Bruce Handy, contributing editor for Vanity Fair, provides a “ramble through classic children’s literature” in Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult.
Author: Macy
Graduate student in Children's Literature and Library and Information Science at Simmons University. I'm an avid reader, writer, feminist, and fangirl. My goal is to become a children's/youth services librarian in a rural community and continue sharing my love of literature with others.
Welcome
This welcome post is long overdue! Thank's for visiting my blog, where I have a place to nerd out about children's and YA lit, and explore some of the ways I find them fascinating. . .
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Caroline Fraser’s new biography Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder seeks to provide not only the tale of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life but also to provide the context of the historical periods in which Laura lived.
Kurt Vonnegut & Sherman Alexie
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel Slaughterhouse Five and Sherman Alexie’s 2007 novel Flight both feature violent scenarios, and time travel narratives. As Alexie explains in a 2007 NPR Interview, reading Slaughterhouse Five helped him form the shape of Flight. Similarly, scholars have broken down the function of time travel narratives in each of these novels. Because of the correlation that exists between the two novels, they can be read, and taught, in tandem.
Laura Ingalls Wilder & Louise Erdrich
Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series has long been regarded as the essential pioneer girl narrative. However, scholar Michelle Stewart explains that Wilder's novels also contain problematic narratives, including racist and stereotypical portrayals of Native Americans. In contrast, Louise Erdrich's The Birchbark House, is a historical story about an Ojibwa girl written by an Ojibwa author. The Birchbark House counteracts many of the myths that Wilder's work perpetuates about Native Americans, a move that Stewart argues was intentional. Because of the critical conversation surrounding between Little House on the Prairie and the The Birchbark House, the potential exists for them to be interacted with together in order to engage children about literature, history, and diversity.
Bookishly Bright 