In the twelve-month PGCE courses, the problem was one of time, not lack of
enthusiasm. At the University of Exeter, for example, postgraduate English specialists
could only be introduced to children’s literature through workshops on novels/short
stories/poems in the classroom; at the University of Birmingham students read a core of
books by modern authors such as Leon Garfield, Philippa Pearce, Rosemary Sutcliff,
Alan Garner and Ursula Le Guin (Evans 1984:105–106).
Outside teacher education at undergraduate level, there was, as we have seen,
resistance (especially in University English Departments) to recognising children’s
literature as a valid area for study. However, the University of Wales Institute of Science
and Technology (later to merge to become University of Wales, Cardiff) was the first in
Britain to introduce (in the form of an option in the third year) a course on children’s
literature within a university BA degree in English. Critical concepts of narrative, genre,
psychological and literary development provided an introduction to a historical survey of
children’s literature from the eighteenth century to the present, followed by special
study of major nineteenth- and twentieth-century children’s authors (Hunt 1990). As
this university’s courses have been modularised, this forty-four (teaching) hour course
has been replaced by, initially, three fifteen-hour modules: an introduction to children’s
literature, the golden age of children’s literature, and twentieth century children’s
literature. The University of York offered a term’s course (ten weeks) on modern fiction
for children to students taking a combined degree consisting of a main subject from the
sciences, social sciences or humanities with education. The course introduced students
to a wide range of modern fiction of a high literary standard for children, and, at the
same time, discussed issues that arose from the study of such literature. Students
specialising in English at York could write an independent essay on children’s literature
as a substitute for one of the nine examination papers making up the final degree
(Bailey and Hollindale 1986). At Roehampton Institute, London, the modular BA degree
offered three modules in children’s literature: nineteenth-century children’s literature
considered a range of texts in their historical, social political, economic and
philosophical contexts; twentieth-century developments in children’s literature
examined sub-genres such as animal stories and fantasy; and contemporary children’s
literature considered a range of narrative strategies used by contemporary writers.
The University of Reading offered an option course on twentieth-century children’s
literature within the English BA degree. The first part of the course examined pre-1950
texts by authors such as J.M.Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, E. Nesbit and J.R.R.Tolkien;
the second part of the course ranged more widely in post-1950 children’s literature: it
included authors and author-illustrators, such as Anthony Browne, Margaret Mahy,
Philippa Pearce, Ursula Le Guin, Alan Garner, Robert Cormier, John Burningham,
Maurice Sendak, William Mayne and Gillian Cross. In Library Studies, the College of
Librarianship Wales, Aberystwyth, ran a major children’s literature course called
literature and libraries for young people which could be taken in the undergraduate
programme or on the postgraduate diploma course. A substantial part of the students’
work concerned contemporary stories and novels, poetry and plays. (Lonsdale and Spink
1987:203–204).
At the postgraduate and in-service level, the study of children’s literature consolidated
and strengthened its position in Britain during the 1980s and early 1990s. Again, most
APPLICATIONS OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE 603