Children's Literature and Literacy Definitions

Literature and Literacy Definitions

Carolyn L. Piazza

Multiple literacies are the complex amalgam of communicative channels, symbols, forms, and meanings inherent in oral and written language (verbal and nonverbal) as well as the arts-visual arts, music, dance, theater, and film (including television, video, and technology).

Literacy is the use of multiple channels to inquire, represent, and communicate, through an array of conceptual and stylistic elements.

Children's Literature Definitions

Traditional Definition:

Literature is the body of writing that exists because of inherent imaginative and artistic qualities.

Louise Rosenblatt:

Any piece of writing or pictorial narrative may potentially be considered literature. When a reader gets involved with the text and brings it to life, this transaction makes it literature.

Purves and Monson:

Children's literature: Arrangement and structure of words, or children's response to those or combination of the arrangement of words and punctuation that creates a mood in children that entices them to read it.

Are there differences between children's literature and other literatures?
What other characteristic of children's literature or other literatures might be added?

What are characteristic or children's literature?

How has children's literature changed over the years?