The Early Reader in Children's Literature and Culture

This book considers Early Readers – books written and designed for children just beginning to read independently. Using approaches from education, child psychology, sociology, cultural studies, and children’s literature, it examines Early Readers as teaching tools; as cultural artifacts that shape cultural and individual subjectivity; as mass-marketed products; and as aesthetic objects. Essays explore how Early Readers contribute to the construction of younger children as readers, thinkers, consumers, and as gendered, raced, classed subjects. They address children’s texts that have been translated and sold around the globe as part of an increasingly transnational children’s media culture.