The first comprehensive study of slavery in children's literature, Slavery in American Children's Literature, 1790-2010 historicizes the ways generations of authors have drawn upon antebellum literature in their own recreations of slavery. Beginning with abolitionist and proslavery views in antebellum children's literature, Connolly examines how successive generations reshaped the genres of the slave narrative, abolitionist texts, and plantation novels to reflect the changing contexts of racial politics in America. As a literary history of how antebellum racial images have been re-created or revised for new generations, Slavery in American Children's Literature ultimately offers a record of the racial mythmaking of the United States from the nation's beginning to the present day. Book jacket.

Long seen by writers as a vital political force of the nation, children’s literature has been an important means not only of mythologizing a certain racialized past but also, because of its intended audience, of promoting a specific racialized future. Stories about slavery for children have served as primers for racial socialization. This first comprehensive study of slavery in children’s literature, Slavery in American Children’s Literature, 1790–2010, also historicizes the ways generations of authors have drawn upon antebellum literature in their own re-creations of slavery. It examines well-known, canonical works alongside others that have ostensibly disappeared from contemporary cultural knowledge but have nonetheless both affected and reflected the American social consciousness in the creation of racialized images. Beginning with abolitionist and proslavery views in antebellum children’s literature, Connolly examines how successive generations reshaped the genres of the slave narrative, abolitionist texts, and plantation novels to reflect the changing contexts of racial politics in America. From Reconstruction and the end of the nineteenth century, to the early decades of the twentieth century, to the civil rights era, and into the twenty-first century, these antebellum genres have continued to find new life in children’s literature—in, among other forms, neoplantation novels, biographies, pseudoabolitionist adventures, and neo-slave narratives. As a literary history of how antebellum racial images have been re-created or revised for new generations, Slavery in American Children’s Literature ultimately offers a record of the racial mythmaking of the United States from the nation’s beginning to the present day.

Frontiers in American Children’s Literature is a groundbreaking work by both established and emerging scholars in the fields of children’s literature criticism, history, and education. It offers 18 essays which explore and critically examine the expanding canon of American children’s books against the backdrop of a social history comprised of a deep layering of trauma and struggle, redefining what equality and freedom mean. The book charts new ground in how children’s literature is telling stories of historical trauma – the racial violence of American slavery, the Mexican Repatriation Act, and the oppression and violence against African Americans in light of such murders as in the AME Mother Emanuel Church and the shooting of Michael Brown. This new frontier explores how truth telling about racism, oppression, and genocide communicates with the young about violence and freedom in literature, transforming harsh truths into a moral vision. Frontiers in American Children’s Literature will be an instant classic for fans of children’s and adolescent literature, American literature, cultural studies, and students of literature in general, as well as teachers and prospective teachers. Those interested in art history, graphic novels, picture book art, African American and American Indian literature, the digital humanities, and new media will also find this volume compelling. Authors and artists covered in these essays include Laurie Halse Anderson, M.T. Anderson, Paolo Bacigalupi, Louise Erdrich, Eric Gansworth, Edward Gorey, Russell Hoban, Ellen Hopkins, Patricia Polacco, Ann Rinaldi, Peter Sís, Lynd Ward, and Naomi Wolf, among others. Essayists examine their subjects’ most provocative works on the topics of realistic depictions of slavery, oppression, and trauma, and the triumph of truth in storytelling over these experiences. From The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing to The Birchbark House, from the graphic novel to picture books and the digital humanities in teaching and reading, there is something for everyone in this collection. Contributors include leaders in the fields of literature and education, such as the award-winning Katherine Capshaw and Anastasia Ulanowicz. Margaret Noodin, poet and leader in American Indian scholarship and education, leads the essays on American Indian children’s literature, while Steven Herb, Director of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book and an affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, offers an insider’s view of Caldecott Medal awardee Lynn Ward.

Drawing on critical race theory, critical race feminism, critical multicultural analysis, and intertextuality this book examines how slavery is represented in contemporary children’s picture books. Through analysis of recently published picture books about slavery, Rogers discusses how these books engage with and respond to the historiography of the institution of slavery. Exploring how contemporary writers and illustrators have represented the institution of slavery, Rogers presents a critical and responsible approach for reading and using picture books in K-12 classrooms and demonstrates how these picture books about slavery continue to perform important cultural work.

