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No Kids Allowed by Michelle Ann Abate

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No Kids Allowed by Michelle Ann Abate

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 allAbate'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

Michelle Ann Abate is a professor of literature for children and young adults at The Ohio State University. She is the author of five books, including Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History, Bloody Murder: The Homicide Tradition in Children's Literature, and Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics.

SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9781421438863
ISBN 10 1421438860
Title No Kids Allowed
Author Michelle Ann Abate
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Year published 2020-12-08
Number of pages 248
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.