Assignment

        Write a review of a work of literary criticism, such as you might do for an academic journal. I'll post it on the web so that all your classmates can benefit from it. So, when you turn it in, please submit two copies. (1) Give a hard copy to me. (2) Post a copy to the "Book Review" section of our class in K-State OnLine.

Some Reviews by Yours Truly

        These are intended to serve as examples. Please note. These links are accessible only via K-State; if you're not logged in on campus, find these via K-State Libraries' Find e-journal.

• Review of Julia L. Mickenberg's Learning from the Left: Children's Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics in the United States.  Children's Literature Association Quarterly 32.1 (2007): 80-82. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/childrens_literature_association_quarterly/v032/32.1nel.html>. (Available to subscribers of Project Muse.)
• Review of The American Child: A Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Caroline F. Levander and Carol J. Singley. American Historical Review 109.5 (Dec. 2004): 1587-88. <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/109.5/br_65.html>.

Due dates

• Full schedule of due dates.

The reviews will be due a week before the presentations. Reviewers will choose a book that will be useful to their presentation. There are two benefits of this approach. First, if you are reviewing a book that ties in with your presentation, then one assignment will help you with the other. Second, staggering the due dates over the course of the semester gives everyone a chance to process each review and, perhaps, to consider reading or consulting the book for their term papers.

Books

• Bart Beaty, Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005).
• Paul S. Boyer, Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age, Second Edition (University of Wisconsin Press, 2002).
• Mingshui Cai, Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002).
• Michael Cart and Christine Jenkins, The Heart Has Its Reasons (Scarecrow, 2006).
• J.M. Coetzee, Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (University of Chicago Press, 1997)
• Herbert N. Foerstel, Banned in the U.S.A.: A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in School and Public Libraries (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002).
• David Hadju, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2008).
• Marjorie Heins, Not in Front of the Children: “Indecency,” Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001).
• Mary Hilton, Morag Styles, and Victor Watson, eds. Opening the Nursery Door: Reading, writing, and childhood 1600-1900 (New York: Routledge, 1997)
• Michelle Martin, Brown Gold: Milestones of African-American Children's Picture Books, 1845-2002 (Routledge, 2004).
• Noel Perrin, Dr. Bowlder’s Legacy: A History of Expurgated Books in England and America (Boston: David R. Godine, 1969).
• Nicholas Tucker, ed. Suitable for Children? Controversies in Children’s Literature (London: Sussex University Press, 1978).
• Mark West, Trust Your Children: Voices Against Censorship in Children’s Literature, 2nd ed. (New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 1997).