Middle-grade fiction
As a middle-grade fiction ( Engl. For "fictional literature for the middle grades") is the one body of texts within the American children's literature referred to, which is written for 8- to 12-year-old.
Middle-grade fiction is characterized by a certain volume and structure in chapters. This distinguishes it on the one hand from both picture book literature and literature for beginners . On the other hand, missing the targeted approach of the emotional states of adolescents as for Children's Literature ( Young Adult Fiction is characteristic).
As an independent literary system, middle-grade fiction did not emerge from children's and youth literature until the 20th century, and the term “middle-grade fiction” did not establish itself in the USA until the 1980s. However, this article also deals with previous works from which middle-grade fiction took its present form.
Genres and themes
Stories and novels
Nature and animal stories
Starting with Old Mother West (1910), Thornton Burgess has published a variety of children's books in which local wildlife - rabbits, skunks, raccoons, frogs, etc. - are the protagonists.
The most important animal novel of the period after the First World War was Will James ' (1892–1942) horse story Smoky the Cow Horse (1929), which has been filmed four times to date, once even in the Soviet Union . While Smoky was a realistic novel, the animal stories by Hugh Lofting (1886–1947) and Walter R. Brooks (1886–1958) belong to the fantastic genre. Lofting, a native of Britain, wrote 12 novels in his adopted American home, which he came to after the First World War, about the now world-famous figure of Doctor Dolittle (published 1920–1952), the doctor who understands the language of animals. A talking animal - more precisely: a talking pig - is also the main character in Walter R. Brooks ' multi-volume series of novels about Freddy the Pig (1927-1958).
Successful animal tales of the 1930s were Phil Stong's (1899–1957) elk story Honk, the Moose (1935) and Richard (1892–1948) and Florence Atwater's novel Mr. Popper's Penguins (1938). John A. Moroso (1874–1957) published a successful novel about a boy and his dog in 1936 , Nobody's Buddy (1936). Jim Kjelgaard's (1910–1959) dog story Big Red (1945) was filmed in 1962 by Disney Studios . Was also filmed Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings ' Pulitzer Prize novel The Yearling (1939) about a boy who adopts a fawn and rearing. The most famous horse novel of the time was Walter Farley's (1915-1989) 1941 published classic The Black Stallion .
Many successful post-war children's books had themes from nature. Award-winning winter and weather stories were Berta (approx. 1890–1976) and Elmer Haders (1889–1973) The Big Snow (1948) and Charlotte Zolotows (1915–2013) The Storm Book (1952). Mary (1890-1970) and Conrad Buffs (1886-1975) children's novel Big Tree was about trees . Another example of this genre is Carolyn Sherwin Bailey's (1875–1961) children's novel Miss Hickory (1946), which tells the story of a doll that is abandoned by its human owners and learns to get along with plants and animals.
The genre of the animal novel reached a high point in the 1950s, with which such high-ranking authors as Meindest DeJong and EB White dealt with. A number of stories about dogs, cats, rabbits and other farm animals that children love, and their plot, come from Meindest DeJong (1906–1992), the first American to be awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Prize in 1962 locations as diverse as DeJong's West Frisian homeland, his adopted home USA and China. The works of EB White , especially Klein Stuart (1945), Wilbur and Charlotte (1952) and The Swan with the Trumpet (1970), in which the animals themselves become characters, are also classics of American children's literature . Successful dog stories from the 1950s were Eleanor Estes ' (1906–1988) Ginger Pye (1951), Fred Gipson's (1908–1973) Old Yeller (1956) and Rutherford Montgomery's Broken Fang . The novels Misty of Chincoteague (1947), King of the Wind (1948; both by Marguerite Henry , 1902–1997), Midnight, a Cow Pony (1949; by SP Meek , 1894–1972) and Chucaro were about horses and ponies : Wild Pony of the Pampa (1958; by Francis Kalnay ). The hero of George Selden's (1929–1989) book The Cricket in Times Square (1960) is a musical cricket .
A bestseller of the time was Dodie Smith's dog story 101 Dalmatians (1956), which was first filmed in the Disney studios in 1961 .
A major nature-themed children's book from the 1960s was The Sun is a Golden Earring (1962) by Natalia M. Belting . Notable equestrian novels from the same period were Hetty Burlingame Beattys (1907–1971) Blitz (1961) and Mebane Holoman Burgwyns (1914–1992) The Crackajack Pony (1970). Other animal novels were about dogs ( Kävik the Wolf Dog , 1968, by Walt Morey , 1907–1992; Sounder , 1969, by William H. Armstrong , 1911–1999), a raccoon ( Rascal, the raccoon , 1963, by Sterling North , 1906–1974) and a cat ( It's Like This, Cat , 1963, by Emily Cheney Neville , 1919–1997).
Many children's books of the 1970s also try to give children an emotional understanding of nature, such as: B. Jane Langton's fantasy novel The Fledgling (1980) or Joyce Sidman's illustrated volume of poetry Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems (1980). Norma Farbers (1909–1984) poetry book Never Say Ugh to a Bug (1979) is about insects .
One of the most literarily demanding animal books of the 1970s is Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971) by Robert C. O'Brien (1918–1973), in which a harried field mouse finds refuge with a group of rats that have broken out after their outbreak have turned a laboratory into an intellectually and technically highly developed community. O'Brien's daughter Jane Leslie Conly released a sequel, Rasco and the Rats of NIMH , in 1986 .
Allan W. Eckert's adventure novel about a boy and a badger , Incident At Hawk's Hill (1971), offers a classic animal story . John Reynolds Gardiner's (1944–2006) novel Steinadler (1980) tells the story of a boy who competes with his dog sled against a silent and apparently invincible Indian.
In the 1980s, many horse and equestrian novels for girls emerged, including A Very Young Rider (1987) by Jill Krementz and The Saddle Club novels (1988-2001) by Bonnie Bryant , which were adapted as a television series in Australia in 2001 .
Paul Fleischman's insect poetry volume Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices (1989) was a literarily remarkable animal book of the time .
In 1991 Phyllis Reynolds Naylor published her novel Shiloh about a boy who adopts a stray beagle . The book was so successful that Naylor created a trilogy from it, which was soon made into a film.
The most important author of (fantastic) animal novels is currently Kate DiCamillo , who first hit the bestseller lists in 2000 when she published her dog story Winn-Dixie . The tiger story Kentucky Star followed in 2001 and her novel Despereaux in 2003 - From one who set out to unlearn the fear of a little mouse with grotesquely large ears who falls hopelessly in love with a human princess. The book was awarded the Caldecott Medal and was released as a film in 2008. In 2006 DiCamillo published the novel The Wondrous Journey by Edward Tulane about a porcelain rabbit, which only learns after it is lost that even a love object that one loses is worth more than a life without love.
Alan Armstrong published a fantastic cat novel in 2005 with his Newbery Honor book Whittington .
Realistic contemporary novels
Familystories
An early example of a family -themed children's book series was the Little Pilgrim series (1879 – ca. 1884) by Ella Rodman Church .
In Jewish families who had since the early 1950s All-Of-A-Kind Family- novels by Sydney Taylor popular.
The most successful family story writer in the 1980s was Beverly Cleary , whose 1983 children's novel Dear Mr. Henshaw, about a 10-year-old child of divorce, won the Newbery Medal . Cleary's Ramona Quimby little girl novels and her Ralph S. Mouse series about the adventures of a mouse were also widely read . Also in the 1980s, Mavis Jukes wrote his remarkable children's novel Like Jake and Me (1984) about a boy and his new stepfather.
One of the most exciting recent family stories is Jeanne Birdsall's National Book Award children's novel The Penderwicks (2005) about the adventures of four dissimilar sisters while on vacation in the Berkshire Mountains . The writer Polly Horvath , who grew up in the USA but now lives in British Columbia , published her book The Canning Season in 2002 about a 13-year-old girl who is deported by her loveless mother to two eccentric old aunts in rural Maine . The book, which owes its wit to the characters' characters, won a National Book Award . Horvath had previously won other awards for her children's novels The Trolls (1999) and Everything on a Waffle (2001). Each Little Bird That Sings (2005) by Deborah Wiles is about death , about a girl whose parents run a funeral home.
Everyday stories
From 1916 to 1919 the well-read Merryvale stories for boys and for girls by Alice Hale Burnett were published , who accompany the boys and girls in a small rural town through everyday adventures.
After the First World War, a large number of books appeared which not only focused the attention of young audiences on rural life, but sometimes even idealized it; This development must also be understood against the background of the global economic crisis that has just been overcome, as a result of which there was a great need for agricultural workers. The authors who described or advertised agriculture in books for young people include John Case , Paul W. Chapman , Sarah Lindsay Schmidt , Betty Baxter Anderson , Arthur Charles Bartlett and Elizabeth Yates (1905-2001).
One of the most interesting American children's books of the 1950s is Robert Paul Smith's (1915–1977) autobiographical novel Where Did You Go? Out. What did you do? Nothing. The book, published in 1957, nostalgically depicts the inner life of childhood, the joys and the vital necessity of privacy, the absence of parental supervision, unstructured time, and boredom, in a consequence that has remained unimaginable in literary history to this day .
In comparison, the everyday stories by Catherine Besterman , Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896–1953), Jack Schaefer (1907–1991), Scott Corbett (1913–2006) and Patrick Skene Catling seem almost a bit conventional . A Newbery Prize winner was Virginia Sorensen's (1912–1991) home story Miracles on Maple Hill (1956).
Stories of friendship
Notable examples of children's books that tell of friendship are Little Maid Marian (1908) by Amy Ella Blanchard , Onion John (1959) by Joseph Krumgold , The Secret Super Powers of Marco (1995) by Meredith Sue Willis , When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (1999) by Kimberly Willis Holt and The Friendship Ring (1998-2000) series by Rachel Vail .
Problem stories
The most notable family novel of the 1960s was Summer of the Swans (1970) by Betsy Byars , which tells the story of the sister of an autistic boy. 1979 followed her bestseller Pinballs about three children in a foster family. Sulamith Ish-Kishor (1896–1977) describes a completely different family history in Our Eddie (1969). At the center of this novel is a Jewish family that almost falls apart under the severity of their father. Another popular book from the 1970s was The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear (1971) by Kin Platt, about a twelve-year-old boy who developed psychosis after his parents divorced. The novel Hang Tough, Paul Mather (1973) by Alfred Slote describes the fate of a baseball- loving boy who developed leukemia .
Jerry Spinelli's Newbery Medal novel Maniac Magee (1990) is about racial conflicts about an orphaned 12-year-old who, as an extremely talented athlete, tries to mediate between the whites and the blacks of his hometown.
Many of the novels of the 1990s that describe children's everyday lives deal with depressing experiences and serious problems. To the death of close relatives it is z. For example, in Cynthia Rylant's Newbery book Missing May (1992), in the sports novel Heart of a Champion (1993) by Carl Deuker , in Salamancas Reise (1994) by Sharon Creech and in Getting Near to Baby (1999) by Audrey Couloumbis . In Crazy Lady (1995) Jane Leslie Conly tells of a boy whose family collapses after his mother dies. At the center of Rodman Phil Bricks youth book Freak (1993) is a boy whose father is in prison because he killed the mother. Family violence is also about Carolyn Coman's book What Jamie Saw (1995) and Edward Bloor's story Tangerine (1997), about a visually impaired boy who finds out that his brother, a popular soccer player, is a sadist and to blame for his eye accident.
Jack Gantos ' book Joey Pigza Loses Control (2002) is about an ADHD child . Siblings of autistic children are the focus of the children's novels Rules (2006) by Cynthia Lord and Al Capone Does My Shirts (2004) by Gennifer Choldenko . The success of Susan Patron's Newbery Medal book The Higher Power of Lucky (2006) is based on the complex characters of the characters; The focus of the multi-layered novel is a 10-year-old girl who has to find her way into a new life after the death of her mother.
Comedic stories
A bestseller of the 1970s was the disgusting story How to Eat Fried Worms (1973) by Thomas Rockwell , in which Billy and his two friends make a bet that he will eat 15 earthworms in 15 days. In 1978, Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith in the bestseller lists; the book tells the story of Henry Green, who likes to eat chocolate so much that he amazes medicine with a new disease: “chocolate fever”.
School stories
The Jesuit father Francis J. Finn (1859–1928) gained popularity in the last years of the 19th century through his Catholic novels for boys, especially a series about the boy Tom Playfair .
While school stories occupy a large space in children's literature in other countries, Jesse Stuart's (1906–1984) autobiographical report The thread that runs so true (1948) was one of the few books from the period after the Second World War that described everyday American school life. The story of Paula Danziger's (1944–2004) girls' novel The Cat Ate My Gymsuit (1974) and Robert Cormier's (1926–2000) bestseller The Chocolate War (1974) are also set in the school environment .
In the 1980s, a large number of popular children's novels emerged for the first time, the plot of which was set in the school environment. The most successful representative of this genre was initially Francine Pascal , who began publishing her Sweet Valley High school novels in 1983 , the individual volumes of which reached millions and which was soon continued by a team of ghostwriters . The student stories of Louis Sachar , who published his five-part novel series Sideways Stories From Wayside School from 1978 to 1995 , were also widely read . Many more of the students told of Sachar's books, such as B. There is a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom (1988). Many student stories were tailored for a female reading audience, such as: For example, the very popular Baby-sitters Club novels by Ann M. Martin , which appeared from 1986 to 2000, reached millions in circulation in the 1980s and were soon written by ghostwriters. Andrew Clements published several school novels in the 1990s ( Frindle , 1996). Define “Normal” (2000) by Julie Anne Peters tells the story of two dissimilar girls in a middle school .
Adam Selzer's book How To Get Suspended and Influence People , in which a 13-year-old is expelled from school after producing a sex education video for his classmates, was presented by Adam Selzer in 2007, a school novel that was as cheerful as it was critical . The action of the commercially very successful Katie Kazoo Switcheroo novel series (since 2002) by Nancy E. Krulik is also set in the school environment . The most successful new school series is Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (since 2007) about the comic adventures of a sixth grader who is afflicted with all age-typical characteristics.
Books for girls
Maria J. McIntosh aka Aunt Kitty is considered to be one of the first American women writers to produce a girl's book series . In 1939 she published a novel Blind Alice , entitled Tales for the Young; or Lessons for the Heart a whole series of books followed. Jacob Abbott published the cousin Lucy (1841/42) and the Franconia novels (1850–54) only a little later . One of the most productive authors of books for girls of the 19th century, however, was the English teacher Harriette Newell Woods Baker, aka "Aunt Hattie" , who has now almost been forgotten . Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1815-1852) also wrote for an audience of girls and published her novel series under the pseudonym H. Trusta . Other well-known girls' authors before the Civil War were Emily Alice Bradley Neal Haven (1827–1863), Daniel Wise (1813–1898), Elizabeth Payson Prentiss (1818–1878), Elizabeth M. Bruce (1830–1911), Frances Irene Burge Griswold (1836–1900), Sarah Cook Stuart Robbins (1817–1910) and Annie Ketchum Dunning (1831–1896).
Girls' novel series remained popular even after the Civil War. One of the best-known representatives of this genre was the poet Adeline Dutton Train Whitney (1824–1906), who in her works - e. B. Faith Gartney's Girlhood (1863) and The Other Girls (1873) - has repeatedly defended conservative female values. Rebecca Sophia Clarke (1833–1906) published her Little Prudy stories since 1864 . The teacher Martha Finley (1828-1909) began in 1867 with the publication of her Elsie Dinsmore novels (until 1905), which tell the life story of a half-orphan in New England from childhood to old age in 28 volumes. Other authors who began to publish girl novel series after 1965 were Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (1844-1911; a daughter of the older author of the same name), Harriet Burn McKeever (1807-1886) and Joanna Hone Mathews (1849-1901).
In 1868 Louisa May Alcott published the first volume of her novel Little Women . Little Women tells the story of four sisters who grew up during the Civil War. The complexity of the female characters and their gender role conflicts offered the female reading public so far-reaching opportunities for identification that the novel immediately became a bestseller and had a lasting impact on many generations of American women.
Other girls' authors of the late 1860s and early 1870s were Virginia Frances Townsend (1836-1920), Margaret Hosmer (1830-1897), Caroline Wells Healey Dall (1822-1912), Susan Blagge Caldwell Samuels (1848-1931) and Virginia Wales Johnson (1849-1916). In 1872 Sarah Chauncey Woolsey alias Susan Coolidge (1835-1905) published her novel What Katie Did . The popular book tells the story of an unruly 12-year-old girl who is disabled by an accident.
The later Pulitzer Prize winner Laura E. Richards (1850-1943) published her five-part Hildegarde series from 1889 to 1897, along with numerous other children's books . Further series of girls' novels were published in the late 19th century a. a. Published by Elizabeth Williams Champney (1850-1922), Mary Bradford Crowninshield (1844-1913), Sarah Jones Clarke (1840-1929) and Myra Sawyer Hamlin (1856-1927).
Kate Douglas Wiggin published what is now a classic girls' book with her novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), which tells the story of a girl in New England. The sequel New Chronicles on Rebecca followed in 1906 . The girls' novel Pollyanna , published by Eleanor H. Porter (1868–1920) in 1913, is just as popular in the USA to this day . The book tells the story of an orphan who works with unshakable optimism to make her living environment more humane. The novel was so popular straight away that Porter had a sequel to follow in 1915. Later produced Harriet Lummis Smith , Elizabeth Borton , Margaret Piper Chalmers , Virginia May Moffitt and Colleen L. Reece whole Pollyanna -Reihen.
In the period before the Second World War, Marjorie Hill Allee's novel Jane's Island (1931) and Anne Parrish's (1888–1957) doll adventure Floating Island (1930) are particularly noteworthy among the girls' books .
While female authors like Enid Blyton sparked a boom in girls' novels in Great Britain as early as the 1940s, the genre initially barely developed in the United States, where girls read family stories rather than stories about female peer groups . The popular Beany Malone novels (1943–1969) by Lenora Mattingly Weber (1895–1971), which - aimed at a predominantly female reading audience - tell the adventures of a group of motherless siblings, are an example of the unusual path in American literature .
In 1999, Kate Klise's girls' book Letters From Camp was published about the summer in a summer camp . The heroine of Megan McDonald's successful Judy Moody novel series (since 2000) about an ambitious 9-year-old who repeatedly stirs up her surroundings with her extravagant ideas is a demanding child . Ellen Potter's Olivia Kidney series (since 2003) about the experiences of a lonely New York skyscraper child are addressed to the same group of readers .
Diversity
The African American perspective
The (white) anthropologist Harold Courlander (1908-1996) published his collection of African sagas, The Cow-Tail Switch, and Other West African Stories as early as 1947 .
Although the African American civil rights movement peaked in the 1960s, there were still few children's books on the subject of the living conditions and culture of African Americans. An exception is the novel The Jazz Man (1966) by Mary Hays Weik , which is about a black boy in Harlem . The first high-profile children's book to deal with racism and discrimination against blacks was the novel The Cay (1969) by Theodore Taylors (1921-2006), of which more than 3 million copies were sold in 1976 alone.
The ALA has presented its Coretta Scott King Award to African-American authors exclusively since 1970 .
In the 1970s, a large number of children's books with Afro-American themes appeared for the first time in American literary history, such as Mildred Taylor's Newbery Medal winner Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976), Ouida Sebestyen's National Book Award book Words by Heart (1979) , Bette Greene's girls' novel Philip Hall Likes Me, I Reckon Maybe (1974), Sharon Bell Mathis ′ family history The Hundred Penny Box (1975) and the coming-of-age novel MC Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton (1936–2002) , one of the most prominent children's and youth writers, who was the fourth American to receive the Hans Christian Andersen Prize in 1992. In the 1980s, the adolescent girl's novel Marked By Fire (1982; by Joyce Carol Thomas ) and the boys' book The Moves Make the Man (1984; by Bruce Brooks ) were published.
The African-American poet and activist Maya Angelou published her volume of poetry, Life Doesn't Frighten Me, illustrated for children by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1993 .
Many children's novels of the 1990s reported on the difficult living conditions of blacks in the past and present, for example Nikki Grimes ' novel Jazmin's Notebook (1998) about a girl who lived in Harlem in the 1960s in a difficult family situation. Christopher Paul Curtis ' Newbery book The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 (1996) describes the experiences of an African American family in the Birmingham campaign of the African American civil rights movement . The plot of Jess Mowry's black drug and problem novel Babylon Boyz (1997) is set in the present.
Much of the recent African American children's literature has the history of African Americans as its theme. MT Anderson's National Book Award novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation (2006) tells the story of a young black man who became the subject of study for a radical white philosopher during the American Revolutionary War.
Another important recent African American children's book is Marilyn Nelson's collection of poetry, Carver: A Life In Poems (2001). Since 2001 Valerie Wilson Wesley has been publishing her cheerful Willimena Rules! - Novel series about the school adventures of a black 9 year old.
The Indian perspective
An early example of the Indian perspective in American children's literature is the work of the painter and writer Grace Moon (1884–1947). Hal Borland's (1900–1978) Indian novel When the Legends Die (1963) was filmed in 1972 with Richard Widmark and was reprinted in 1984 with more than 3 million copies. The novel Anpao: An American Indian Odyssey (1977; by Jamake Highwater , approx. 1930-2001) was about the culture of the Indians .
Louise Erdrich's novels The Birchbark House (1999) and The Game of Silence (2005) depict the everyday life of an Anishinabe family on Lake Superior in 1847.
Immigrant perspective
The wave of immigration that began in the USA after the First World War enriched children's literature for the first time with a large number of books on ethnic subjects. This ethnic literature was of particular interest to the American Library Association (ALA) , which awarded the Newbery Medal every year from 1922 onwards .
As the founder of Chicano literature, i. H. of Mexican American literature, Rudolfo Anaya is often mentioned , who in addition to novels for adults has also written a number of children's books. The most successful of these is the novel Bless Me, Ultima (1972) about the story of a Chicano boy in New Mexico in the 1940s.
In 1975 Laurence Yep published his novel Dragonwings , which described the fate of Chinese-American migrants at the time of the great earthquake in San Francisco (1906) and was awarded the Newbery Honor . Based on Dragonwings , Yep wrote eight more novels about the experiences of Chinese immigrants in California, which were soon summarized under the title Golden Mountain Chronicles .
Linda Crew published her novel Children of the River in 1991 about the experiences of a young Cambodian migrant in the USA. Haemi Balgassi's book Tae's Sonata (1997) is about a Korean-American girl .
Look into foreign cultures
One of the most important early American novels for young readers was Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (1865) Mary Mapes Dodge , the story of a Dutch working-class boy .
In 1928, the Newbery jury awarded its main prize to the Indian Dhan Gopal Mukerji (1890-1936), whose novel Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon tells the story of an Indian competition pigeon; The main award winner of the following year was Eric P. Kelly (1884-1960), whose book The Trumpeter of Krakow is based on a legend from the history of Poland . As early as 1925, Charles J. Finger (1869–1941) had received the medal for his collection of historical Latin American sagas - Tales from Silver Lands (1914). The main award winner of 1926 - Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman (1889–1953) - was a collection of Chinese sagas.
The ALA awarded its side prize, the Newbery Honor , to Irish- American authors several times after the First World War : to Padraic Colum (1881–1972) for his myth-based retelling The Golden Fleece and The Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles (1921) and The Voyagers : Being Legends and Romances of Atlantic Discovery (1925) and to Ella Young (1867-1956), who retold Irish legends in her volume The Wonder Smith and His Son (1928). Julia Davis Adams (1900-1993) was also honored with the Newbery Honor in 1929 for her novel Vaino, A Boy of New Finland . The youth books by Anna Balmer Myers , whose best-known work is the novel Amanda: A Daughter of the Mennonites (1921), indicate not an ethnic but a religious group - the Mennonites in Lancaster County .
The American Library Association (ALA) continued to be interested in children's literature on ethnic subjects even after the Great Depression. Works that made her stand out in the 1930s and early 1940s include Herbert Best's African short story Garram the Hunter: A Boy of the Hill Tribes (1930), Indian books by Ralph Hubbard ( Queer Person , 1930), and Laura Adams Armer (1874 –1963; Waterless Mountain , 1931), Elizabeth Coatsworth (1893–1986) Buddhist legend The Cat Who Went to Heaven (1931), Christine Westons (approx. 1923–2008) India history Bhimsa, the Dancing Bear (1945) and China -Books by Elizabeth Foreman Lewis (1892–1958; Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze , 1932), Elizabeth Seeger ( Pageant of Chinese History , 1934) and Chih-Yi Chan ( Good-Luck Horse , 1943). With the Newbery Honor, the ALA also honored Nora Burglon (1900–1976), who in addition to the award book ( Children of the Soil: A Story of Scandinavia , 1932) has written other stories about children all over the world. Hilda van Stockum's (1908–2006) book Day On Skates: The Story of a Dutch Picnic (1934) focuses on the experiences of a Dutch school class; Monica Shannon's (approx. 1905–1965) Roman Dobry (1935) tells the story of a Romanian farm boy.
The plot of Dorothy Rhoads ' farm boy story The Corn Grows Ripe (1956) is set in Mexico . In the same year, Mari Sandoz '(1896–1966) novel The Horsecatcher appeared , in which the growing up of a young Cheyenne is portrayed. Ann Nolan Clarks (1896–1995) Newbery Honor book Secret of the Andes (1953) reports on the adventures of an Inca boy in the Andes highlands .
Many other children's books of the 1940s and 1950s have European settings, such as France ( The Avion My Uncle Flew , 1946, by Cyrus Fisher , 1904-1964; The Family Under The Bridge , 1958, by Natalie Savage Carlson , 1906-1997), Switzerland ( All Alone , 1953, by Claire Huchet Bishop , 1899–1993; Banner In The Sky , 1954, by James Ullman , 1907–1971) or Italy ( Red Sails to Capri , 1952, by Ann Weil , 1908–1969). Still other books have Asian settings, such as Siberia ( The Defender , 1951, by Nicholas Kalashnikoff ), China ( Li Lun, Lad of Courage , 1947, by Carolyn Treffinger ), India and Tibet ( Daughter of the Mountain , 1948, by Louise Rankin ) and Japan ( Crow Boy , 1955, by Taro Yashima ).
Important works of the 1960s were the novel Call It Courage (1961; Armstrong Sperry , 1897–1976), which tells of the Pacific Islands, and the novel Shadow of a Bull (1964; Maia Wojciechowska , 1927–2002), which tells of Spain . Suzanne Fisher Staples ' children's novel Shabanu, Daughter of the Wind (1989) tells the story of a nomad girl in Pakistan , and Gloria Whelan's National Book Award winner Homeless Bird (1990) is about a young Indian woman who was widowed at the age of 13 becomes. From Latin America, Joan Abelove's youth novel Go and Come Back (1998) tells about Indians in the Peruvian jungle. With a National Book Award was Nancy Farmers youth novel The Scorpion House (2002) awarded on drug cultivation in Mexico.
A cultural minority in their own country are the Amish , about whom Mary Christner Borntrager , Carrie Bender and Levi Miller contributed numerous books for children and young people in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Action-oriented genres
Adventure stories
An early storyteller of adventure stories for children was Joseph Alexander Altsheler (1862-1919). Walter Scott Story (1879–1955), a series author of adventure novels, wrote especially for an audience of boys . Laurie York Erskine (1894-1976) published his novel series Renfrew of the Royal Mounted from 1922 to 1941 . These Mountie adventure stories were so popular that they were filmed many times in the 1930s. In the scout milieu , the plot of most of the books by Percy Keese Fitzhugh (1876–1950) was set. Other popular authors of adventure novels for boys were Holling C. Holling (1900-1973), James Cloyd Bowman (1880-1961) and Stephen W. Meader (1892-1977). Typical products of the war years were the Dave Dawson (1941–46) and Red Rendall (1944–46) novels by Robert Sidney Bowen (1900–1977), which tell war adventures prepared for children.
