Introducing Children's Literature: From Romanticism to Postmodernism

It is amazing how children’s books are still ignored in general social and literary history, and this title redresses the balance. It is a (partial) history that links key children’s books to mainstream cultural literary movements from romanticism (The King of the Golden River), through modernism (Mary Poppins) to postmodernism (Clockwork and The Stinky Cheese Man). Accessible and readable, it also traces ‘the extent to which children’s books are about writing for children’: how did and how do authors ‘imagine the child’ and find an appropriate way of addressing their audience? The communications and attitude gaps that used to exist between ‘academics’ studying children’s books and ‘practitioners’ using them seem to be disappearing, and books like this one can only speed the process.