Course Description
This course will explore the foundations of literary study through a specific frame of reference: children’s literature. The main emphases in this course are: 1) developing the critical skill of close reading; 2) learning about the differences (and significance) of literary genres. We will cover several examples of literature across various periods in four main literary genres: poetry, novels, drama, and picture books. We will also pair these genres with short close reading essays. Because we all begin reading with children’s books, these texts serve as a prime site for your introduction to the study of literature. Throughout this course, we will spend considerable amount of class time working on close reading, which will prove beneficial for literature classes in general, and will be broadly applicable outside the literature class. The final project will be a Critical Analysis Project focused on critically analyzing one text from ENG 210 through close reading or critically creating a creative project that engages with one text from ENG 210.
Course Materials
- Picturebooks, Pt. I
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
- Selected picturebooks from Justin’s collection
- Drama
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
- Prose
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
- When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
- The Watsons Go to Birmingham — 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
- Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan
- Poetry
- Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
- Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
- Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
- Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai
- Picturebooks, Pt. II
- A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson