• encyclopaedia

  / Children’s encyclopaedias
• dramatic literature

  / Audience expectations
• Black Beauty

• March family
• Judy Blume
• Lucy Boston
• Margaret Wise Brown
• Lewis Carroll

  / Origins and publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky
• Dr. Seuss

  / The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and other classics of Dr. Seuss
• William Pène du Bois
• Robert Munsch
• Mary Norton
• Elizabeth Payson Prentiss
• Arthur Rackham
• Christina Rossetti
• Shel Silverstein

  / Early career and work for Playboy
• Robert Louis Stevenson

  / Romantic novels of Robert Louis Stevenson
• Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Zhang Tianyi

• fable, parable, and allegory

  / Influence of Jean de La Fontaine
• Brothers Grimm

  / Beginnings in folklore and fairy tale collecting

Histories by country and region

Books that provide histories of children’s literature in countries and regions around the world are numerous. The following list is intended as a sampling.

Wide-ranging insights into literature for children in Great Britain can be found in Gillian Avery, Nineteenth Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children’s Stories 1780–1900 (1965); Florence V. Barry, A Century of Children’s Books (1922, reprinted 1968); Marcus Crouch, Treasure Seekers and Borrowers: Children’s Books in Britain 1900–1960 (1962, reissued 1970); F.J. Harvey Darton, Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, 3rd ed., rev. by Brian Alderson (1982); Roger Lancelyn Green, Tellers of Tales: British Authors of Children’s Books from 1800 to 1964, rev. ed. (1965); Percy Muir, English Children’s Books, 1600 to 1900 (1954, reissued 1985); M.F. Thwaite, From Primer to Pleasure: An Introduction to the History of Children’s Books in England, from the Invention of Printing to 1900 (1963); Alison Douglas, The Scottish Contribution to Children’s Literature (1966); Owen Dudley Edwards, British Children’s Fiction in the Second World War (2007); and John Rowe Townsend, Written for Children: An Outline of English Children’s Literature, 6th ed. with new postscript (2003). Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Bibliography of British Books for Children & Adolescents 1470–1770 (2008), is a comprehensive bibliography available online .

Sheila Egoff and Judith Saltman, The New Republic of Childhood: A Critical Guide to Canadian Children’s Literature in English (1990), is a thoroughly revised version of a book first published in the 1960s. Marcie Muir and Kerry White, Australian Children’s Books: A Bibliography, 2 vol. (1992), covers the period 1774 –1988; a third volume, by Kerry White (2004), covers 1989–2000. Cornelia Meigs et al., A Critical History of Children’s Literature: A Survey of Children’s Books in English from Earliest Times to the Present, rev. ed. (1969), considers English-language works generally to the middle of the 20th century.

Bettina Hurlimann, Europäische Kinderbücher in drei Jahrhunderten, 2nd ed. (1963; Eng. trans., Three Centuries of Children’s Books in Europe, 1968), remains a useful, albeit increasingly dated, survey of children’s literature across Europe. Irene Dyhrenfurth, Geschichte des deutschen Jugendbuches, 3rd rev. ed. (1967); and Hermann Leopold Köster, Geschichte der deutschen Jugendliteratur (1972), provide overviews of German children’s literature, whereas volumes published under the title Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliterature—including those subtitled Von 1570 bis 1750 (1991), Von 1750 bis 1800 (1982), Von 1800 bis 1850 (1998), and SBZ/DDR von 1945 bis 1990 (2006)—dive deeply into individual historical periods in Germany.

Although first published decades ago, these works on the children’s literature of other European countries remain notable: Eva von Zweigbergk, Barnboken i Sverige 1750–1950 (1965); Jean de Trigon, Histoire de la littérature enfantine de ma Mère l’Oye au Roi Babar (1950); Piero Bargellini, Canto alle rondini: panorama storico della letteratura infantile, 6th ed. (1968); Giuseppe Fanciulli, Scrittori per l’infanzia, new ed. (1972); Louise Restieaux Hawkes, Before and After Pinocchio: A Study of Italian Children’s Books (1933); and Carmen Bravo-Villasante, Historia de la literatura infantil española, corrected ed. (1985).

