An introduction to Children’s Literature by Peter Hunt

An Introduction to Children’s Literature by Peter Hunt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I recently picked up a fair few of the older children’s literature theory books, the ones that I’ve always known as points of reference to be read in extracts and photocopied chapters whilst also taking them with a slight pinch of salt due to their age. Time moves on, there are always children and there will always be books for them and both publishing and theory moves swiftly and sometimes not at all. It’s one of the things I’m realising now, with one foot in publishing and another in academia, that one field talks to the other and the other talks back to it and sometimes both of them spend years not listening to each other in the slightest.

But an unexpected haul of the older theory books interested me because: theory books are expensive when they’re first published, sometimes it’s nice to remind yourself of the bedrocks of your field, and if you pick them up and read them with the knowledge that things have changed and that they are not as definitive as they once were (but paradoxically still definitive in their own way), then there is something fascinating in that. As with my books (Daisy May Johnson), I find a lot of use in knowing where children’s literature has been to know where it is going.

An Introduction to Children’s Literature was published in 1994 by the Oxford University Press. It’s a deeply readable book that resists the urge to be too scholarly whilst also being unafraid of giving you some theory. It’s also deeply deft at points; Hunt has an ability to give you a line or two, here and there, that are so articulate and to the point that I found myself stopping and underlining. Metaphorically. Not actually. I’m not a monster. ANYWAY. It’s a well-written book and even though the concept of it demands lists of titles and years and for a necessary pace that leaves you longing for more time to be spent on certain authors, I think it’s still a very solid introduction to the field. As it was. A lot’s happened since then but this does still stand very nicely.

Another thing to mention is that this is primarily about British children’s literature and although there is mention of other cultures, namely America and Japanese, they tend to be wedded to literary movements or cultural phenomena. In many senses it’s useful to remember the time and context Hunt is writing in; this is early internet stuff, he’s a British writer, and global children’s literature really doesn’t have the visibility in Britain that it does now. (I can remember being absolutely dazzled as a child when we went on a trip to America and discovering that there were all these other titles in a series that I was collecting – hundreds and hundreds of them – when all that had ever been published in the UK were the first four…).

I like this book. I like how steady and solid it is. It’s worth picking up if you come across it second hand if only for the way that it will tell you about titles that you’ve never heard of and suddenly really fancy reading. It’s also rather prescient in terms of discussions of representation and diversity and does, I was quite pleased to see, hint at some of the tensions that characterise these discussions today. I also really liked how Hunt treated the influence of female writers and how he actually gave Angela Brazil a little space to be considered! the novelty! justice for angie!

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I hope you enjoyed this post! If you’d like to know more about my thoughts on children’s literature, then I’m available for teaching and lecturing. You can also read my own books for children.