making the most of the innocence of beginning readers to engage them in new reading
games.
If children’s literature begets new critical theory and moves further into the academic
circle it will become subject to institutional conventions and regulations which are not
those of the old protectionist ethos. This may give new scholars more recognition, more
power even, to decide what counts as children’s literature and how it is to be studied.
There will be no escape, however, from learning how children read their world, the great
variety of its texts beyond print and pictures. Interactions of children and books will go
on outside the academy, as has ever been the case, in the story-telling of young minds
operating on society ‘at the very edge of the forest’, inventing, imagining, hypothesising,
all in the future tense.
The contents of this Encyclopedia are a tribute to all, mentioned or not, who have
worked in the domain of children’s books during the twentieth century, and earlier. The
hope is that, in the next millennium, by having been brought together here, their efforts
will be continued and prove fruitful.
ReferencesAppleyard, J.A. (1990) Becoming a Reader: the Experience of Fiction from Childhood to Adulthood,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barthes, R. (1974) S/Z: An Essay, New York: Hill and Wang.
Bruner, J. (1986) Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Carpenter, H. and Prichard, M. (1984) The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Carter, A. (1990) The Virago Book of Fairy Tales, London: Virago.
Cole, B. (1993) Mummy Laid an Egg, London: Cape.
Crago, H. and Crago, M. (1983) Prelude to Literacy: A Pre-school Child’s Encounter with Picture and
Story, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Darton, F.J.H. (1932/1982) Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, 3rd edn,
rev. B. Alderson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eco, U. (1983) Reflections on ‘The Name of the Rose’, trans. W.Weaver, London: Secker and
Warburg.
Fisher, M. (1964) Intent Upon Reading, rev. edn, Leicester: Brockhampton Press.
Fox, C. (1993) At the Very Edge of the Forest: The Influence of Literature on Storytelling by Children,
London: Cassell.
Garfield, L. (1985) Shakespeare Stories, London: Gollancz.
Hardy, B. (1968/1977) ‘Narrative as a primary act of mind’, in Meek, M., Warlow, A. and Barton,
G. (eds) The Cool Web, London: Bodley Head.
Hollindale, P. (1988) ‘Ideology and the children’s book’, Signal 55:3–22.
Hunt, P. (1994) ‘Researching the fragmented subject’, in Broadbent, N., Hogan, A., Wilson, G. and
Miller, M. (eds) Research in Children’s Literature: A Coming of Age? Southampton: LSU.
Le Guin, U. (1981) ‘Why are we huddling round the camp fire?’, in Mitchell, W.J. T. (ed.) On
Narrative, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
——(1989) Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places, London: Paladin.
Lewis, D. (1990) ‘The constructedness of texts: picture books and the metafictive’, Signal 62:131–
146.
Lurie, A. (1990) Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: Subversive Children’s Literature, London: Bloomsbury.
12 INTRODUCTION