Children’s Literature Reviews: Discipline and Characters in Children’s Literature

Discipline . . . the teacher’s goal, perhaps. Why then do we often provide readers with characters, plots, and ideas that represent anything but discipline? Young readers love books where the characters may be unruly and unpredictable. They like stories where the characters get in and out of trouble. And they enjoy pondering the plot of a tale that may be troublesome to adult readers. Providing children and adolescents with characters who are undisciplined leads to lively discussions. The reviewers have tried to identify some of their recent favorites to balance this issue’s theme of “Disciplining the Language Arts.”