General Works on Childhood/Children’s Literature


(Some with an Americanist focus, some not.)

Sociology of Childhood

St Luke’s and Main Library: 301.4314

Áries, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood (Penguin Ltd: Harmondsworth, 1960).

Burnett, John. Destiny obscure: Autobiographies of childhood, education, and family from the 1820s to the 1920s (London & New York: Routledge, 1994)

Clegg, Christine, The Ruins of Childhood (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2001)

Cunningham, Hugh. Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 (London: Longman, 1995)

De Mause, Lloyd (ed.), The History of Childhood (Souvenir Press: London, 1980).

Alison James & Alan Prout, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociology of Childhood (Falmer Press, 1990)

Graff, Harvey J. Conflicting paths: Growing up in America (Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press, 1997.)

Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society  (London: Vintage, 1995.  2nd ed.)

Holland, Patricia, Picturing childhood: The myth of the child in popular imagery (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.)

James, Allison & Jenks, Chris, Theorizing childhood  (Cambridge: Polity, 1998.)

Jenks, Chris, Childhood, (London: Routledge, 1995)

Postman, Neil. The Disappearance of Childhood. (London: W.H. Allen, 1983.)

Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent-child relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1983)

Steedman, Carolynn, Strange Dislocations: Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995)

Steedman, Carolyn, the Tidy House: Little Girls Writings (London: Virago Press, 1992)

Zelzier, Viviana, A. Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Childhood in Contemporary Cultures (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

Cultural Studies and Childhood

Main and St Luke’s Library: 305.23 – 305.230973

Bruhm, Steven and Natasha Hurley (eds)  Curiouser: On the Queerness of Children (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota)

Fass, Paula S & Mason, Mary Ann (eds), Childhood in America. (New York: New York University Press: where, 1999): A useful sourcebook of extracts from both primary and secondary texts from the Puritans to the modern day.

Levander, Caroline & Carol J Singley (eds) The American Child: A Cultural Studies Reader, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003).

Levander, Caroline, Cradle of Liberty: Race, the Child, and National Belonging from Thomas Jefferson to W. E. B. Du Bois, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.)

Mintz, Stephen, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, Mass & London: The Belknap Press, 2004)

Zornado, Joseph L. Inventing the Child: Culture, ideology, and the story of childhood (New York: Routledge, 2006.)

Children’s Literature Studies

St Luke’s Library: 028.5

Main Library: 809.89282

This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything we have on this subject in a library, and not all texts are on American children’s literature as such: it is merely to get you started.

Avery, Gillian, Behold the Child: American Children and Their Books 1621-1922 (London: Bodley Head, 1994)

Clark, Beverly Lyon. Girls, boys, books, toys: gender in children’s literature and culture (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)

Goldthwaite, John. The natural history of make-believe: a guide to the principal works of Britain, Europe, and America (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)

Hunt, Peter. Understanding children’s literature: key essays from the International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature (London: Routledge, 1999.)

Lesnik-Oberstein, Karın. Children’s literature: criticism and the fictional child (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994)

Lesnik-Oberstein, Karin, Children’s literature: new approaches (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

Lurie, Alison. Don’t tell the grown-ups: subversive children’s literature. (London: Bloomsbury, 1990)

Meek, Margaret. Children’s literature and national identity (Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, 2001)

Rose, Jacqueline, The Case of Peter Pan or the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1984).

MacLeod, Anne Scott. A moral tale: children’s fiction and American culture, 1820-1860 Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1975. 

Thiel, Elizabeth. The fantasy of family: nineteenth-century children’s literature and the myth of the domestic ideal (New York: Routledge, 2007.)

Zipes, Jack David. The Oxford encyclopedia of children’s literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Zipes, Jack. Sticks and stones: the troublesome success of children’s literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter (New York : Routledge, 2000)

Other relevant work throughout the libraries

[Browse nearby shelf marks for other possible titles]

Áries, Philippe& Michelle Perrot, The History of Private Life, Volume 4, From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1990.) [940.28 Fro] [History]

Boas, George, The Cult of Childhood (London: Warburg Institute, 1966). [301.21] [Semiotics]

Coe, Richard N., When the Grass Was Taller: Autobiography and the Experience of Childhood (New Haven: Yale UP, 1984). [809.93592] [Autobiography]

Coveney, Peter, The Image of the Child. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957). [820.9] [English Literature]

Edelman, Lee, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Durham, London: Duke University Press. 2004 [301.4157 Ede] [Sexuality Social/Cultural Studies]

Kiefer, Monica, American Children Through Their Books, 1700-1835. Philadelphia : Pennsylvania University Press ,1948) (Order up from Old Library Store)

Kincaid, James, Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1992). [820.90: English Literature]

MacCann, White Supremacy in Children’s Literature: Characterizations of African Americans 1830-1900 (New York & London: Routledge, 2000) (on order)

Michael Moon, A Small Boy and Others: Imitation and Initiation from Henry James to Andy Warhole, (Durham, Duke Univeristy Press, 1998 [306.7660973 MOO] [Queer Theory]

Moretti, Franco, “Kindergarten” in Signs Taken for Wonders: essays in the sociology of literary forms. Trans. Susan Fischer, David Forgacs &  David Miller (California: Stanford UP, 1998).

Pifer, Ellen, Demon or Doll: Images of the Child in Contemporary Writing and Culture (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000) [823.9109352054 PIF] [English Literature]

Eric A Shelman & Stephen Lazoritz (eds) The Mary Ellen Wilson Child Abuse Case and the Beginning of Children’s Rights in 19th Century America (Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland, 2004)]345.73025554097471] [Legal History: Child Abuse]

Walker, Nancy and Catherine Brooks et al, Children’s Rights in the United States: In Search of a National Policy, (Thousand Oakes, California: Sage Publications, 1999). 323.3520973 WAL [Legal History: Children’s Rights]