Children's Literature As Critical Thought is a pioneering scholarly work that redefines how we view the didactic nature of children's books. Rather than focusing on what stories impart to young readers, it explores how the "critical child" actively resists, reshapes, and analyzes the idealization processes built into classic literature. The book serves as an essential resource for educators, scholars of children's literature, and developmental psychologists by highlighting the profound cognitive and analytical work done by child readers. Since its inception in the 1970s, the Philosophy for Children movement (P4C) has affirmed children's literature as important philosophical work. Theory, meanwhile, has invested in children's classics, especially Lewis Carroll's Alice books, and has also developed a literature for beginners that resembles children's literature in significant ways. Offering a novel take on this phenomenon, Theory for Beginners explores how philosophy and theory draw on children's literature and have even come to resemble it in their strategies for cultivating the child and/or the beginner. Examining everything from the rise of French Theory in the United States to the crucial pedagogies offered in children's picture books, from Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir Are You My Mother? and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events to studies of queer childhood.
Kenneth Kidd works in Anglophone children's literature studies and is especially interested in the field's intersections with other cultural projects, such as philosophy, psychology, and critical theory. He is interested in questions of gender and sexuality in and around children's literature. His first book, Making American Boys (Minnesota, 2004), explores literary and cultural programs of "boyology" in relation to stories of boys raised by various animals (what he calls the "feral tale"). He has also coedited two essay collections dealing with queer childhood and/or children's literature: Over the Rainbow (Michigan, 2004), and Queer as Camp: Essays in Summer, Style, and Sexuality (Fordham, 2019). He and Derritt also co-edited Alt Kid Lit: What Children's Literature Might Be (Mississippi, 2024), which continues his interest in expanding what registers as children's literature. With UF colleague Sid Dobrin he also coedited the first essay collection on children's literature and ecocriticism, Wild Things (Wayne State, 2004), and with Joseph T. Thomas, Jr. he coedited Prizing Children's Literature: The Cultural Politics of Children's Book Awards. Kenneth is currently working on a book about Florida children's literature. Professor Kidd serves on a number of editorial boards and is especially active with the Children's Literature Association. Professor Kidd teaches undergraduate courses in children's and young adult literature, including a new course on Florida children's literature, as well as graduate seminars such as "Into the Archive," "Comparative Children's Literature" and "Disney and Its Discontents." He is an Affiliate Professor with the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research and also serves as Director of UF's Center for the Study of Children's Literature & Culture. He was named a UF Research Foundation Professor for 2024-2027.
Preface 1. Introduction 2. The Critical Child 3. Laughter and the Permission to Critique 4. On seeing: Kate Greenaway’s Under the Window 5. On crying: E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children 6. On being (bored): Kenneth Grahame’s 7. On talking: J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit 8. On loving: Malcolm Saville’s Lone Pine series 9. Philosophy for Children 10. Theory for Beginners 11. Literature for Minors Bibliography Index
$280.00