Contemporary Classics in Children's Literature – serie

Family Fictions provides an introduction to the history of family stories in children's literature and an in-depth critical study of the works of Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine and Morris Gleitzman.

Edited by Morag Styles and written by an international team of acknowledged experts, this series provides jargon-fee, critical discussion and a comprehensive guide to literary and popular texts for children. Each book introduces the reader to a major genre if children's literature, covering the key authors, major works and contexts in which those texts are published, read and studied. The development of the horror genre in children's literature has been a startling phenomenon - one that has provoked strong, but mixed, reactions. Frightening Fiction provides a lucid and lively guide to that genre, ranging from analyses of such popular series as Point Horror, Goosebumps, the X Files and the buffy stories, to the work of individual authors such as Robert Westall, David Almond, Philip Gross and Lesley Howarth. Kimberly Reynolds is Professor of Children's Literature at the University of Surrey Roehampton and Director of the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature where Kevin McCarron is Senior Lecturer in American Literature. Geraldine Brennan is Books Editor for the Times Educational Supplement.

JK Rowling now is half-way through a series which has taken the world by storm. Unusually, she has attracted success both in terms of massive sales figures and critical acclaim. This study will look at her books and consider some of the reasons for their phenomenal success. This will be done against a background of how Harry Potter relates to other contemporary children+as books so that students and teachers can place them in the context for which they were written.This book has not been authorized by JK Rowling, her agent, or Warner Bros.

Edited by Morag Styles and written by an interational team of acknowledged experts, this series provides jargon-free, critical discussion and a comprehensive guide to literary and popular texts for children. Each book introduces the reader to a major genre of children's literature, covering key authors, major works and contexts in which those texts are published. Margaret Meek and Victor Watson provide a profound and revealing examiniation of the treatment of personal development, maturation and rites of passage in literature written for children and adolescents. Including a broad survey of the theme across a number of genres and an in-depth analysis of the work of key writers, the authors work towards an answer to the question What is a classic? Margaret Meek is Reader Emeritus at the Institute of Education in London. Victor Watson is Assistant Director of Research at Homerton College, Cambridge.