary children’s fiction who are interested in how such writing addresses some of the most pressing issues affecting us today, including survival after terror, migration, and community building.


Book Synopsis Terror and Counter-Terror in Contemporary British Children’s Literature by : Blanka Grzegorczyk

Download or read book Terror and Counter-Terror in Contemporary British Children’s Literature written by Blanka Grzegorczyk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-10 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The widespread threat of terrorist and counter-terrorist violence in the twenty-first century has created a globalized context for social interactions, transforming the ways in which young people relate to the world around them and to one another. This is the first study that reads post-9/11 and 7/7 British writing for the young as a response to this contemporary predicament, exploring how children’s writers find the means to express the local conditions and different facets of the global wars around terror. The texts examined in this book reveal a preoccupation with overcoming various forms of violence and prejudice faced by certain groups within post-terror Britain, as well as a concern with mapping out their social relations with other groups, and those concerns are set against the recurring themes of racist paranoia, anti-immigrant hostility, politicized identities, and growing up in countries transformed by the effects of terror and counter-terror. The book concentrates on the relationship between postcolonial and critical race studies, Britain’s colonial legacy, and literary representations of terrorism, tracing thematic and formal similarities in the novels of both established and emerging children’s writers such as Elizabeth Laird, Sumia Sukkar, Alan Gibbons, Muhammad Khan, Bali Rai, Nikesh Shukla, Malorie Blackman, Claire McFall, Miriam Halahmy, and Sita Brahmachari. In doing so, this study maps new connections for scholars, students, and readers of contemporary children’s fiction who are interested in how such writing addresses some of the most pressing issues affecting us today, including survival after terror, migration, and community building.

Children's Literature and British Identity

Children's Literature and British Identity

Author: Rebecca Knuth

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0810885166

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Children's Literature and British Identity: Imagining a People and a Nation is the story of the development of English children's literature, focusing on how stories inspire children to adhere to the values of society. Such English authors as Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling have entertained, inspired, confronted social wrongs, and transmitted cultural values--functions previously associated with folklore. Their stories form a new folklore tradition that grounds personal identity, provides social glue, and supports a love of England and English values. This book examines how this tradition came to fruition.


Book Synopsis Children's Literature and British Identity by : Rebecca Knuth

Download or read book Children's Literature and British Identity written by Rebecca Knuth and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children's Literature and British Identity: Imagining a People and a Nation is the story of the development of English children's literature, focusing on how stories inspire children to adhere to the values of society. Such English authors as Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling have entertained, inspired, confronted social wrongs, and transmitted cultural values--functions previously associated with folklore. Their stories form a new folklore tradition that grounds personal identity, provides social glue, and supports a love of England and English values. This book examines how this tradition came to fruition.

British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture

British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture

Author: Catherine Butler

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-09-21

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1350195499

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Whether watching Studio Ghibli adaptations of British children's books, visiting Harry Potter sites in Britain or eating at Alice in Wonderland-themed restaurants in Tokyo, the Japanese have a close and multifaceted relationship with British children's literature. In this, the first comprehensive study to explore this engagement, Catherine Butler considers its many manifestations in print, on the screen, in tourist locations and throughout Japanese popular culture. Taking stock of the influence of literary works such as Gulliver's Travels, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Tom's Midnight Garden, and the Harry Potter series, this lively account draws on literary criticism, translation, film and tourist studies to explore how British children's books have been selected, translated, understood, adapted and reworked into Japanese commercial, touristic and imaginative culture. Using theoretically informed case studies this book will consider both individual texts and their wider cultural contexts, translations and adaptations (such as the numerous adaptations of British children's books by Studio Ghibli and others), the dissemination of distinctive tropes such as magical schools into Japanese children's literature and popular culture, and the ways in which British children's books and their settings have become part of way that Japanese people understand Britain itself.


