Books Received

Chinese Children’s Literature in the Golden Age. By Zhu Ziqiang. Beijing: China Children’s Press and Publication Group, 2014.

This book provides an overview of Chinese children’s literature published since 1978. The text is in both Chinese and English. The book is divided into four parts under the following headings: “The Development of Children’s Fantasy Literature,” “The Achievements of Realistic Children’s Fiction,” “Unique Children’s Poetry,” and “The Rise of Original Picture Books.”

Victorian Fairy Tales. Edited by Michael Newton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Part of the Oxford World’s Classics series, this collection features sixteen literary fairy tales as well as four essays about the genre from this same period. Among the authors included are Dinah Mulock Craik, Juliana Horatia Ewing, George MacDonald, John Ruskin, and Robert Southey. Editor Michael Newton also provides a scholarly introduction, biographical sketches of the authors, and many explanatory notes.

Who Wrote “The Night Before Christmas”? Analyzing the Clement Clarke Moore vs. Henry Livingston Question. By MacDonald P. Jackson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016.

Clement Clarke Moore is often credited with writing “The Night Before Christmas,” published anonymously in 1823, but Henry Livingston’s descendants argue that he was the real author of the poem. MacDonald P. Jackson examines this question in great detail, using the techniques of computational stylistics. This book should especially appeal to readers who are interested in the emerging field of attribution studies.