Lois Lenski, A Friend to Children: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of a Children's Book Author

<p>In her lifetime, Lois Lenski wrote, illustrated, and otherwise contributed to more than one hundred books for children and preteens. This study focuses on Lenski’s regional books for preteens, novels that Lenski claimed were written from real life. Using interpretive narrative analysis, this study evaluates two of Lenski’s regional novels: <em>Strawberry Girl</em> (1945), the 1946 Newbery award-winner and second installment in the American Regional series, and <em>High-Rise Secret</em> (1966), the eleventh installment in the Roundabout America series, focusing specifically on Lenski’s creative process. The analysis of Lenski’s works was contextualized using literature focusing on the concepts of character representation, authority, power, and agency. As such, this study also addresses children’s books as cultural artifacts alongside issues of socialization and identity creation. Historically, the focus of the period in which Lenski was writing her regional novels is on the creation of a national unity and identity following such events as World War II. However, this national identity is inherently biased in favor of the ethnically White considering its development prior to the period of social change inspired by the Civil Rights movement. While the study found that there was little to no difference between character and environment representation when comparing the real-life situations and the novels, the narrative structure, content construction, and predominance of ethnically White characters demonstrate that both the books and their author were products of their time.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Anthropology and Sociology

Year dc:date.available

2017

Author dc:creator

• Thomas, Stephanie Evans

Contributors dc:contributor

• Bridget Hayden
• Teresa S. Welsh
• Stacy Creel

• Lois Lenski
• interpretive narrative analysis
• character representation
• children's literature
• cultural artifacts
• Archival Science
• Library and Information Science
• Social and Cultural Anthropology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/335

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-1354