Children's literature

Basic Characteristics

There is some debate as to what constitutes children's literature. Some would have it that children's literature is literature written specially for children, though many books that were originally intended for adults are now commonly thought of as works for children, for example Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, or Huckleberry Finn. The opposite has also been known to occur, where works of fiction originally written or marketed for children are given recognition as adult books. Witness that in recent years, the prestigious Whitbread Awards were twice given to books marketed as children's books: Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass, and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. The Nobel prize for literature has also been given to authors who made great contributions to children's literature, such as Selma Lagerlöf and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Often it is hard to reach consensus on the question of whether a certain book is a children's book or not, for example, The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Related Topics:
Literature - Mark Twain - The Prince and the Pauper - Huckleberry Finn - Fiction - Whitbread Awards - Philip Pullman - The Amber Spyglass - Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Nobel prize - Selma Lagerlöf - Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien

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Additionally, there is some debate as to whether or not non-fiction is literature (and a separate debate over whether non-fiction should be called non-fiction or informational). While the ALSC has an award specifically for non-fiction, the Sibert Medal, non-fiction books have also very occasionally won the Newbery Medal, the premier children's book award in the United States (notably, Russell Freedman's 1988 Lincoln: A Photobiography).

Related Topics:
ALSC - Sibert Medal - Newbery Medal - Russell Freedman

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Many authors specialize in books for children. Other authors are more known for their writing for adults, but have also written books for children, such as [[Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi|Alexey Tolstoy

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]]'s The Adventures of Burratino, and Carl Sandburg's "Rootabaga Stories". In some cases, books intended for adults, such as Swift's Gulliver's Travels have been edited (or bowdlerized) somewhat, to make them more appropriate for children.

Related Topics:
Carl Sandburg - Swift's - Gulliver's Travels - Bowdlerized

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An attempt to identify the characteristics shared by works called 'children's literature' leads to some good general guidelines. No one rule is perfect, however, and for every identifying feature there are many exceptions, as well as many adult books that share the characteristic.

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To edit this table, look at each chunk separted by "|-" on a line by itself. The layout of the table is:

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