Jean Lee Latham received a Newbery Medal for her sailing novel Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (1955) . In the 1960s, the Robinsonade Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) by Scott O'Dell (1898–1989) received international attention. O'Dell was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Prize in 1972 as the second American.
One of the most important adventure novels of the 1960s does not take place in wild or exotic places, but in the big city: The very popular novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967) by EL Konigsburg, which has been awarded a Newbery Medal is about a precocious 11-year-old New York girl who runs away from home and seeks refuge in the Metropolitan Museum of Art . The Pushcart War (1964) by Jean Merrill (1923–2012) tells of another big city adventure, namely a "war" between delivery truck drivers and hawkers .
The adventure stories by Willard Price (1887–1983), Henry Felsen (1916–1995) and Jean Craighead George (1919–2012) were addressed to boys .
RA Montgomery published a series of " Choose Your Own Adventure " novels from 1979 to 1998 , in which readers can decide for themselves how the narrative should continue by scrolling back and forth at selected points in the plot. Sid Fleischman's (1920–2010) newbery book The Whipping Boy (1986) tells the story of a whipping boy who unexpectedly becomes the spoiled prince's best friend, for whom he usually takes the blows. Other important adventure novels of the time were The Goats (1987; by Brock Cole ) and The Problem Story of Guilt and Conscience On My Honor (1987; by Marion Dane Bauer ).
The children's adventure novel experienced a revival at the end of the 20th century with Edward Irving Wortis , who published his books under the pseudonym "Avi". After writing history novels and other children's books since the 1960s, Wortis published the novel The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle in 1990 about the adventures of a 13-year-old on board a transatlantic sailor in 1832, which received a Newbery Honor and became a bestseller. This was followed in 2002 by Wortis' Newbery Medal award-winning book Crispin: The Cross of Lead, about the adventures of a 13-year-old farm boy in medieval England; a first sequel to the novel appeared in 2006.
A specialist in historical adventure stories is the American writer Gillian Bradshaw , currently living in Great Britain , who is best known for works such as the Roman novel Island of Ghosts (1998). Joe Cottonwood 's children's novel Quake (1995) about the fate of a 14-year-old girl in the Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco in 1989 also belongs to the adventure genre .
One of the most successful American children's books of the early 2000s is the series of novels A series of unfortunate events by Daniel Handler, who is also known in Germany under his pseudonym Lemony Snicket. The thirteen-part series, which is characterized by a strong melancholy mood, tells the adventures of three exceptionally talented siblings who, after the death of their parents, try to escape the machinations of their uncle, who is devoted to their inheritance. Greg R. Fishbone's entertaining epistolary novel The Penguins of Doom (2007) about a 13-year-old who also goes through a series of strange adventures in search of her missing triplet sister is largely related . Brian Selznick's Caldecott Medal book The Discovery of Hugo Cabret (2007), a children's novel about the late life of the French film pioneer Georges Méliès , in which the narrative form at key points of the plot repeatedly through pages long , is one of the most literarily interesting adventure stories of recent times , for self-speaking image sequences is broken. Selznick is a nephew of famous Hollywood producer David O. Selznick .
The Métrico Mesh novels (since 2005) by Wren Blackberry, about the amateur research adventures of two Portuguese-American brothers, try to casually convey scientific and historical facts to young readers. Peg Kehret 's children's book Escaping the Giant Wave (2004) about a 13-year-old who gets caught in a tsunami while on vacation with his family on the Oregon coast can also be assigned to the adventure novel genre . In 2006 Watt Key published his debut novel Alabama Moon, about a boy who tried to survive alone in the North American wilderness in 1980.
Crime stories
In the field of children's crime, Augusta Huiell Seaman has stood out since 1910 . A successful author in the period after the First World War was Edward Stratemeyer , who not only wrote around 150 books for young people, but also invented the crime series The Hardy Boys , which - written by various authors - has been published since 1927 to the present day and therefore as the am longest existing children's book series in literary history. Gertrude Chandler Warner (1890–1979) began publishing her The Boxcar Children books in 1942 , a very popular series of children's crime novels for which Warner continued to write new volumes until 1976. In 1930, the Grosset & Dunlap publishing house began publishing Nancy Drew crime novels, a bestseller series for girls that continued until 2002 and on which numerous different authors collaborated under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene . In 1932 Margaret Sutton's (1903-2001) similarly successful girl crime series Judy Bolton (until 1967) followed.
In the 1950s, Andrew E. Svenson (1910–1975) , who wrote under various pseudonyms, created a successful crime series with his The Happy Hollisters novels (1953–1970), which focuses on a family with five children whose passion is Solve criminal cases.
Two successful children's crime series began to appear in the 1960s: the Alvin Fernald novels (1960–1986) by Clifford B. Hicks are about a boy whose fantastic inventions help him solve criminal cases; Donald J. Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown novels (since 1963) also deal with a detective boy of marvelous intelligence . Robert Arthur founded the crime series The Three ??? in 1963. . A milestone in the history of American children's literature is Louise Fitzhugh's (1928–1974) novel Harriet the Spy (1964) about an ambitious and intelligent 11-year-old who in her small environment (the rich Upper East Side of Manhattan ) through keen observation Solving the problems of other people and putting things right.
The most remarkable children's crime novel of the 1970s is the Newbery Medal winner The Westing Game (1978) by Ellen Raskin (1928–1984), a Whodunit about the 16 heirs of a millionaire who died under strange circumstances. The Nate the Great detective novels by Marjorie W. Sharmat , published since 1972, have also been widely read . The children's crime novel The Court of the Stone Children (1973) by Eleanor Cameron (1912–1996), which was awarded a National Book Ward, takes readers to Napoleonic France. Another thriller, The Perilous Gard (1974) by Elizabeth Marie Pope , tells of druids in medieval England.
Lois Duncan (1934-2016) published her teenage thriller Locked In Time (1985) in 1985 about a boarding school student who had to cope with the death of her mother and the remarriage of her father. The Cam-Jansen novels by David A. Adler , published since 1980, formed a successful crime series for younger girls . In 1999 Michael Hoeye's Hermux Tantamoq series was created about a mouse solving criminal cases .
Blue Ballett's book Chasing Vermeer (2003), a thriller in which two 12-year-old girls track down a stolen Vermeer painting and grapple with pentomino puzzles , has high intellectual demands . Her book The Wright 3 , published in 2006, is an architectural thriller centered around Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House . Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls series is about a number of teenage girls who are trained as agents at a special boarding school under the highest secrecy. Similar motifs can be found in Trenton Lee Stewart's Mysterious Benedict Society best-selling novels, which have been published since 2007 , in which gifted children of both sexes are trained and spied.
History novels
American History
By Amanda Douglas (1831-1916) derived Little Girl novels (1896-1909), which are considered the first historicist Girls book series of American literary history. Harriet Theresa Comstock published her first novel Molly, the Drummer Boy in 1900 with an episode from the American Revolutionary War. The author followed up with several other historical novels for young readers. Rachel Field (1894-1942) published her novel Hitty, Her First Hundred Years , in 1929 , which told the story of New England through the fate of a doll.
