Humor In Contemporary Junior Literature

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Humor in Contemporary Junior Literature

Author : Julie Cross
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136839879
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (368 download)

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Book Synopsis Humor in Contemporary Junior Literature by : Julie Cross

Download or read book Humor in Contemporary Junior Literature written by Julie Cross and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new book, Julie Cross examines the intricacies of textual humor in contemporary junior literature, using the tools of literary criticism and humor theory. Cross investigates the dialectical paradoxes of humor and debunks the common belief in oppositional binaries of ‘simple’ versus ‘complex’ humor. The varied combinations of so-called high and low forms of humor within junior texts for young readers, who are at such a crucial stage of their reading and social development, provide a valuable commentary upon the culture and values of contemporary western society, making the book of considerable interest to scholars of both children’s literature and childhood studies. Cross explores the ways in which the changing content, forms and functions of the many varied combinations of humor in junior texts, including the Lemony Snickett series, reveal societal attitudes towards young children and childhood. The new compounds of seemingly paradoxical high and low forms of humor, in texts for developing readers from the 1960s onwards, reflect and contribute to contemporary society’s hesitant and uneven acceptance of the emergent paradigm of children’s rights, abilities, participation and empowerment. Cross identifies four types of potentially subversive/transgressive humor which have emerged since the 1960s which, coupled with the three main theories of humor – relief, superiority and incongruity theories – enables a long-overdue charting of developments in humor within junior texts. Cross also argues that the gradual increase in the compounding of the simple and the complex provide opportunities for young readers to play with ambiguous, complicated ideas, helping them embrace the complexities and contradictions of contemporary life.

The Languages of Humor

Author : Arie Sover
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350062316
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis The Languages of Humor by : Arie Sover

Download or read book The Languages of Humor written by Arie Sover and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are things funny? How has humor changed over the centuries? How can humor be a political force? Featuring expert authors from across the globe, The Languages of Humor discusses three main types of humour: verbal, visual, and physical. Despite the differences between them, all have a common purpose, showing us in different ways the reality that we live in, and how we can reflect on that reality. To this end, the book shows how humor has been used to address such topics as the Holocaust and the Soviet Union, and why it has been controversial in cases including Charlie Hebdo. The Languages of Humor explores a subject that is of interest in a wide range of intellectual disciplines including sociology, psychology, communication, philosophy, history, social sciences, linguistics, computer science, literature, theatre, education, and cultural studies. This volume features contributions from world-leading academics, some of who have professional backgrounds in this field. This unique research-led book, which includes over 20 illustrations, offers a top-down analysis of humor studies.

Children’s Literature in the Classroom

Author : Matthew D. Zbaracki
Publisher : SAGE Publications Limited
ISBN 13 : 1529786762
Total Pages : 301 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (297 download)

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Book Synopsis Children’s Literature in the Classroom by : Matthew D. Zbaracki

Download or read book Children’s Literature in the Classroom written by Matthew D. Zbaracki and published by SAGE Publications Limited. This book was released on 2023-12-06 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children′s literature is a powerful resource that can inspire a young reader’s lifetime love of reading, but how can you ensure that your literacy teaching uses this rich creative world to its fullest? This book gives pre-service primary teachers an in-depth guide to each major type of children′s book, examining the form, structure and approach of each. From fairy tales and non-fiction to picture books and digital texts, learn what qualities underpin outstanding children′s literature and how you can use this to inspire rewarding learning experiences in your classroom. Key features: Each chapter is full of key book recommendations to help you select excellent age-appropriate texts for your learners An international focus across English-language publishing, covering key books from Australian, US and UK authors A special focus on Australian indigenous children′s literature Busting popular myths about children′s literature to give you a deeper understanding of the form Evaluation criteria for every genre, helping you to recognise the qualities of high quality books This is essential reading for anyone training to teach in primary schools and qualified teachers looking to improve their professional knowledge. Matthew Zbaracki is State Head of Victoria in the National School of Education at ACU, Melbourne.