Book Synopsis British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture by : Catherine Butler

Download or read book British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture written by Catherine Butler and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-21 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether watching Studio Ghibli adaptations of British children's books, visiting Harry Potter sites in Britain or eating at Alice in Wonderland-themed restaurants in Tokyo, the Japanese have a close and multifaceted relationship with British children's literature. In this, the first comprehensive study to explore this engagement, Catherine Butler considers its many manifestations in print, on the screen, in tourist locations and throughout Japanese popular culture. Taking stock of the influence of literary works such as Gulliver's Travels, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Tom's Midnight Garden, and the Harry Potter series, this lively account draws on literary criticism, translation, film and tourist studies to explore how British children's books have been selected, translated, understood, adapted and reworked into Japanese commercial, touristic and imaginative culture. Using theoretically informed case studies this book will consider both individual texts and their wider cultural contexts, translations and adaptations (such as the numerous adaptations of British children's books by Studio Ghibli and others), the dissemination of distinctive tropes such as magical schools into Japanese children's literature and popular culture, and the ways in which British children's books and their settings have become part of way that Japanese people understand Britain itself.

British Children's Literature and Material Culture

British Children's Literature and Material Culture

Author: Jane Suzanne Carroll

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-10-21

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1350201790

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The 'golden age' of children's literature in the late 19th and early 20th century coincided with a boom in the production and trade of commodities. The first book-length study to situate children's literature within the consumer culture of this period, British Children's Literature and Material Culture explores the intersection of children's books, consumerism and the representation of commodities within British children's literature. In tracing the role of objects in key texts from the turn of the century, Jane Suzanne Carroll uncovers the connections between these fictional objects and the real objects that child consumers bought, used, cherished, broke, and threw away. Beginning with the Great Exhibition of 1851, this book takes stock of the changing attitudes towards consumer culture – a movement from celebration to suspicion – to demonstrate that children's literature was a key consumer product, one that influenced young people's views of and relationships with other kinds of commodities. Drawing on a wide spectrum of well-known and less familiar texts from Britain, this book examines works from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There and E. Nesbit's Five Children & It to Christina Rossetti's Speaking Likenesses and Mary Louisa Molesworth's The Cuckoo Clock. Placing children's fiction alongside historical documents, shop catalogues, lost property records, and advertisements, Carroll provides fresh critical insight into children's relationships with material culture and reveals that even the most fantastic texts had roots in the ordinary, everyday things.


Book Synopsis British Children's Literature and Material Culture by : Jane Suzanne Carroll

Download or read book British Children's Literature and Material Culture written by Jane Suzanne Carroll and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 'golden age' of children's literature in the late 19th and early 20th century coincided with a boom in the production and trade of commodities. The first book-length study to situate children's literature within the consumer culture of this period, British Children's Literature and Material Culture explores the intersection of children's books, consumerism and the representation of commodities within British children's literature. In tracing the role of objects in key texts from the turn of the century, Jane Suzanne Carroll uncovers the connections between these fictional objects and the real objects that child consumers bought, used, cherished, broke, and threw away. Beginning with the Great Exhibition of 1851, this book takes stock of the changing attitudes towards consumer culture – a movement from celebration to suspicion – to demonstrate that children's literature was a key consumer product, one that influenced young people's views of and relationships with other kinds of commodities. Drawing on a wide spectrum of well-known and less familiar texts from Britain, this book examines works from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There and E. Nesbit's Five Children & It to Christina Rossetti's Speaking Likenesses and Mary Louisa Molesworth's The Cuckoo Clock. Placing children's fiction alongside historical documents, shop catalogues, lost property records, and advertisements, Carroll provides fresh critical insight into children's relationships with material culture and reveals that even the most fantastic texts had roots in the ordinary, everyday things.

Ethics and Children's Literature

Ethics and Children's Literature

Author: Claudia Mills

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-13

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1317141407

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Exploring the ethical questions posed by, in, and about children’s literature, this collection examines the way texts intended for children raise questions of value, depict the moral development of their characters, and call into attention shared moral presuppositions. The essays in Part I look at various past attempts at conveying moral messages to children and interrogate their underlying assumptions. What visions of childhood were conveyed by explicit attempts to cultivate specific virtues in children? What unstated cultural assumptions were expressed by growing resistance to didacticism? How should we prepare children to respond to racism in their books and in their society? Part II takes up the ethical orientations of various classic and contemporary texts, including 'prosaic ethics' in the Hundred Acre Wood, moral discernment in Narnia, ethical recognition in the distant worlds traversed by L’Engle, and virtuous transgression in recent Anglo-American children’s literature and in the emerging children’s literature of 1960s Taiwan. Part III’s essays engage in ethical criticism of arguably problematic messages about our relationship to nonhuman animals, about war, and about prejudice. The final section considers how we respond to children’s literature with ethically focused essays exploring a range of ways in which child readers and adult authorities react to children’s literature. Even as children’s literature has evolved in opposition to its origins in didactic Sunday school tracts and moralizing fables, authors, parents, librarians, and scholars remain sensitive to the values conveyed to children through the texts they choose to share with them.


