Portal:Children's literature
The Children's Literature Portal
Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. In addition to conventional literary genres, modern children's literature is classified by the intended age of the reader, ranging from picture books for the very young to young adult fiction for those nearing maturity.
Children's literature can be traced to traditional stories like fairy tales, which have only been identified as children's literature since the eighteenth century, and songs, part of a wider oral tradition, which adults shared with children before publishing existed. The development of early children's literature, before printing was invented, is difficult to trace. Even after printing became widespread, many classic "children's" tales were originally created for adults and later adapted for a younger audience. Since the fifteenth century much literature has been aimed specifically at children, often with a moral or religious message. Children's literature has been shaped by religious sources, like Puritan traditions, or by more philosophical and scientific standpoints with the influences of Charles Darwin and John Locke. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are known as the "Golden Age of Children's Literature" because many classic children's books were published then. (Full article...)
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Der Struwwelpeter (1845) is a series of illustrated moral tales by Heinrich Hoffman. The above poem translates as:
- "Just look at him! there he stands,
- With his nasty hair and hands.
- See! his nails are never cut;
- They are grimed as black as soot;
- And the sloven, I declare,
- Never once has combed his hair;
- Anything to me is sweeter
- Than to see Shock-headed Peter."
In this month
- June 1908 – Publication of L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, which has since been translated into 20 languages and sold 50 million copies
- June 1938 – First appearance of Superman (pictured), in Action Comics
- 20 June 1941 - Armstrong Sperry awarded the Newbery Medal for Call It Courage
- 25 June 2006 – The Children's Party at the Palace, held in honor of the 80th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II held at Buckingham Palace Garden
- 26 June 1905 - Birth of Lynd Ward, illustrator of 200 juvenile and adult books and one of the founders of the American graphic novel
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Did you know...
- ... that Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel won a medal as a fine artist in Paris before becoming a children's book illustrator (example pictured)?
- ...that De brief voor de koning (The Letter for the King) by Tonke Dragt was chosen in 2004 by the judges of the Gouden Griffel as the best Dutch children's novel of the past fifty years?
- ... that the 1916 children's novel Just David was the second in a series of four consecutive bestsellers in the United States for Eleanor H. Porter?
Featured content
Featured articles
Chinua Achebe
Argosy (magazine)
Bronwyn Bancroft
Enid Blyton
Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang
The Coral Island
Gerald Durrell
Edmund Evans
Ian Fleming
The Fox and the Hound (novel)
Anne Frank
The Guardian of Education
The Hunger Games (novel)
Lad, A Dog
Ursula K. Le Guin
Julianne Moore
Baron Munchausen
The Phantom Tollbooth
Proserpine (play)
Talbot Baines Reed
Sally Ride
J. K. Rowling
Scoops (magazine)
Mary Martha Sherwood
The Story of Miss Moppet
To Kill a Mockingbird
J. R. R. Tolkien
When Megan Went Away
A Wizard of Earthsea
Mary Wollstonecraft
Featured lists
Andre Norton Award
Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel
Barbara Park bibliography
Caldecott Medal
S. E. Hinton bibliography
Coretta Scott King Award
Ursula K. Le Guin bibliography
List of awards and nominations received by J. K. Rowling
Madonna bibliography
Newbery Medal
Timeline of Mary Wollstonecraft
Categories
Topics
Children's literature: Book talk • Children's literature criticism • Children's literature periodicals • International Children's Digital Library • Native Americans in children's literature
Young adult literature: Gay teen fiction • Lesbian teen fiction • List of young adult authors • Young Adult Library Services Association
Associations and awards: Children's Book Council of Australia • CBCA book awards • Governor General's Literary Award for Children's Literature and Illustration • IBBY Canada • American Library Association • Association for Library Service to Children • Newbery Medal • Caldecott Medal • Golden Kite Award • Ezra Jack Keats Book Award • SCBWI • Sibert Medal • Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal • Batchelder Award • Coretta Scott King Award • Belpre Medal • Carnegie Medal • Kate Greenaway Medal • Nestlé Smarties Book Prize • Guardian Award • Hans Christian Andersen Award • Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award • Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators
Lists: List of children's classic books • List of children's literature authors • List of children's non-fiction writers • List of fairy tales • List of illustrators • List of publishers of children's books
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