ENGL 2209 - Children’s Literature

1. Read, discuss, analyze, and interpret a variety of works of children’s literature selected from diverse writers and cultures.
2. Understand how literary works reflect the values of the people and time in which they were written.
3. Use various writing techniques to analyze literature.
4. Select and apply a critical approach (such as biographical, reader-response, feminist, historical, psychoanalytic, etc.) to analyze, interpret, and evaluate selected works of children’s literature.
5. Use literary terminology such as character, plot, setting, theme, style, point of view, symbol, and metaphor to describe technical elements of children’s literature.
6. Recognize how race, ethnic group, gender, class, and sexuality differences both inform and are illustrated by literature, and how literature can be used to discuss, understand, and appreciate these differences.
7. Recognize the value and contribution of diverse voices and perspectives in literature.
8. Appreciate how literature helps us celebrate differences and better understand ourselves, other people, and the world around us.

1. Exposure to a broad scope and variety of children’s literature
2. Literary elements and devices as they are used in children’s literature
3. Critical and/or analytical writing response to children’s literature
4. Critical approaches to literature (may include, but not be limited to, reader-response, feminist, biographical, historical, psychological, deconstruction, archetypal, and new criticism)
5. Main theme identification
6. Relation of literature to child development
7. Fiction as a cultural, historical, political, and personal artifact
8. Race, ethnic group, gender, and class conflicts in literature
9. The contributions of diverse writers to the literary canon