Part I. Picturebooks
Chapter 1: Heidegger, Winnicott, and The Velveteen Rabbit: Anxiety,
Toys, and the Drama of Metaphysics
Kirsten Jacobson
Chapter 2: Slave Morality in The Rainbow Fish
Claudia Mills
Chapter 3: Absolutely Positively Feeling that Way and More:
Paradoxes of Fiction and Judith Viorst’s Alexander stories
Dina Mendonca
Chapter 4: Are You My Mother? Finding the Self in (M)others
Licia Carlson
Chapter 5: Horton Hears Badiou!: Ethics and an Understanding
of Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!
Carl F. Miller
Chapter 6: Mapping Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of
Harris Burdick
Kelly Jones
Chapter 7: Silverstein’s Missing Pieces: Lessons in Love and
Incompleteness Matthew F. Pierlott
Chapter 8: Is Arthur’s Anger Reasonable?
Karin Murris
Chapter 9: Gift-Giving, Waiting, and Walking—The (Non-)Reciprocal,
(Im-)Possible Apprenticeship of Frog and Toad
Peter Costello
Part II. Chapter Books
Chapter 10: Word Play, Language-Games, and Unfair Labels in
Beverly Cleary’s Ramona the Pest
Aaron A. Schiller and Denise H. B. Schiller
Chapter 11: The things that are not among the things there are
to do: Harriet the Spy and Maurice Blanchot’s Passivity
Oona Eisenstadt
Chapter 12: Intelligence and Utopia in Mrs. Frisby and the
Rats of NIMH
Sarah O’Brien Conly
Chapter 13: The Cricket in Times Square: Crickets, Compassion, and
the Good Life
Court Lewis
Chapter 14: Pollyanna, Moral Sainthood, and Childhood Ideals
Claire M. Brown
Part III. Multiple Avenues of Criticism
Chapter 15: The Giving Tree and Environmental Philosophy: Listening
to Deep Ecology, Feminism and Trees
Ellen Miller
Chapter 16: The Giving Tree, Women, and the Great Society
Milena Radeva
Chapter 17: King of the Wild Things: Children and the Passionate
Attachments of the Anthropological Machine
Tyson E. Lewis
Chapter 18: Lovingly Impolite
Lindsay Lerman
Claire Brown is assistant professor of philosophy at Asbury
University in Wilmore, Kentucky. Claire recently completed
her dissertation on supererogation and virtue ethics at the
University of Notre Dame. She has broad interests in
normative theory (esp. virtue ethics), metaethics, and philosophy
of religion.
Licia Carlson is associate professor of philosophy at Providence
College. Her research interests include ethics and bioethics,
feminist philosophy, contemporary French philosophy, and
aesthetics. She is the co-editor of Cognitive Disability and Its
Challenge to Moral Philosophy and her book, The Faces of
Intellectual Disability: Philosophical Reflections was published in
2009. She is currently writing a book on music, philosophy and
disability.
Sarah Conly teaches in the philosophy department at Bowdoin
College, in Brunswick Maine. She was an undergraduate at
Princeton, a graduate student at Cornell, and has also taught at
the University of Michigan. She enjoys children’s literature,
kayaking, and hanging out with her dog.
Peter Costello is associate professor of philosophy at Providence
College. His research is centered in phenomenology,
particularly focused on Husserl, Edith Stein, and Merleau-Ponty.
He has written articles on phenomenology and both modernist
literature and contemporary American drama. His book Layers
in Husserl’s Phenomenology: On Meaning and Intersubjectivity is
forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press.
Oona Eisenstadt is associate professor of religious studies and
Fred Krinsky Chair of Jewish Studies at Pomona College. She
has published extensively on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas,
and has also written on Derrida, Rosenzweig, Plato, Shakespeare,
and J.K. Rowling. She received her doctoral degree from
McMaster University and, despite residency in California, remains a
proud Canadian.
Kirsten Jacobson is assistant professor of philosophy at the
University of Maine. Professor Jacobson specializes in 19th
and 20th century Continental philosophy and the philosophy of
art. Her research interests include the study of spatiality
and the interpersonal significance of space, the nature of home and
dwelling, and more generally, the philosophical significance and
status of the phenomenological method. Her published work has
focused significantly on using the phenomenological arguments of
Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger to conduct novel
analyses of psychological and physiological illnesses ranging from
spatial neglect to agoraphobia, and more generally to consider
issues of"existential health." In 2009, she created a
philosophy outreach program called Philosophy Across the Ages,
which brings together undergraduate philosophy students with local
high school students and retirement community members for
seminar-style discussions of accessible and exciting philosophical
texts.
Kelly Jones is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Guelph in
Ontario, Canada where she divides her time between research,
writing, teaching, and producing radio programs. Her research
interests include 20th Century European philosophy, and the
intersections of philosophy and literature, in particular. Kelly is
very excited to welcome a child of her own, shortly, and is excited
to read and re-read a wide swath of children's literature as a
result.