Satire, Humor and the Construction of Identities

Author : Massih Zekavat
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 902726550X
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis Satire, Humor and the Construction of Identities by : Massih Zekavat

Download or read book Satire, Humor and the Construction of Identities written by Massih Zekavat and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Satire, Humor and the Construction of Identities conveys how satire can contribute to the construction of social subjects’ identities. It attempts to provide a theoretical ground for a novel understanding of the relationship between satire and identity by finding their common denominator, namely opposition, in order to explain the mechanism through which satire can form identities. After establishing the role of opposition in satire and identity construction through a detailed analysis of various theories, it will be argued that satire can contribute to the construction of racial, ethnic, national, religious, and gender identities. Several examples from British, Persian, ancient Roman literary traditions, and different epochs illustrate the theoretical discussions. The prevalence of satire and the challenges that identity has encountered in our contemporary world guarantee the significance of this study and its socio-political implications.

The Myth of Persephone in Girls' Fantasy Literature

Author : Holly Blackford
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136644288
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (366 download)

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Book Synopsis The Myth of Persephone in Girls' Fantasy Literature by : Holly Blackford

Download or read book The Myth of Persephone in Girls' Fantasy Literature written by Holly Blackford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-04-23 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the myth of Persephone and Demeter as it informs the development of a long discourse about civilization, the development of children, child psychology, and fantasy literature. The pattern in the myth of girls who descend into underworlds and negotiate a partial return to the earth is a marked feature of girls’ literature, and the cycle also reflects the change of seasons and fertility/death. Tracing the parallel between the myth and girls’ literature enables an understanding of how female development is mourned but deemed necessary for the reproduction of culture. Blackford looks at the function of toys in children’s literature as a representation of the myth’s narcissus, combining this approach with classic interpretations of the myth as expressive of female psychology, mother-daughter object-relations, hieros gamos (fertility coupling) rituals, transition from matriarchal to patriarchal order, and excursions into the creative/artistic unconscious. The story of Persephone’s separation from her mother and abduction into the underworld is explored as an expression of ambivalence about female development in works such as Hoffmann’s Nutcracker and Mouse King, Alcott’s Little Women, Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, Burnett’s The Secret Garden, White’s Charlotte’s Web, Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Meyer’s Twilight, and Gaiman’s Coraline. With this book, Blackford offers a consideration of how literature for the young squares with broader canons, how classics flexibly and uniquely speak through novels that enjoy broad appeal, and how female traditions are embedded in novels by both men and women.

Landscape in Children's Literature

Author : Jane Suzanne Carroll
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136321179
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (363 download)

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Book Synopsis Landscape in Children's Literature by : Jane Suzanne Carroll

Download or read book Landscape in Children's Literature written by Jane Suzanne Carroll and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-06 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a new critical methodology for the study of landscapes in children's literature. Treating landscape as the integration of unchanging and irreducible physical elements, or topoi, Carroll identifies and analyses four kinds of space — sacred spaces, green spaces, roadways, and lapsed spaces — that are the component elements of the physical environments of canonical British children’s fantasy. Using Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising Sequence as the test-case for this methodology, the book traces the development of the physical features and symbolic functions of landscape topoi from their earliest inception in medieval vernacular texts through to contemporary children's literature. The identification and analysis of landscape topoi synthesizes recent theories about interstitial space together with earlier morphological and topoanalytical studies, enabling the study of fictional landscapes in terms of their physical characteristics as well as in terms of their relationship with contemporary texts and historical precedents. Ultimately, by providing topoanalytical studies of other children’s texts, Carroll proposes topoanalysis as a rich critical method for the study and understanding of children’s literature and indicates how the findings of this approach may be expanded upon. In offering both transferable methodologies and detailed case-studies, this book outlines a new approach to literary landscapes as geographical places within socio-historical contexts.

