Children’s Literature Program

Our Children's Literature program is a strong component of the English Department at Illinois State University. We have been offering courses for over sixty years and are more established in Children's Literature than any other university's English department in the U.S. In any given semester we offer fifteen to twenty sections of Children's Literature.

Our Children's Literature program has long embraced both literary and educational approaches to Children's Literature, so the program is seminal in its advocacy of using books written for children to foster integrated learning. Moreover, our Children's Literature faculty employ a variety of theoretical models in their ongoing scholarship of the textual study of children's books.