ELT 222 (First Exam)

• Children’s Literature is the body of written works and accompanying illustrations  produced  to  entertain  or  instruct  young  people. The genre encompasses a wide range of works, including acknowledged classics of world literature, picture books and easy-to-read stories written exclusively for children, and fairy tales, lullabies, fables, folk songs, and other primarily orally transmitted materials.
• Adolescent Literature refers more to the pedagogical content than a type of literature. Scholars use the term Young Adult Literature for those literary pieces intended for an audience of 12 to 20 years old. However, the term adolescent literature is used with primary consideration on the teaching and learning process. You should understand that some literatures that are appealing to young adults may result to harmful consequences. Thus, it is the duty of teachers to identify what pieces are suitable to the process of learning.
• William Caxton’s 1484 translation of Aesop’s Fables, the 1760 publication of Mother Goose’s Melody, and the early nineteenth-century fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen are usually identified as early examples of children’s literature.
• An early American work specifically written for children was John Cotton’s 1641 Spiritual Milk for Children, a volume created to teach the Bible and moral values.
• The idea that literature for children should contain more of an emphasis on entertainment and enjoyment was evidenced in the mid-nineteenth century through works such as Edward Lear’s 1846 A Book of Nonsense, Lewis Carroll’s 1865 Alice in Wonderland, Joel Chandler Harris’ 1880 Uncle Remus stories, Carlo Collodi’s 1880 Pinocchio, Robert Louis Stephenson’s 1880 A Children’s Garden of Verses, and Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.
• The first half of the twentieth century was a time of transition, with changing emphasis on the balance between moral lessons and entertainment.
• In 1900, L. Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a classic volume for children that went on to become a major motion picture and an inspiration for Broadway productions.
• Elements of traditional stories continued with two notable 1902 works, Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories and Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
• The late 1920s and the 1930s saw increasing numbers of books written specifically for children on both sides of the Atlantic.
• These books emphasized entertainment from the child’s point of view, including A. A. Milne’s 1926 Winnie the Pooh, Wanda Gag’s 1928 Millions of Cats, Munro Leaf’s 1936 Ferdinand, Dr. Seuss’s 1937 And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street, and Ludwig Bemelmans’ 1939 Madeleine.
• The trend continued and in 1967 Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are introduced the imaginative antics of a child anti-hero.