No Kids Allowed

Children's Literature for Adults

Michelle Ann Abate author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Johns Hopkins University Press

Published:8th Dec '20

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No Kids Allowed cover

Children's literature isn't just for children anymore. This original study explores the varied forms and roles of children's literature—when it's written for adults.

What do Adam Mansbach's Go the F**k to Sleep and Barbara Park's MA! There's Nothing to Do Here! have in common? These large-format picture books are decidedly intended for parents rather than children. In No Kids Allowed, Michelle Ann Abate examines a constellation of books that form a paradoxical new genre: children's literature for adults. Distinguishing these books from YA and middle-grade fiction that appeals to adult readers, Abate argues that there is something unique about this phenomenon. Principally defined by its form and audience, children's literature, Abate demonstrates, engages with more than mere nostalgia when recast for grown-up readers. Abate examines how board books, coloring books, bedtime stories, and series detective fiction written and published specifically for adults question the boundaries of genre and challenge the assumption that adulthood and childhood are mutually exclusive.

[Abate's] most foundational argument is that the genre of children's literature for adults exists at all. Abate's study moves well beyond the genre itself to include cultural analysis of the shifting, often contradictory boundaries of childhood and adulthood."
American Literary History

ISBN: 9781421438856

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 23mm

Weight: 454g

248 pages