Researchers get serious about kids’ stuff

The institute, which is a joint venture of the Faculty of Education and Homerton College, is being formally launched this week and will aim to study the messages and ideas that children pick up from books and other cultural sources in broader terms than ever before.

Alongside time-honoured classics in poetry and prose; films, television, comics and computer games will all be treated as "texts" in their own right, worthy of serious academic attention. In addition, researchers hope to examine emerging forms of youth media, such as blogs and fan fiction.

The first programme of talks and seminars will cover subjects including Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House On The Prairie", pre-school picture books, interpretations of "Hamlet" for younger audiences and the "Twilight" saga by Stephenie Meyer, whose fantasy tales of vampire romance have scored a major hit with teenagers all over the world.

A scattering of similar institutes already exists in the UK, but the founders of the Cambridge centre believe that it will prove unique, both in terms of its scope and because of the fresh approaches they are taking to researching children's literature.

In particular, they will aim to bridge an existing divide between scholars who discuss children's and youth culture from a literary perspective, and those who adopt a more scientific method by treating it as a social science with links to areas like education and psychology.

Although children's literature is sometimes regarded as a "soft" subject both within and outside higher education, researchers argue that it is of huge importance in shaping young people's development and deserves to be taken seriously.

Academics contend that books, films and other media reach children in a way that their teachers and parents simply cannot, providing them with ideologies that many carry through to adulthood. At its best, they argue, children's literature can help them to become thoughtful and imaginative citizens, but it can also be mishandled and actively isolate them from the adult world.

Professor Maria Nikolajeva, who will be the centre's first director, said: "Everybody can remember a book or a film from their childhood that played a role in shaping the way they understand the world around them. For children, these are often secret and sacred places that they can go to and we need to study them if we want to improve their education and development."

"It's easy to say that these things are just kids' fashions or that they're trash, but I don't believe that's good enough. If what we regard as trash is popular with young people, we need to know why and whether, as researchers and teachers, we can offer them something that addresses the same needs but also deals with these themes in a critical and ethical way."

The Centre will comprise about a dozen researchers, all of whom are already members of the Education Faculty at Cambridge. Together, they will cover texts which represent the widest possible range of ages, from pre-school picture-books through to teenage fiction.

The Faculty's current teaching and research programme covers material including ABC books, folk and fairytales, Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island", Philippa Pearce's classic "Tom's Midnight Garden" and more recent offerings by writers such as JK Rowling and Philip Pullman.

Scholars are, however, equally interested in the representation of young people in films and video games - particularly where, as in the case of "Harry Potter", they are spin-offs from an earlier set of novels. Along with other media, such as comics, they argue that these play as significant a role in shaping and reinforcing children's sense of identity as the books themselves.

Other initiatives are also being planned, including an international conference in the autumn entitled "The Emergent Adult", which will focus on teenage literature and present some of the latest findings on how it informs young people's views on issues such as gender, ethnicity and sexuality.

The conference will aim to make use of recent research in neuroscience concerning teenagers' cognitive, psychological and emotional behaviour, which can enhance scholars' understanding of how readers absorb the messages and representations in books such as the "Twilight" series.

"Studying this can help us deal with questions which are important not only for the children themselves, but for adults as well," Professor Nikolajeva added. "Many of our PGCE students already tell us that when they go into a classroom for the first time, there are things that they understand and can apply because they have studied children's books or films and grasped their meaning, significance and appeal."

Further information about the new University of Cambridge Centre for Children's Literature can be found by clicking on the link to the right of this page.