Children’s Literature and Childhood Discourses

Book excerpt: Children's literature shapes what children learn about the world. It reflects social values, norms, and stereotypes. This book offers fresh insights into some of the key issues in fiction for children, from the representation of gender to embodied cognition and the translation of children's literature. Connecting classic children's texts such as Alice in Wonderland with contemporary fiction including Murder Most Unladylike, the book innovatively brings together perspectives from corpus linguistics, stylistics, cognitive linguistics, literary and cultural studies, and human geography. It explores approaches to experiencing fiction, as well as methods for the study of literary texts. Childhood discourses are investigated through the materiality of texts, the spaces that literature takes up in libraries, the cultural history of fiction moulded through performances, as well as reading environments that shape childhood experiences, such as fashion and urban spaces. Children's Literature and Childhood Discourses emphasizes the crucial link between fictional stories and real life.