Reading for Learning
Cognitive approaches to children's literature
Author
How does reading fiction affect young people? How can they transfer fictional experience into real life? Why do they care about fictional characters? How does fiction enhance young people's sense of self-hood? Supported by cognitive psychology and brain research, this ground-breaking book is the first study of young readers' cognitive and emotional engagement with fiction. It explores how fiction stimulates perception, attention, imagination and other cognitive activity, and opens radically new ways of thinking about literature for young readers. Examining a wide range of texts for a young audience, from picturebooks to young adult novels, the combination of cognitive criticism and children’s literature theory also offers significant insights for literary studies beyond the scope of children’s fiction. An important milestone in cognitive criticism, the book provides convincing evidence that reading fiction is indispensable for young people’s intellectual, emotional and social maturation.
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 3] 2014. viii, 247 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
-
Acknowledgments | pp. vii–viii
-
What is cognitive criticism and what's in it for children's literature research? | pp. 1–20
-
Chapter 1. Knowledge of the world | pp. 21–48
-
Chapter 2. Three possible worlds | pp. 49–74
-
Chapter 3. Knowledge of other people | pp. 75–100
-
Chapter 4. Creative mind-reading | pp. 101–140
-
Chapter 5. Knowledge of self | pp. 141–154
-
Chapter 6. Memory of the present | pp. 155–176
-
Chapter 7. Ethical knowledge | pp. 177–198
-
Chapter 8. The ethics of address and the ethics of response | pp. 199–224
-
How to read a children's book and why | pp. 225–228
-
References
-
Index | pp. 245–248
“Nikolajeva brings her wide reading in cognitive literary study into productive interaction with her deep knowledge of children’s literature. The result is a learned and lucid volume, a work of interest to experts in children’s literature and cognitive critics alike. Moreover, Nikolajeva’s conclusions about the value of literary reading extend beyond children’s literature, carrying significant and salutary implications for literary study at all ages.”
Patrick Colm Hogan, University of Connecticut
“
Reading for Learning is part detailed introduction to a rapidly developing discipline (‘literary critics are fascinated by the new vistas opened up by brain research’), part passionate polemic (‘reading is social justice’), part lively analyses of children’s picture books and novels, and part survey of the connections between criticism, psychology and literacy. As an ‘open-ended exploration’ of the rapidly-developing inter-disciplinary field of Cognitive Criticism, it is timely, highly readable, and, like the rest of Nikolajeva’s work, elegantly authoritative.”
Peter Hunt, University of Cardiff
“This book offers scholars of children's literature a smart new way of addressing the field's key questions. What do children learn from children's literature? How do we know? An important intervention, and a must-read for anyone interested in not just how we read, but why.”
Philip Nel, Kansas State University
“Maria Nikolajeva has given us a brilliant and engaging synthesis of cognitive literary criticism. The work is unforgettable in its applications of this criticism to works of children's literature across the ages. She makes a compelling case for the essential role of this literature in the maturation of children's comprehension of themselves and others in the worlds of fiction and fantasy.”
Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University
“In this masterful introduction to the possibilities of bringing cognitive criticism into productive conversation with children's literature, Nikolajeva exposes and goes some way to correct a blind spot in each field. In both her theoretical explanations and her close readings of children's texts, she demonstrates that while children's literature can be better understood and interpreted through an understanding of how particular cognitive functions such as memory, perception, attention, and empathy make it possible for young readers to engage with fiction, cognitive criticism itself can be further nuanced by a frank recognition of the cognitive andaffective differences between adult and child readers. Her focus on how and what kinds of knowledge are made available through fiction and her emphasis on the ethics of narrative will invigorate discussions of ideological interpellation and transformation as other scholars will surely be inspired to take up her challenge to enter this crucial conversation. As in all of her previous work, Nikolajeva refines and redefines the field of children's literature criticism, pointing an exciting and vibrant way forward.”