In the aftermath of the Great Depression, many novels and short stories were written that described the everyday life of American children in earlier times. The most important representative of this memoir and history literature was Laura Ingalls Wilder , whose Little House on the Prairie stories (published 1932–1974) were inspired by her growing up in a settler family in the Midwest . These stories have often only become known to international audiences through the sweet TV adaptation Our Little Farm (1974–1983). Literary critics, however, count Wilder among the most important authors in the country, and the ALA not only awarded six of their books the Newbery Honor , but also awarded Wilder the bronze medal donated in 1954 for its overall contribution to American children's literature, which has since been named Laura Ingalls in her honor Wilder Medal , but renamed the Children's Literature Legacy Award in 2018 after research found evidence of racist stereotypes in Wilder's books; Wilder's name was removed from the list of award winners. The Little House on the Prairie novels reached millions of copies when the publisher HarperCollins first published them as paperbacks in 1971 . Other authors, such as Roger Lea MacBride (1929–1995), continued the series later. Melissa Wiley even wrote a series of prequels, the Martha Years novels (1999-2003), about family ancestors in Scotland in the early 18th century.
Other authors who have presented historical everyday life in the country and town to a young readership are Robert Lawson (1892–1957), Carol Ryrie Brink (1895–1981), Ruth Sawyer (1880–1970) and Lois Lenski (1893–1974 ). The Betsy Tacy novels by Maud Hart Lovelace (1892–1980), which appeared in 1940–1955 and told the life of an American girl from childhood to early adulthood, were a particular success with the public, covering a 20-year period around the turn of the 20th century Century covers.
In addition to such everyday stories, there were also many historical novels in the narrower sense. The authors of fictional literature for young people who worked on American history in the 1930s and early 1940s include Elsie Singmaster (1879–1958), Mary Jane Carr (1895–1988), Esther Forbes (1891–1967), Elizabeth Enright (1909– 1968), Doris Gates (1901–1987), Eva Roe Gaggin and Walter D. Edmonds (1903–1998).
Walter (1901–1994) and Marion Havighurst's Song of The Pines: A Story of Norwegian Lumbering in Wisconsin (1949) describes the experiences of a young Norwegian immigrant in the farmland of the Midwest. The girls' books Wonderful Year (1946; by Nancy Barnes ) and The Golden Name Day (1955; by Jennie Linquist ) also describe everyday farm life in earlier times .
Many books for children and young people after World War II were about American history. A number of books dealt with the fate of the pioneers, such as the novel Better Known as Johnny Appleseed (1950; by Mabel Leigh Hunt , 1892–1971) and the bestseller The Courage of Sarah Noble (1954; Alice Dalgliesh , 1893–1979) . The novels Rifles for Watie (1957; Harold Keith , 1903–1998) and The Perilous Road (1958; William O. Steele 1917–1979) tell stories from the Civil War.
The Great Brain novels (1967-1995) by John D. Fitzgerald (1906-19988) appeared in the 1960s , the plot of which is set in Utah at the end of the 19th century. Ester Wiers (1910–2000) book The Loner (1963) tells the story of an orphan boy who made his way as a migrant agricultural worker in Montana .
Important historical novels of the 1970s include James and Christopher Collier's Revolutionary War novel, My Brother Sam is Dead (1974), and Joan Blos 'girls' diary from the 1830s, A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal (1979). Robert Newton Peck's book A Day No Pigs Would Die (1972) tells of the life of the Shakers in Vermont .
The novel The Slave Dancer (1973) by Paula Fox about American slavery received numerous literary prizes . In 1978 Fox was the fourth American to receive the renowned international Hans Christian Andersen Prize. The Edge of Nowhere (1972) by Lucy Johnston Sypher (1907–1990) reports on the everyday life of a family in North Dakota in the period around 1900. In a more recent section of the American version , the plot of Myron Levoy's internationally acclaimed novel The Yellow Bird (1977), which tells of the fate of a Jewish refugee girl in New York City during the Second World War. Another interesting historical children's book is The Moved-Outers (1972) by Florence Crannell Means (1891–1980), which is about the internment of Japanese-born Americans in World War II, a subject whose public discussion in the United States had hardly begun at that time . In the same year, the autobiographical novel Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston appeared on the same topic , which the couple adapted as a film in 1976 and which was published again in 1983 for millions. A bestseller was the youth novel Summer of My German Soldier (1973) by Bette Greene about the love of an American woman for a German prisoner of war.
Responsible for the most commercially successful children's history book series of the 1980s - if not American children's literature at all - is the American Girl company , which since 1986 has not only brought out a series of dolls , each with a collection of clothes from a specific section of the American history, but also a variety of print materials such as dress-up dolls and reading books, in which not only adventures about the individual doll characters are told, but also historical knowledge is conveyed. From 1986 to 1993 these volumes, backed by authors such as Janet Shaw , Valerie Tripp , Connie Porter , Susan Adler and Maxine Rose Schur , repeatedly appeared in the bestseller lists with millions of copies.
Many other books deal with American history at the same time, such as the novel A Lion to Guard Us (1981) by Clyde Robert Bulla (1914–2007), which tells the story of an English girl who lived on the in the 17th century Finding her father travels to the Virginia colony . Newbery Medal books from the 1980s included Russell Freedman's "Photobiography" on Abraham Lincoln (1987) and Patricia MacLachlan's family novel Sarah, Plain and Tall (1985), which tells of the life of farmers in the Midwest in the late 19th century. Lily's Crossing (1984) by Patricia Reilly Giff is about the experiences of American children during World War II . The bestseller In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord , published in 1984, tells the story of a Chinese migrant girl in New York in 1947.
Jackie French Koller published her novel The Primrose Way in 1992 about a young puritan who came to Massachusetts as a settler with her parents in 1633. The Annie Henry novels (1995/96) by Susan Olasky tell of the experiences of a girl during the Revolutionary War . Rachel's Journal: The Story of a Pioneer Girl (1999) by Marissa Moss tells the story of a young settler who walked west on the Oregon Trail in 1850 . In the same year, Susan Campbell Bartoletti's novel No Man's Land was published about the experiences of a 14-year-old boy from Georgia who took part in the Civil War as a soldier, and Jennifer L. Holm's book Our Only May Amelia about a young Finnish woman who followed her with her family in 1899 Washington State is coming.
Three of the most important children's history books of the 1990s tell from the difficult 1930s: Karen Hesse's Newbery -Jugendroman Out of the Dust (1997) describes the experiences of a farmer family in the Dust Bowl -Jahren of Oklahoma . Published in 1998, Richard Peck , the children's book A Long Way from Chicago about two sisters from Chicago , during the Great Depression are sent to the countryside to her eccentric grandmother; for the sequel, A Year Down Yonder (2000), Peck was awarded the Newbery Medal .
By Jim Murphy of the children's novel comes An American Plague (2003) about a devastating yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793. From the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is Harry Mazers children's novel A Boy at War (2001).
World history
The most important representative of the historical youth novel in the 1920s was Bernard G. Marshall , whose novel Cedric the Forester tells a story from medieval England and who was awarded the Newbery Honor in 1922 . In 1924 Charles Hawes published his pirate adventure The Dark Frigate , the story of which was set in 18th century England.
