Children's Literature Analysis

These texts are part of a larger genre termed Children’s Literature: literature that is predominantly meant for children, often not produced by children; disseminated and procured by parents for children’s consumption. Students should study and engage with Children’s Literature as it: studies the influence of the same on children, aids cognitive development of both children and students, and offers a distinctive critical position of a doubled perspective. The cognitive development domain is strengthened as the field of study encourages deeper thought, traces travel of important literary themes and censorship, and acts as an avenue for students to learn about cultures – both their own and those of the outside world. The new critical position

Yet, children experience these texts entirely uniquely – this forces the students to re-evaluate the censorship – itself being problematic as it is relative – and overt monitoring of the genre. Earlier forms of children’s literature were overtly didactic: conceptions of moral value and virtuousness - based on traditional materials - littered the pages of such texts. Yet, large numbers of these texts originate from fairy tales and folk lore – exhibiting cultural and ideological assimilation (Hunt 5). The modern form of this genre is largely a nineteenth century phenomenon, building on such cultural assimilation: a sociological process in which cultures begin to absorb elements from one another. Children’s literature exposes students to a genre that is marginalized and is frequently omitted from the literary canon: it enables students to contemplate the notions that society deems most pressing or most deserving of passing onto the next

As a genre, Children’s Literature “can be approached from any specialist viewpoint” (Hunt 1). Students can scrutinize the value of the ‘identification’ phenomenon occurring in the genre, wherein texts in which children see an image of themselves appeals to them, and formulate educated opinions on the use of a text as a didactic mirror or as an escape: where individuals do not necessarily have to connect only with others closely resembling themselves, but can do so with individuals whom they aspire to be. Ideological critique or ideological deconstruction, study of representation, Leavisite notion of psychologism of characters, Structuralist approaches, liberalist human readings: are all approaches to examining a genre commonly misconstrued as