Lindsay Lerman is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy Department at
the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. She currently lives in
Northern Arizona, where she is completing her dissertation and
creating a program with the Philosophy Department at Northern
Arizona University to make philosophy a part of the curriculum in
local elementary schools. Her work on Bataille’s concept of
nonknowledge and its relation to mysticism will be featured in a
forthcoming volume (from Inter-Disciplinary Press) on spirituality
and the 21st century.
Court Lewis teaches philosophy at Pellissippi State Technical
Community College. His research interests include ethics, the
holocaust, social/political Philosophy, and popular culture.
His area of specialty is the study of forgiveness and moral
responsibility. Court has appeared in several edited collections
dealing with a variety of topics, from popular culture to peace
studies, and he recently co-edited Doctor Who and Philosophy with
Paula Smithka.
Tyson E. Lewis is associate professor of educational philosophy at
Montclair State University. He has published articles in
journals such as theory@buffalo, Cultural
Critique, Culture, Theory, and Critique, and Rethinking
Marxism. In addition to the book Education Out of
Bounds: Rethinking Cultural Studies for a Posthuman Age (New
York: Palgrave, 2010), he is currently completing a manuscript
titled The Aesthetics of Education: Theatre, Curiosity, and
Politics in the Work of Jacques Ranciere and Paulo
Freire (London: Continuum, in press).
Dina Mendonça earned an M.E.d. in philosophy for children at
Montclair State University. She went on to receive a Ph.D. in
philosophy at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. She
is currently a member of the research team of Instituto de
Filosofia da Linguagem, holding a post-doctoral position working on
a Pragmatic Analysis of Emotion (www.emotionemotion.com). In
addition, she works in Philosophy or Children in classrooms as well
as training for teacher and educators developing new material for
Philosophy for Children. Her forthcoming Manual for
Philosophy for Children is scheduled for publication in Portugal in
Fall 2011.
Carl F. Miller received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida.
He teaches literature at the University of Alabama, where he
specializes in Anglophone modernism and postmodernism, critical
theory, and children’s literature. He has recent publications
on the influence of the Cold War in the 1980s graphic novel, the
expression of utopia by Michael Jackson in Captain EO, and the role
of sports in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. He is
currently working on a book about the literature and culture of the
1980s Cold War.
Ellen Miller is associate professor in the Department of Philosophy
and Religion Studies at Rowan University. She is the author
of Releasing Philosophy, Thinking Art (Davies Group Publishers,
2009), the first full length philosophical study of Sylvia Plath’s
poetry. Her publications have addressed topics in philosophy of
art, feminist philosophy, and ethics. Her current research
shows how Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty’s views on nature, the
environment and technology resonate with current work in
educational and environmental thinking.
Claudia Mills is associate professor of philosophy at the
University of Colorado at Boulder, specializing in the fields of
ethics and political philosophy, with particular interest in
philosophical and ethical analyzes of children's literature.
She is the author of over forty books for young readers, most
recently Mason Dixon: Pet Disasters (Knopf, 2011) and Fractions =
Trouble! (Farrar, 2011).
Karin Murris is visiting professor at the University of Wales in
Newport (UK) and senior lecturer in philosophy of education at the
School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in
Johannesburg, South Africa. She studied library science in
Amsterdam, philosophy at the University of Leiden (NL), University
of London (MA), and completed her Ph.D. in philosophy with children
in 1997. Trained under Professor Matthew Lipman, she pioneered the
use of picturebooks for the teaching of philosophy and helped to
set up the professional development courses in philosophy with
children in Britain and SA. As co-director of consultancy
Dialogueworks she has worked as an integrity consultant and
philosophy with children senior trainer with children and adults in
schools, businesses, and universities for over 20 years. She is the
author of Teaching Philosophy with Picture Books (1992), and with
Joanna Haynes Storywise:Thinking through Stories (2002) and
Picturebooks, Pedagogy and Philosophy (2011). Her research
interests include philosophy of education, children’s literature
(picturebooks), childhood, and professional dilemmas and ethics in
education.
Matthew F. Pierlott is associate professor of philosophy at West
Chester University of Pennsylvania. His teaching and research
focus on ethics and agency. He has contributed several essays
on business ethics and on integrity to books within the philosophy
and popular culture genre, including Dr. Seuss and Philosophy: Oh,
the Thinks You Can Think! (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).
Milena Radeva earned her advanced degree in English from Sofia
University in Bulgaria, and her M.A. and Ph. D. in English from the
Pennsylvania State University. She currently teaches in the
English Department at Providence College. Her research
interests center on the theme of philanthropy in British and
American Modernism, and she has published articles on philanthropy
in the works of Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton. Works under
review include an article on the role of gift-giving in Rebecca
West’s Eastern European travelogue, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
Aaron Allen Schiller holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the
University of California, San Diego and is currently a
visiting assistant professor of philosophy at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He specializes in the intersection between the
philosophies of knowledge, mind, and language, and is especially
interested in the nature of the contents of the perceptual
experiences of the socially-embedded subject. Schiller's recent
publication in Philosophical
Psychology develops an enactive account of the
perception of facts, but he has also written about the role of
rationality as interpretability in Wilfrid Sellars's "myth of
Jones," the (deontic) logic of the phenomena of linguistic
license, and is the editor of Stephen Colbert and
Philosophy.
