Children's Literature and New York City

ISBN-13: 9780415823029 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 206 str.

Keith O'Sullivan; Padraic Whyte

Opis

This book visits the significance of New York City in children s literature, stressing literary, political, and societal influences on writing for young people from the twentieth century to the present day. Contextualized in light of contemporary critical and cultural theory, the chapters examine the varying ways in which children s literature has engaged with New York City as a city space, both in terms of (urban) realism and as "idea," such as the fantasy of the city as a place of opportunity, or other associations. The collection visits not only dominant themes, motifs, and tropes, but also the different narrative methods employed to tell readers about the history, function, physical structure, and conceptualization of New York City, acknowledging the shared or symbiotic relationship between literature and the city: just as literature can give imaginative "reality" to the city, the city has the potential to shape the literary text. This book critically engages with all the major forms and genres of literature for children/young adult that dialogue with New York City, considering such authors as Ruth Sawyer, Emily Cheney Neville, E.L. Konigsburg, Mary Ann Sadleir, J.D. Salinger, Judy Blume, Shaun Tan, Ned Vizzini, and Patti Smith.

Recenzje

"In this book, urban studies and children's literature studies seem to have truly found each other. It is an inspiring volume of essays that provides conceptual frameworks for taking this research further and applying it to other cities as well" - Vanessa Joosen, Tilburg University/University of Antwerp, Bookbird, Vol, 53, No.1, 2015

Spis treści

Introduction  Pádraic Whyte and Keith O’Sullivan  1. Bank Street and Beyond: New York City in the Here and Now Books of Lucy Sprague Mitchell and Margaret Wise Brown  Joseph Stanton  2. ‘Form Follows Function’: Elizabeth Enright’s Melendy Quartet (1941–1951)  Julie Anne Stevens  3. Striated Space and Smooth Space: A Deleuzoguttarian Reading of Nick McDonell’s Twelve  Keith O’Sullivan  4. Navigating Adolescence through the Streets of New York: I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip  Pádraic Whyte  5. ‘Cities Will Sing’: Natural New York  Jenny Bavidge  6. A City Cold and Wild: Nature and Social Justice in Slake’s Limbo and Ten Mile River  Suzanne Marie Hopcroft  7. ‘New York Is a Great Place’: Urban Mobility in Twentieth-Century Children’s Literature  Sonya Sawyer Fritz  8. Catalysing Urban Interaction: Individual and Crowded Identities in New York City  Jane Suzanne Carroll  9. Self in the City: Young Adult Fiction about New York City after 9/11  Jo Lampert  10. I Am an Island: Caribbean Immigrants to New York City in Children’s Literature  Karen Sands-O’Connor  11. The View from the Top of the Bus: Curious George in Émigré New York  Katie Trumpener  12. New York City: A Dystopian Utopia in Visual Narratives  Valerie Coghlan  13. A Right to Music: New York and Mid-Century Liberal Imagination in The Cricket in Times Square  Helen Conrad O’Briain  14. Just Kids: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Androgyne in New York Roni Natov

O autorze

Pádraic Whyte is Assistant Professor of English and co-director of the Masters Programme in Children’s Literature at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin. He is author of Irish Childhoods: Children’s Fiction and Irish History (2011). In 2012, he delivered the Betsy Beinecke Shirley Lecture on American Children’s Literature at Yale University.

Keith O’Sullivan lectures in English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Dublin. He recently co-edited Irish Children’s Literature and Culture: New Perspectives on Contemporary Writing (Routledge, 2011). In 2012, he was the recipient of a David Almond Fellowship for Research in Children’s Literature at Newcastle University and Seven Stories.