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This is the first comprehensive look at African-American picture books from the mid-nineteenth century to today. Using critical approaches that have emerged out of African-American studies, post-modern theory, and children's literature studies, Michelle Martin examines how the genre evolved from its ...

This is the first comprehensive look at African-American picture books from the mid-nineteenth century to today. Using critical approaches that have emerged out of African-American studies, post-modern theory, and children's literature studies, Michelle Martin examines how the genre evolved from its roots in minstrelsy to the contemporary multicultural moment, showing how picture books have grown from instructional texts to celebrations of race and ethnicity.

The twentieth century was, by any reckoning, the age of the child in America. Today, we pay homage at the altar of childhood, heaping endless goods on the young, reveling in memories of a more innocent time, and finding solace in the softly backlit memories of our earliest years. We are, the ...

The twentieth century was, by any reckoning, the age of the child in America. Today, we pay homage at the altar of childhood, heaping endless goods on the young, reveling in memories of a more innocent time, and finding solace in the softly backlit memories of our earliest years. We are, the proclamation goes, just big kids at heart. And, accordingly, we delight in prolonging and inflating the childhood experiences of our offspring. In images of the naughty but nice Buster Brown and the coquettish but sweet Shirley Temple, Americans at mid-century offered up a fantastic world of treats, toys, and stories, creating a new image of the child as "cute." Holidays such as Christmas and Halloween became blockbuster affairs, vehicles to fuel the bedazzled and wondrous innocence of the adorable child. All this, Gary Cross illustrates, reflected the preoccupations of a more gentle and affluent culture, but it also served to liberate adults from their rational and often tedious worlds of work and responsibility. But trouble soon entered paradise. The "cute" turned into "cool" as children, following their parental example, embraced the gift of fantasy and unrestrained desire to rebel against the saccharine excesses of wondrous innocence in deliberate pursuit of the anti-cute. Movies, comic books, and video games beckoned to children with the allures of an often violent, sexualized, and increasingly harsh worldview. Unwitting and resistant accomplices to this commercial transformation of childhood, adults sought-over and over again, in repeated and predictable cycles-to rein in these threats in a largely futile jeremiad to preserve the old order. Thus, the cute child-deliberately manufactured and cultivated--has ironically fostered a profoundly troubled ambivalence toward youth and child rearing today. Expertly weaving his way through the cultural artifacts, commercial currents, and parenting anxieties of the previous century, Gary Cross offers a vibrant and entirely fresh portrait of the forces that have defined American childhood.

This classic dictionary brings together over 500 nursery rhymes, songs, nonsense jingles, lullabies, and rhyming alphabets traditionally handed on to young children. All the items have been arranged alphabetically, from `A was an apple-pie' to `Yankee Doodle came to town' and include such favourites ...

This classic dictionary brings together over 500 nursery rhymes, songs, nonsense jingles, lullabies, and rhyming alphabets traditionally handed on to young children. All the items have been arranged alphabetically, from `A was an apple-pie' to `Yankee Doodle came to town' and include such favourites as `A frog he would a-wooing go', `Baa, baa, black sheep', `Dance to your daddy', `Jack and Jill', and `Old Mother Hubbard'. With each item comes a unique set of historical and bibliographical notes that record the earliest known publication of each piece, describe the circumstances of its origin, illustrate changes in wording over time, and indicate variations and parallels in other languages. In a detailed and fascinating introduction, the editors describe the different types of rhyme, the earliest published collections, theories of origins, and such questions as whether or not individual rhymes originally portrayed real people and who was Mother Goose. Complementing the rhymes are nearly a hundred illustrations, including reproductions of early appearances in ballad sheets and music books, which show the development of nursery rhyme illustrations over the last two centuries. For this revised edition, the notes have been updated and extended in the light of recent scholarship, providing an unrivalled wealth of literary and bibliographical information. There is also a new essay on the singing tradition of nursery rhymes by Cecily Raysor Hancock, making The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes an indispensable source of reference for scholars and book collectors, and a volume to be treasured by parents and children alike. 'No reader's imagination could fail to be enriched by this book' - Sunday Times 'The classic on the subject' - Daily Telegraph