Philosophy in Children&#039;s Literature

Peter Costello

doi:10.5771/9780739168240

Summary

This book allows philosophers, literary theorists, and education specialists to come together to offer a series of readings on works of children’s literature. Each of their readings is focused on pairing a particular, popular picture book or a chapter book with philosophical texts or themes.

The book has three sections—the first, on picturebooks; the second, on chapter books; and the third, on two sets of paired readings of two very popular picturebooks. By means of its three sections, the book sets forth as its goal to show how philosophy can be helpful in reappraising books aimed at children from early childhood on. Particularly in the third section, the book emphasizes how philosophy can help to multiply the type of interpretative stances that are possible when readers listen again to what they thought they knew so well.

The kinds of questions this book raises are the following: How are children’s books already anticipating or articulating philosophical problems and discussions? How does children’s literature work by means of philosophical puzzles or language games? What do children’s books reveal about the existential situation the child reader faces?

In posing and answering these kinds of questions, the readings within the book thus intersect with recent, developing scholarship in children’s literature studies as well as in the psychology and philosophy of childhood.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2011
ISBN-Print: 978-0-7391-6823-3
ISBN-Online: 978-0-7391-6824-0
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 326
Product type: Edited Book

1. Contents No access
2. Foreword No access
3. Introduction No access
Chapter 01. Heidegger, Winnicott, and The Velveteen Rabbit No access Pages 1 - 20
Chapter 02. Slave Morality in The Rainbow Fish No access Pages 21 - 40
Chapter 03. Absolutely Positively Feeling that Way and More No access Pages 41 - 62
Chapter 04. Are You My Mother? Finding the Self in (M)others No access Pages 63 - 82
Chapter 05. Horton Hears Badiou!: Ethics and an Understanding of Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who! No access Pages 83 - 100
Chapter 06. Mapping Chris Van Allsburg’sThe Mysteries of Harris Burdick No access Pages 101 - 118
Chapter 07. Silverstein’s Missing Pieces No access Pages 119 - 134
Chapter 08. Is Arthur’s Anger Reasonable? No access Pages 135 - 152
Chapter 09. Gift-Giving, Waiting, and Walking No access Pages 153 - 174
Chapter 10. Word Play, Language-Games, and Unfair Labels in Beverly Cleary’s Ramona the Pest No access Pages 175 - 190
Chapter 11. The Things That Are Not among the Things There Are to Do No access Pages 191 - 204
Chapter 12. Intelligence and Utopia in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH No access Pages 205 - 218
Chapter 13. The Cricket in Times Square No access Pages 219 - 234
Chapter 14. Pollyanna, Moral Sainthood, and Childhood Ideals No access Pages 235 - 250
Chapter 15. The Giving Tree and Environmental Philosophy No access Pages 251 - 266
Chapter 16. The Giving Tree, Women, and the Great Society No access Pages 267 - 284
Chapter 17. King of the Wild Things No access Pages 285 - 300
Chapter 18. Lovingly Impolite No access Pages 301 - 314
Index No access Pages 315 - 320
About the Authors No access Pages 321 - 326