Caroline Dale Snedeker's (1871–1956) book The Forgotten Daughter , published in 1933, tells a story from ancient Rome. Kate Seredy (1896-1975) published her Hun novel The White Stag in 1937 . The plot of Eloise Lownsberys (1888-1967) Out of the Flame (1931) and Ann Kyle's Apprentice of Florence (1933) was set in the French and Italian Renaissance . Agnes Hewes published her historical fantasy Spice and the Devil's Cave in 1930 , which describes a fictional gathering of the Portuguese sailors Vasco da Gama , Bartolomeu Diaz and Ferdinand Magellan . Elizabeth Gray Vinings (1902–1999) novel Adam of the Road , published in 1942, tells the story of a boy in medieval England.
In the 1940s, some authors reported again from the European Middle Ages, including Eleanor Jewett ( The Hidden Treasure of Glaston , 1946), Anne Malcolmson ( Song of Robin Hood , 1947) and Marguerite de Angeli (1889-1987) in their Newbery title The Door in the Wall (1949).
One of the most famous personalities who have contributed to American children's and youth literature is the Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991), who fled Poland in 1935 and later won the Nobel Prize for Literature . Almost all of the 14 children's books that Singer has written tell of the history and life of Polish Jews. His best-known volumes of short stories Mazel and Shlimazel (1966), Zlateh die Geiß (1967) and The Schelme von Schelm (1973) as well as the autobiographical report Eine Kindheit in Warsaw (1969), for which Singer received a National Book Award in 1970.
Elizabeth George Speares' award-winning Old Palestine book The Bronze Bow (1961), the Greek story Men of Athens (1962) by Olivia Coolidge and the Velázquez novel I, Juan de Pareja (1965 ) deal with other parts of European history ) by Elizabeth Borton de Treviño (1904-2001).
In the 1970s, among other things, the Holocaust novel The Upstairs Room (1972) by Johanna Reiss was published . David Kherdian's book The Road from Home: The Story of an Armenian Girl (1979) is about another genocide, the Turkish genocide of the Armenians .
The subject of Rhonda Blumberg 's children's novel Commodore Perry In the Land of the Shogun (1985) marked the beginning of American-Japanese trade relations in the 19th century. The autobiographical novel Homesick: My Own Story (1982) by the award-winning children's book author Jean Fritz tells of the experiences of an American girl in China in the 1920s. Lois Lowry's popular novel Number the Stars (1990) tells of the fate of the Jews in World War II from the perspective of Denmark , where the population was able to prevent a Holocaust through civil disobedience despite the German occupation . Even better known today, however, is Lowry's 1993 novel The Guardian of Memory, about the disturbing experiences of a 12-year-old boy in an apparently ideal world.
Karen Cushman's debut novel Catherine, Called Birdy (1994) is about a young noblewoman in medieval England. The Midwife's Apprentice followed in 1995 , Cushman's story of a foundling who also lived in the Middle Ages and grew up with a midwife ; the ALA awarded the book a Newbery Medal .
Linda Sue Park won a Newbery Medal with her children's novel A Single Shard (2001), about the experiences of an orphan boy in Korea in the 12th century. Also with a Newbery Medal was the unusual youth book Good Masters! Sweet ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village (2007) by Laura Amy Schlitz , in which the narrative is replaced by a series of monologues spoken by the individual members of a medieval English village community.
Fantastic
fairy tale
Since the last quarter of the 19th century, the fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen have been among the traditional collections of children's literature imported into the USA . As early as 1862, however, the American writer Horace Scudder had written a number of fairytale-like stories for children. Frank R. Stockton's book The Bee-Man of Orn (1887) is a mixture of fairy tale and legend.
General fantasy
While Lewis Carroll had already set the standard for fantastic children's literature in Great Britain in the 19th century, American authors followed this example very late. In 1900 one of the most famous works of American youth literature was published: L. Frank Baum's book The Wizard of Oz tells the story of the girl Dorothy who, in the company of a scarecrow, a tin man and a cowardly lion, goes to the castle of a wizard who helps her supposed to get back to their native Kansas . The fantastic novel was so successful - 21,000 copies were already sold in the year of publication - that Baum wrote 13 sequels by 1919. The material later became internationally known through the MGM musical film The Wizard of Oz by Victor Fleming . After Baum's death, Ruth Plumly Thompson , John R. Neill , Rachel R. Cosgrove , Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Lauren Lynn McGraw continued the series. Other Oz novels have been published since the mid-1980s a. a. Published by James Howe , Dick Martin , Eric Shanower , Edward Einhorn , Gina Wickwar and Darren Reid .
Tudor Jenks (1857–1922) was also at home in the fantastic genre , from whom u. a. the imaginotions; Truthless Tales (1894) and the novel Galopoff, the Talking Pony (1901) date.
Another early representative of the fantastic genre is Julia L. Sauer , whose novel Fog Magic , published in 1944, describes a girl's journey through time. In 1947, the French-born William Pène du Bois (1916–1993) published his story The Twenty-One Balloons (1947), which was soon awarded the Newbery Medal , and which is about the shipwreck of a retired teacher on a strange island. Betty MacDonald (1907–1958) created a completely different bizarre world in her Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series (1947–1957). Further examples of fantastic children's literature of the time are the novels My Father's Dragon (1948; by Ruth Stiles Gannett ), The Blue Cat of Castle Town (1949; by Catherine Coblentz , 1897–1951), Half Magic (1954; by Edward Eager , 1911 –1964), David and the Phoenix (1957; by Edward Ormondroyd ) and The Gammage Cup (1959; by Carol Kendall , 1917–2012).
In the 1960s the genre of fantastic youth literature experienced a significant rise. This development was mainly driven by three authors: Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007), Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) and Ursula K. Le Guin. Madeleine L'Engle published her novel Die Zeitfalte ( A Wrinkle in Time ) in 1962 , which tells of the time travel of three children. Together with three subsequent volumes created later, A Wrinkle in Time forms the tetralogy Time Quartet . A very different kind of fantasy was written by Lloyd Alexander , who began in 1964 with the publication of his five-part series The Chronicles of Prydain . The plot of these fantasy novels was set in a mythical world inspired by Welsh legends. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a variety of science fiction and fantasy novels , of which the Earth Sea Cycle (1968-2001) and the novel The Left Hand of Darkness (former title: Winter Planet ; 1969) are best known. For younger readers, Le Guin wrote the series of novels Catwings (1988–1999) about cats born with wings.
Norton Juster's modern fairy tale The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) about a boy who enters the kingdom of wisdom through a magical toll station was published as early as 1961 . Other representatives of the fantastic youth literature were Alexander Key (1904–1979; The Forgotten Door , 1965), Randall Jarrell (1914–1965; The Animal Family , 1965), Zilpha Keatley Snyder (1927–2014; The Egypt Game , 1967) and Sylvia Engdahl ( Enchantress From the Stars , 1970). In The Magic of the glits (1979) tells CS Adler the story of a seven-year orphan who for the sake of an older boy who glits invents: magical creatures, can meet the requirements.
