Description: Exploring the ethical questions posed by, in, and about children's literature, this collection examines the way texts intended for children raise questions of value, depict the moral development of their characters, and call into attention shared moral presuppositions. Even as children's literature has evolved in opposition to its origins in didactic Sunday school tracts and moralizing fables, authors, parents, librarians, and scholars remain sensitive to the values conveyed to children through the texts they choose to share with them.
Review Quotes: 'Keenly analytical and critically astute, Ethics and Children's Literature is a compelling exploration of the ethical at work in literature for the young. Each of the essays contributes a unique voice to the volume; the sensitively edited chapters blend to become a chorus resonant with the ways that ethics and children's literature inflect one another.' Roberta Seelinger Trites, Illinois State University, USA, author of Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature and Literary Conceptualizations of Growth 'The volume successfully brings together a variety of approaches to studying ethics in children's literature. It conveys an important message that the quite overt manipulation to which children were subject in the past, e.g. in the segregation era, has been replaced by more subtle snares to be disentangled by critical reading.' International Research in Children's Literature '... a collection that is full of interesting perspectives ... [I] recommend this volume for the freshness of its approach to a subject that has received rather less attention than it deserves in the field of children's literature criticism.' Network