Defining Children’s Literature and Childhood

Abstract

‘A Cinderella story: research on children's books takes on new life as a field of literary study’: that was the headline for an article on the rise of academic children's literature criticism, published 13 February 1991, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (the newspaper for American universities, similar to the Times Higher Educational Supplement in Britain). Although the article, by Ellen K. Coughlin, nicely sketches several of the current poststructuralist, including feminist, lines in children's literature criticism, it is the headline that is arresting. The teasing, metaphoric association with the rags-to-riches image of Cinderella stories inadvertently discloses the uneasy relations between children's literature, feminist theory and the academy.

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