The Playful Antiquarian

The Looking Glass 10.2 (Apr. 2006)

The April 2006 issue of The Looking Glass is a special issue on Japanese children’s literature. It contains the following articles:

• Japanese Picture Books / Jane and Bill McCullam of Cattermole Books
• “When the myth of life began our people shared life with humans, stone to earth, fire to water, trees to sky”: Multiplicity and Commonality in Hiromi Goto’s Water of Possibility / Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak
• “The Art of Emptiness”: Buddhist Nature in picture books of Miyazawa Kenji’s Donguri to Yamaneko (Wildcat and the Acorns) / Helen Kilpatrick
• Walking Along With Nature: A Psychological Interpretation of My Neighbor Totoro / Rieko Okuhara
• Analyzing Ideology in a Japanese Fairy Tale /Jane E. Kelley
• A Selected and Annotated Bibliography of Illustrated Japanese Folktales / Yukiko Tosa
• Anne of Green Gables and Japan / M. Elizabeth DeBlois

There is also an article on Philip Pullman: Elaborately Wound: Philip Pullman’s Marlowean Muse / Lisa M. Miller

This issue was the one that I hoped to submit an article to but did not have time to draft something before the submission deadline. The articles that were submitted and selected are much better than anything I could have written, though.

Add comment May 15th, 2006

The Lion and the Unicorn 30.2 (Apr. 2006)

The April 2006 issue of The Lion and the Unicorn is a special issue on Asian American Children’s Literature edited by Dolores de Manuel and Rocío G. Davis. This issue features the following articles:

• Paying with Shadows / Laurence Yep
• The Cultural Production of Asian American Young Adults in the Novels of Marie G. Lee, An Na, and Doris Jones Yang / Monica Chiu
• Asian American Autobiography for Children: Critical Paradigms and Creative Practice / Rocío G. Davis
• “The sound of bamboo planted deep inside them:” Reclaiming Filipino American History and Identity in Lakas and the Manilatown Fish / Melinda L. De Jesus
• Writing Chinese America into Words and Images: Storytelling and Retelling of The Song of Mu Lan / Lan Dong
• Negotiated Identities and Female Personal Space in Thai American Adolescent Literature / Rahpee Thongthiraj
• Toward a Poetics of Asian American Fantasy: Laurence Yep’s Construction of a Bicultural Mythology / Celestine Woo

This issue also includes book reviews for the following books:

• Archetypes and motifs in folklore and literature: a handbook
• Dime novel in children’s literature
• Clever maids: the secret history of the Grimm fairy tales
• Brown gold: milestones of African American children’s picture books, 1845-2002
• Important books: children’s picture books as art and literature
• Elusive childhood: impossible representations in modern fiction

These articles are available online to Project Muse subscribers only. Check your local library for access to print or electronic copies.

Add comment May 15th, 2006

Lemony Snicket on Law Books

A paragraph so delightful that it had to be shared:

“There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different … But one type of book that practically no one likes to read is a book about the law. Books about the law are notorious for being very long, very dull, and very difficult to read. This is one reason many lawyers make heaps of money. The money is an incentive … to read long, dull, and difficult books.”

–Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events)

Add comment May 13th, 2006

Read along with the Playful Antiquarian

This month I hope to finish cataloging my book collection at LibraryThing. I started in October, but since my collection has grown by about four books per day in the past few weeks, I may never catch up! If you are curious, visit my LibraryThing catalog or subscribe to my recently-added books RSS feed.

Recent acquisitions include

• Oxford companion to children’s literature / Humphrey Carpenter and Mari Prichard
• From cover to cover: evaluating and reviewing children’s books / Kathleen T. Horning
• Growing up with Dick and Jane: learning and living the American dream / Carole Kismaric
• Miffy’s surprise party / Dick Bruna
• Betty Crocker’s new boys’ and girls’ cookbook

Add comment January 9th, 2006

Kerlan Collection Newsletter, Winter 2006

Speaking of the Children’s Literature Research Collections at the University of Minnesota, the Winter 2006 issue of the Kerlan Collection Newsletter [PDF] is online.

Add comment January 6th, 2006