Exploring Ethics Through Children's Literature


Book Description

Shows how children's literature can be used to help children develop their own strength as independent ethical decision makers.




Ethics and Children's Literature


Book Description

Exploring the ethical questions posed by, in, and about children’s literature, this collection examines the way texts intended for children raise questions of value, depict the moral development of their characters, and call into attention shared moral presuppositions. The essays in Part I look at various past attempts at conveying moral messages to children and interrogate their underlying assumptions. What visions of childhood were conveyed by explicit attempts to cultivate specific virtues in children? What unstated cultural assumptions were expressed by growing resistance to didacticism? How should we prepare children to respond to racism in their books and in their society? Part II takes up the ethical orientations of various classic and contemporary texts, including 'prosaic ethics' in the Hundred Acre Wood, moral discernment in Narnia, ethical recognition in the distant worlds traversed by L’Engle, and virtuous transgression in recent Anglo-American children’s literature and in the emerging children’s literature of 1960s Taiwan. Part III’s essays engage in ethical criticism of arguably problematic messages about our relationship to nonhuman animals, about war, and about prejudice. The final section considers how we respond to children’s literature with ethically focused essays exploring a range of ways in which child readers and adult authorities react to children’s literature. Even as children’s literature has evolved in opposition to its origins in didactic Sunday school tracts and moralizing fables, authors, parents, librarians, and scholars remain sensitive to the values conveyed to children through the texts they choose to share with them.




Ethics in British Children's Literature


Book Description

Featuring close readings of selected poetry, visual texts, short stories and novels published for children since 1945 from Naughty Amelia Jane to Watership Down, this is the first extensive study of the nature and form of ethical discourse in British children's literature. Ethics in British Children's Literature explores the extent to which contemporary writing for children might be considered philosophical, tackling ethical spheres relevant to and arising from books for young people, such as naughtiness, good and evil, family life, and environmental ethics. Rigorously engaging with influential moral philosophers, from Aristotle through Kant and Hegel, to Arno Leopold, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, and Lars Svendsen, this book demonstrates the narrative strategies employed to engage young readers as moral agents.




Life Lessons through Storytelling


Book Description

Storytelling empowers children to engage in discussions; explore ideas about power, respect, community, fairness, equality, and justice; and help frame their understanding of complex ethical issues within a society. In Life Lessons through Storytelling, Donna Eder interviews elementary students and presents their responses to stories from different cultures. Using Aesop's fables and Kenyan and Navajo storytelling traditions as models for classroom use, Eder demonstrates the value of a cross-cultural approach to teaching through storytelling, while providing deep insights into the social psychology of learning.




The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas


Book Description

“Ursula Le Guin is more than just a writer of adult fantasy and science fiction . . . she is a philosopher; an explorer in the landscapes of the mind.” – Cincinnati Enquirer The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and the Pushcart Prize, Ursula K. Le Guin is renowned for her spare, elegant prose, rich characterization, and diverse worlds. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a short story originally published in the collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters.










Raising Good Children


Book Description

Raising decent, caring, and responsible children is the most complex and challenging job in every parent’s life—and an increasingly difficult one in today’s society. Here is the most authoritative book available on this crucial subject, a valuable and sensitive guide for parents who want their children to grow up with lifelong positive values. Based on fascinating research, this groundbreaking work by psychologist and educator Dr. Thomas Lickona describes the predictable stages of moral development from birth to adulthood. And it offers you down-to-earth advice and guidance for each stage: • Seven caring ways to discipline “terrible twos” • Why your preschooler “lies” and how to handle it • What to do about a four-year-old’s back talk • How to handle your seven-year-old’s endless negotiations about what’s “fair” • Why teens have trouble with peer pressure—and how to help them • How to talk to your child about drugs, drinking, and sex • How to help children of any age reason more clearly about what’s right and wrong PLUS . . . A list of more than one hundred children’s books that teach moral values, and much more. “An excellent book on a vastly neglected aspect of raising children.”—Dr. Fitzhugh Dodson, author How to Parent, How to Father “We have been waiting for a book like this for a long time—a readable work that translates a moral development into parents’ language and experience.”—Dolores Curran, author of Traits of a Healthy Family “Truly integrates a moral development theory into a consistent approach to childrearing. . . Word-of-mouth recommendations from parent to parent may lift it to the level of popularity once held by Dr. Spock’s book on child care.”—Moral Education Forum







Ethics and the Early Childhood Educator


Book Description

"New foreword by Rhian Evans Allvin"--Cover.