Book Synopsis Ethics and Children's Literature by : Claudia Mills

Download or read book Ethics and Children's Literature written by Claudia Mills and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the ethical questions posed by, in, and about children’s literature, this collection examines the way texts intended for children raise questions of value, depict the moral development of their characters, and call into attention shared moral presuppositions. The essays in Part I look at various past attempts at conveying moral messages to children and interrogate their underlying assumptions. What visions of childhood were conveyed by explicit attempts to cultivate specific virtues in children? What unstated cultural assumptions were expressed by growing resistance to didacticism? How should we prepare children to respond to racism in their books and in their society? Part II takes up the ethical orientations of various classic and contemporary texts, including 'prosaic ethics' in the Hundred Acre Wood, moral discernment in Narnia, ethical recognition in the distant worlds traversed by L’Engle, and virtuous transgression in recent Anglo-American children’s literature and in the emerging children’s literature of 1960s Taiwan. Part III’s essays engage in ethical criticism of arguably problematic messages about our relationship to nonhuman animals, about war, and about prejudice. The final section considers how we respond to children’s literature with ethically focused essays exploring a range of ways in which child readers and adult authorities react to children’s literature. Even as children’s literature has evolved in opposition to its origins in didactic Sunday school tracts and moralizing fables, authors, parents, librarians, and scholars remain sensitive to the values conveyed to children through the texts they choose to share with them.

Why Have Children?

Why Have Children?

Author: Christine Overall

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2012-02-03

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0262300516

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A wide-ranging exploration of whether or not choosing to procreate can be morally justified—and if so, how. In contemporary Western society, people are more often called upon to justify the choice not to have children than they are to supply reasons for having them. In this book, Christine Overall maintains that the burden of proof should be reversed: that the choice to have children calls for more careful justification and reasoning than the choice not to. Arguing that the choice to have children is not just a prudential or pragmatic decision but one with ethical repercussions, Overall offers a wide-ranging exploration of how we might think systematically and deeply about this fundamental aspect of human life. Writing from a feminist perspective, she also acknowledges the inevitably gendered nature of the decision; the choice has different meanings, implications, and risks for women than it has for men. After considering a series of ethical approaches to procreation, and finding them inadequate or incomplete, Overall offers instead a novel argument. Exploring the nature of the biological parent-child relationship—which is not only genetic but also psychological, physical, intellectual, and moral—she argues that the formation of that relationship is the best possible reason for choosing to have a child.


Book Synopsis Why Have Children? by : Christine Overall

Download or read book Why Have Children? written by Christine Overall and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-02-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging exploration of whether or not choosing to procreate can be morally justified—and if so, how. In contemporary Western society, people are more often called upon to justify the choice not to have children than they are to supply reasons for having them. In this book, Christine Overall maintains that the burden of proof should be reversed: that the choice to have children calls for more careful justification and reasoning than the choice not to. Arguing that the choice to have children is not just a prudential or pragmatic decision but one with ethical repercussions, Overall offers a wide-ranging exploration of how we might think systematically and deeply about this fundamental aspect of human life. Writing from a feminist perspective, she also acknowledges the inevitably gendered nature of the decision; the choice has different meanings, implications, and risks for women than it has for men. After considering a series of ethical approaches to procreation, and finding them inadequate or incomplete, Overall offers instead a novel argument. Exploring the nature of the biological parent-child relationship—which is not only genetic but also psychological, physical, intellectual, and moral—she argues that the formation of that relationship is the best possible reason for choosing to have a child.

Exploring Ethics Through Children's Literature

Exploring Ethics Through Children's Literature

Author: Elizabeth Baird Saenger

Publisher: Council for Spiritual & Ethical Education (Csee)

Published: 1993-01-01

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 9780894554858

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Shows how children's literature can be used to help children develop their own strength as independent ethical decision makers.


Book Synopsis Exploring Ethics Through Children's Literature by : Elizabeth Baird Saenger

Download or read book Exploring Ethics Through Children's Literature written by Elizabeth Baird Saenger and published by Council for Spiritual & Ethical Education (Csee). This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how children's literature can be used to help children develop their own strength as independent ethical decision makers.