The Littles novels (1967–2003) by John Peterson (1924–2002), which center on tiny elven- like creatures living undetected in the household of an American family, were addressed to younger children .
William Joyce created the George Shrinks adventure series in the mid-1980s, about a 10-year-old who, for some inexplicable reason, is only eight centimeters tall. The books were so popular that they were adapted as a television animation series in 2000.
Fantastic reached a new high point in the 1970s with Katherine Paterson and her novel The Bridge to Terabithia (1977) about two lonely children who create a fantasy kingdom in a forest near their parents' homes in which they are king and queen. The book was honored with the Newbery Medal , and Paterson later received such high-profile awards as the Hans Christian Andersen Prize and the Swedish Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize for her life's work.
The British-American writer Susan Cooper published her fantasy novel The Gray King in 1975 . The book, which is part of a five-part series of Arthurian novels (The Winter Solstice) , was awarded the Newbery Medal . Further artistically ambitious fantastic novels of the time are Journey Outside (1972; by Mary Q. Steele , 1922–1992), Tuck Everlasting (1975; by Natalie Babbitt ) and A String in the Harp (1976; by Nancy Bond ).
One of the most popular fantasy authors of the 1990s is David B. Coe , who published his novel Children of Amarid in 1997, which was the starting point for The Lon Tobyn Chronicle , which is now in three parts . Another author who has appeared with fantasy bestsellers since then is Francesca Lia Block ( Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books , 1998).
On the other hand, the fantastic novels Lizard Music (1996) by Daniel Pinkwater about a boy who witnesses an invasion of intelligent lizards, Ella Enchanted (1997) by Gail Carson Levine about a girl who has been cursed by a fairy are addressed to children the fairy book The Moorchild (1997) by Eloise McGraw . The 13-year-old young scientist and research traveler, whom Rob Thomas placed at the center of his children's book Green Thumb (1999) , also experiences fantastic adventures .
The very popular The Secrets of Droon series by Tony Abbott was created in 1999 , a series of novels aimed at primary school children about three children who discover a magical world populated by trolls and other fairy tale creatures in the basement of one of their parents' houses . The most commercially successful newer fantasy novel series for younger children is the Spiderwick series (2003/04) by Holly Black about the adventures of three siblings, who in the old house they move to after their parents divorced, into a world of mythical creatures devices.
Other fantastic children's books recently are the Peter Pan prequel Peter and the Starcatchers (2004) by Dave Berry and Ridley Pearson , the fairytale-like story The King in the Window (2005) by Adam Gopnik , the time travel novel The Black Canary ( 2005) by Jane Louise Curry and the complex tooth fairy tale What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy (2007) by Gregory Maguire . The fairytale-like Sylvie Cycle novels (since 2001) by Roderick Townley , the fantasy novel Sommerland (2002) by Michael Chabon , the Goth novel Green Angel (2003) by Alice Hoffman , Shapeshifter's Quest (2005) by are addressed to a somewhat older reading public Dena Landon and the fairytale Newbery Honor book Princess Academy (2005) by Shannon Hale .
Horror fiction
VC Andrews' horror novels ( Flowers of the Night , 1979) became very popular . James Howe created a series of curious horror novels for children in 1979 with his Bunnicula novels about a family that is haunted by a vampire rabbit who sucks the juice from vegetables.
In 1986 Alvin Schwartz began publishing his Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark , a series of horror novels for children that appeared several times in the bestseller lists until 1991. In 1980, Barbara Brooks Wallace published her novel Peppermints in the Parlor about a girl who finds refuge with relatives in San Francisco after the death of her parents, but who soon discovers that her new home is overshadowed by a terrible secret. The story, which Wallace added with a sequel in 2005, was later occasionally compared to the work of Lemony Snicket .
One of the most successful authors of horror stories at the moment is RL Stine , who is often referred to as " Stephen King of children's literature". Stine, who has written dozens of horror novels for children and young people to this day, owes his international fame primarily to the Goosebumps series (since 1992), the volumes of which were mostly in the millions in the first six years after the series was written. Another series of horror novels - The Watchers (1998/99) - is by Peter Lerangis . In 1992 Patricia McKissack published her Newbery Honor book The Dark Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural (1992), a collection of haunted stories from the American southern states. Well-read teenage horror novels were written by Christopher Pike (actually Kevin McFadden; The Midnight Club , 1994), Vivian Vande Velde ( Companions of the Night , 1995) and Annette Curtis Klause ( Blood and Chocolate , 1997).
In 2002 Neil Gaiman , who came from Great Britain in 1992, published his fantasy and horror story Coraline, which is now also an animated film .
Science fiction
Successful science fiction novelists wrote Jerome Beatty Jr. ( Matthew Looney series, 1961–1978) and Bertrand R. Brinley ( Mad Scientist's Club series, 1961–1868).
Small forms
Poetry
Examples of early volumes of poetry:
- Lydia Sigourney : Poetry for Children (1834)
- Mary Emily Bradley (1835–1898) and Kate J. Neely - Proverb Series (1868–1870)
- Eugene Field (1850–1895) - Wynken, Blynken, and Nod (1889)
John Updike (1932–2009) created a much acclaimed volume of poetry for children with A Child's Calendar (1965), illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman .
J. Patrick Lewis published his poetry collection Please Bury Me in the Library in 2004 . The Poetry Foundation has been awarding a Children's Poet Laureate since 2006 . The first award winner was Jack Prelutsky ( A Pizza the Size of the Sun , 1994).
Madlibs
A playful, humorous literary genre that emerged as early as the 1950s, but appeared in the bestseller lists with millions in circulation in the 1970s, were the Mad Libs , which are still extremely popular with American children today . Mad Libs are collections of short texts in which there are spaces in place of many words (nouns, proper names, verbs, adjectives, adverbs), which are completed by the user. Since the replacement words are selected before the user knows the text, the result is usually a funny and entertaining effect.
play
Montrose Jonas Moses published A Treasury of Plays for Children in 1921 , which collected dramatizations of popular children's novels: Frances H. Burnett: The Little Princess , Constance D. Mackay: The Silver Thread , Marguerite Merington: The Tesing of Sir Gawayne , WR Robertson: Pinkie and the fairies , H. Williamson and T. Sarg: Punch and Judy: The Three Wishes , A. Strong: The Toymaker of Nuremberg, S. Walker: Six Who Pass While the Lentils Boil , Anna: Master Skylark .
Individual evidence
- ^ Shannon Maughan: Navigating Middle Grade Books. Retrieved October 4, 2019 .
- ^ Phil Stong ; Honk the Moose ; Mr. Popper's Penguins ( Memento from May 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Charlotte Zolotow ; Carolyn Sh. Bailey ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Jane Langton ( Memento of the original from July 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Joyce Sidman ; Rebecca Caudill
- ↑ Allan W. Eckert ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; John R. Gardiner
- ↑ Laura Ingalls Wilder's name removed from book award over racism concerns , theguardian.com, June 24, 2018, accessed June 25, 2018
- ↑ US organization recognizes Laura Ingalls Wilder Prize , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, published and accessed on June 25, 2018
