Children's literature

Basic characteristics

There is some debate as to what constitutes children's literature. In general, the term comprises both those books which are selected and read by children themselves, as well as those vetted as 'appropriate for children' by authorities, e.g. teachers, reviewers, scholars, parents, publishers, librarians, bookstores, and award committees.

Some would have it that children's literature is literature written specially for children, though many books that were originally intended for adults are now commonly thought of as works for children, such as Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, or Huckleberry Finn. The opposite has also been known to occur, where works of fiction originally written or marketed for children are given recognition as adult books. Witness that in recent years, the prestigious Whitbread Awards were twice given to books marketed as children's books: Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass, and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. The Nobel prize for literature has also been given to authors who made great contributions to children's literature, such as Selma Lagerlöf and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Often no consensus is reached whether a given work is best categorized as adult or children's literature, and many books are multiply marketed in adult, children's, and young adult editions.

There are a number of problems inherent in children’s literature:

Much of the core “classic” literature for children speaks at multiple levels, and is not just enjoyable by and for children, but also by and for their parents and other adults. Many an adult will reread Alice in Wonderland or The Wind in the Willows at intervals throughout his/her life.

This speaking at multiple levels, however has drawbacks, for many adults can find things they see at an adult level which they deem inappropriate for children - whereas a child may see no such thing. This leads to many of the good books for children also being lightning rods for being “banned” as bad for children (or anyone).

A prime example of this is Gulliver’s Travels and the method of putting out the Lilliputian fire - which appalls some adults who are afraid children will take this as something to be emulated, or simply feel any reference to urination at all in public is unacceptable. The child, however, may simply note that he or she has never seen any reference to urination in a book - and yet everyone does it every day, and that as a pragmatic though unattractive way of putting out a fire - it worked, didn’t it.

Another example is that of Huckleberry Finn, where the “n” word is used liberally throughout the book. Many people who have been discriminated against because of the dark color of their skin find this word an anathema because it was used to demean them, and find it wholly unacceptable, any where, any time. While it’s use is now politically incorrect, and most people avoid it, it is still deliberately used by some to deride those with dark skin. (There is a small segment of those with darker skin who use the word often, but will resent its use by anyone with lighter complexion.) Avoiding this work because of the word however, ignores that this was the first American book in which the Negro or Black slave is actually the adult to be emulated, and who serves as the voice of reason for a cast-off urchin and a middle class white boy in their voyage growing up.

Parents wishing to protect their children from the unhappier aspects of life often find the traditional fairy tales, nursery rhymes and other voyages of discovery problematical, because often the first thing a story does is remove the adult influence, leaving the central character to learn to cope on his or her own: Snow White, Hansel and Gretal, Bambi, the Lemony Snickett series, etc. This necessary removal (the whole point of the character’s discovery for him or herself of how to become a functioning adult) is, of course, a psychologically unpleasant occurrence. Some parents know a particular child will be bothered by the method of removal and another not. Other parents find that these stories, used while the child is safe among family and friends, let children prepare for confronting bad things which may occur.

A final example is the Harry Potter series, sometimes regarded as evil perhaps because some adults have blurred the line between fact and fiction, not recognizing the “spells” to be distorted English or Latin words (“ludakris”). There are some adults who find almost any kind of fiction bad because it is not real, wanting their children to always be truthful. Other parents find works like this help their children distinguish fact from fantasy.

It can be seen, then, that differences in parenting methods, religion, and ethnic or social groups play a large role in defining children’s literature, and in choosing appropriate materials.

Additionally, there is some debate whether non-fiction is literature (and a separate debate over whether non-fiction should be called non-fiction or informational). While the ALSC has an award specifically for non-fiction, the Sibert Medal, non-fiction books have also occasionally won prestigious awards which are usually reserved for fiction (for example, Russell Freedman's 1988 Lincoln: A Photobiography won the Newbery Medal).

Many authors specialize in books for children. Other authors are more known for their writing for adults, but have also written books for children, such as Alexey Tolstoy's The Adventures of Burratino, and Carl Sandburg's "Rootabaga Stories". In some cases, books intended for adults, such as Swift's Gulliver's Travels have been edited (or bowdlerized) somewhat, to make them more appropriate for children.

An attempt to identify the characteristics shared by works called 'children's literature' leads to some good general guidelines that are generally accepted by experts in the field. No one rule is perfect, however, and for every identifying feature there are many exceptions, as well as many adult books that share the characteristic. (For further discussion, see Hunt 1991: 42-64, Lesnik-Oberstein 1996, Huck 2001: 4-5.)

