Books in the Children's Literature Association Centennial Studies series

This collection of 13 essays, published in association with the Children's Literature Association, celebrates the centennial of the publication of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit", by Beatrix Potter. It explores how contemporary American children respond to the timeless appeal of Peter's antics.

In Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows: A Children's Classic at 100, editors Jackie C. Horne and Donna R. White have assembled a collection of essays that look at the book in terms of class, gender and nationality, as well as its construction of heteronormative masculinity, the very English novel's appeal to Chinese readers, and the meaning of a text in which animals can be human-like, pets, servants, and even food.

Although L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was published more than 100 years ago, literary critics and historians continue to discover new approaches to the world of Oz. This collection of essays represents some of the most interesting of these new approaches.

Frances Hodgson Burnett gained famed not only as an author of social fictions and romances but also for writing the immensely popular children's novel Little Lord Fauntleroy. She seemed an unlikely candidate to pen a quiet, realistic, and unsentimental paean to disagreeable children and the natural world, which has the power to heal them. But it is precisely these qualities that have garnered The Secret Garden both a continued audience and a central place in the canon of children's literature for a century. In Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden: A Children's Classic at 100, some of the most respected scholars of children's literature consider Burnett's seminal work from modern critical perspectives. Contributors examine the works and authors that influenced Burnett, identify authors who have drawn on The Secret Garden in their writing, and situate the novel in historical and theoretical contexts. These essays push beyond the themes that have tended to occupy the majority of academic scholars who have written about The Secret Garden to date. In doing so, they approach the text from theoretical perspectives that allow new light to illuminate old debates. Scholars and students of children's literature, women's literature, transcontinental literature, and the Victorian/Edwardian period will find in this collection refreshing new looks at a children's classic.

Celebrating 100 years of Peter Pan, this fourth volume in the Centennial Studies series explores the cultural contents of Barrie's creation and the continuing impact of Peter Pan on children's literature and popular culture today, especially focusing on the fluctuations of time and narrative strategies.