Assignment
Write a review of a work of literary criticism, such as you might do for an academic journal. We'll post it to K-State OnLine so that all your classmates can benefit from it. So, when you turn it in, please give me two copies, one hard copy and one copy electronic copy. For the file format, please use either Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf).
Some Reviews by Me
- "A Tale of Two Canons." Review of Michelle H. Martin's Brown Gold: Milestones of African-American Children's Picture Books, 1845-2002 and Anita Silvey's 100 Best Books for Children. Children's Literature 33 (2005): 242-51. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/childrens_literature/v033/33.1nel.html>. This piece reviews two books. You need only review one book. So, adjust your expectations (for your own work) accordingly.
- "O Puppet, Where Art Thou?: The Transformations of Pinocchio." Review of Richard Wunderlich and Thomas J. Morrissey's Pinocchio Goes Postmodern: Perils of a Puppet in the United States. Children's Literature 32 (2004): 226-230. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/childrens_literature/v032/32.1nel.html>.
- "Metaphors and Paranoia: Two Approaches to Contemporary American Fiction." Review of Timothy Melley's Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America and Arthur Saltzman's This Mad "Instead": Governing Metaphors in Contemporary Fiction. Modern Fiction Studies 48.2 (Summer 2002): 480-85. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_fiction_studies/v048/48.2nel.html>. This piece reviews two books. You need only review one book. So, in other words, if you were to omit the introductory paragraph and concluding paragraphs, this review would be twice as much as I'm asking you to do.
Due Dates
The reviews will be due a week before the presentations. Reviewers will choose a book that will be useful to their presentation. There are two benefits of this approach. First, if you are reviewing a book that ties in with your presentation, then one assignment will help you with the other. Second, staggering the due dates over the course of the semester gives everyone a chance to process each review and, perhaps, to consider reading or consulting the book for their term papers.
Books
Each graduate student should choose a different book to review. Choose one of the following books.
- Stan and Jan Berenstain, Down a Sunny Dirt Road: An Autobiography (Random House, 2002).
- Charles Cohen, The Seuss, the Whole Seuss, and Nothing But the Seuss (Random House, 2004).
- Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (Routledge, 2006).
- Selma G. Lanes, Down the Rabbit Hole: Realism and Misadventures in the Realm of Children's Literature (Atheneum, 1971).
- Ruth K. MacDonald, Dr. Seuss (Twayne, 1988).
- Richard Minear, Dr. Seuss Goes to War (New Press, 1999).
- Philip Nel, The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (Random House, 2007).
- Philip Nel, Dr. Seuss: American Icon (Continuum, 2004).
RESOURCES
for English 680-B: Dr. Seuss
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