ANNOTATION

A collection of fairy tales, picture books, nursery rhymes, fantasy, alphabets, chapbooks, and comics published in English since 1659, representing 170 authors and illustrators, and including more than ninety complete works and excerpts from others.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For more than 450 years, children's literature has delighted, fascinated, and powerfully influenced readers and listeners of all ages. Now the groundbreaking Norton Anthology of Children's Literature invites readers to discover four centuries of literature for children. Beginning in 1659 and ending at the turn of the twenty-first century, the Norton Anthology includes the work of 170 authors and illustrators representing such familiar genres as fairy tales, picture books, nursery verse, and fantasy, as well as less familiar genres such as alphabets, chapbooks, and comics. More than 90 works are included in their entirety, from The New England Primer to Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses to the contemporary classic Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. Richly illustrated, the volume includes 45 images in full color and 375 in black and white and makes widely available for the first time facsimile images of works available only in rare-book libraries. Norton Anthology introductions, headnotes, annotations, and selected bibliographies help readers understand and enjoy the works.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

To give an idea of the breadth of this sampling from children's literature through the ages, consider that the volume's "timeline" begins in the Eighth Century-B.C. The bulk of the material in this slipcased paperback, however (and bulk is used here in the most complimentary way possible), spans the past four centuries. The delights are abundant. A facsimile image of a 1777 version of The New-England Primer, America's original schoolbook, is reprinted in its entirety (sample vocabulary words: humiliation, mortification, purification). John Newbery, who "excelled at collecting materials that could be assembled cheaply and attractively to be marketed" (and for whom the Newbery Medal is named), is represented by an excerpt from his book on "Epistolary Writing." In addition to instructing children on how to correspond with church and government officials, he includes Anne Boleyn's last missive to Henry VIII as an example of an "important" letter. Zipes and his collaborators cull from fables, nursery rhymes, comics, poetry, plays, science fiction and fantasy, providing a lens through which the evolution of childhood itself can be viewed. The scope is expansive-the fairy tales hail from Grimm and Perrault, but also from Francesca Lia Block and Julius Lester. Headnotes introduce authors and illustrators, often tracing the lineage between them: Lear's Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo as grandfather to Seuss's Sneetches, for instance. The volume contains dozens of complete works and hundreds of illustrations, including a 32-page color inset of seminal artwork from the likes of Greenaway, Brunhoff and Sendak. A mile wide and very deep, this is an invaluable resource for professionals, but fun for casual perusing, too. All ages. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The purpose of this mammoth anthology, according to general editor Zipes (German, Univ. of Minnesota; Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale), is to provide "an introduction to children's literature for students," and it easily succeeds in this aim. Fairy tale and fantasy are just two of the 19 genres covered here; the excellent introductory essay for the latter is divided into five sections: "Narratives of Wonder," "England: Fantasy's Foes and Friends," "Fantasy in Early America," "High Fantasy," and "Time, Magic and the Everyday." Works as varied as Lucy Lane Clifford's 19th-century "The New Mother" and Ruth Park's modern "Playing Beattie Bow" are included under fantasy, and both are presented in their entirety, as are approximately 80 other stories. Introductory essays define each genre, detail its writers and their works, and draw conclusions about the contributions of the form to children's literature. All are well written, informative, and thought-provoking. This volume, which spans 350 years, boasts 170 writers and illustrators; more than 400 images, 60 of them in color, enliven its pages. A sturdy frame for students and others "to explore new ways to teach children's literature"; highly recommended.-Kathryn R. Bartelt, Univ. of Evansville Libs., IN Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal