Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Illustrations ix
4. Introduction. Toward a New History of Children’s Literature 1
5. 1. Speak , Child. Children’s Literature in Classical Antiquity 17
6. 2. Ingenuity and Authority. Aesop’s Fables and Their Afterlives 35
7. 3. Court, Commerce, and Cloister. The Literatures of Medieval Childhood 57
8. 4. From Alphabet to Elegy. The Puritan Impact on Children’s Literature 81
9. 5. Playthings of the Mind. John Locke and Children’s Literature 104
10. 6. Canoes and Cannibals. Robinson Crusoe and Its Legacies 129
11. 7. From Islands to Empires. Storytelling for a Boy’s World 151
12. 8. On beyond Darwin. From Kingsley to Seuss 172
13. 9. Ill-Tempered and Queer. Sense and Nonsense, from Victorian to Modern 190
14. 10. Straw into Gold. Fairy-Tale Philology 209
15. 11. Theaters of Girlhood. Domesticity, Desire, and Performance in Female Fiction 228
16. 12. Pan in the Garden. The Edwardian Turn in Children’s Literature 253
17. 13. Good Feeling. Prizes, Libraries, and the Institutions of American Children’s Literature 274
18. 14. Keeping Things Straight. Style and the Child 288
19. 15. Tap Your Pencil on the Paper. Children’s Literature in an Ironic Age 305
20. Epilogue. Children’s Literature and the History of the Book 320
21. Acknowledgments 333
22. Notes 337
23. Index 377