Portal:Children's literature
The Children's Literature Portal
Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader, from picture books for the very young to young adult fiction.
Children's literature can be traced to traditional stories like fairy tales, which have only been identified as children's literature since the eighteenth century, and songs, part of a wider oral tradition, which adults shared with children before publishing existed. The development of early children's literature, before printing was invented, is difficult to trace. Even after printing became widespread, many classic "children's" tales were originally created for adults and later adapted for a younger audience. Since the fifteenth century much literature has been aimed specifically at children, often with a moral or religious message. Children's literature has been shaped by religious sources, like Puritan traditions, or by more philosophical and scientific standpoints with the influences of Charles Darwin and John Locke. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are known as the "Golden Age of Children's Literature" because many classic children's books were published then. (Full article...)
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Beauty and the Beast illustrated by Walter Crane (1874)
In this month
- 2 April 1805 - Birth of Hans Christian Andersen (pictured), Danish author and poet, most famous for his fairy tales
- 8 April 1911 - Short film Little Nemo released, based on the comic strip
- 9 April 1768 – Death of Sarah Fielding, author of the first novel in English for children
- 12 April 1958 - Publication of Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss
- 16 April 2002 - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang opens in the West End at the London Palladium theatre
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Did you know...
- ... that a collection of 247 tiles illustrating children's books are installed on the Story Book Wall at the Alamogordo Public Library (pictured) in New Mexico, U.S.?
- ...that Leela Majumdar, author of children's books, translated Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea into Bengali?
- ...that Family Moving Day was the last entry to be translated into English in Beechwood Bunny Tales, a series of children's books written by French author Geneviève Huriet?
Featured content
Featured articles
Chinua Achebe
Argosy (magazine)
Bronwyn Bancroft
Enid Blyton
Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang
The Coral Island
Gerald Durrell
Edmund Evans
Ian Fleming
The Fox and the Hound (novel)
Anne Frank
The Guardian of Education
The Hunger Games (novel)
Lad, A Dog
Ursula K. Le Guin
Julianne Moore
Baron Munchausen
The Phantom Tollbooth
Proserpine (play)
Talbot Baines Reed
Sally Ride
J. K. Rowling
Scoops (magazine)
Mary Martha Sherwood
The Story of Miss Moppet
To Kill a Mockingbird
J. R. R. Tolkien
When Megan Went Away
A Wizard of Earthsea
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Children's literature: Book talk • Children's literature criticism • Children's literature periodicals • International Children's Digital Library • Native Americans in children's literature
Young adult literature: Gay teen fiction • Lesbian teen fiction • List of young adult authors • Young Adult Library Services Association
Associations and awards: Children's Book Council of Australia • CBCA book awards • Governor General's Literary Award for Children's Literature and Illustration • IBBY Canada • American Library Association • Association for Library Service to Children • Newbery Medal • Caldecott Medal • Golden Kite Award • Ezra Jack Keats Book Award • SCBWI • Sibert Medal • Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal • Batchelder Award • Coretta Scott King Award • Belpre Medal • Carnegie Medal • Kate Greenaway Medal • Nestlé Smarties Book Prize • Guardian Award • Hans Christian Andersen Award • Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award • Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators
Lists: List of children's classic books • List of children's literature authors • List of children's non-fiction writers • List of fairy tales • List of illustrators • List of publishers of children's books
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