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Kiddie Lit

English Literature: a Very Short IntroductionCall me an Anglophile but I have an abid­ing inter­est in Eng­lish, my moth­er tongue, and the lit­er­a­ture that flowed—and still flows—from it. Which is why I read a book titled Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture; A Very Short Intro­duc­tion (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty press, 2010). It was writ­ten by Jonathan Bates, a Shake­speare schol­ar at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Warwick.

It is indeed, a short, but extreme­ly lucid, sur­vey of the vast range of Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, full of inter­est­ing ideas and anec­dotes touch­ing, for the most part, on well-known writ­ers, but quite a few about whom I did not know. I learned a lot.

The most unusu­al part of the book is its first chap­ter, which is about children’s lit­er­a­ture. Bate’s premise is per­fect­ly log­i­cal; the books we read as chil­dren are the books that shape our own lit­er­ary cul­ture. I have nev­er read a sur­vey of Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture that begins this way.

In my expe­ri­ence, uni­ver­si­ty Eng­lish pro­fes­sors have not the slight­est inter­est in books for young peo­ple. More often than not they have quite for­got­ten, even deny, they read children’s books. Of course, they did read them—or they would not have become immersed in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, which is Bate’s point.

I once worked as a librar­i­an at a col­lege in New Jer­sey. One day an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor came to me with much excite­ment. “We just got the state to approve two read­ing meth­ods cours­es as a require­ment for ele­men­tary teachers!”

“That’s good,” I said. “Did you have to drop any­thing from the requirements?”

“Just the course in kid­die lit.”

Oh, if every school teacher were exposed, in range and depth, to the world of children’s literature—came to know it, love it, and, most of all, to share it—how much rich­er would our children’s lives become!

6 thoughts on “Kiddie Lit”

  1. Your last sen­tence sums it all up. I can’t imag­ine where my life would be now with­out an ear­ly expo­sure to sto­ries that opened up the world for me. Thanks, Avi, for your contributions–keep tak­ing us on adventures.

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  2. how sad! “kid­die lit” is what inspired me to a 34 year career as a school librarian–required course!

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  3. Fas­ci­nat­ing that he starts the book with chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture! I’m can’t wait to read it. The same series has a book ded­i­cat­ed to entire­ly to chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture which is quite well done. (Chil­dren’s Lit­er­a­ture: A Very Short Introduction). 

    Yes, yes, yes to get­ting more books in the hands of teach­ers — not only to enrich the lives of the chil­dren but also of them! I’m grate­ful to teach in a col­lege of edu­ca­tion where chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture is a required course.

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  4. I’m thank­ful that we home­school. We are not sub­ject to the whims of such Eng­lish pro­fes­sors and administrators.

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