About CCL

Founded in 1975, Canadian Children's Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary and bilingual academic journal of criticism and review which focuses on children's and young adult literature in Canada. It also provides stimulating ideas about children's literature, broadly speaking, in both national and international contexts. It is committed to encouraging scholarship on Canadian children's literature and culture in particular as well as to publishing criticism which covers international topics and books, recognizing that the boundaries of nationhood, like the boundaries separating young people's literature from adult literature, seem increasingly traversable in children's literature. Literature written for children is now recognized by international scholars as a significant component of any national literature, as a powerful force in the enculturation of children and the construction of "childhood," and as critically engaged in the politics of culture, language, and technologies of communication, both historically and at the present time.

CCL has provided serious criticism examining Canadian children's literature from its beginning to the present, through articles, profiles, interviews, in-depth reviews, and bibliographies. It has also published articles which have dealt with children's literature in a cross-cultural context, recognizing the international reach and nature of children's literature and culture. Thematic issues have covered such topics as "Censorship," "Children of the Shoah: Holocaust Literature and Education," "Politics," "L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture," "Potter and Pooh," "Early Canadian Women Writers," "Australian Children's Literature," "Consuming Entertainment," "Drama and Theatre for Young People," "The Dark Side," "Sex and Sensibility," "Book and Toy Design," "Education in Postcolonial Canada," "Images of Canada in International Magazines 1870-1950," "Gender: Men and Boys," "Recycling Fairy Tales and Myths," "Psychological Criticism," "Women's Voices," "Transgressing Gender Norms in Canadian Young Adult Fiction," "Shared Characteristics of 'Mainstream' Canadian Children's Fiction," "Telling Tales of Trauma," and "What's Canadian about Canadian Children's Literature?"

Canadian Children's Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse is a non-profit academic quarterly published as a public service by Canadian Children's Press in association with the Canadian Children's Literature Association and with the cooperation of the School of English and Theatre Studies and the School of Languages and Literatures of the University of Guelph. We gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Dean of Arts at the University of Guelph, and private donors. Our official website is http://www.uoguelph.ca/ccl/.