Abstract: Abstract This book explores how children can grow to realize their rights and to respect the rights of others through children’s literature. Both international law and domestic law affirm that children have rights. Human rights education research demonstrates that when children learn about human rights, they exhibit greater self-esteem and respect for the rights of others. The Convention on the Rights of the Child—the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history—not only ensures that children have rights, it also requires that states make those rights “widely known, by appropriate and active means, to adults and children alike.” This first-of-its-kind requirement for a human rights treaty indicates that if rights are to be meaningful to the lives of children, then government and civil society must engage with those rights in ways that are relevant to children. The book investigates children’s rights under international law—identity and family rights, the right to be heard, the right to be free from discrimination, and other civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights—and consider the ways in which those rights are embedded in children’s literature, such as Peter Rabbit, Horton Hears a Who!, and Harry Potter. Reviewing more than five hundred children’s books, the book explores the role of children’s literature in disseminating human rights norms. This book traverses children’s rights law, literary theory, and human rights education to argue that in order for children to fully realize their human rights, they first have to imagine them.
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: book
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 44
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