Children's Literature - EDU00072H

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Module summary

This module introduces students to children’s and young adult literature. Its twin aims are to turn students into critical readers of those texts, and to engage them in the pedagogical potential of such literature. In that aim, the module is unique in its structure, which alternates between sessions focused on literary analysis and sessions focused on pedagogical practice for the same type of text.

Related modules

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 1 2025-26

Module aims

This module introduces students to children’s and young adult literature. Its twin aims are to turn students into critical readers of those texts, and to engage them in the pedagogical potential of such literature. In that aim, the module is unique in its structure, which alternates between sessions focused on literary analysis and sessions focused on pedagogical practice for the same type of text.

Module learning outcomes

By the end of this module students will be able to:

• closely analyse and explore, aesthetically as well as ideologically, some major works of fiction for young people and major genres of such literature

• apply that knowledge and analytical approach to the teaching and transmission of such texts in various educational contexts

• engage with literature to question and re-evaluate their beliefs and assumptions about education, childhood and adolescence;

• develop critical analysis skills, objectively assessing a range of different view-points in order to understand and to argue about controversial educational issues.

Module content

• The module explores various types of modern fiction for young people, from picturebooks to young adult literature, and engages with sophisticated secondary literature on the subject. Students will read, analyse and think critically about a range of literature written both for children and teenagers. They are encouraged to reflect upon the literary and aesthetic qualities, and the social values, embedded in the texts studied, and to ask what the books have to offer to developing readers. The module explores the ways in which the texts read by young people both within and outside school convey messages to and about young people concerning their developmental, social and cultural contexts.

• The module has 11 class meetings. These will involve tutor-led input, lectures, small group activities, class debates and student presentations using a range of materials. Each class will require the students to do preparatory readings and to complete follow-up activities. Preparatory readings will take the form of primary sources, academic papers, reports, newspaper articles or policy documents. The weekly required readings and the follow-up activities are clearly outlined on the VLE. Follow-up activities will be varied but may include creative writing, independent research, keeping a glossary of key terms etc.

• The module also has an hour a week of online practical tasks

The following is indicative of the possible content:

Subject content

• General introduction to reading and theorising children’s literature

• Picturebooks

• Teaching picturebooks

• Junior and Series Fiction

• Working with series in the classroom

• Children’s Classics

• What do we do with the classics in class?

• Poetry for Children

• Planning for poetry in the classroom

• Young Adult literature

• Teenagers as readers

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

For their formative assessment, students will have to present a brief analysis of one of the texts studied on the module, taking into account both theoretical and practical perspectives as modelled during the different sessions. The presentations will be formatively assessed with oral feedback.

The summative assignment will consist of an essay on literary analysis OR on pedagogical applications of children’s or young adult literature to the classroom OR a creative writing piece + essay.

In the first instance (literary essay), students will choose a text of children’s or young adult literature and write a literary analysis of the text in answer to a question of their own choosing.

In the second instance (education essay), students will write an essay on ways of teaching a chosen text of children’s or young adult literature to a class in a context of their choice.

In the third instance (creative writing essay), students will submit a piece of creative writing for children, accompanied with a reflective essay explaining their creative process and linking their piece to the wider theoretical and practical field of children’s literature scholarship.

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100

Module feedback

Individual written feedback reports, with follow-up tutor meeting, if necessary. The feedback is returned to students in line with university policy. Please check the Guide to Assessment, Standards, Marking and Feedback for more information

Indicative reading

• Gubar, M. (2013). Risky Business: Talking about Children in Children’s Literature Criticism. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 38(4): 450-457

• Gubar, M. (2016). The hermeneutics of recuperation: What a kinship-model approach to children's agency could do for children's literature and childhood studies. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 8(1), 291-310.

• Hollindale, P. (1997). Signs of Childness in Children’s Books. Stroud, Thimble press.

• Hunt, P. (1996). International Companion: Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature.London, Routledge.

• Kidd, K. B. (2020). Theory for Beginners: Children’s Literature as Critical Thought. Fordham University Press.

• Nikolajeva, M. (2002). The rhetoric of character in children's literature. Lanham: Scarecrow.

• Nikolajeva, M. (2005) Aesthetic Approaches to Children’s Literature: An introduction. Lanham: Scarecrow. Link

• Nikolajeva, M. (2010). Power, Voice and Subjectivity in Literature for Young Readers. London: Routledge.

• Nodelman, P. (2008). The Hidden Adult. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.

• Rose, J. (1984). The Case of Peter Pan, Or The Impossibility of Children’s Fiction. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

• Zipes, J. (2001). Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children's Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter. New York: Routledge.

All students will be expected to have read, and be very familiar with, the following primary set texts. All of them are available from the University Library and from the York Explore library in town, and are easily ordered on Waterstones.

• Akissi, Tales of Mischief, by Marguerite Abouet and Mathieu Sapin, Nobrow.

• The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo, HarperCollins.

• Matilda, by Roald Dahl, Puffin.