Children & Education: Children's Literature

This new volume introduces readers to the wealth of children's literature by focusing on the essentials -- the best books for children, the ones that inform, impress, and, most important, excite young readers. This edition features more than 475 entries on the best-loved children's authors and illustrators, numerous essays on social and historical issues, thirty personal glimpses into craft by well-known writers, illustrators, and critics, and invaluable reading lists by category. The essential guide to children's books and their creators summarizes the canon of contemporary children's literature, in a practical guide essential for anyone choosing a book for or working with children.

A comprehensive survey of children's literature features almost two thousand entries encompassing biographical sketches of authors, illustrators, printers, and publishers, as well as essays on the different genres, fictional characters and printing processes

Covers 150 years of children's literature in 1,200 biographical-critical entries and nearly 100 topical articles.

The over 3200 entries of this reference, together with the resources compiled in the appendices of v.4 provide an ample overview of a very rich field, written by a fully international group of contributors. Though the focus is on literature in English, many European and non-Western writers and illustrators are included as well. The entries, which are written for the undergraduate and interested general reader, contain a brief biography of the writer or illustrator, an outline of their career, and a discussion of major works and themes in an engaging style that will have the audience reading far more than the initial entry they sought. Volume 4 contains an exhaustive index, a lengthy selected bibliography, a list of award-winning titles (from the date each award was founded to 2005), a list of major research centers and libraries of children's literature, and an outline of entries by topic, including countries, special subjects and terms, genres, types, titles, characters, authors, and illustrators. A sampling of non-biographical entry topics includes censorship, children as authors, death, dragons, dwarfs, humor, literacy, racism, superheroes, cover art, magic, poetry, realism, riddles, and young adult literature. Zipes, who has translated the Brothers Grimm and published several books on fairy tales and children's literature, teaches German and comparative literature at the U. of Minnesota. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)