This course will address the key issues and central theoretical approaches within the study of children’s literature and culture. Assuming that childhood constitutes an ideological phenomenon integrally linked to the historical context, it presents children’s literature as a cultural product determined by how the child and his needs/ abilities and the adult’s responsibility towards him are defined.

We shall examine subjects such as what is a child, what role does culture play in defining this concept, and the changes in the view of the child and childhood that have occurred over the years; discuss the relationship between the prevalent view of the child/childhood and children’s literature and the relationship generated between children and adults by children’s texts; survey the history of children’s literature, the tasks imposed upon it, and the literary trends that have characterized it from its beginnings to the present day. Particular attention will be devotad to analyzing the status of the publication of children’s literature and its relation to other cultural systems.

During the course, we shall acquaint ourselves with both Israeli and foreign children’s classics and contemporary children’s literature—such as Grimms’ fairy tales, Heinrich Hoffmann’s Shockheaded Peter, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, the works of Miriam Yellin-Steklis, Leah Goldberg, Ain Hillel, Alona Frankel, Nurit Zarchi, Meir Shalev and Etgar Keret. We shall also read studies that examine children’s literature and culture from various disciplinary perspectives.