Assignment
Write a review of a work of literary criticism, such as you might do for an academic journal. I'll post it to the Electronic Bulletin Board so that all your classmates can benefit from it. So, when you turn it in, please give me two copies, one hard copy and one copy electronic copy. For the file format, please use either Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf).
Some Reviews by Me
- "O Puppet, Where Art Thou?: The Transformations of Pinocchio." Review of Richard Wunderlich and Thomas J. Morrissey's Pinocchio Goes Postmodern: Perils of a Puppet in the United States. Children's Literature 32 (2004): 226-230. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/childrens_literature/v032/32.1nel.html>.
- "Metaphors and Paranoia: Two Approaches to Contemporary American Fiction." Review of Timothy Melley's Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America and Arthur Saltzman's This Mad "Instead": Governing Metaphors in Contemporary Fiction. Modern Fiction Studies 48.2 (Summer 2002): 480-85. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_fiction_studies/v048/48.2nel.html>. This piece reviews two books. You need only review one book. So, in other words, if you were to omit the introductory paragraph and concluding paragraphs, this review would be twice as much as I'm asking you to do. However, to repeat, you will review only one.
- Review of James Carter's Talking Books. The Lion and the Unicorn 25.2 (April 2001): 328-30. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lion_and_the_unicorn/v025/25.2nel.html>.
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
Each graduate student should choose a different book to review. Choose one of the following books.
- Joyce Antler, Lucy Sprague Mitchell: The Making of a Modern Woman (Yale UP, 1987).
- Beverly Lyon Clark, Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children's Literature (Johns Hopkins UP, 2003).
- Barbara Elleman, Virginia Lee Burton: A Life in Art (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002).
- Edward Gorey, Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey, ed. Karen Wilkin (Harcourt, 2001).
- Leonard S. Marcus, Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon (1992; Quill/Morrow, 1999).
- Leonard S. Marcus, A Caldecott Celebration: Six Artists and Their Path to the Cadlecott Medal (Walker & Co., 1998).
- Michelle Martin, Brown Gold: Milestones of African-American Children's Picture Books, 1845-2002 (Routledge, 2004).
- Jean Nathan, The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright (Henry Holt and Co., 2004).
- Perry Nodelman, Words About Pictures (U of Georgia P, 1988).
- Maurice Sendak, Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures (1988; Noonday, 1990).
- Alexander Theroux, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey (Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books, 2000).
- Jack Zipes, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (London: Heinemann, 1982).