ABSTRACT
The study of children’s literature involves three elements-the literature, the children, and the adult critics. The relationship between these is complex, partly because childhood and ‘the child’ are difficult to define, partly because adults need to ‘construct’ the child in order to talk about the books, and partly because the literature is assumed to be ‘good for’ children in some way. The tensions which are generated are fundamental to the ways in which we think and talk about the subject; in this chapter, Karín Lesnik-Oberstein sets out the fascinating range of positions that can be taken in the search for working definitions.
