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Definition: children’s literature from Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

Mermaids and merman, illustration by Hans Tegner, from the 1900 edition of Fairy Tales, by … Credit:Courtesy of the Folklore Society Library, University College, London; photograph, R.B. Fleming

Body of written works produced to entertain or instruct young people. The genre encompasses a wide range of works, including acknowledged classics of world literature, picture books and easy-to-read stories, and fairy tales, lullabies, fables, folk songs, and other, primarily orally transmitted, materials. It emerged as a distinct and independent form only in the second half of the 18th century and blossomed in the 19th century. In the 20th century, with the attainment of near-universal literacy in most developed nations, the diversity in children’s books came almost to rival that of adult popular literature.

Event: children’s literature

Keywords: children’s literature

children's literature

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
writing whose primary audience is children. See also children's book illustration . The earliest of what came to be regarded as children's literature was first meant for adults. Among this ancient body of oral literature were myths and legends created to explain the natural phenomena of night and day and the changing seasons. Ballads, sagas, and epic tales were told by the fireside or in courts to an audience of adults and children eager to hear of the adventures of heroes. Many of these tales were later written down and are enjoyed by children today. The first literature written specifically for children was intended to instruct them. During the Middle Ages the Venerable Bede , Aelfric, St. Aldhelm , and St. Anselm all wrote school texts in Latin, some of which were later used in schools in England and colonial America. More enjoyable and enduring fare came later when William Caxton , England's first printer, published Aesop's Fables (1484) and Sir Thomas Malory 's Morte d'Arthur…
8,199 results
Nonfiction, story anthologies, bibliography, juvenile literature; spoken word — lectures, storytelling Augusta Baker—granddaughter of a formerly enslaved “marvelous storyteller,” only child of two college-educated teachers, mother of an only son, and children's librarian for the New York Public…
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Full text Article children's literature

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
writing whose primary audience is children. See also children's book illustration . The earliest of what came to be regarded as children's literature was first meant for adults. Among this ancient body of oral literature were myths and legends created to explain the natural phenomena of night and…
| 1,670 words
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Full text Article children's literature

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
As Leslie A. FIEDLER proclaimed in Love and Death in the American Novel , “There is a real sense in which our prose fiction is immediately distinguishable from that of Europe, though this is a fact difficult for Americans to confess. The great works of American fiction [ Adventures of Huckleberry…
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Full text Article Fax, Elton C. (Clay) 10/9/1909-3/13/1993

From Encyclopedia of African-American Writing
Juvenile and children ‘s literature, travel, biography; illustrator, cartoonist Before he was 20 years old, Elton Fax married Grace Elizabeth Turner (1929), with whom he had three children: Betty Louise (Mrs. James Evans), Virginia Mae (deceased), and Leon. He attended the historically black…
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Full text Article children’s literature

From Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature
Although substantial bodies of material specifically written for children began to be current around the cusp of the 18th and 19th cs., there is evidence in James BOSWELL that the question of childeren's fiction was already awake much earlier in the 18th, for Boswell, teasing Samuel JOHNSON about…
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Full text Article Children's Literature

From The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies
Children's literature from any tradition or culture is defined, in part, by its audience—children and youth—and understood to be distinct from adult literature, as children, too, are different from adults. At the same time, children's literature has never existed apart from adult literature . To…
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Full text Article Children's Literature

From Keywords for Children's Literature
“Children's literature” is a term used to describe both a set of texts and an academic discipline—and it is often regarded as an oxymoron. If “children” commonly connotes immaturity, and “literature” commonly connotes sophistication in texts and reading, then the two terms may seem to be…
| 2,968 words
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Full text Article children's literature

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Works specifically written for children. The earliest known illustrated children's book in English is Goody Two Shoes (1765), possibly written by Oliver Goldsmith. Fairy tales were originally part of a vast range of oral literature, credited only to the writer who first recorded them, such as…
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Full text Article children's literature

From The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets
In the Grimm Brothers’ story “Hansel and Gretel”...
has a direct relationship with sweets: the text is not just sweet but is itself a sweet. “A is an apple pie,” reads one alphabet verse—a seventeenth-century ditty that continues to be re-illustrated up to the present, the drama of which is founded on the consumption of “A Apple Pie.” In Giles…
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Full text Article Bryan, Ashley F. 7/13/1923-

From Encyclopedia of African-American Writing
Folklore, children ‘s literature, autobiography/memoir; illustrator, artist, educator Ashley Bryan was born in 1923 and raised in the Bronx, NY. When Bryan was still in kindergarten, he created his first book—illustrating, binding, and distributing it himself. His first book was an alphabet book, …
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