In this Book
- Audacious Kids: The Classic American Children's Story
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
summary
The definitive book-length study of the great classics of American children’s literature, now updated for a new century.Outstanding Book of the Year Award, Children’s Literature AssociationOften called the Golden Age of Children’s Books, the years stretching from the Civil War to World War I were a remarkable epoch in juvenile literature, an era when the best authors on both sides of the Atlantic wrote some of their finest work primarily for children. In Audacious Kids, Jerry Griswold provides a groundbreaking and lucid study of twelve of these classic American children’s tales, including such time-honored stories as Little Women, Tom Sawyer, The Secret Garden, and The Wizard of Oz. Griswold’s most remarkable insight is that, fundamentally, these twelve books all tell essentially the same story: a child is orphaned, makes a journey, is adopted and harassed by adults, and eventually triumphs over them and comes into his or her own. Griswold, a leading figure in the study of children’s literature, also reveals that these tales emphasize motifs that are distinctly American, such as positive thinking, concern with health, and the concealment of sex and violence, and he shows how these secular parables replaced religion with psychology and preached gospels of emotional self-control and optimism. In this revised edition, which is aimed at students, scholars, and general readers, Griswold has updated the text throughout and added a new preface, introduction, and select bibliography.
Table of Contents
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- Preface 2014
- pp. ix-xvi
- Preface to the First Edition
- pp. xvii-xxii
- Part One: Oedipal Patterns
- pp. 41-42
- Part Two: Manuals of Republicanism
- pp. 113-114
- 5. Ur of the Ur-Stories: Tarzan of the Apes
- pp. 127-144
- Part Three: The Theater of Feelings
- pp. 167-168
- 8. Bosom Enemies: Little Women
- pp. 184-195
- 9. Bread and Circuses: Toby Tyler
- pp. 196-216
- Part Four: The Gospel of Optimism
- pp. 217-218
- 10. Sunny Land, Angry Waters: Hans Brinker
- pp. 219-232
- 11. Positive Thinking: The Secret Garden
- pp. 233-249
- 12. Radical Innocence: Pollyanna
- pp. 250-274
- Afterword to the First Edition
- pp. 275-280
- Select Bibliography
- pp. 321-326
Additional Information
ISBN
9781421414584
Related ISBN(s)
9781421414577
MARC Record
OCLC
965471397
Pages
368
Launched on MUSE
2016-12-10
Language
English
Open Access
No