Library Guides: English 4996: Guide to Resources: Childhood in Literature: eBook Resources

Google Books

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Tips for Database Searching

Boolean Operators

AND: Using AND narrows your search results. Using AND makes the database only pull articles with both phrases.

OR: Using OR broadens your search results. It is useful if you want to include synonyms for your keywords.

NOT: Using NOT narrows your search results. It is useful if you do not want a specific word or phrase in our search results. It can also be used to eliminate concepts that might be associated with your search.

Other Techniques

Truncation: Use an asterisk to search for words that share the same root word. Instead of searching and returning results only with the phrase "child", truncation tells the database to return all words that start with "child", so it would find child, childs, children, childhood, childbirth, etc.

Wildcards: The symbol for Wildcards can vary from database to database, but the most common symbol is a question mark. Use a wildcard to stand in for any English character. This can be used for when words have different common spellings or when words have a hyphen between them.

Quotations: Placing your search term in quotations makes the database return results where the exact phrase is found, without other words between.

Finding eBooks

The University has access to not only print books and journal databases, but to many platforms with eBooks. The eBook platforms below allow for full text search, an advantage it has over many of the research databases. Some eBooks are also listed in MERLIN and linked to the database they come from. Please note that if the eBook in MERLIN is associated with a different campus (UMSL, UMKC, Missouri S&T, etc) you will not be able to access it.

ProQuest Ebook Central
Access to many ebooks from a variety of publishers.
JSTOR
Provides access to scholarly journals in the arts and sciences.
Specifically contains access to Arts and Sciences I, II, III, IV, Complement, Ecology & Botany and General Science Collections.
Free account can be created for personalization.
Date Coverage: Varies by title
Maximum Users: Unlimited
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Search Guide: https://support.jstor.org/hc/en-us/articles/115004701828-Search-Help-Resources-Overview
Project Muse
Provides full-text access to scholarly journals from the Johns Hopkins University Press and other University presses covering the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Mathematics.
Date Coverage: 1995-date.

Maximum Users: Unlimited

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Gale Virtual Reference Library
A database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.
Can be linked to Google or Microsoft account to quickly save entries.
Date Coverage: Varies
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Truncation: Truncation: *; Wildcard:?
Ebscohost Ebooks Public Library Collection
Thousands of searchable full-text ebooks from the Public Library Collection. Access provided by MOREnet.
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Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.

Relevant eBooks

Here are some general texts about childhood studies:

The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies
Childhood studies has both matured and experienced remarkable diversification over the past twenty-five years and this Handbook, an essential guide to the subject, is an indication that childhood has become a legitimate field of study in its own right. With contributions from an international line-up of leading scholars, from across a range of disciplines including sociology, social policy, social work, education, cultural studies, history, geography and law, this collection of specially-commissioned essays maps the field whilst setting a research agenda for future study.
The Children's Table: Childhood Studies and the Humanities
The Children's Table brings together scholars from architecture, philosophy, law, and literary and cultural criticism to provide an overview of the innovative work being done in childhood studies--a transcript of what is being said at the children's table. Together, these scholars argue for rethinking the academic seating arrangement in a way that acknowledges the centrality of childhood to the work of the humanities. The figure we now recognize as a child was created in tandem with forms of modernity that the Enlightenment generated and that the humanities are now working to rethink. Thus the growth of childhood studies allows for new approaches to some of the most important and provocative issues in humanities scholarship: the viability of the social contract, the definition of agency, the performance of identity, and the construction of gender, sexuality, and race.
The Journal of Aesthetic Education Vol. 33, No. 1
Symposium: Constructing Childhood in the Study of Creative Lives. Each of the four papers focuses on a different aspect of the relationship between childhood experience and creative work in adult life. Two deal with literary sources and two with the visual arts.
Rethinking Childhood
Rethinking Childhood, twenty contributors, coming from the disciplines of anthropology, government, law, psychology, education, religion, philosophy, and sociology, provide a multidisciplinary view of childhood by listening and understanding the ways children shape their own futures. Topics include education, poverty, family life, divorce, neighborhood life, sports, the internet, and legal status. In all these areas, children have both voice and agency. They construct their own social networks and social reality, sort out their own values, and assess and cope with the perplexing world around them.
Childhood: Origins, Evolution, and Implications
This collection is the first to specifically address our current understanding of the evolution of human childhood, which in turn significantly affects our interpretations of the evolution of family formation, social organization, cultural transmission, cognition, ontogeny, and the physical and socioemotional needs of children. Moreover, the importance of studying the evolution of childhood has begun to extend beyond academic modeling and into real-world applications for maternal and child health and well-being in contemporary populations around the world.

Other Relevant eBooks:

Textual Revisions: Reading Literature and Film
Textual Revisions is a collection of new essays which discusses adaptations for cinema and television of a variety of novels, plays and short stories.
Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma, and Memory
Drawing on trauma and memory studies and theories of authorship and readership, Contesting Childhood offers commentary on the triumphs, trials, and tribulations that have shaped this genre. Douglas examines the content of the narratives and the limits of their representations, as well as some of the ways in which autobiographies of youth have become politically important and influential. This study enables readers to discover how stories configure childhood within cultural memory and the public sphere.
Girlhood: A Global History
Spanning a broad time frame from 1750 to the present, essays illuminate the various continuities and differences in girls' lives across culture and region--girls on all continents except Antarctica are represented. Case studies and essays are arranged thematically to encourage comparisons between girls' experiences in diverse locales, and to assess how girls were affected by historical developments such as colonialism, political repression, war, modernization, shifts in labor markets, migrations, and the rise of consumer culture.
Children's Special Places : Exploring the Role of Forts, Dens, and Bush Houses in Middle Childhood
This book describes a study of childhood experiences with creating personal space in the outdoors, the role these spaces play in children's evolving sense of self, and implications of place-making for education.
Freud in Oz : At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children’s Literature
This text is about children's literature, but still provides relevant information for approaching childhood through a Freudian lens. Kenneth B. Kidd argues, children’s literature and psychoanalysis have influenced and interacted with each other since Freud published his first case studies. In Freud in Oz, Kidd shows how psychoanalysis developed in part through its engagement with children’s literature, which it used to articulate and dramatize its themes and methods, turning first to folklore and fairy tales, then to materials from psychoanalysis of children, and thence to children’s literary texts.