Re-visioning Historical Fiction for Young Readers

Author : Kim Wilson
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136666265
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (366 download)

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Book Synopsis Re-visioning Historical Fiction for Young Readers by : Kim Wilson

Download or read book Re-visioning Historical Fiction for Young Readers written by Kim Wilson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-06-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is concerned with how readers are positioned to interpret the past in historical fiction for children and young adults. Looking at literature published within the last thirty to forty years, Wilson identifies and explores a prevalent trend for re-visioning and rewriting the past according to modern social and political ideological assumptions. Fiction within this genre, while concerned with the past at the level of content, is additionally concerned with present views of that historical past because of the future to which it is moving. Specific areas of discussion include the identification of a new sub-genre: Living history fiction, stories of Joan of Arc, historical fiction featuring agentic females, the very popular Scholastic Press historical journal series, fictions of war, and historical fiction featuring multicultural discourses. Wilson observes specific traits in historical fiction written for children — most notably how the notion of positive progress into the future is nuanced differently in this literature in which the concept of progress from the past is inextricably linked to the protagonist’s potential for agency and the realization of subjectivity. The genre consistently manifests a concern with identity construction that in turn informs and influences how a metanarrative of positive progress is played out. This book engages in a discussion of the functionality of the past within the genre and offers an interpretative frame for the sifting out of the present from the past in historical fiction for young readers.

Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children's Literature

Author : Tison Pugh
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136829164
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (368 download)

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Book Synopsis Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children's Literature by : Tison Pugh

Download or read book Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children's Literature written by Tison Pugh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature examines distinguished classics of children’s literature both old and new—including L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series—to explore the queer tensions between innocence and heterosexuality within their pages. Pugh argues that children cannot retain their innocence of sexuality while learning about normative heterosexuality, yet this inherent paradox runs throughout many classic narratives of literature for young readers. Children’s literature typically endorses heterosexuality through its invisible presence as the de facto sexual identity of countless protagonists and their families, yet heterosexuality’s ubiquity is counterbalanced by its occlusion when authors shield their readers from forthright considerations of one of humanity’s most basic and primal instincts. The book demonstrates that tensions between innocence and sexuality render much of children’s literature queer, especially when these texts disavow sexuality through celebrations of innocence. In this original study, Pugh develops interpretations of sexuality that few critics have yet ventured, paving the way for future scholarly engagement with larger questions about the ideological role of children's literature and representations of children's sexuality. Tison Pugh is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Queering Medieval Genres and Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature and has published on children’s literature in such journals as Children’s Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Marvels and Tales.

Colonial India in Children's Literature

Author : Supriya Goswami
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0415886368
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (158 download)

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Book Synopsis Colonial India in Children's Literature by : Supriya Goswami

Download or read book Colonial India in Children's Literature written by Supriya Goswami and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colonial India in Children’s Literatureis the first book-length study to explore the intersections of children’s literature and defining historical moments in colonial India. Engaging with important theoretical and critical literature that deals with colonialism, hegemony, and marginalization in children's literature, Goswami proposes that British, Anglo-Indian, and Bengali children’s literature respond to five key historical events: the missionary debates preceding the Charter Act of 1813, the defeat of Tipu Sultan, the Mutiny of 1857, the birth of Indian nationalism, and the Swadeshi movement resulting from the Partition of Bengal in 1905. Through a study of works by Mary Sherwood (1775-1851), Barbara Hofland (1770-1844), Sara Jeanette Duncan (1861-1922), Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), Upendrakishore Ray (1863-1915), and Sukumar Ray (1887-1923), Goswami examines how children’s literature negotiates and represents these momentous historical forces that unsettled Britain’s imperial ambitions in India. Goswami argues that nineteenth-century British and Anglo-Indian children’s texts reflect two distinct moods in Britain’s colonial enterprise in India. Sherwood and Hofland (writing before 1857) use the tropes of conversion and captivity as a means of awakening children to the dangers of India, whereas Duncan and Kipling shift the emphasis to martial prowess, adaptability, and empirical knowledge as defining qualities in British and Anglo-Indian children. Furthermore, Goswami’s analysis of early nineteenth-century children’s texts written by women authors redresses the preoccupation with male authors and boys’ adventure stories that have largely informed discussions of juvenility in the context of colonial India. This groundbreaking book also seeks to open up the canon by examining early twentieth-century Bengali children’s texts that not only draw literary inspiration from nineteenth-century British children’s literature, but whose themes are equally shaped by empire.

