In this article, Boldt considers decisions teachers must make about the value of children's writing as a form of play in primary classrooms. She offers a brief history of the framing of this question at 1966 Dartmouth Conference on English, focusing particularly on the perspective of Jimmy Britton. She highlights the relationship between Britton's…

Profiles the author of over 60 books for children and young adults. (JL)

Comments on the ability of fantasy to evoke images, the validity of fantasy, and influence of fantasy. (DD)

An annotated listing of picture storybooks, realistic fiction, and fanciful fiction. (RL)

Describes the stories told by two three-year-olds and suggests that the storytelling process is a healthy expression of children's imaginations. (DD)

Introducing children to fantasy literature allows them to safely explore the problems and joys of being human. (JH)

Examines the possibly factual origins of several elements of fantasy literature, including giants, dwarfs and goblins, fairies, talking animals, and the ability to transform beings into other shapes. (HTH)

Examines the relationship between humans and the sea, discusses two types of underwater folk creatures--selchies and merfolk--that populate children's books, and indicates how well a number of stories about these creatures work both within their own literary contexts and within the larger folklore-as-metaphysics context. (ET)

Uses summaries and excerpts from ERIC documents to define fantasy, examine its attraction for children, and describe how fantasy may be selected and used in the elementary school classroom. (DD)

Recounts a boy's experiences with writing a story that helped him fulfill emotional needs. (MS)

Examines the ways Bruno Bettelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment" may be used to teach children's literature and the effectiveness of Bettelheim's method of psychoanalytical criticism as a means of understanding fairy tales. (DD)

Notes that fantasy and fairy tales are frequent targets of censorship attempts. Provides a defense against such attacks, by offering an answer (perhaps a challenge) to each of the major objections to fantasy stories. (SR)

Presents the value of stories, especially fairy tales, as ways of both tutoring and expressing the imaginative and intuitive side of the personality. (DD)

Defines and describes the fantasizing motif in children's literature and explains how teachers can use this motif to help children learn to live in society. (JL)

Presents brief reviews of 26 picture books, chapter books, and informational books that deal with families and/or communities. Notes that the picture books and chapter books cover a wide variety of genres including poetry, realistic fiction, and fantasy and that the informational books have a variety of formats, with the "photo essay" dominating.…