Children's Books on Africa and Their Authors; An Annotated Bibliography

This article considers how the children's books written by two nineteenth-century female writers, Eliza Tabor and Mary Martha Sherwood, when they accompanied their husbands to India, enabled them to navigate this new environment and their position as respectable middle-class women while revealing how India was deemed a place where British childhood was impossible. Just as many women took up botanical study to legitimise their ‘otherwise transgressive presence in imperial spaces’ (McEwan 219), writing for children enabled others to engage with the masculine world of travelling and earning money without compromising their femininity. Addressing their work to children also seems to have helped both writers to deal with the absence of their own children: the Indian climate made it impossibly challenging for most British infants and children. In this way their writing gives expression to what might be termed a crisis of imperial motherhood. Underlying the texts is an anxiety relating to British settlement and an attempt to comprehend and control a place that threatened their maternal roles.

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The Adult as Foe or Friend?: Childism in Guus Kuijer's Criticism and Fiction

International Research in Children s Literature ◽

10.3366/ircl.2013.0099 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 205-217 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Vanessa Joosen

Keyword(s):

Children's Literature ◽

Children’S Literature ◽

Age Groups ◽

Children's Books ◽

Children’S Books ◽

Memorial Award ◽

Adult Reader ◽

Shed Light ◽

Selection Of

Compared to the attention that children's literature scholars have paid to the construction of childhood in children's literature and the role of adults as authors, mediators and readers of children's books, few researchers have made a systematic study of adults as characters in children's books. This article analyses the construction of adulthood in a selection of texts by the Dutch author and Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner Guus Kuijer and connects them with Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's recent concept of ‘childism’ – a form of prejudice targeted against children. Whereas Kuijer published a severe critique of adulthood in Het geminachte kind [The despised child] (1980), in his literary works he explores a variety of positions that adults can take towards children, with varying degrees of childist features. Such a systematic and comparative analysis of the way grown-ups are characterised in children's texts helps to shed light on a didactic potential that materialises in different adult subject positions. After all, not only literary and artistic aspects of children's literature may be aimed at the adult reader (as well as the child), but also the didactic aspect of children's books can cross over between different age groups.

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Life in the Open with Charles Frederick Holder

Southern California Quarterly ◽

10.1525/scq.2014.96.2.206 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 96 (2) ◽

pp. 206-221

Author(s):

Jane Apostol

Keyword(s):

Natural Science ◽

Children's Books ◽

Children’S Books ◽

Sport Fishing ◽

Prolific Author ◽

Natural Scientist ◽

The Arts ◽

Santa Catalina Island

Natural scientist Charles Frederick Holder settled in Pasadena in 1885. As a prolific author, lecturer, and editor, Holder was a key promoter of the region, sport fishing, and natural science. He wrote popular children’s books as well. He is also remembered as an influential figure in education and the arts and as a founder of the Tuna Club on Santa Catalina Island and the Valley Hunt Club in Pasadena and its Tournament of Roses.

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A content analysis of gender representation in Malaysian children's literature

Social and Management Research Journal ◽

10.24191/smrj.v5i2.5159 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 49

Author(s):

Ramesh Nair

Keyword(s):

Content Analysis ◽

Children's Literature ◽

English Language ◽

Children’S Literature ◽

Children's Books ◽

Children’S Books ◽

Minor Characters ◽

And Gender ◽

Mental Schemas ◽

Selection Of

Children's literature serves as a powerful medium through which children construct messages about their roles In society and gender Identity is often central to this construction. Although possessing mental schemas about gender differences is helpful when children organize their ideas of the world around them, problems occur when children are exposed to a constant barrage of uncompromising, gender-schematic sources that lead to stereotyping which in turn represses the full development of the child. This paper focuses on how gender is represented in a selection of Malaysian children's books published in the English language. Relying on the type of content analysis employed by previous feminist social science researchers, I explore this selection of Malaysian children's books for young children and highlight some areas of concern with regard to the construction of maleness and femaleness in these texts. The results reveal Imbalances at various levels Including the distribution of main, supporting and minor characters along gendered lines and the positioning of male and female characters In the visual Illustrations. The stereotyping of these characters In terms of their behavioural traits will be discussed with the aim of drawing attention to the need for us to take concerted measures to provide our children with books that will help them realize their potential to the fullest.

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