Ethics and Children's Literature

Claudia Mills is Associate Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. She is the author of many books for children, most recently Zero Tolerance (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

• IntroductionPart I The Dilemma of Didacticism: Attempts to Shape Children as Moral Beings1 Transmitting Ethics through Books of Golden Deeds for Children Claudia Nelson2 Sermonizing in New York: The Children's Magazines of Mary Mapes Dodge and Jose Marti Emma Adelaida Otheguy3 Talking to Children about Race: Children's Literature in a Segregated Era, 1930-1945 Moira HindererPart II Ethical Themes in Classic and Contemporary Texts4 Discernment and the Moral Life in Prince Caspian and the Later Narnia Chronicles Emanuelle Burton5 Making a Difference: Ethical Recognition through Otherness in Madelein L'Engle's Fiction Mary Jeanette Moran6 A Prosaics of the Hundred Acre Wood: Ethics in A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner Niall Nance-Carroll7 Virtuous Transgressors, Not Moral Saints: Protagonists in Contemporary Children's Literature Jani L. Barker8 Model Children, Little Rebels, and Moral Transgressors: Virtuous Childhood Images in Taiwanese Juvenile Fiction in the 1960s Andrea Mei-Ying WuPart III Ethical Criticism of Children's Literature9 The Rights and Wrongs of Anthropomorphism in Picture Books Lisa Rowe Fraustino10 Lewis, Tolkien, and the Ethics of Imaginary Wars Suzanne Rahn11 Heeding Rousseau's Advice: Some Ethical Reservations about Addressing Prejudice through Children's Literature Claudia MillsPart IV Ethical Responses to Children's Literature: Identification, Recognition, Adaptation, Conversation12 The Ethics of Reading Narrative Voice: An Anti-Bakhtinian View Leona W. Fisher13 Prizing Social Justice: The Jane Addams Children's Book Award Ramona Caponegro14 Katniss Everdeen's Emerging Moral Consciousness in The Hunger Games Martha Rainbolt15 Using Children's Literature as a Spark for Ethical Discussion: Stories that Deal with Death Sara Goering

'Keenly analytical and critically astute, Ethics and Children’s Literature is a compelling exploration of the ethical at work in literature for the young. Each of the essays contributes a unique voice to the volume; the sensitively edited chapters blend to become a chorus resonant with the ways that ethics and children’s literature inflect one another.' Roberta Seelinger Trites, Illinois State University, USA, author of Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature and Literary Conceptualizations of Growth 'The volume successfully brings together a variety of approaches to studying ethics in children's literature. It conveys an important message that the quite overt manipulation to which children were subject in the past, e.g. in the segregation era, has been replaced by more subtle snares to be disentangled by critical reading.' International Research in Children's Literature '... a collection that is full of interesting perspectives ... [I] recommend this volume for the freshness of its approach to a subject that has received rather less attention than it deserves in the field of children's literature criticism.' Network