Prizing Children's Literature

Prizing Children's Literature PDF

Author: Kenneth B. Kidd

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-11-10

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1317231422

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Children's book awards have mushroomed since the early twentieth-century and especially since the 1960s, when literary prizing became a favored strategy for both commercial promotion and canon-making. There are over 300 awards for English-language titles alone, but despite the profound impact of children’s book awards, scholars have paid relatively little attention to them. This book is the first scholarly volume devoted to the analysis of Anglophone children's book awards in historical and cultural context. With attention to both political and aesthetic concerns, the book offers original and diverse scholarship on prizing practices and their consequences in Australia, Canada, and especially the United States. Contributors offer both case studies of particular awards and analysis of broader trends in literary evaluation and elevation, drawing on theoretical work on canonization and cultural capital. Sections interrogate the complex and often unconscious ideological work of prizing, the ongoing tension between formalist awards and so-called identity-based awards — all the more urgent in light of the "We Need Diverse Books" campaign — the ever-morphing forms and parameters of prizing, and scholarly practices of prizing. Among the many awards discussed are the Pura Belpré Medal, the Inky Awards, the Canada Governor General Literary Award, the Printz Award, the Best Animated Feature Oscar, the Phoenix Award, and the John Newbery Medal, giving due attention to prizes for fiction as well as for non-fiction, poetry, and film. This volume will interest scholars in literary and cultural studies, social history, book history, sociology, education, library and information science, and anyone concerned with children's literature.

Prizing Scottish Literature

Prizing Scottish Literature PDF

Author: Stevie Marsden

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2021-02-15

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1785274821

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This history of the Saltire Society Literary Awards demonstrates the significance the awards have had within Scottish literary and cultural life. The book explores how the prizes have influenced understandings of Scottish literature over eight decades and explores what they reveal about the wider mechanisms of how literary prize culture functions in the UK today.

Prizing Literature

Prizing Literature PDF

Author: Gillian Roberts

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2011-10-29

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1442694599

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When Canadian authors win prestigious literary prizes, from the Governor General's Literary Award to the Man Booker Prize, they are celebrated not only for their achievements, but also for contributing to this country's cultural capital. Discussions about culture, national identity, and citizenship are particularly complicated when the honorees are immigrants, like Michael Ondaatje, Carol Shields, or Rohinton Mistry. Then there is the case of Yann Martel, who is identified both as Canadian and as rootlessly cosmopolitan. How have these writers' identities been recalibrated in order to claim them as 'representative' Canadians? Prizing Literature is the first extended study of contemporary award winning Canadian literature and the ways in which we celebrate its authors. Gillian Roberts uses theories of hospitality to examine how prize-winning authors are variously received and honoured depending on their citizenship and the extent to which they represent 'Canadianness.' Prizing Literature sheds light on popular and media understandings of what it means to be part of a multicultural nation.

Prizing Scottish Literature

Prizing Scottish Literature PDF

Author: Stevie Marsden

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2021-02-15

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 178527483X

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This cultural history of the Saltire Society Literary Awards demonstrates the significance the awards have had within Scottish literary and cultural life. It is one piece of the wider cultural award puzzle and illustrates how, far from being parochial or niche, lesser-known awards, whose histories may be yet untold, play their own role in the circulation of cultural value through the consecration of literary value. The study of the Society’s Book of the Year and First Book of the Year Awards not only highlights how important connections between literary awards and national culture and identity are within prize culture and how literary awards, and their founding institutions, can be products of the socio-political and cultural milieu in which they form, but this study also illustrates how existing literary award scholarship has only begun to scratch the surface of the complexities of the phenomenon. This book promotes a new approach to considering literary prizes, proposing that the concept of the literary awards hierarchy can contribute to emerging and developing discourses pertaining to literary, and indeed cultural, prizes more broadly.

Literary Prizes and Cultural Transfer

Literary Prizes and Cultural Transfer PDF

Author: Petra Broomans

Publisher: Barkhuis

Published: 2022-02-05

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 9493194450

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Literary Prizes and Cultural Transfer addresses the multilevel nature of literary and translation prizes, with the aim of expanding our knowledge about them as an international and transnational phenomenon. The contributions to this book analyse the social, institutional, and ideological functions of such prizes. This volume not only looks at famous prizes and celebrities but also lesser known prizes in more peripheral language areas and regions, with a special focus on cultural transmitters and their networks, which play a decisive role in the award industry. Cultural transfer and translations are at the heart of this book and this approach adds a new dimension to the study of literary and translation prizes. The contributions reveal the diverse ways in which a cultural transfer approach enhances the study of literary prizes, presenting the state of the art regarding recent developments in the field. Articles with a broader scope discuss definitions, concepts, and methods, while other contributions deal with specific case studies. A variety of theoretical and methodological approaches are explored, applying field theory, network analysis, comparative literature, and cultural transfer studies. By providing multiple perspectives on the literary prize, this volume aims to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of this intriguing phenomenon.

Deacon King Kong (Oprah's Book Club)

Deacon King Kong (Oprah's Book Club) PDF

Author: James McBride

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0735216738

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Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction Winner of the Gotham Book Prize One of Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of the Year" Oprah's Book Club Pick Named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and TIME Magazine A Washington Post Notable Novel From the author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water, comes one of the most celebrated novels of the year. In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride’s funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird. In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood’s Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself. As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters—caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York—overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion. Bringing to these pages both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel every bit as involving as The Good Lord Bird and as emotionally honest as The Color of Water. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us.

How to Win the Nobel Prize in Literature

How to Win the Nobel Prize in Literature PDF

Author: David Carter

Publisher: Hesperus Press

Published: 2013-03-28

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 1780940408

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With humor, wit, and insight, David Carter sets out a number of fail-safe rules to follow in order to win the Nobel Prize in literatureThere are acclaimed writers— James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Tolstoy, Mark Twain— who never won the Nobel Prize, and others, less well known, such as Henryk Sienkiewicz, Paul Heyse, and Romain Rolland, who did. What exactly does one have to do to impress, or be snubbed by, the Nobel Committee? This book is a fascinating survey of the Nobel Prize for literature, constructed as a tongue-in-cheek series of rules. "Be a man" is one of them, and "Make sure your best work has been translated into Swedish" another. Presenting biographical information as well as extracts from their work, David Carter will try to answer a number of questions about the prize, such as What are the outstanding qualities of the winners' works? Were there any unusual circumstances attending the award? and Who else was considered and rejected and why?

Merivel: A Man of His Time

Merivel: A Man of His Time PDF

Author: Rose Tremain

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2013-04-15

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0393079570

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Court physician Robert Merivel has a middle age crisis and sets off for Versailles where he meets Madame de Flamanville, a Swiss botanist, and rescues a captive bear to take back to Bidnold Manor.

An American Marriage

An American Marriage PDF

Author: Tayari Jones

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Published: 2018-02-06

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1616207604

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THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB 2018 SELECTION “One of my favorite parts of summer is deciding what to read when things slow down just a bit, whether it’s on a vacation with family or just a quiet afternoon . . . An American Marriage by Tayari Jones is a moving portrayal of the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African-American couple.” —Barack Obama “Haunting . . . Beautifully written.” —The New York Times Book Review “Brilliant and heartbreaking . . . Unforgettable.” —USA Today “A tense and timely love story . . . Packed with brave questions about race and class.” —People “Compelling.” —The Washington Post “Epic . . . Transcendent . . . Triumphant.” —Elle Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together. This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.