The Courage to Imagine: The Child Hero in Children's Literature (Bloomsbury Perspectives on Children's Literature) - Softcover

Roni Natov

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1350111759 ISBN 13: 9781350111752

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019

Synopsis

The act of imagining lies at the very heart of children’s engagements with literature and with the plots and characters they encounter in their favorite stories. The Courage to Imagine is a landmark new study of that fundamental act of imagining. Roni Natov focuses on the ways in which children’s imaginative engagement with the child hero figure can open them up to other people’s experiences, developing empathy across lines of race, gender and sexuality, as well as helping them to confront and handle traumatic experience safely. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical approaches from the psychological to the cultural and reading a multicultural spectrum of authors, including works by Maya Angelou, Louise Erdrich, Neil Gaiman and Brian Selznick, this is a groundbreaking examination of the nature of imagining for children and re-imagining for the adult writer and illustrator.

About this title

About the Author

Roni Natov is Professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA. A multi-award winning teacher and scholar, she is the founding editor of The Lion and the Unicorn: A Critical Journal of Children's Literature and her previous publications include The Poetics of Childhood (2005).

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350111759
• ISBN 13: 9781350111752
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216