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# Introduction

This free course, Approaching language, literature and childhood, introduces you to the field of children’s literature. In this course, you’ll consider issues such as: How do children acquire and use languages and literacies? Why (and how) is language important in children’s literature? Why (and how) is literature important for children and young adults? How is childhood socially constructed? And how is the child represented in literature?

Figure 1 Reading and writing in English

Children’s literature is a vast and growing area of academic study. Interdisciplinary in nature, the field draws on theories, methods and applications from language, literature and childhood studies. While an academic domain in its own right, the study of children’s literature generally has a personal connection for individuals, hooking into our own memories of reading and viewing particular works.

Most of us have some level of familiarity with poems, rhymes, cartoons, graphic novels and other forms of storytelling from our own childhood, from children we interact with as adults, or from engaging with literature for children as adults ourselves. But how does this material influence us as children or as adults? Do the books we read – or engage with through films, computer games, plays or other means – serve to expand or limit our worldviews? And how can the disciplines of linguistics, literature and childhood studies help us to explore the world of children’s books?

In this short course, you’ll begin to address these and other questions. You’ll start by considering what it means to revisit children’s literature as an adult reader and begin thinking about literature in terms of its purpose. You’ll start considering two novels written for children, Marianne Dreams and Tom’s Midnight Garden, and learn some introductory linguistic techniques to help you identify how these works achieve their intended effects. You’ll then consider diversity and inclusion, and at the end of the course, you’ll think about how you could recommend children’s books to others.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course L301 Language, literature and childhood. L301 situates children’s literature in the context of language practices and conceptualisations of childhood from the late twentieth century to present day literature through the lenses of three disciplines: language studies, literature, and childhood studies.

## Box 1 A few definitions

You will find a few terms emboldened in the course text, which are then defined in the glossary (found at the end of the course). If you hover over the term, the definition will appear, or you can click to be taken to the glossary page. Here are a few definitions before getting started with the course:

- ‘Children’s literature’ refers to stories or factual writing produced for children aged under 18 and encompasses everything from picturebooks, short stories and graphic novels to biographies and dictionaries.
- This course’s use of the umbrella term ‘children’s literature’ includes hard-copy books with illustrations, ebooks and audiobooks, as well as literature engaged with through films, television, plays, video games or other formats.
- ‘Childhood’ is taken to mean the period of time from 0–18 years old.
- ‘Text’ will refer to any piece of language, whether spoken or written, long or short, which forms a unified whole.

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OpenLearn - Approaching language, literature and childhood
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