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Children's literature

Many authors specialize in books for children. Other authors are more known for their writing for adults, but have also written books for children, such as Alexey Tolstoy's The Adventures of Burratino. In some cases, books intended for adults, such as Swift's Gulliver's Travels have been edited (or bowdlerized) somewhat, to make them more appropriate for children.

Certain characteristics are shared by most works of fiction commonly acknowledged as children's literature, though for each characteristic there are dozens of counter-examples, making it difficult to define children's literature according to them. Works of children's literature often:

• Have children as protagonists (counter examples: My Friend Mr. Leaky by J.B.S. Haldane is a children's book with an adult protagonist; The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger is an adult book with an adolescent protagonist)
• Do not contain adult themes (counter examples: Junk by Melvin Burgess is a children's book with adult themes)
• Are appropriate for children (a problematic criterion, as the definition of "appropriate" is subjective; also, many adult books are deemed appropriate for children).
• Are relatively short (counter examples: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling)
• Contain illustrations, in particular books intended for younger children
• Are written in simple language (counter examples: Skellig by David Almond)
• Are plot-oriented (fewer descriptions and ruminations)
• Deal with themes of growing up, coming to age and maturation
• Are educational, or else contain tales of fantasy and adventure
• Have a happy end, in which good triumphs over evil. (counter examples: Katherine Paterson has written books with difficult if not unhappy endings, such as Bridge to Terabithia and The Great Gilly Hopkins, and Lois Lowry's The Giver ends ambiguously)

Publishers have attempted to further break down children's literature into subdivisions appropriate for different ages. In the United States, current practice within the field of children's books publishing is to break children's literature into pre-readers, early readers, chapter books, and young adults. This is roughly equivalent to the age groups 0-5, 5-7, 7-11 (sometimes broken down further into 7-9 and pre-teens), and books for teenagers. However, the criteria for these divisions are just as vague and problematic as the criteria for defining children's books as a whole. One obvious distinction is that books for younger children tend to contain illustrations, but Picture books which feature art as an integral part of the overall work also cross all genres and age levels.

The success of a book for children often prompts the author to continue the story in a sequel, or even to launch into an entire series of books. Some works are originally conceived as series: J. K. Rowling has always stated in interviews that her original plan was to write no fewer than seven books about Harry Potter, and some authors, such as the prolific Enid Blyton and R. L. Stine, seem incapable of writing a stand-alone book. In several cases, series have outlived their authors, whether publishers openly hired new authors to continue after the death of the original creator of the series (such was the case when Reilly and Lee hired Ruth Plumly Thompson to continue The Oz series after L. Frank Baum's death), or whether the pen name of the original author was retained as a brand-name-de-plum for the series (as with Franklin W. Dixon and the Hardy Boys series, Carolyn Keene and the Nancy Drew series, and V. C. Andrews and the Flowers in the Attic series).

Some noted awards for children's literature are:

• United States: the Newbery Medal for writing and the Caldecott Medal for illustration
• United Kingdoms and Commonwealth: the Carnegie Medal for writing and the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration; the Nestle Smarties Book Prize; and the Guardian Award.
• Internationally: the Hans Christian Andersen Award

Table of contents

1 Famous Works of Children's Fiction 2 See also 3 External links

Famous Works of Children's Fiction

• Fairy tale collections are one of the earliest forms of published fiction that have never lost their charm for children, though several of the classic tales are gruesome and were not originally collected for children. Famous collectors and retellers of Fairy Tales include Charles Perrault, the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and Andrew Lang.

• Struwwelpeter (1845) by Heinrich Hoffman (published in English as Slovenly Peter).

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1864) by Lewis Carroll (the pen name of Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson, a novel about a little girl who follows a white rabbit into a land where logical puzzles come to life, gained worldwide popularity in the Victorian era and is considered a seminal work of children's literature. It was succeeded by Through the Looking-Glass.

• Little Women (1868) by Louisa May Alcott.

• Max and Moritz (1865) by Wilhelm Busch.

• Pinocchio (1880) by Carlo Collodi.

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum, later expanded into a series of books which were tremendously popular in America during the first half of the twentieth century.

• Just So Stories for Little Children (1902), by Rudyard Kipling, fantastical accounts of the origins of natural phenomena.

• The Railway Children (1906), by E. Nesbit

• Anne of Green Gables (1908) by L. M. Montgomery.

• Peter and Wendy (1911) by J. M. Barrie (better known as Peter Pan)

• Winnie the Pooh (1928) by A. A. Milne.

• Mary Poppins (1934) by Pamela Travers, and sequels.

• Five on a Treasure Island (1942) by Enid Blyton, and sequels

• Pippi Longstocking (1944) by Astrid Lindgren.

• Goodnight Moon (1947) by Margaret Wise Brown

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) by C. S. Lewis, and sequels.

• Charlotte's Web (1952) by E. B. White, about a spider who befriends a pig and saves him from being slaughtered.

• The Cat in the Hat (1957) by Dr. Seuss

• The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) by Alan Garner

• Where the Wild Things Are (1964) by Maurice Sendak

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) by Roald Dahl, a novel about a young boy who receives a once-in-a-lifetime chance to visit the near-magical Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. It was succeeded by Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Other children's books by Roald Dahl include James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr Fox, and The Witches (winner of the 1983 Whitbread Award) and Matilda.

• A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) by Ursula K. Le Guin, and sequels.

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997) by J. K. Rowling, and sequels.

• List of children's literature authors
• List of illustrators
• Fairy tales
• Publishers of children books
• Fiction

• Online Resources for K-12 Teachers: Children's and Adolescent Literature
• Using Literature To Help Children Cope with Problems
• Exploring the Function of Heroes and Heroines in Children's Literature from around the World
• Multicultural Children's Literature in the Elementary Classroom
• Achuka - British children's books resource