Honors ENGL 380 Children’s Literature

Honors Children’s Literature was is one of my favorite classes I have taken at Longwood so far. Dr. Christopher McGee is a great professor and I really enjoyed our classes. We would analyze children’s books, shows, and movies in an academic context and find the inner messages and themes the author presents throughout a story. This class challenged me to look beyond the surface themes and find the hidden messages and patterns. One such pattern was in “Where the Wild Things Are“, in the picture book, as the main character had more agency to do what he wanted, the more space the picture would take up on the page. The middle of the book, where he had the most agency, the picture took up the whole page and there wasn’t room for words. The most interesting lessons from this class came from examples like “Where the Wild Things Are.”

The second exam in honors children’s literature was talking about a characteristic of a children’s book, defining it, and examining how it was used in the novel. I chose Artemis Fowl, and interesting novel for the child, Artemis, is a child criminal mastermind and plans a heist to steal gold which is an interesting topic of a children’s book. I spoke of agency in this paper. I chose this paper as my artifact for this class because I enjoyed the book and identifying each character’s agency so much, I wrote non-stop and enjoyed writing the paper.