Denise H. B. Schiller is a children's literature scholar currently
living in Milwaukee, WI. Her interests are in girls chapter books
and picturebooks, particularly Scandinavian. She has written on
feminist criticism, women's changing roles in society, and orphans.
While studying for her M.A. in children's literature from San Diego
State University, she studied with Jerry Griswold, Alida Allison
(known as the "mother of children's literature" in India), and June
Cummins.
Editor Costello (Providence College) brings together an excellent
sequence of examinations of the philosophical ideas in various
children's literature. The text is split into unequal thirds that
discuss picture books (nine chapters), chapter books (five
chapters), and multiple readings/interpretations of the same text
(four chapters, two per text). The contributors are primarily
philosophers, but Costello's introduction situates the book both
within the context of the philosophy and children movement and
within scholarly interest in children's literature. In many ways,
this volume owes less to the tradition of Matthew Lipman and Gareth
Matthews than to the field of literary criticism. Thus, readers
gain insight into reading and using these texts, but the texts
remain objects to be examined by scholars--not readings to be
shared with children. The chapters on Shel Silverstein's Missing
Piece books and The Giving Tree are among the most engaging. The
chapter on Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH,
written by his daughter, Sarah O'Brien Conly, follows closely
behind. This is a valuable resource for those who do philosophy
with children, scholars of children's literature, and educators
looking for innovative readings of standard children's literature.
Summing Up: Highly recommended.
*CHOICE*
As we read children’s literature to our children, we always knew
that the writers of many of these little books were engaged in
philosophizing. Now a wonderful, focused, and informed study of
particular children’s books explores the philosophical thinking and
theorizing that is taking place in these writings. With continental
philosophy in the background, the philosophical world of these
books is opened up for those who want to find more out of what we
read to our children and grandchildren, and what they read to
themselves. The philosophical and moral language of these
short works of fiction is taken seriously through philosophical
essays by multiple contributors. Peter Costello’s introduction
situates this enterprise in terms of contemporary continental
thinking about the meaning of an engagement with human, personal,
social, and moral issues with the caveat that such works must not
be used for propaganda or to diminish human freedom and experience,
but rather as an opening up of the child’s imagination, perception
and thought.
*Hugh J. Silverman, Executive Director, The International
Association for Philosophy and Literature, and Professor of
Philosophy and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at Stony
Brook University*
Philosophy in Children's Literature is a nostalgic revisit of
childhood favorites combined with a readable, introspective
examination of the relationship between children's literature and
philosophy. This book supports the premise that children are, by
nature, philosophers, and that philosophy has meaning for humans of
all ages.
*Debra Dew, Rockford College*
Children's literature is an especially important part of culture,
because of the formative role it plays in shaping the souls of
future adults. This volume opens up the field of children's
literature by way of allowing philosophy, and philosophers, to mark
out new paths of understanding through many of our culture's
familiar children's stories. By bringing together an international
and interdisciplinary group of scholars, many of whom are directly
connected to the production or criticism of children's literature,
Costello invites us to re-connect to texts we thought we knew and
to see them in a new, provocative light. This book should be of
interest to any educated reader but will be of particular use in
college courses on literature, philosophy, literary theory, and
education.
*John Russon, University of Guelph*
What do Kant, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Derrida, and Badiou have to
do with books like The Velveteen Rabbit, Where the Wild Things Are,
and Pollyanna? This book’s exploration of the intriguing
conjunction of philosophy and children’s literature has much to
tell us not only about the relevance of ethical, ecological,
feminist, existentialist (and many other) issues to children’s
books, but also about the way children already have philosophical
lives. In a series of sustained readings of short fiction for
children, from picture books for the very young to books with
chapters for adolescents, this volume takes a radical theoretical
approach which yields many original insights.
*Ruth Parkin-Gounelas, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,
Greece*
Is philosophical thinking relevant to children’s literature? The
very presence and details of each individual essay would be a
resounding yes
These essays are written very accessibly, for an audience who is
unfamiliar with academic philosophy and they are written with a
conviction that shows the real value in focusing on children’s
literature with a philosophical lens.
*Metapsychology Online*
Scholars of children's literature will be introduced to
applications of philosophy to this field not usually found in its
journals (though the linguistic and gender approaches will be
familiar); philosophy students will be exposed to the richness of
children's texts as vehicles for understanding those philosophies.
It lives up to its promise to offer both children's literature
scholars and philosophers new ways of thinking about familiar
texts.
*Children's Literature Association Quarterly*
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