Children and Biography

Reading and Writing Life Stories

Kate Douglas

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350236387
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The first study of life narratives produced for, about, and written by children, this book examines the recent popularity of children's biographies and how they engage with the biggest issues of our time: environmental change, health crises, education, and children's personal and political development. Beginning with a literary-historical overview, Children and Biography proceeds to examine 21st-century examples and trends such as illustrated texts including Women in Science, the Fantastically Great Women Who… books, Rebel Dogs, Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, Kids Who Did, My Beautiful Birds and The Journey. The book also considers archives of children's writings and drawings, in particular the testimonies of child asylum seekers, children's biographical art, and 'Lockdown diaries' produced during the Covid-19 pandemic. By analyzing these works alongside empirical studies into how such material is received by child readers, and how texts generated by children are perceived both by them and their parents, this book provides new knowledge on how biographies for children are produced and read. Comprehensive and original, Children and Biography, presents an ethical methodological framework for scholarly practice when reading, witnessing and interpreting children's life narratives. The book offers a mandate for future researchers: to place children's voices and writing at the centre of inquiries in ways that facilitate genuine agency for child authors.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Value Tales
• 1 Biographies for children: A literary and cultural history
• 2 Biography for children in the twenty-first century
• 3 Reading the heroic life: Kids Who Did
• 4 ‘Tales of Trusty Hounds’: Posthuman biography for children
• 5 Children’s picture books as collaborative biography
• 6 ‘Biography of a Detention Centre’: Children’s drawings as auto/biographical testimony
• 7 ‘Five Reasons My Mum Is the Best’: Children and biographical practice
• 8 My lockdown diary: Childhood biography during Covid-19
• Conclusion: What next for children’s biography?
• References
• Index
• Copyright Page