MA Children’s Literature: Children’s Book Illustration

This course emphasises the pleasures of literature and aims to make students knowledgeable and committed readers of literature for children and young people. In the course we aim to address a range of issues in relation to culture and identity through literature for children.

We take a wide definition which includes picture books and graphic novels, media and dramatic texts. We consider historical perspectives and explore children's literature for today, as a distinct form, which is a product of both literary traditions and current ideological contexts.

Sessions will include consideration of the nature of literature for children, poetry and oral texts, picture books, media texts, graphic novels and reader response theory, and an exploration of literature about the refugee experience.

The core practice module Children’s Book Illustration Practice will develop creative and professional skills in children’s illustration through project-based work and developing advanced skills in materials and communication of ideas and emotions, leading into the practice dissertation.

Children’s Publishing will prepare students for transition into the professional field and the wider publication of their own and others' work, which may include instruction in self-publishing and post-digital opportunities for the publication and distribution of graduates' professional activities in traditional and emerging forms of publishing. Students will learn principles of typography, typesetting, pre-flight, and scanning of analogue materials for press. They will be introduced to the principles of children's publishing, which in any given year may include the landscape of the contemporary industry and the business models of publishing and self-publishing. The principles of marketing and distribution, including budgeting, will be inculcated.

This Module will enable students to carry out a piece of ‘action research’, investigating a learning environment, in which an intervention based on literature is made by the student.

At the onset of this module students will set up participant-observer, ‘action research’ projects involving themselves and child or young adult readers. Through seminar discussion, students will learn how to adapt and change the project; how to report on ‘work in progress’, how to analyse process within the progression of the project, how to use learning theory, talk analysis, reader-response theory. As the project progresses the students will learn how to analyse and evaluate the data they are collecting in terms of use of language, social interactions around literary texts, psychological indications given by how children speak and behave in relation to literary texts, the importance of the role of intertextuality, social class, race and gender in how or why the children are responding in particular ways.

By the end of their projects, the students will be able to produce lucid accounts of this original research, evaluating both their ‘intervention’ in the learning environment and the children’s progress through the project, showing how the account was informed by theory and by the seminar discussions so that the project may a) be reproduced by others attempting similar projects; b) inform the debates around literacy, oracy and children’s literature; c) affect and improve the students’ own practice in whatever learning environment they work.

This module focuses on issues of race, ethnicity and cultural diversity in education. We will begin by considering what these terms mean, before discussing how and why ethnic and racial boundaries have been constructed through history, and to what extent people accept or contest these boundaries. We will pay particular attention to the history of the concept of racism, and to some of its contemporary manifestations around the world.

From these starting points we will move on to consider how these concepts impact on education. Issues such as what is or should constitute a 'good pupil', the nature of the teacher’s role in the classroom, what knowledge is valued, and who decides, will be investigated. We will also consider how other aspects of identity, notably social class and gender, intersect with ethnicity and race to affect learning and learner identities in different ways.

The module aims to challenge stereotypes, and notions of ethnic identities as fixed and unchanging. It invites participants to reflect on their own ethnic and cultural background, and to explore how this influences their own understandings of racialisation and identity. It also expects participants to draw directly on their own personal experiences as learners and, where appropriate, as teachers. Throughout the module we will seek to consider strategies and discourse which lead to a more inclusive socio-cultural approach to teaching and learning, and to experience the excitement and complexity of being part of an inclusive multicultural classroom ourselves.

You explore key ideas and issues in the area of young children’s learning, with special reference to the cultural contexts of that learning. You consider the impact of such ideas and issues on curriculum and policy development and become familiar with techniques for, and approaches to, observing and analysing young children’s learning. This includes a consideration of: the care and development of young children in diverse settings; cross cultural perspectives on children’s learning; the concept of childhood and its impact on policy development. Visits are taken to observe young children in different settings. 

This module will ask you to reassess and articulate the current state of your practices. It builds on your prior learning from former degrees, and professional practices. You'll reinvigorate and position your overlapping practices (artistic and pedagogic) within the contexts of your professional, pedagogic practice, and through a critical engagement with contemporary art and theory 

Aims 

• To provide you with an opportunity to identify and evaluate the breadth and scope of your existing practice/skills/techniques and to enable you to articulate the current state of your practice.
• To enable the production of new work/processes.
• To enable critical reflection in relation to contemporary art and contemporary developments in education and theory, and in relation to current exhibitions/practices. 
• To reflect on the engagement of current pedagogical practice with artistic practice, including an analysis of the validity of any distinction/integration between artistic and pedagogical practice.

This module introduces the practice of writing picture books for children (Grade, 3-7 years) It offers you the opportunity to develop creative work in progress, give and receive feedback in weekly workshops and experiment with new forms, readerships and voices.

It also encourages you to discuss the work of established writers for younger readers in relation to your own writing practice and consider the theoretical, social and cultural contexts of contemporary writing for children. The workshop will aim to allow you to develop your own interests and preferences. Critical analysis, close reading, workshop exercises and critical evaluation methods will be used to enable you to develop and demonstrate an ability to produce writing in different forms, from a number of different perspectives and to develop informed critical understanding in this field.

You will be required to read widely and to follow current debates and research. You will explore a wide variety of picture book texts to better understand the joys and challenges of writing for young readers. You will be encouraged to experiment with writing for different age ranges and genres to help you hone your individual writing interests, preferences and styles.