Picture-Book Professors
Academia and Children's Literature

Provides a publishing history of the role of academics in children's literature. This title is also available, with additional material, as Open Access.

Melissa M. Terras (Author)

9781108438452, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 4 October 2018

152 pages
18 x 12.6 x 1.7 cm, 0.22 kg

'Terras's work has become more urgent since its publication. It calls for further investigation into how the academy and academics are presented in children's literature, but also for steps forward in diversity and representation. At the moment it seems that the real-life academy might, at least in part, depend on it.' Clare Cavenagh, The Cambridge Quarterly

How is academia portrayed in children's literature? This Element ambitiously surveys fictional professors in texts marketed towards children. Professors are overwhelmingly white and male, tending to be elderly scientists who fall into three stereotypes: the vehicle to explain scientific facts, the baffled genius, and the evil madman. By the late twentieth century, the stereotype of the male, mad, muddlehead, called Professor SomethingDumb, is formed in humorous yet pejorative fashion. This Element provides a publishing history of the role of academics in children's literature, questioning the book culture which promotes the enforcement of stereotypes regarding intellectual expertise in children's media. The Element is also available, with additional material, as Open Access.

1. Introduction
2. Related research: representation, vocation, and higher education
3. Research methodology
4. An analysis of academics in children's illustrated literature
5. Pedagogical, baffled, or mad: the stereotype of academics as plaything
6. Conclusion
Bibliography
Appendix A. Children's books included in the analysis
Appendix B. Academics identified in children's literature, listed chronologically
Appendix C. Potential books identified (but unavailable).

Subject Areas: Children’s & teenage literature studies [DSY], Literary theory [DSA], Literature: history & criticism [DS]