Karen Coats, Illinois State University
“Maria Nikolajeva gives us the science of cognitive criticism in all itsbreathtaking complexity and applies it to children's literature in ways that enhance rather than diminish the poetry and poetics of narrative art. Taking us to Where the Wild Things Are, Narnia, Oxford, and Panem, she deftly combines evidence with intuition to show how counterfactuals open up minds and rewire our brains. Reading for Learning is as adventurous, engaging, and persuasive as the literary minds and worlds it explores.”
Maria Tatar, Harvard University
Cited by
Cited by 88 other publications
Alkestrand, Malin & Christopher Owen
2018. A Cognitive Analysis of Characters in Swedish and Anglophone Children's Fantasy Literature. International Research in Children's Literature 11:1 ► pp. 65 ff. 
Ameel, Lieven
2022. Narrative Forms of Adaptation, Retreat, and Mitigation in Richard Ford'sLet Me Be Frank with You. Poetics Today 43:1 ► pp. 127 ff.
Arizpe, Evelyn
2021. Migrant shoes and forced walking in children’s literature about refugees: Material testimony and embodied simulation. Migration Studies 9:3 ► pp. 1343 ff.
Arizpe and, Evelyn & Emma McGilp
2022. Picturebook Futures. In A Companion to Children's Literature, ► pp. 193 ff.
ARZIK-ERZURUMLU, Özüm
2021. Çeviri çocuk kitaplarında Korona: Çocukları bilgilendirme için bir araç. RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi
Attar, Dena
2018. A Democracy of Children’s Literature Critics? The Opportunities and Risks of Paying Attention to Open Reviews and Mass Discussion. Children's Literature in Education 49:4 ► pp. 430 ff.
Attar, Dena & Janet Maybin
2016. The Contribution of Children’s Literature Studies. In Futures for English Studies, ► pp. 179 ff.
Backman, Anna
2020. Shadow in children’s picturebooks: highlighting children’s perspectives. International Journal of Early Years Education ► pp. 1 ff.
2022. Fictionalised Non-fiction Picturebooks for Preschoolers: Children’s Responses to Imaginary Constructs in Designed Reading Activities. Children's Literature in Education
Balaha, Hossam Magdy, Hesham Arafat Ali & Mahmoud Badawy
2021. Automatic recognition of handwritten Arabic characters: a comprehensive review. Neural Computing and Applications 33:7 ► pp. 3011 ff.
Barone, Diane & Rebecca Barone
2016. “Really,” “Not Possible,” “I Can't Believe It”: Exploring Informational Text in Literature Circles. The Reading Teacher 70:1 ► pp. 69 ff.
2019. Fourth-grade gifted students participation in literature circles. Gifted Education International 35:2 ► pp. 121 ff.
Brodski, Michael
2019. Contemporary Children’s Film, CGI, and the Child Viewer’s Attention. In The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television, ► pp. 549 ff.
Burke, Michael & Karen Coats
2022. Stylistics and children’s literature. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 31:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Butler, Catherine
2018. Not I? Critics Versus Readers. In Literary Studies Deconstructed, ► pp. 11 ff.
Cadden, Mike
2022. Narrative Theory and Children's Literature. In A Companion to Children's Literature, ► pp. 376 ff.
Castellano Sanz, Margarida
2022. Challenging Picturebooks and Domestic Geographies. In Managing Pandemic Isolation With Literature as Therapy [Advances in Psychology, Mental Health, and Behavioral Studies, ], ► pp. 213 ff.
Coats, Karen & Gretchen Papazian
2023. Introduction. In Emotion in Texts for Children and Young Adults [Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 13], ► pp. 1 ff.
Daly, Nicola
2021. Voices in the Library: Curating New Zealand Children’s Literature. New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship 27:1 ► pp. 33 ff.
2021. Kittens, Blankets and Seaweed: Developing Empathy in Relation to Language Learning via Children’s Picturebooks. Children's Literature in Education 52:1 ► pp. 20 ff.
Derby, Melissa
2023. Talking Together: The Effects of Traditional Māori Pedagogy on Children’s Early Literacy Development. Education Sciences 13:2 ► pp. 207 ff.
Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Justyna
2020. Reading About Solidarity and Collective Action: Social Minds in Radical Fantasy Fiction. Children's Literature in Education 51:2 ► pp. 144 ff.
Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Justyna & Mateusz Marecki
2015. Understanding Motherhood as Maturation: Maternity Scripts in Lois Lowry’s Son. Children's Literature in Education 46:2 ► pp. 190 ff.
Dymel-Trzebiatowska, Hanna
2016. Visual representations of war in Polish and Scandinavian picturebooks. A metaphorical perspective. Problemy Wczesnej Edukacji 34:3 ► pp. 118 ff.
2016. Några tankar om nordisk barnlitteratur och dess översättning ur ett polskt perspektiv. Folia Scandinavica Posnaniensia 21:1 ► pp. 46 ff.
Dědinová, Tereza
2018. Žijeme ve fantazii – fantastická literatura jako prostředek proměny mysli a světa. Bohemica litteraria :2 ► pp. 145 ff.
Eynur, Baybars Recep, Aytul Eynur, Mustafa Said Erzeybek, E. Masal, I. Önder, S. Beşoluk, H. Çalişkan & E. Demirhan
2017. Studying attention levels of the university students from various sport branches. SHS Web of Conferences 37 ► pp. 01059 ff.
Fjällström, Eva & Lydia Kokkola
2015. Resisting Focalisation, Gaining Empathy: Swedish Teenagers Read Irish Fiction. Children's Literature in Education 46:4 ► pp. 394 ff.
Flegar, Željka
2022. Mediating Girl Power: A Cognitive Approach to Enola Holmes on Page and Screen. Children's Literature in Education
García Ochoa, Gabriel & Sarah McDonald
2020. Embedding the Curriculum in Cultural Literacy: Reading Across Cultures. In Cultural Literacy and Empathy in Education Practice, ► pp. 161 ff.
2020. Cultural Literacy and the Case for Empathy. In Cultural Literacy and Empathy in Education Practice, ► pp. 21 ff.
2020. “Organic” Cultural Literacy—A Case Study. In Cultural Literacy and Empathy in Education Practice, ► pp. 69 ff.
García-González, Macarena & Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak
2020. New Materialist Openings to Children's Literature Studies. International Research in Children's Literature 13:1 ► pp. 45 ff.
Giddens, Eugene
2019. Christmas Books for Children,
Giovanelli, Marcello
2018. Construing the Child Reader: A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis of the Opening to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. Children's Literature in Education 49:2 ► pp. 180 ff.
2022. Cognitive Grammar and Readers’ Perceived Sense of Closeness: A Study of Responses to Mary Borden’s ‘Belgium’. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 31:3 ► pp. 407 ff.
Hanssen, Jessica Allen & Maja Henriette Jensvoll
2020. Linking Criticality and Creativity. In Handbook of Research on Cultivating Literacy in Diverse and Multilingual Classrooms [Advances in Educational Technologies and Instructional Design, ], ► pp. 261 ff.
Hedman, Christina & Ulrika Magnusson
2023. Adjusting to linguistic diversity in a primary school through relational agency and expertise: a mother-tongue teacher team’s perspective. Multilingua 42:1 ► pp. 139 ff.
Hintz, Carrie
2022. Young Adult (YA) Fiction. In The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures, ► pp. 191 ff.
Johansson, Maritha
2022. “It was Difficult. And a Little bit Boring.” Swedish Middle School Students’ Reception of Narrative Texts. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research ► pp. 1 ff.
Karlsen, Gunnar
2018. Aesthetic Appreciation in Nature and Literature. In Ecocritical Perspectives on Children's Texts and Cultures, ► pp. 41 ff.
Kertzer, Adrienne
2022. Trauma Studies. In A Companion to Children's Literature, ► pp. 403 ff.
Keus, Kelly & Roxanne Harde
2022. “She Wished Someone Would Help Them”: PTSD and Empathy in the Six of Crows Duology. Children's Literature in Education 53:1 ► pp. 130 ff.
