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Author Joosen, Vanessa, 1977- author.

Title Adulthood in children's literature / Vanessa Joosen
Published London, UK : Bloomsbury Academic, 2018
©2018

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Description 1 online resource
Series Bloomsbury perspectives on children's literature
Bloomsbury perspectives on children's literature.
Contents Cover page; Halftitle page; Series page; Title page; Copyright page; Dedication; Contents; Figures; Note to the Reader; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Age studies; Methodological refl ections; Opening up adult minds and experiences; Reconfi guring the adult as reader; Chapter overview and corpus; 1 Defining Adulthood in Children's Literature; To know or not to know; Kidults; Big bodies -- adult minds?; 2 Grown- up Children?; Free as an adult; 'Childlike' adults; The playful adult; Adult themes; Didactic messages for the adult reader; 3 Hair, Hair, Everywhere; Social skin
Hair, hair, everywhereAdult sexuality; 4 The Disdainful Adult; The disdainful adult, the disdained child; Childist adults in children's literature; Mieke Mom's mad mum; Childism in God's name; His Dark Materials; Grown-ups, yuk!; 5 From Writer's Block to Wonderful Friend; Allegories of telling; Ironic representations; The children's writer as ally; Between irony and sympathy: The Story of Tracy Beaker; A famous alter ego; Writers as parental fi gures; The children's author -- a child's best friend?; 6 Second Childhoods; A narrative of decline; The alliance between young and old
The puer senex tropeThe elderly storyteller; A parody of the connection between youth and old age; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Summary "While most scholars who study children's books are pre-occupied with the child characters and adult mediators, Vanessa Joosen re-positions the lens to focus on the under-explored construction of adulthood in children's literature. Adulthood in Children's Literature demonstrates how books for young readers evoke adulthood as a stage in life, enacted by adult characters, and in relationship with the construction of childhood. Employing age studies as a framework for analysis, this book covers a range of English and Dutch children's books published from 1970 to the present. Calling upon critical voices like Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Peter Hollindale, Maria Nikolajeva and Lorraine Green, and the works of such authors as Babette Cole, Philip Pullman, Ted van Lieshout, Jacqueline Wilson, Salman Rushdie and Guus Kuijer, Joosen offers a fresh perspective on children's literature by focusing not on the child but the adult."--Bloomsbury Publishing
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on September 14, 2018)
Subject Adulthood in literature.
Children's literature, American -- History and criticism
Children's literature, Dutch -- History and criticism
LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
Adulthood in literature
Children's literature, American
Children's literature, Dutch
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2018020320
ISBN 9781350049802
1350049808
9781350049796
1350049794