An Introduction to Children’s Literature

Oh dear. In Peter Hunt’s opinion, BfK is conservative, untheoretical and anti-intellectual. This baffled me until I noticed it was based largely on a single review and on a key article he’d misdated, by nine years, having failed to spot it was a reprint. Sadly, this suspect scholarship is typical of an account which never quite makes up its mind whether it’s an introduction to actual texts for children or to current literary theory. As a result, not surprisingly, it short changes the reader on both – treating the latter entirely uncritically and the former, all too often, as mere exempla.