Books Received

Abstract

Books Received Mark I. West Approaches to Teaching Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Other Works. Edited by Leslie A. Donovan. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2015. Most of the contributors to this collection discuss various approaches to teaching The Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien did not intend for children. However, several of the contributors also discuss The Hobbit, which is a children’s book. The essay that deals most directly with this work is Brian Walter’s “Child of the Kindly West: Innocence and Experience in The Hobbit.” Critical Childhood Studies and the Practice of Interdisciplinarity: Disciplining the Child. Edited by Joanne Faulkner and Magdalena Zolkos. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2016. This collection of eight essays explores childhood studies as an emerging academic field. The contributors discuss how this field relates to the disciplines of history, sociology, gender studies, and literary studies. Although none of the essays focuses on children’s literature, Elizabeth Drumm makes references to it in her “Childhood, Character, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel.” De-Constructing Dahl. By Laura Viñas Valle. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2016. The author of this monograph is especially interested in the relationship between Roald Dahl’s public persona and his works of fiction for children and adults, basing much of her argument on his editorial correspondence. However, Dahl’s literary estate did not give her permission to quote from his correspondence, so she is unable to provide readers with much evidence to support her interpretations. A Tour of Fabletown: Patterns and Plots in Bill Willingham’s Fables. By Neta Gordon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016. In this study of Bill Willingham’s comic book series Fables, Neta Gordon examines how the author/artist recasts traditional folk- and fairy tales so that they relate to contemporary concerns and cultural developments: for example, how the concept of meta-fiction applies to Willingham’s works. [End Page 331] Copyright © 2016 Children’s Literature Association