Textual Transformations in Children's Literature

Author : Benjamin Lefebvre
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0415509718
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (155 download)

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Book Synopsis Textual Transformations in Children's Literature by : Benjamin Lefebvre

Download or read book Textual Transformations in Children's Literature written by Benjamin Lefebvre and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers new critical approaches for the study of adaptations, abridgments, translations, parodies, and mash-ups that occur internationally in contemporary children's culture. It follows recent shifts in adaptation studies that call for a move beyond fidelity criticism, a paradigm that measures the success of an adaptation by the level of fidelity to the "original" text, toward a methodology that considers the adaptation to be always already in conversation with the adapted text. This book visits children's literature and culture in order to consider the generic, pedagogical, and ideological underpinnings that drive both the process and the product. Focusing on novels as well as folktales, films, graphic novels, and anime, the authors consider the challenges inherent in transforming the work of authors such as William Shakespeare, Charles Perrault, L.M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and A.A. Milne into new forms that are palatable for later audiences particularly when--for perceived ideological or political reasons--the textual transformation is not only unavoidable but entirely necessary. Contributors consider the challenges inherent in transforming stories and characters from one type of text to another, across genres, languages, and time, offering a range of new models that will inform future scholarship.

Pinocchio, Puppets, and Modernity

Author : Katia Pizzi
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136620508
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (366 download)

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Book Synopsis Pinocchio, Puppets, and Modernity by : Katia Pizzi

Download or read book Pinocchio, Puppets, and Modernity written by Katia Pizzi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of this book is to reassess Pinocchio originally, alongside puppets and marionnettes within modernity, as a figure characterized by a ‘fluid identity’, informed with transition, difference, joie de vivre, otherness, displacement and metamorphosis. As such, Pinocchio is a truly modern, indeed a postmodern and posthuman cultural icon.

Jews and Jewishness in British Children's Literature

Author : Madelyn Travis
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136222049
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (362 download)

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Book Synopsis Jews and Jewishness in British Children's Literature by : Madelyn Travis

Download or read book Jews and Jewishness in British Children's Literature written by Madelyn Travis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-02 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a period of ongoing debate about faith, identity, migration and culture, this timely study explores the often politicised nature of constructions of one of Britain’s longest standing minority communities. Representations in children’s literature influenced by the impact of the Enlightenment, the Empire, the Holocaust and 9/11 reveal an ongoing concern with establishing, maintaining or problematising the boundaries between Jews and Gentiles. Chapters on gender, refugees, multiculturalism and historical fiction argue that literature for young people demonstrates that the position of Jews in Britain has been ambivalent, and that this ambivalence has persisted to a surprising degree in view of the dramatic socio-cultural changes that have taken place over two centuries. Wide-ranging in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, Jews and Jewishness in British Children’s Literature discusses over one hundred texts ranging from picture books to young adult fiction and realism to fantasy. Madelyn Travis examines rare eighteenth- and nineteenth-century material plus works by authors including Maria Edgeworth, E. Nesbit, Rudyard Kipling, Richmal Crompton, Lynne Reid Banks, Michael Rosen and others. The study also draws on Travis’s previously unpublished interviews with authors including Adele Geras, Eva Ibbotson, Ann Jungman and Judith Kerr.

Beyond Pippi Longstocking

Author : Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136741941
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (367 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond Pippi Longstocking by : Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

Download or read book Beyond Pippi Longstocking written by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-05-09 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astrid Lindgren, author of the famed Pippi Longstocking novels, is perhaps one of the most significant children's authors of the last half of the twentieth-century. In this collection contributors consider films, music, and picturebooks relating to Lindgren, in addition to the author's reception internationally. Touching on everything from the Astrid Lindgren theme park at Vimmerby, Sweden to the hidden folk songs in Lindgren's works to the use of nostalgia in film adaptations of Lindgren's novels, this collection is distinguished by its intermedial and international scope in the realm of Lindgren research.

