1. ELE 616 Research in Children’s Literature
Fall 2012
Defining
Children’s
Literature

2. What is Children’s Literature?
• Literature written for children?
• Literature written by children?
• Literature read by children, no
matter who it was written for?
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3. C. S. Lewis
• I am almost inclined to set it up as a
canon that a children’s story that is
enjoyed only by children is a bad
children’s story. The good ones last.
• Those of us who are blamed when old for
reading childish books were blamed
when children for reading books too old
for us. No reader worth his salt trots
along in obedience to a time-table.
– Lewis, C. S. (1952). “On Three Ways of Writing
for Children.” Of Other Worlds: Essays and
Stories. Ed. Walter Hooper. San Diego, CA:
Harcourt, 2002. 22-34.
– Quoted by David Beagley in Discovering
Children's Literature: A Personal Journey
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4. What IS children’s literature?
• This is the nub of the Fascination
[with children’s literature]
– What makes one book a
children’s book and another
an adult book? When I read
the one, must I read as a
child while the other must be
seen only in adult terms?
• Beagley, Discovering Children's
Literature: A Personal Journey
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5. Another view of children’s lit
• It doesn’t exist!
– “I firmly believe there is no such thing
as children’s literature,” Early writes.
“Children’s literature exists as an idea
in the adult mind about the ways one
speaks to children, about how we
adults configure childhood. Children’s
literature celebrates the imagination
we think is necessary for us to engage
childhood as adults. It is a way for
adults, in short, to distinguish children
from adults.”
• Quoted by Liam Otten in “More mainstream than
ever, children's literature remains hard to define,
poorly understood and frequently underestimated.”
Gerald Early: What Is Children's
Literature? Belles Lettres, Vol. III, no. 3
[Original article no longer online] 5

6. A didactic definition?
• A blogger writes:
– After many years of wrestling with
this definition, I came across one
trait that might actually apply to
every children’s book … and is
virtually antithetical to adult
literature. It is something my wife
(who studies Victorian children’s
literature) learned while working
with children’s literature scholar
June Cummins. Are you ready?
• children’s literature assumes a
teachable audience
• Toward a Definition of Children’s Literature
Posted 07.6.2011 by Jonathan Auxier
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7. A “safe” definition?
• Laura Laffrado:
– It is probably most
useful to define
children’s literature broadly,
as literature that doesn't
exclude children, family
literature, literature for a
number of generations.
• Teaching American Children's
Literature in The Heath Anthology of
American Literature Newsletter
Number XII, Fall 1995
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8. No matter, people study it!
• Jacqueline Banerjee:
– Hard as it is to define, children’s
literature is now recognized as an
important field of study, both in
itself and for the insights it yields
into literature as a whole — as
well as into the family life, society
and thinking of any given period,
and the minds of the many major
authors influenced by it.
• What is Children’s Literature?
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9. The End