The Poetics Of Childhood

This work investigates the sensibility of childhood and the way writers try to recapture it. It explores the earliest conceptions of innocence and the development of literature about children. It encompasses the pastoral, the dark pastoral, the anti-pastoral; it addresses picture books, fantasy and realism. It looks at the literature of childhood, so that the child and adult can be seen reflectively - the child in the adult and the various stages of childhood as they are remembered and retained in adulthood. It confronts issues of primal and socially constructed desire and the issue of childhood to talk about desire. It is a poetic way of imagining the experience of childhood and explores childhood as a particularly fluid and porous time, it also addresses issues of creativity. This is a reference for teachers, parents, artists and writers. Review: The Poetics of Childhood is a Sterling contribution to the internationally renowned Children and Culture series.... Natov's commanding work..... demonstrates for me the power of the fine art of close reading in the hands of an experienced reader and writer of literary criticism.. - Children's Literature Association Quartely, Vol.28, No. 3, Fall 2003