Kokkola, Lydia
2023. Directions of Desire: Reading the Adolescent Body. International Research in Children's Literature 16:1 ► pp. 16 ff.
Kokkola, Lydia & Ulla Rydström
2022. Creativity and cognition in fiction by teenage learners of English. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 31:1 ► pp. 99 ff.
Kostecka, Weronika
2021. Czym jest wielokulturowa literatura dziecięca i młodzieżowa i jak ją badać? Propozycje metodologiczne z perspektywy literaturoznawczej w kontekście polskim. Wielogłos :1 (47) ► pp. 123 ff.
Kucirkova, Natalia
2019. How Could Children’s Storybooks Promote Empathy? A Conceptual Framework Based on Developmental Psychology and Literary Theory. Frontiers in Psychology 10
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina
2014. Wenn Kinder zu Mördern werden - Störungen der Kindheit im Spiegel der Kinderliteratur. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Germanistenverbandes 61:4 ► pp. 362 ff.
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina & Jörg Meibauer
2017. Chapter 4. Metaphorical maps in picturebooks. In Maps and Mapping in Children's Literature [Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 7],
Loh, Chin Ee, Sujia Gan & Sarah Mounsey
2022. What Do Children Want to Read? A Case Study of How One Primary School Library Supported Reading for Pleasure. Journal of Library Administration 62:7 ► pp. 931 ff.
Lucchi Basili, Lorenza & Pier Luigi Sacco
2019. Shakespeare in Love: A Fictional Transliteration of the Grammar of Heterosexual Mating. SAGE Open 9:1 ► pp. 215824401882237 ff.
Macintyre, Pam
2016. Reading in the Teacher Education Classroom. In Global Learning in the 21st Century, ► pp. 105 ff.
Meibauer, Jörg & Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
2022. Being Silent About the Truth: Narrative Ethics in Mats Wahl’s I ballong över Stilla havet. Children's Literature in Education
Morgan, Ben
2017. Embodied Cognition and the Project of the Bildungsroman: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Daniel Deronda
. Poetics Today 38:2 ► pp. 341 ff.
Nikolajeva, Maria
2016. Recent Trends in Children's Literature Research: Return to the Body. International Research in Children's Literature 9:2 ► pp. 132 ff.
2019. What is it Like to be a Child? Childness in the Age of Neuroscience. Children's Literature in Education 50:1 ► pp. 23 ff.
Oziewicz, Marek
2020. Truth-Telling, Trauma Fiction, and the Challenge of Critical Engagement: A Reading of Breaking Stalin’s Nose and A Winter’s Day in 1939. Children's Literature in Education 51:4 ► pp. 519 ff.
Pakhomova, Marina Aleksandrovna
2018. CARNIVALIZATION OF RELATIONS “TEACHER-STUDENT” IN THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE CHILDREN’S POEMS ABOUT SCHOOL. Philological Sciences. Issues of Theory and Practice :12-3 ► pp. 448 ff.
Palo, Annbritt & Lena Manderstedt
2019. Beyond the Characters and the Reader? Digital Discussions on Intersectionality in The Murderer’s Ape. Children's Literature in Education 50:2 ► pp. 125 ff.
Papazian, Gretchen
2021. Coloring Feelings: Concept Books Making and Remaking Racialized Color Meanings. Children's Literature in Education 52:3 ► pp. 357 ff.
Prestegård, Øygunn Skodvin
2022. Who is in power, you say?. In Nordic Utopias and Dystopias [FILLM Studies in Languages and Literatures, 17], ► pp. 197 ff.
Rohlfing, Katharina, Kerstin Nachtigäller, Anna Berner & Anouschka Foltz
2019. Chapter 4. Does emotional narrative context influence retention of newly learned words?. In Narrative, Literacy and Other Skills [Studies in Narrative, 25], ► pp. 111 ff.
Sainsbury, Lisa
2017. “But The Soldier’s Remains Were Gone”: Thought Experiments in Children’s Literature. Children's Literature in Education 48:2 ► pp. 152 ff.
