The purpose of this essay is to examine Harper Lee's insights about education, particularly as found in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Lee apparently relied on reflections of her own experiences as the narrator, Scout, describes her first day in school in chapters two and three. But, it should be kept in mind that the narrative is fiction, a…

This article considers the extent to which medieval "mappaemundi" are an important precedent for literary cartographies in fiction for children. It connects the notion of embeddedness to Peta Mitchell's (2011) suggestion that "mappaemundi" refused to entertain the later, post-Enlightenment cartographic distinction between…

This current study explores the relationship between visual technology (cinema and photography) and a metanarrative preoccupation with the craft of literary narration in two texts by Pablo Palacio (Ecuador, 1906-47). In his novella "Débora" (1927), Palacio employs the language of cinema (e.g., the cinematograph, the cinema, references to…

Can you make James Joyce's short story "Eveline" contemporary and create a modern short story based on Joyce's work? The purpose of this study was to provide a context to Joyce's short story "Eveline," illustrate the journey of my fiction writing, and expand the conversation on using classical fiction as a guide to modern short…

The dolls' house as children's plaything is anything but simple. Inasmuch as the dolls' house may be the reproduction of domestic ideals on a minute scale and an educational model prompting girls to become good housewives, this article argues that it is also a means and space to express imagination, creativity, and agency. Including a short…

This paper considers how "knowledge" of China was presented for Victorian and Edwardian children in "The Boy's Own Paper" ("BOP") between 1879 and 1914. It considers how genre affects the representation of China in the "BOP" by comparing travel narratives and adventure stories. First, it focuses on…

Spatial mental representations can be derived from linguistic and non-linguistic sources of information. This study tested whether these representations could be formed from statistical linguistic frequencies of city names, and to what extent participants differed in their performance when they estimated spatial locations from language or maps. In…

Naturalism was first proposed and formulated by French novelist Emile Zola, and it was introduced to America by American novelist Frank Norris. It is a new and harsher realism. It is a theory in literature emphasizing scientific observation of life without idealism or avoidance of the ugly. American literature naturalists dismissed the validity of…

The function of fiction is to entertain, not to analyze philosophical, political, or psychological concepts and attitudes. (DD)

To determine present trends in junior novels, researchers compared 23 novels written after 1959 with characteristics of junior novels written before that date. The following trends were identified: (1) The action in the majority of novels occurs over a few months. (2) Simple and compound sentences often connected by "and" predominate. (3) The…

Part of a panel discussion on the modern Japanese novelist presented at the 24th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies on March 29, 1972, in New York, New York. (DS)

This study examined titles of successful books, i.e., those that were best sellers or won literary prizes. In all, 3,239 titles in 71 lists by decade were characterized. The single largest category was popular general fiction followed by general nonfiction. About 49% of the titles won or were nominated for awards, and 45% were best sellers. Most…

Chapter from author's book of the same title. (DS)