Below is a selection of online resources that include a vast number of articles on topics in Children's Literature, including literary criticism. The resources on this page include articles from both scholarly and popular sources, so be sure to evaluate your sources in order to make sure they're appropriate for your project.
The first step in picking a topic is to brainstorm by asking yourself a few questions. What do you already know about this topic from your course readings? Are there similar ideas that you might want to explore? What are the key concepts that you're interested in pursuing? Once you've spent a bit of time answering these questions, you can take the concepts you've identified and use the keywords and phrases to start searching for information.
Databases respond best to keyword searching. To search efficiently, turn your research question into a keyword search:
Research Question: How do the narrative techniques in contemporary children's picture books reflect a postmodernist sensibility?
Search One: (Search with keywords connected by “and”):
narrative and children and picture books and postmodernism
Search Two: (Truncate some of the keywords using *):
narrat* and children* and picture book* and postmodern*
Search Three: (Add alternate words into the search with “(or)”):
narrat* and children* and picture book* and (postmodern* or metafict* or polyphon*)
Truncate keywords where applicable. Truncation uses the asterisk (*) to end a word at its core, allowing you to retrieve many more documents containing variations of the search term. Truncation can also be used to find the singular and plural forms of a term. Example: educat* will find educate, educates, education, educators, educating and more.
Narrat* |
Postmodern* |
Metafict* |
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Will Find: |
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Narrate |
Postmodern |
Metafiction |