The Nation in Children's Literature

Author : Christopher Kelen
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0415624797
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (156 download)

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Book Synopsis The Nation in Children's Literature by : Christopher Kelen

Download or read book The Nation in Children's Literature written by Christopher Kelen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the meaning of nation or nationalism in children's literature and how it constructs and represents different national experiences. The contributors discuss diverse aspects of children's literature and film from interdisciplinary and multicultural approaches, ranging from the short story and novel to science fiction and fantasy from a range of locations including Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Norway, America, Italy, Great Britain, Iceland, Africa, Japan, South Korea, India, Sweden and Greece. The emergence of modern nation-states can be seen as coinciding with the historical rise of children's literature, while stateless or diasporic nations have frequently formulated their national consciousness and experience through children's literature, both instructing children as future citizens and highlighting how ideas of childhood inform the discourses of nation and citizenship. Because nation and childhood are so intimately connected, it is crucial for critics and scholars to shed light on how children's literatures have constructed and represented historically different national experiences. At the same time, given the massive political and demographic changes in the world since the nineteenth century and the formation of nation states, it is also crucial to evaluate how the national has been challenged by changing national languages through globalization, international commerce, and the rise of English. This book discusses how the idea of childhood pervades the rhetoric of nation and citizenship, and how children and childhood are represented across the globe through literature and film.

Reading the Adolescent Romance

Author : Amy Pattee
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136829792
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (368 download)

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Book Synopsis Reading the Adolescent Romance by : Amy Pattee

Download or read book Reading the Adolescent Romance written by Amy Pattee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this critical study, Pattee examines the series’ content, structure, and reader base, investigating an influential marketing and literary phenomenon, and interrogating the intersecting influences of history, audience positioning, and readability that allowed "Sweet Valley" to flourish, and continues to allow other teen series to enjoy popular acclaim.

Children's Literature and New York City

Author : Padraic Whyte
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135923000
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (359 download)

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Book Synopsis Children's Literature and New York City by : Padraic Whyte

Download or read book Children's Literature and New York City written by Padraic Whyte and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection explores the significance of New York City in children’s literature, stressing literary, political, and societal influences on writing for young people from the twentieth century to the present day. Contextualized in light of contemporary critical and cultural theory, the chapters examine the varying ways in which children’s literature has engaged with New York City as a city space, both in terms of (urban) realism and as an ‘idea’, such as the fantasy of the city as a place of opportunity, or other associations. The collection visits not only dominant themes, motifs, and tropes, but also the different narrative methods employed to tell readers about the history, function, physical structure, and conceptualization of New York City, acknowledging the shared or symbiotic relationship between literature and the city: just as literature can give imaginative ‘reality’ to the city, the city has the potential to shape the literary text. This book critically engages with most of the major forms and genres for children/young adults that dialogue with New York City, and considers such authors as Margaret Wise Brown, Felice Holman, E. L. Konigsburg, Maurice Sendak, J. D. Salinger, John Donovan, Shaun Tan, Elizabeth Enright, and Patti Smith.

Entranced by Story

Author : Hugh Crago
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317806700
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (178 download)

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Book Synopsis Entranced by Story by : Hugh Crago

Download or read book Entranced by Story written by Hugh Crago and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a world of stories; yet few of us pause to ask what stories actually are, why we consume them so avidly, and what they do for story makers and their audiences. This book focuses on the experiences that good stories generate: feelings of purposeful involvement, elevation, temporary loss of self, vicarious emotion, and relief of tension. The author examines what drives writers to create stories and why readers fall under their spell; why some children grow up to be writers; and how the capacity for creating and comprehending stories develops from infancy right through into old age. Entranced by Story applies recent research on brain function to literary examples ranging from the Iliad and Wuthering Heights to Harold and the Purple Crayon, providing a groundbreaking exploration of the biological and neurological basis of the literary experience. Blending research, theory, and biographical anecdote, the author shows how it is the unique structure of the human brain, with its layering of sophisticated cognitive capacities upon archaic, emotion-driven functions, which best explains the mystery of story.