Theory for Beginners: Children's Literature as Critical Thought

by Kenneth B. Kidd

Overview

Since its inception in the 1970s, the Philosophy for Children movement (P4C) has affirmed children’s literature as important philosophical work. Theory, meanwhile, has invested in children’s classics, especially Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, and has also developed a literature for beginners that resembles children’s literature in significant ways. Offering a novel take on this phenomenon, Theory for Beginners explores how philosophy and theory draw on children’s literature and have even come to resemble it in their strategies for cultivating the child and/or the beginner. Examining everything from the rise of French Theory in the United States to the crucial pedagogies offered in children’s picture books, from Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Are You My Mother? and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events to studies of queer childhood, Kenneth B. Kidd deftly reveals the way in which children may learn from philosophy and vice versa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823289608
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	11/03/2020
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kenneth B. Kidd is Professor of English at the University of Florida. He is the author of Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale and Freud in Oz: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children’s Literature. He is also co-editor (with Derritt Mason) of Queer as Camp: Essays on Summer, Style, and Sexuality (Fordham).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Children’s Literature Otherwise | 1

1. Philosophy for Children | 25

2. Theory for Beginners | 58

3. Literature for Minors | 92

Acknowledgments | 135

Notes | 137

Works Cited | 163

Index | 185

Editorial Reviews

Kenneth Kidd’s generative and useful book considers what it would mean to ground a critical theory in books for young people. An ideal spokesbook for the public humanities, Kidd’s lucid, accessible Theory for Beginners explores why small books are so good at raising big questions. By estranging the familiar and cultivating a sense of wonder, children’s literature, as Kidd shows us, teaches us not just how to read but how to read the world.—Philip Nel, author of Was the Cat in the Hat Black? The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books

Is theory for beginners? If all theorists were as intellectually broad-minded, playfully pedagogical, and mercifully undogmatic as Kenneth Kidd, then it would be. His witty and wide-ranging account of how children’s literature sometimes functions as theory and theory sometimes engages creatively with children (and other novices) is wonderfully eclectic and illuminating.—Marah Gubar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

From the Publisher

Is theory for beginners? If all theorists were as intellectually broad-minded, playfully pedagogical, and mercifully undogmatic as Kenneth Kidd, then it would be. His witty and wide-ranging account of how children’s literature sometimes functions as theory and theory sometimes engages creatively with children (and other novices) is wonderfully eclectic and illuminating.

Marah Gubar

Serious students of childhood studies, children’s literature,philosophy, and theory will find this book useful. Recommended.

Choice Reviews

...the spirit of the book is one of delight in the sheer fun of philosophical and theoretical exploration; it is infused with appreciation for the ways in which the most daunting books of philosophy and theory nonetheless express a childlike sense of adventurous wonder and the ways in which the simplest texts for the youngest of readers can contain sophisticated and elegant philosophizing and theorizing. It is a generous book that welcomes learners both young and old into a feast for the mind.

Children's Literature Association Quarterly

Theory for Beginners is a meaningful contemplation of literatures that construct themselves for the novice reader and is successful in highlighting how children’s literature lives within, as well as alongside, philosophical and theoretical pursuits.

International Research in Children's Literature

Kenneth Kidd’s generative and useful book considers what it would mean to ground a critical theory in books for young people. An ideal spokesbook for the public humanities, Kidd’s lucid, accessible Theory for Beginners explores why small books are so good at raising big questions. By estranging the familiar and cultivating a sense of wonder, children’s literature, as Kidd shows us, teaches us not just how to read but how to read the world.

Philip Nel