Human Rights in Children's Literature

One of its strengths is that it does not merely depend on adults' analyses of key works of children's literature, but it also incorporates responses from child readers themselves. As the authors explain, they 'designed a qualitative, descriptive study' that involved their facilitation of reading groups comprised of 'children as young as four years old and as old as seventeen in their natural settings (schools and after-school programs)'; in turn, they drew on the participants' insights, anecdotes and questions as they considered how 'children's books allow children to think about human rights in ways that are developmentally suitable and profoundly imaginative'. s

Rebekah Fitzsimmons, The Lion and the Unicorn The authors analyze and discuss children's books that exemplify the rights and ideas covered within that area of international law, as well as reader responses from children engaged with those same fictional texts. The result is a book that is complex, informative, and multifaceted... The selected results of this qualitative study help bolster the authors' claims that children's literature can and does affect the perception of human rights among young readers while supporting the idea that the study of children's literature is valid and important in this context.

Risa Kaufman, Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute (Human Rights at Home Blog) For those working to bring human rights home, the book offers important and unique insights on the role that childrens literature can play in shaping a culture of human rights, near and far.

Association for Childhood Education International The authors have embarked upon a unique and thought-provoking exploration of childrens literature through which readers gain new insights into how stories influence childrens awareness of their rights. This groundbreaking inquiry is a must read for all those interested in learning how literature serves as a vehicle for human rights education.

Jonathan Todres and Sarah Higinbotham reveal in this remarkable and long overdue book [that] the content of children's literature is crucial. It matters for the children concerned and, by extension, for the very nature of the societies in which they grow up. It helps children to understand that they have rights, and that these rights are important. Children's literature has a pivotal role to play in forging that early sense of self-worth, and Jonathan and Sarah are to be congratulated for shining a new light on a role that has, until now, been under-appreciated".
(From the Foreword)
-Carol Bellamy, Former Executive Director of UNICEF

Human Rights in Children's Literature is an important book for educators and anyone who believes that society is better off when everyone knows their rights and then adults are expected to talk about and teach rights to the next generation. This original inquiry combines children's rights, human rights, and literary theory with the larger purpose of finding b...

Jonathan Todres is a Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law. His research focuses on children's rights and child well-being. Professor Todres has published more than fifty articles on children's rights, child trafficking and related forms of exploitation, legal and cultural constructs of childhood, and human rights in children's literature. He is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Sarah Higinbotham is a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her scholarship centers on the intersections of literature and law. She has written about the violence of the law in early modern England, critical prison theory, and human rights in children's literature. She teaches at a men's prison outside Atlanta and works actively with an Atlanta nonprofit that benefits children who have an incarcerated parent.

Foreword by Carol Bellamy, Former Executive Director of UNICEF ; Preface by Jonathan Todres ; Acknowledgments ; Chapter 1: Making Children's Rights Widely Known ; Chapter 2: Participation Rights and the Voice of the Child ; Chapter 3: Confronting Discrimination, Pursuing Equality ; Chapter 4: Identity Rights and Family Rights ; Chapter 5: Civil and Political Rights of Children: Accountability with Dignity ; Chapter 6: Securing Child Well-being: The Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights of the Child ; Chapter 7: Adults in the World of Children's Literature ; Chapter 8: Reading, Rights, and the Best Interests of the Child ; Appendix 1: United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ; Appendix 2: Discrimination against Children ; Appendix 3: Cinderella around the World ; Appendix 4: Empirical Study: How Children Interpret Human Rights in Stories ; Children's Literature Bibliography ; Bibliography ; For more information ; Index