The texts included in this anthology illustrate the wide range of possibilities that abolitionist writings offered to American children during the first half of the nineteenth century. Composing their works under the wings of the antislavery movement, authors responded to the unequal and controversial development of abolitionist politics during the decades that led up to the outbreak of the Civil War. These writers struggled to teach children “to feel right,” and attempted to instruct them to actively respond to the injustice of the slavery system as rendered visible by a harrowing visual archive of suffering bodies compiled by both English and American antislavery promoters. Reading was equated with knowledge and knowledge was equated with moral responsibility, and therefore reading about “the abominations of slavery” became an act of emotional personal transformation. Children were thus turned into powerful agents of political change and potential activists to spread the abolitionist message. Invited to comply with a higher law that entailed the breaking of their nation’s edicts, they were morally rewarded by the Christian God and approvingly applauded by their elders for their violation of these same American regulations. These texts enclosed immeasurable value for young nineteenth-century Americans to fulfill a more democratic and egalitarian role in their future. Undoubtedly, abolitionist writings for children took away American children’s innocence and transformed them into juvenile abolitionists and empowered compassionate citizens.

Ghost stories have played a prominent role in childhood. Circulated around playgrounds and whispered in slumber parties, their history in American literature is little known and seldom discussed by scholars. This book explores the fascinating origins and development of these tales, focusing on the social and historical factors that shaped them and gave birth to the genre. Ghost stories have existed for centuries but have been published specifically for children for only about 200 years. Early on, supernatural ghost stories were rare--authors and publishers, fearing they might adversely affect young minds, presented stories in which the ghost was always revealed as a fraud. These tales dominated children's publishing in the 19th century but the 20th century saw a change in perspective and the supernatural ghost story flourished.

This book brings together leading scholars to examine slavery in American literature from the eighteenth century to the present day.

Until recently, scholars believed that African American children’s literature did not exist before 1900. Now, Who Writes for Black Children? opens the door to a rich archive of largely overlooked literature read by black children. This volume’s combination of analytic essays, bibliographic materials, and primary texts offers alternative histories for early African American literary studies and children’s literature studies. From poetry written by a slave for a plantation school to joyful “death biographies” of African Americans in the antebellum North to literature penned by African American children themselves, Who Writes for Black Children? presents compelling new definitions of both African American literature and children’s literature. Editors Katharine Capshaw and Anna Mae Duane bring together a rich collection of essays that argue for children as an integral part of the nineteenth-century black community and offer alternative ways to look at the relationship between children and adults. Including two bibliographic essays that provide a list of texts for future research as well as an extensive selection of hard-to-find primary texts, Who Writes for Black Children? broadens our ideas of authorship, originality, identity, and political formations. In the process, the volume adds new texts to the canon of African American literature while providing a fresh perspective on our desire for the literary origin stories that create canons in the first place. Contributors: Karen Chandler, U of Louisville; Martha J. Cutter, U of Connecticut; LuElla D’Amico, Whitworth U; Brigitte Fielder, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Eric Gardner, Saginaw Valley State U; Mary Niall Mitchell, U of New Orleans; Angela Sorby, Marquette U; Ivy Linton Stabell, Iona College; Valentina K. Tikoff, DePaul U; Laura Wasowicz; Courtney Weikle-Mills, U of Pittsburgh; Nazera Sadiq Wright, U of Kentucky.

"How children helped abolish slavery"--

This is the first study to take a comprehensive look at transnational children’s literature in the period before 1900. The chapters examine what we mean by ‘children’s literature’ in this period, as well as what we mean by ‘transnational’ in the context of children’s culture. They investigate who transmitted children’s books across borders (authors, illustrators, translators, publishers, teachers, relatives, readers), through what networks the books were spread (commercial, religious, colonial, public, familial), and how the new local identities of imported texts were negotiated. They ask which kinds of books were the most mobile, and they consider what happens to texts when they migrate, as well as what effects transnational dissemination had on individual readers, and on societies and cultures more broadly. Geographically, the case studies gathered here range right across Europe, from Dublin to St Petersburg, then onto North America, India and China. They extend widely across the many genres and formats of children’s reading, from cheap print such as almanacs and ABCs to fairy tales and fables, children’s novels, textbooks, and beautifully illustrated gift-books.