Students pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Children’s and Young Adult Literature have the opportunity to interact with works of children’s and young adult literature in multiple ways. Students choose a concentration (literary analysis, publishing, or theatre for the young) that best prepares them for their chosen career or further study.

Learn

In the Major in Children’s and Young Adult Literature, students choose one of three flexible and interdisciplinary concentrations to match their particular career, education, and life goals. These concentrations focus on literary analysis of texts for younger audiences, publishing for children and young adults, and drama/theatre for the young. Within each concentration, students explore different genres and categories of texts for children and young adults. They study current issues, debates, and histories about texts created for younger readers, and envision the future of the field. Through reading, research, discussion, and internships, they consider how children’s books reflect and shape individual lives, different cultures, and society as a whole while developing an appreciation for art in multiple formats. The degree’s scholarly, creative, practical, and reflective curriculum and instruction foster critical thinking, reading, research, writing, and presentation skills that are beneficial in many professional contexts.

Opportunities

While pursuing this major, students have opportunities to engage in scholarly research related to texts for young people, to complete creative, multimodal projects and performances, and to share their scholarly and creative work as part of the Undergraduate Research Symposium. Students are also able to participate in hands-on, experiential learning through academic-service learning, Learning Beyond the Classroom courses, and through internships with publishing companies that specialize in children’s and young adult literature.

Students studying Children’s Literature at EMU pursue various career paths that often require additional training, such as post-baccalaureate teacher certification or a graduate degree in library science. As a result, our alumni are able to apply their knowledge of children’s and young adult literature to a variety of exciting careers in teaching, librarianship, publishing, bookselling, writing, or children’s theatre. Former students have enrolled in graduate programs devoted to the study of fields such as children’s literature, children’s theatre, English, cultural studies, or education, which have led them to careers in secondary education.