Schmidt, Dirk
2020. Grading Tibetan Children’s Literature. ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing 19:6 ► pp. 1 ff.
Sen, Erhan & Sedat Karagul
2021. A Study of Secondary School Students’ Perceptions of Fictional Characters. International Journal of Educational Methodology 7:3 ► pp. 433 ff.
Shi, Xiaofei
2022. Differences, Idiosyncrasies, and Shared Humanity: Reconceptualising Crossover Literature. International Research in Children's Literature 15:2 ► pp. 178 ff.
2022. Towards a post-age picturebook pedagogy. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 9:1
Silva-Díaz, María Cecilia
2015. Picturebooks, lies and mindreading. Barnelitterært forskningstidsskrift 6:1
Stockwell, Peter
2019. Chapter 2. Immersion and emergence in children’s literature. In Experiencing Fictional Worlds [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 32], ► pp. 15 ff.
Szilvássy, Orsolya
2022. A félelem játszóterén. nCOGNITO - Kognitív Kultúraelméleti Közlemények 1:2 ► pp. 72 ff.
Tandoi, Eve
2019. “It’s Not Just Writing”: Negotiating Childness in Children’s Literature Through Performance. Children's Literature in Education 50:1 ► pp. 76 ff.
Tsai, Yi-Shan
2018. Close-ups: an emotive language in manga. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 9:5 ► pp. 473 ff.
Tselenti, Danai, Daniel Cardoso & Joana Carvalho
2023. Constructing Sexual Victimization: A Thematic Analysis of Reader Responses to A Literary Female-on-Male Rape Story on Goodreads. The Journal of Sex Research ► pp. 1 ff.
Valente, David
2022. Scaffolding In-depth Learning: Picturebooks for Intercultural Citizenship in Primary English Teacher Education. In Innovative Practices in Early English Language Education, ► pp. 259 ff.
Van den Bossche, Astrid
2017. Stories of Value: The Nature of Money in Three Classic British Picture Books. In The Language of Money and Debt, ► pp. 33 ff.
2017. A New Bridge from Text to Mind: Cognitive Literary Approaches to Advertising. In Qualitative Consumer Research [Review of Marketing Research, 14], ► pp. 1 ff.
van Lierop-Debrauwer, Helma
2022. Children’s Literature: A Joint Venture. International Research in Children's Literature 15:3 ► pp. 249 ff.
Veldhuizen, Vera Nelleke
2021. Narrative Ethics in Robert Westall’s The Machine Gunners. Children's Literature in Education 52:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Villanueva, Maria Casado
2021. Portrait of the artist as a complex man: Engagement and discovery in picturebook biographies of poets’ lives. In Verbal and visual strategies in nonfiction picturebooks, ► pp. 124 ff.
Yu, Ningbing
2022. Empathy as Mandate: Revisiting the Debates over Modern Chinese Children's Literature (1919–1949). International Research in Children's Literature 15:1 ► pp. 40 ff.
Zhang, Kunkun, Emilia Djonov & Jane Torr
2016. Reading and Reinterpreting Picture Books on Children’s Television: Implications for Young Children’s Narrative Literacy. Children's Literature in Education 47:2 ► pp. 129 ff.
ÖZTÜRK, Burcu & Seher ÇİÇEK
2021. Anlatıcı kavramının ortaokul Türkçe ders kitaplarına yansımaları. RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi
Čermáková, Anna
2021. Diachronic change in the ordering of kinship binomials. In Time in Languages, Languages in Time [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 101], ► pp. 39 ff.
Čermáková, Anna & Michaela Mahlberg
2022. Gendered body language in children’s literature over time. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 31:1 ► pp. 11 ff.
ŞEN, Erhan
2020. Karnavalizmin Çocuk Edebiyatına Yansıması ve Pedagojik İşlevi. Akademik Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 march 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects & Metadata
Literature & Literary Studies
BIC Subject: JNFD – Literacy strategies
BISAC Subject: LAN010000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Literacy