Girls, Boys, Books, Toys: Gender in Children's Literature and Culture

by Margaret R . Higonnet (Editor), Beverly Lyon Clark (Editor)

New
Paperback
2000
$35.95

Beverly Lyon Clark and Margaret R. Higonnet bring together twenty-two scholars to look closely at the complexities of children's culture. Girls, Boys, Books, Toys asks questions about how the gender symbolism of children's culture is constructed and resisted. What happens when women rewrite (or illustrate) nursery rhymes, adventure stories, and fairy tales told by men? How do the socially scripted plots for boys and girls change through time and across cultures? Have critics been blind to what women write about masculine topics? Can animal tales or doll stories displace tired commonplaces about gender, race, and class? Can different critical approaches-new historicism, narratology, or postcolonialism-enable us to gain leverage on the different implications of gender, age, race, and class in our readings of children's books and children's culture?

Synopsis

Beverly Lyon Clark and Margaret R. Higonnet bring together twenty-two scholars to look closely at the complexities of children's culture. Girls, Boys, Books, Toys asks questions about how the gender symbolism of children's culture is constructed and resisted. What happens when women rewrite (or illustrate) nursery rhymes, adventure stories, and fairy tales told by men? How do the socially scripted plots for boys and girls change through time and across cultures? Have critics been blind to what women write about masculine topics? Can animal tales or doll stories displace tired commonplaces about gender, race, and class? Can different critical approaches-new historicism, narratology, or postcolonialism-enable us to gain leverage on the different implications of gender, age, race, and class in our readings of children's books and children's culture?

$35.95

Quantity

1 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 312
Edition: New edition
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 21 Sep 2000
ISBN 10: 0801865263
ISBN 13: 9780801865268
Book Overview: No previous collection of criticism has focused on gender in the broad range of children's literature. No previous collection has embraced both children's literature and material culture.

Media Reviews

Clark describes the book as a 'sampler' of the many cloths of feminist writing. It is theoretically sophisticated and engaging on many levels. -- Kenneth Kidd * Michigan Quarterly Review *

Author Bio

Beverly Lyon Clark is a professor of English at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She is the author of Regendering the School Story: Sassy Sissies and Tattling Tomboys. Her essays have appeared in New Literary History, Philological Quarterly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Women's Review of Books, and other journals. Margaret R. Higonnet is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. She is the former editor of Children's Literature. Her articles have appeared in Poetics Today, Enfance, Revue des livres pour enfants, and other journals.