This ambitious study of the textual characteristics of children’s literature examines its history and stylistics, analyzes the modern conception of childhood, and dissects the rhetoric of selected children’s novels. Underlying it all is the author’s interest in children’s play and what it reveals about their nature and the literature intended for them.

John Morgenstern is an associate professor in the English department of Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

John Morgenstern
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 240
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2009
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4295-9
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      v
Preface      1

1. The Fall into Literacy      7
2. Children and Other Talking Animals      44
3. Playing with Books      65
4. The Children’s Novel      89
5. The Nineteenth-Century Children’s Novel      125
6. The Twentieth-Century Children’s Novel      176

Conclusion      205
Chapter Notes      211
Bibliography      219
Index      227