Family Media Suggestions

Family Media Suggestions

Dean W. Duncan, ’87, assistant professor of theatre and media arts, teaches a class at BYU designed to study children’s media and its history, theory, scope, movements, production, criticism, and audience. The class also examines ways “teachers, parents, and children together can make media an abiding part of an abundant relationship” (TMA 392 syllabus). The list of books below is part of Duncan’s syllabus for the class, and the works mentioned may help you in your own efforts to establish healthy and productive media practices in your home.


Books About Children and Children’s Media

David Buckingham, ed., After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2000; 245 pp.; $28.95).

David Buckingham, ed., Teaching Popular Culture: Beyond Radical Pedagogy (Bristol, PA: UCL Press, 1998; 207 pp.; $24.95).

Carl Bazalgette and David Buckingham, eds., In Front of the Children: Screen Entertainment and Young Audiences (London: British Film Institute, 1995; 220 pp.; $19.95).

Maire Messenger Davies, Fake Fact and Fantasy: Children’s Interpretations of Television Reality (Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1997; 256 pp.; $29.95).

Henry Jenkins, ed., The Children’s Culture Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1998; 500 pp.; $26).

Marsha Kinder, Kids’ Media Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000; 376 pp.; $18.95).

Marsha Kinder, Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; 266 pp.; $15.95).

Michael and Diane Medved, Saving Childhood: Protecting Our Children from the National Assault on Innocence (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999; 336 pp.; $13).

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 1986; 184 pp.; $14).

Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Delacorte Press, 1994; 177 pp.; $12).


Books About Children and Children’s Literature

Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1989; 352 pp.; $14).

Humphrey Carpenter and Mairi Prichard, eds., The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999; 587 pp.; $24.95).

Bernice Cullinan and Lee Galda, Literature and the Child, 4th ed. (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998; 528 pp.; $86.95).

Sheila Egoff et al., eds., Only Connect: Readings on Children’s Literature, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996; 416 pp.; $24.96).

Charlotte Huck et al., Children’s Literature in the Elementary School, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill College Div., 2000; 866 pp.; $81.30).

Peter Hunt, ed., Children’s Literature: An Illustrated History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; 378 pp.; $44.95). Note: This title is out of print.

James Jacobs and Michael Thunnel, Children’s Literature, Briefly, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999; 390 pp.; $31).

Barbara Keifer, The Potential of Picture Books (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994; 320 pp.; $35).

Rebecca J. Lukens, A Critical Handbook of Children’s Literature, 6th ed. (New York : Longman, 1996; 378 pp.; $44.80).

Peter and Iona Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1959; 488 pp.; $14.05).

Peter and Iona Opie, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; 560 pp.; $49.95).

Anita Silvey, ed., Children’s Books and Their Creators (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995; 800 pp.; $45).

Jim Triplease, The Read Aloud Handbook, 4th ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1995; 387 pp.; $13.05).

Jack Zipes, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry (New York: Routledge, 1997; 144 pp.; $21.99).

Jack Zipes, ed., The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; 601 pp.; $39.96).