Telling children's stories : narrative theory and children's literature

Author(s)

• Cadden, Michael

Bibliographic Information

Telling children's stories : narrative theory and children's literature

edited by Mike Cadden

（Frontiers of narrative）

University of Nebraska Press, c2010

• : pbk

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-302) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

The most accessible approach yet to children's literature and narrative theory, Telling Children's Stories is a comprehensive collection of never-before-published essays by an international slate of scholars that offers a broad yet in-depth assessment of narrative strategies unique to children's literature. The volume is divided into four interrelated sections: "Genre Templates and Transformations," "Approaches to the Picture Book," "Narrators and Implied Readers," and "Narrative Time." Mike Cadden's introduction considers the links between the various essays and topics, as well as their connections with such issues as metafiction, narrative ethics, focalization, and plotting. Ranging in focus from picture books to novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird, from detective fiction for children to historical tales, from new works such as the Lemony Snicket series to classics like Tom's Midnight Garden, these essays explore notions of montage and metaphor, perspective and subjectivity, identification and time. Together, they comprise a resource that will interest and instruct scholars of narrative theory and children's literature, and that will become critically important to the understanding and development of both fields.

Table of Contents

Introduction Mike Cadden Part 1. Genre Templates and Transformations 1. Telling Old Tales Newly: Intertextuality in Young Adult Fiction for Girls Elisabeth Rose Gruner 2. Familiarity Breeds a Following: Transcending the Formulaic in the Snicket Series Danielle Russell 3. The Power of Secrets: Backwards Construction and the Children's Detective Story Chris McGee Part 2. Approaches to the Picture Book 4. Focalization in Children's Picture Books: Who Sees in Words and Pictures? Angela Yannicopoulou 5. No Consonance, No Consolation: John Burningham's Time to Get Out of the Bath, Shirley Magdalena Sikorska 6. Telling the Story, Breaking the Boundaries: Metafiction and the Enhancement of Children's Literary Development in The Bravest Ever Bear and The Story of the Falling Star Alexandra Lewis 7. Perceiving The Red Tree: Narrative Repair, Writerly Metaphor, and Sensible Anarchy Andrea Schwenke Wyile 8. Now Playing: Silent Cinema and Picture-Book Montage Nathalie op de Beeck Part 3. Narrators and Implied Readers 9. Uncle Tom Melodrama with a Modern Point of View: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird Holly Blackford 10. The Identification Fallacy: Perspective and Subjectivity in Children's Literature Maria Nikolajeva 11. The Development of Hebrew Children's Literature: From Men Pulling Children Along to Women Meeting Them Where They Are Dana Keren-Yaar Part 4. Narrative Time 12. Shifting Worlds: Constructing the Subject, Narrative, and History in Historical Time Shifts Susan Stewart 13. "Whose Woods These Are I Think I Know": Narrative Theory and Diana Wynne Jones's Hexwood Martha Hixon 14. "Time No Longer": The Context(s) of Time in Tom's Midnight Garden Angelika Zirker Further Reading Contributors Index

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BB08030414
• ISBN:
  • 9780803215689
• LCCN: 2010018219
• Country Code: us
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Lincoln
• Pages/Volumes: xxv, 317 p.
• Size: 22 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : PN1009.A1
  • DC22 : 809/.89282
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Children's literature -- History and criticism
  • LCSH : Narration (Rhetoric)
  • LCSH : Children's literature -- Authorship
• Parent Bibliography ID:
  • BA57045181