Raoul Granqvist and Jürgen Martini (eds.), Preserving the Landscape of Imagination: Children’s Literature in Africa (1997); and Meena Khorana (ed.), Critical Perspectives on Postcolonial African Children’s and Young Adult Literature (1998), take a broad view of children’s literature in Africa. Carmen Bravo-Villasante (compiler), Historia y antología de la literatura infantil iberoamericana, 2 vol. (1966); and Verónica Uribe and Marianne Delon (eds.), Panorama de la literatura infantil en América Latina (1984), provide introductions to children’s literature in Latin America. Beatriz Donnet and Guillermo Murray Prisant, Palabra de juguete: una historia y antología de la literatura infantil y juventil en México, 2 vol. (1999), focuses on children’s literature in Mexico.

Peter Hunt (ed.), International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, 2 vol., 2nd ed. (2004), includes entries on many of the countries and regions mentioned above as well as others—particularly in Asia and the Middle East—not included here.

Critical analysis

Many other books consider children’s literature without regard to national boundaries. Among classic critical studies in English are Eleanor Cameron, The Green and Burning Tree: On the Writing and Enjoyment of Children’s Books, 2nd ed. (1985); Kornei Chukovsky, From Two to Five, rev. ed. (1968; Eng. trans. of the 20th Russian ed.); Margery Fisher, Intent upon Reading: A Critical Appraisal of Modern Fiction for Children, 2nd rev. and enlarged ed. (1964); Paul Hazard, Books, Children, and Men, 5th ed., trans. from French (1983); Lillian H. Smith, The Unreluctant Years: A Critical Approach to Children’s Literature (1953, reprinted 1991); Dorothy M. White, Books Before Five (1954, reprinted 1984); and Kay E. Vandergrift, Child and Story (1980).

Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History, from Aesop to Harry Potter (2008), is a sweeping survey. Emer O’Sullivan, Comparative Children’s Literature (2005, originally published in German, 2000), argues against earlier universalizing understandings of childhood and points the study of children’s literature in new directions. Examples of the specialized critical analysis that characterizes scholarship early in the 21st century are Gregory G. Pepetone, Hogwarts and All: Gothic Perspectives on Children’s Literature (2012); Maria Sachiko Cecire et al. (eds.), Space and Place in Children’s Literature, 1789 to the Present (2015); and Clare Bradford, Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children’s Literature (2007).

Illustrations

Illustrations are often an integral part of children’s literature. Among works that consider illustrations and their role are Bettina Hurlimann, Picture-Book World, trans. from German (1968); Lee Kingman, Joanna Foster, and Ruth Giles Lontoft (compilers), Illustrators of Children’s Books: 1957–1966 (1968); Lee Kingman, Grace Allen Hogarth, and Harriet Quimby (compilers), Illustrators of Children’s Books, 1967–1976 (1978); Diana Klemin, The Art of Art for Children’s Books: A Contemporary Survey (1966, reissued 1982); Bertha E. Mahony, Louise Payson Latimer, and Beulah Folmsbee (compilers), Illustrators of Children’s Books 1744–1945 (1947); Pierpont Morgan Library, Early Children’s Books and Their Illustration (1975); Joseph H. Schwarcz, Ways of the Illustrator: Visual Communication in Children’s Literature (1982); Joseph H. Schwarcz and Chava Schwarcz, The Picture Book Comes of Age: Looking at Childhood Through the Art of Illustration (1991); and Martin Salisbury with Morag Styles, Children’s Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling (2012). Although more an illustrated book than a book about illustrations, Peter Hunt (ed.), Children’s Literature: An Illustrated History (1995), delves into the visual aspects of children’s literature.