A New Paradigm for Children’s Literature:
Proposing a Theory for the Field
John Beach, Department of Human
Services and Counseling, School of Education
Abstract
Children’s literature is a field that lacks a unifying theoretical
foundation, yet it impacts children and their right to literacy at
all socio-economic and cultural levels. The theory proposed here
merges existing theories of communication and thought by Aristotle,
Kinneavy, Moffett, and Langer with theories of literature by Propp,
Jolles, and Frye. These are filtered through Eysenck’s theory of
personality and the ideas of Freud, Jung and Bolen. The resulting
new paradigm defines literature’s parameters, identifies its major
classes (both emotional and intellectual), aligns existing genres
within these classes, and reorders the elements of literature into
a coherent system capable of addressing the literacy and story
needs of all children. The new paradigm addresses theories of
literary response by Richards, Rosenblatt, Todorov, and Bakhtin and
theories of literacy and psycholinguistics by Gray, Chall,
Applebee, Anderson, Pearson, Chomsky, and Tannen among others.