12 books like The poetics of childhood

What to read after The poetics of childhood — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

Written for children: an outline of English children's literature John Rowe Townsend · 1965 · ★ 3.0 · 368p · ≈ 12h · Moderate Shares: Littérature de jeunesse anglaise, Children's literature, Books and Reading, Histoire et critique

The Pooh Perplex Frederick C. Crews · 1963 · ★ 4.0 · 150p · ≈ 5h · Moderate In this devastatingly funny classic, Frederick Crews skewers the ego-inflated pretensions of the schools and practitioners of literary criticism popular in the 1960s, including Freudians, Aristotelians, and New Critics. Modeled on the "casebooks" often used in freshman English classes at the time, The Pooh Perplex contains twelve essays written in different critical voices, complete with… Shares: Children's literature, Books and Reading, Children, History and criticism

Regendering the school story Beverly Lyon Clark · 1996 · 297p · ≈ 9h · Moderate In 18th through 20th-century British and American literature, school stories always play out the power relationships between adult and child. They also play out gender relationships, especially when females are excluded, although most histories of the genre ignore the unusual novels that probe the gendering of school stories. When the occasional man wrote about girls schools-as Charles Lamb and… Shares: Children's literature, Books and Reading, Children, History and criticism

Sylvie and Bruno Lewis Carroll · 1889 · ★ 4.0 · 188p · ≈ 6h · Challenging Two little children meet adventure in such places as Dogland, Outland, and Elfland. Shares: Children's literature, Children, English literature

Coraline Neil Gaiman · 2001 · ★ 4.1 · 180p · ≈ 6h · Moderate When Coraline steps through a door to find another house strangely similar to her own (only better), things seem marvelous. But there's another mother there, and another father, and they want her to stay and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go. Coraline will have to fight with all her wit and courage if she is to save herself and return to her ordinary life. Shares: Children's literature, Books and Reading

Dream days Kenneth Grahame · 1898 · 129p · ≈ 4h · Challenging Kenneth Grahame's unjustly neglected collections of vignettes, reminiscences, and inventions capture the ingenuities of a family of children--three boys and two girls--who live magnanimous lives nourished by the secret expeditions and private games they share. Written in the last few years of the 19th century, as Grahame looked back fondly at his own childhood, these sketches of growing up are… Shares: Children's literature, Children

Aunt Jo's scrap-bag Louisa May Alcott · 1871 Preface As grandmothers rummage their piece-bags and bundles in search of gay odds and ends to make gifts with which to fill the little stockings that hand all in a row on Christmas Eve, so I have gathers together some stories, old and new, to amuse the large family that has to rapidly and beautifully grown up about me. I hope that when they pomenade in nightcaps and gowns to rifle the plump… Shares: Children's literature, Children

Running Out of Time Margaret Peterson Haddix · 1995 · ★ 4.2 · 184p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Jessie lives with her family in the frontier village of Clifton, Indiana, in 1840 -- or so she believes. When diphtheria strikes the village and the children of Clifton start dying, Jessie's mother reveals a shocking secret -- it's actually 1996, and they are living in a reconstructed village that serves as a tourist site. In the world outside, medicine exists that can cure the dread disease, and… Shares: Children's literature, Children

Tanglewood Tales Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1853 · ★ 3.8 · 256p · ≈ 8h · Challenging Tanglewood Tales uses the Greek classics as its source. Nathaniel Hawthorne has taken the most striking and exciting ones and adapted them for children. From the original stories he has selected episodes that illustrate conceptions held by the original authors. Titles include: "The Minotaur," "The Pygmies," "The Dragon's Teeth," "Circe's Palace," "The Pomegranate Seeds" and "The Golden Fleece." Shares: Children's literature, Children

Tanglewreck (Blackbirds) Jeanette Winterson · 2006 · ★ 3.1 · 415p · ≈ 13h · Moderate Something frightening is happening with time. One moment, a time tornado rages through the streets of London, and those caught up in its path vanish without a trace. The next moment a woolly mammoth is seen lumbering along the banks of the River Thames. At the center of these bizarre time warps is a house called Tanglewreck, which is home to eleven-year-old Silver, her bony and bad-tempered aunt,… Shares: Children's literature, English literature

The flunking of Joshua T. Bates Susan Shreve · 1984 · ★ 3.6 · 82p · ≈ 2h · Moderate Driving home from the beach on Labor Day, Joshua receives some shocking news from his mother: he must repeat third grade. Shares: Books and Reading, Children

When we were very young A. A. Milne · 1924 · ★ 4.2 · 112p · ≈ 3h · Challenging A collection of poems reflecting the experiences of a little English boy growing up in the early part of the twentieth century. Shares: Children, English literature

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