Introducing Children's Literature is an ideal guide to reading children's literature through the perspective of literary history. Focusing on the major literary movements from Romanticism to Postmodernism, Thacker and Webb examine the concerns of each period and the ways in which these concerns influence and are influenced by the children's literature of the time.
Each section begins with a general chapter, which explains the relationship between the major issues of each literary period and the formal and thematic qualities of children's texts. Close readings of selected texts...