Children's Literature

Course: 521

Course Description:

This one-semester elective course will explore the art of storytelling and the pleasure of children’s literature, surveying various authors and illustrators. Genres surveyed will include folk and fairy tales, picture books, early readers, fantasy, fiction, poetry, and historical fiction. Students will keep a writing journal, lead a class discussion on the thematic patterns found in classical and contemporary literature, and present authors and illustrators as book reviews.

*This course does not count toward the fulfillment of a student’s credit requirement in English.

Textbook/Class Resources:

9780439120425, Ryan, Esperanza Rising, Scholastic, 2002

Student Choice: Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby OR Henry Huggins :

9780380709564, Cleary, Ramona Quimby, Age 8, HarperCollins, 2020

9780380709120, Cleary, Henry Huggins, HarperCollins, 2007

Student Choice: Brown Girl Dreaming OR The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 :

9780147515827, Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming, Puffin Books, 2016

9780440414124, Curtis, The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963, Yearling, 1997

Student Choice: Lois Lowry’s The Giver OR Number the Stars :

9780544336261, Lowry, The Giver, HMH Books, 1993

9780547577098, Lowry, Number the Stars, HMH Books, 2011

Student Choice: 

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban OR The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe :

9780439136365, Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Scholastic, 2001

9780064409421, Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, HarperCollins, 2000

Student Choice: a novel by Roald Dahl that’s at least 150 pages

Choose a story/selection from any edition of: 

Poetry: R.L. Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, Shel Silverstein (Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up), Pat Mora’s Confetti: Poems for Children, Eileen Spinelli’s Summerhouse Time

Nursery Rhymes

Children’s Picture books

Fairy Tales (Grimm brothers, Charles Perrault, or Hans Christian Andersen)

Early Readers

Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh,  OR Beatrix Potter
Poetry: R.L. Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, Shel Silverstein (Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up), Pat Mora’s Confetti: Poems for Children, Eileen Spinelli’s Summerhouse Time