Cub reporters : American children's literature and journalism in the Golden Age / Paige Gray.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gray, Paige, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Children's stories, American--History and criticism.

Children's stories, American.

Young adult fiction, American--History and criticism.

Young adult fiction, American.

Journalism and literature--United States--History--20th century.

Journalism and literature.

Reporters and reporting in literature.

Reporters and reporting--United States.

Reporters and reporting.

History.

United States.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xxxvii, 131 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019]

Summary:

Investigates how depictions of young people in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America use artifice to destabilize pre-existing narratives of truth, news, and fact. Cub Reporters considers the intersections between children's literature and journalism in the United States during the period between the Civil War and World War I. American children's literature of this time, including works from such writers as L. Frank Baum, Horatio Alger Jr., and Richard Harding Davis, as well as unique journalistic examples including the children's page of the Chicago Defender, subverts the idea of news. In these works, journalism is not a reporting of fact, but a reporting of artifice, or human-made apparatus--artistic, technological, psychological, cultural, or otherwise. Using a methodology that combines approaches from literary analysis, historicism, cultural studies, media studies, and childhood studies, Paige Gray shows how the cub reporters of children's literature report the truth of artifice and relish it. They signal an embrace of artifice as a means to access individual agency, and in doing so, both child and adult readers are encouraged to deconstruct and create the world anew. Paige Gray is Professor of Liberal Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Contents:

Introduction: American Children's Literature, the Yellow-Kid Reporter Era, and Artifice

Carrying the Banner: Horatio Alger, Jr., the Newsboy, and the Paper

Making News and Faking Truth: Richard Harding Davis, the Reporter, and American Youth

A Spectacle of Girls: L. Frank Baum, Women Reporters, and the Man Behind the Screen in Early Twentieth-Century America

Join the Club: African American Children's Literature, Social Change, and the Chicago Defender Junior

Conclusion: I Want to Know Everything: Harriet the Spy and New Journalism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781438475394

143847539X

OCLC:

1096230480