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Childhood Literary Role Models

I had to do some research to refresh my memory of this literature before starting this topic. I think children’s books are a very important part of the literature world. A writer has the ability to teach a child an important lesson while also entertaining them.

One important author who transformed the way children were perceived in their respected genre was Beverly Cleary. She wrote long-standing series such as Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby. Throughout her series, where each character was under the age of 10, Cleary wrote about relatively mature conversations such a parent losing their job.

With this topic, I think it would be interesting to take a look at some fictional childhood role models and speak about their significance. Perhaps we can even broaden this to reach countries other than the United States.

  • An interesting part of this would be to look at how the children's book has evolved and changed over time. A lot of early children's books were ettiquette and moral guides, whereas now more are becoming about diverse representations of society and dealing with big issues, such as grief, identity and sexuality. A great topic. – SaraiMW 6 years ago
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  • I think this is a really cool topic! However, I hesitate at broadening it beyond North America (or just one country/area of your choice), as it already a fairly broad topic and could get out of hand. I think focussing on just one issue/theme and how it is treated in children's literature could be really interesting! – Heather Lambert 6 years ago
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  • Heather- Very good point. Whoever decides to write this, take note! – Emily 6 years ago
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  • Love this idea. When they were little, both my adult children (now 35 and 27) loved the Ramona books. Also, in my university-level creative writing class, just last week, two of my students referenced Charlotte's Web, and the importance those animal characters had--and still have--on their lives. The fictional characters of the books we read live with us, like family members. – worddog 6 years ago
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