Children’s Literature

While some might be inclined to reduce children’s literature to containers of morals and platitudes, there is a rich tradition of originality that drives the genre. This course will explore the wide range of themes present in children’s literature, and how deceptively complex these works can actually be. We will examine the capacity for children to deal with ambiguity and how strongly some stories resonate and contribute to the shaping of worldviews. An emphasis will be placed on picture books, folk tales, myths, fantasy and nonfiction as well as the cultural and historical contexts of individual works. The final project will be to go through the process of writing a work of children’s literature that will be presented to an actual audience of children.