Characteristic	Children's book counter example(s)	Adults' book that fits the profile
Marketed to or written for children	To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was not written for or marketed to children originally.	The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka is extremely popular among adults, possibly more so than among children.
Has children as protagonists	My Friend Mr. Leaky by J.B.S. Haldane is a children's book with an adult protagonist.	All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is an adult book with a child protagonist. Many of the short stories of Thomas Ligotti have child protagonists. Note that many adult books with child protagonists become de facto young adult books when they are assigned as classroom reading.
Does not contain adult themes and is 'appropriate for children' -- a problematic criterion, as many specialists argue that an issue that children confront (eg. eating disorders, rape, sexual abuse, prison, war) is appropriate by default.	Junk by Melvin Burgess is about heroin use, No Laughter Here by Rita Williams-Garcia is about FGM.	A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro has no 'inappropriate themes', nor does much adult genre fiction.
Relatively short	Summerland by Michael Chabon	Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
Contains illustrations, in particular books intended for younger children	The Tulip Touch by Anne Fine is an unillustrated book for younger children.	Maus by Art Spiegelman is a graphic novel for adults.
Written in simple language	Skellig by David Almond	The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
Plot-oriented with more dialogue and events, fewer descriptions and ruminations	The Red Pony by John Steinbeck	Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Deals with themes of growing up, coming to age and maturation	Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox	James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, though see the note above about adult books with child protagonists.
Didactic, educational, or attempts to educate children about societal and behavioral issues; otherwise, contains tales of fantasy and adventure	Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol	The Picture of Dorian Gray'' by Oscar Wilde
Happy ending, in which good triumphs over evil	Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia, Lauren Myracle's Rhymes with Witches	Catherine R. Coulter's The Nightingale Legacy

Publishers have attempted to further break down children's literature into subdivisions appropriate for different ages. In the United States, current practice within the field of children's books publishing is to break children's literature into pre-readers, early readers, chapter books, and young adults. This is roughly equivalent to the age groups 0-5, 5-7, 7-11 (sometimes broken down further into 7-9 and pre-teens), and books for teenagers. However, the criteria for these divisions are just as vague and problematic as the criteria for defining children's books as a whole. One obvious distinction is that books for younger children tend to contain illustrations, but picture books which feature art as an integral part of the overall work also cross all genres and age levels (as can be seen with the Caldecott Honor Book Tibet: Through the Red Box, by Peter Sis, which has an adult implied reader). As a general rule the implied reader of a children's or young adult book is 1-3 years younger than the protagonist. (counter example: Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, not necessarily written for children, but co-opted by a child and young adult audience)

History

Because of the difficulty in defining children's literature, it is also difficult to trace the history of children's literature to a precise starting point. In 1658 Jan Ámos Komenský published the illustrated informational book Orbis Pictus; it's considered to be the first picture book published specifically for children. John Newbery's 1744 publication of A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, sold with a ball for boys or a pincushion for girls, is considered a landmark for the beginning of pleasure reading marketed specifically to children. Previous to Newbery, literature marketed for children was intended to instruct the young, though there was a rich oral tradition of storytelling for children and adults; and many tales later considered to be inappropriate for children, such as the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, may have been considered family fare. Additionally, some literature not written with children in mind was given to children by adults. Among the earliest examples found in English of this co-opted adult fiction are Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur and the Robin Hood tales.

Series

The success of a book for children often prompts the author to continue the story in a sequel, or even to launch into an entire series of books. Some works are originally conceived as series: J. K. Rowling has always stated in interviews that her original plan was to write no fewer than seven books about Harry Potter, and some authors, such as the prolific Enid Blyton and R. L. Stine, seem incapable of writing a stand-alone book. In several cases, series have outlived their authors, whether publishers openly hired new authors to continue after the death of the original creator of the series (such was the case when Reilly and Lee hired Ruth Plumly Thompson to continue The Oz series after L. Frank Baum's death), or whether the pen name of the original author was retained as a brand-nom-de-plume for the series (as with Franklin W. Dixon and the Hardy Boys series, Harry G. Allard's Miss Nelson series, Carolyn Keene and the Nancy Drew series, and V. C. Andrews and the Flowers in the Attic series).

Scholarship

In recent years, scholarship in children's literature has gained in respectability. There are an increasing number of literary criticism analyses in the field of children's literature criticism. Additionally, there are a number of scholarly associations in the field, including the Children's Literature Association, the International Research Society for Children's Literature, and Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media (CIRCL), and National Centre for Research in Children's Literature Joshua Williams.

Awards

Some noted awards for children's literature are:

United States: the major awards are given by the American Library Association Association for Library Service to Children. They include the Newbery Medal for writing, Caldecott Medal for illustration, Sibert Medal for informational, Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for impact over time, Batchelder Award for works in translation, Coretta Scott King Award for work by an African-American writer, and the Belpre Medal for work by a Latino writer.
United Kingdoms and Commonwealth: the Carnegie Medal for writing and the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration; the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize; and the Guardian Award.
Internationally: the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award

References

External links

Children's eTexts at Project Gutenberg
More Children's eTexts at Project Gutenberg
Most Honored Children's Literature
Books for Children at the Gutenberg-Museum Mainz (Germany)
Halfway Down the Stairs - An online magazine featuring classic children's literature.
Just For Kids Who Love Books
Storynory, audio stories for children
Children's writing crash course written by Cynthea Liu, children's writer
The Writing for Children Resource Site