Children's Literature: Multicultural Perspectives

This course explores the diversity of children's literature both inside and outside our country, illustrating common social themes as well as multicultural perspectives. Content covers Western and non-Western folktales and fairy tales, along with vibrant representations of multicultural and non-Western children's literature, including texts from African American (Carolivia Herron and Christopher Paul Curtis), Indian (Ruskin Bond and Anushka Ravishankar), Jewish (I.B. Singer and David Wisniewski), and Finnish writers (Tove Jansson). The class, through discussion and reading of primary texts and secondary critical sources, will learn to approach children's literature with particular attention to historical, multicultural, and social contexts. Other topics examined include the definition of children's literature, some of the many possible theoretical approaches to it, and the significant role it plays in our lives and our cultures.