DEVELOPED BY: Judy Bentley
DATE: September 17, 1996
DEPARTMENT: Liberal Studies
CURRICULUM: Humanities
COURSE TITLE: Children's Literature
COURSE NUMBER: ENG231
TYPE OF COURSE: College Transfer
COURSE LENGTH: One Quarter
CREDIT HOURS: 5
LECTURE HOURS: 55
LAB HOURS: 0
CLASS SIZE: 35

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Emphasizes children's and adolescent literature from diverse cultures within the United States,
exploring values reflected and the power and elements of story.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

1. To gain new insights into the range, richness, elements, and techniques of children's
   and adolescent literature; and to gain an appreciation of this rapidly expanding body
   of literature as part of our literary art, an essential human and cultural phenomenon.
2. To explore children's literature and adolescent literature as a means of learning about
   diverse cultures within the United States; to distinguish between children's literature
   which makes blatant appeals to the popular myths of a culture and that which achieves
   more subtle examinations of moral and social issues.
3. To learn to evaluate the literature for young people by the same literary and artistic
   considerations that can be brought to all serious literature.
4. To become aware of the psychological, social, and moral implications of children's and
   adolescent literature.
5. Optional, depending on instructor: To discover sources of potential stories for children
   and adolescents from one's own life' to draw on many sources of experience with the
   possibility of turning them into stories or poems for children and adolescents.
6. To gain skills in working as a class group and within groups toward the shared
   understanding of ideas and issues; to appreciate diversity of perceptions as an
   opportunity for learning.
7. To understand the critical and creative aspects of writing as process; toward this goal,
   to learn to work effectively in writing groups.
8. Through our reading, to gain insight into the nature of the individual, most frequently
   in this class the child or adolescent, and the relationship between that child and the
   community.

PREREQUISITES: None; ENG101 placement recommended

REQUIRED TEXT: Texts may include both textbooks and works of literature, such as:

• A Critical Handbook of Children's Literature, Rebecca Lukens
• A Critical Handbook of Literature for Young Adults, Lukens
• The Oxford Book of Children's Verse in America, Donald Hall, ed.
• Charlotte's Web, E.B. White
• The House of Dies Drear, Virginia Hamilton
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred Taylor
• Dragon Wings, Lawrence Yep
• Jacob Have I Loved, Katherine Paterson
• Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
• Missing May, Cynthia Rylant
• Shiloh, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

*MAJOR DIVISIONS OR APPROXIMATE CLOCK HOURS

TOPICAL OUTLINE 55

1. Literature: What Is It?
2. History of children's and young adult literature
3. Genre in children's and young adult literature
4. Values, cultures, and subjects in children's and adolescent literature
5. Picture books as a category, drawing from African-American, Native American, Asian-American, Hispanic, and Euro-American literature
6. Literary elements: character, plot, theme, setting, point of view, style, and tone, using examples from literature of U.S. cultures
7. Rhyme and poetry reflecting various U.S. cultures
8. Nonfiction
9. Research in children's literature, extended writing assignments, both analytical and creative
10. Discussion of the above topics in small groups