Three other MAs in children’s literature were started in Britain in the 1990s. The
University of Warwick’s MA offered nine modules including, text and readers, twentieth-
century literature for children, reading images, the rise of literature for children, and
versions of fictions. It raised questions about historical and contemporary concepts of
childhood and child readers and considered ‘the narrative and semiotic contents of texts
which include pictures, televisual, filmic and written materials’. The MA in children’s
literature at Roehampton Institute was designed to promote critical debate and enquiry
in the field of children’s literature. The subject was studied ‘both as a literary genre and
in terms of its social, cultural and historical constructions’. It consisted of eight taught
modules: critical theory; adaptation and performance; book illustration; experimental
narration; subcultures and subversion; literature past and present; and literature in the
curriculum. An MA similar in construction to that at Reading began at Trinity College,
Carmarthen, in 1995.
In Australia, Canada and New Zealand, courses in children’s literature at
undergraduate and postgraduate level also developed during the 1980s and 1990s.
In Australia, programmes developed at several universities in New South Wales. For
example, in the Faculty of Education of the University of Sydney, the aim was ‘to
establish enthusiasm for children’s literature and an understanding of what enjoyed
texts can do for literacy development’, through introducing students to contemporary
titles such Anthony Browne’s Hansel and Gretel (Williams 1988: 134). Later in the
degree, students intensified their study through a ‘theory of children’s literature in
education [which] requires a theory of language, especially a theory of language which
produces insight into relationships between texts and their contexts of production and
reception’ (Williams 1988:136). The university also offered a Master’s degree in language
in education which included some children’s literature. Macquarie University offered a
graduate diploma and Master’s degree in children’s literature with the following units:
sources of children’s literature (which examined the relationship of children’s literature
to ‘pre-texts found in mythology, legend and romance, folk and fairy story and fable’);
language and verbal arts; development of children’s literature; narrative: theory and
method; Australian children’s literature; and the picture book. Courses in both
education and English have flourished at several other universities and colleges in the
state, such as the University of Wollongong.
In Victoria, Deakin University, Geelong, pioneered the distance teaching and learning
of children’s literature through course units and radio broadcasts, to students living at
considerable distance from the university. In South Australia, programmes developed at
several universities, including Flinders University, which taught the subject at honours
level. In the mid-1990s, the University of South Australia launched a major in children’s
literature within the BA degree. A number of units were offered including: Australian
children’s literature, adolescent literature, literature and the media, picture books,
fantasy, realism, history of children’s literature, and children’s literature and popular
culture.
In New Zealand, where interest in children’s literature generally flourished, the
Auckland College of Education had developed courses in children’s literature during the
1970s and in 1990, the first graduate course to be offered within an English department
in New Zealand was started at the University of Waikato in Hamilton (Cochrane 1991).
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