Peter Hunt (literary critic) facts for kids
Peter Hunt (born 1945) is a British expert on children's literature. He used to be a professor at Cardiff University in the UK. He also teaches at Dublin City University.
Peter Hunt helped start the serious study of children's books at universities. Before him, people mostly saw children's books as just for teaching. He showed they were important works of literature too. He also helped connect researchers who study children's books all over the world.
His courses at Cardiff University, starting in 1985, were the first of their kind in the UK. He has given talks about children's literature in 23 countries. He has visited over 150 universities and colleges.
He has written or edited 38 books. He has also written over 600 articles and reviews on the topic. His books have been translated into many languages. These include Chinese, Japanese, and Portuguese.
Peter Hunt's Work
Peter Hunt's main goal has been to connect how we study all literature with how we look at books for children. He also wanted to create easy-to-use resources for this field.
He came up with the idea of 'childist criticism'. This is a way of thinking about children's books. It means trying to understand them from a child's point of view. It looks at how children read books. It also considers the economic, psychological, and educational reasons behind them.
He wrote about these ideas in his books. These include Criticism, Theory and Children's Literature (1991). Another important book is Children's Literature (2000). He also helped create major reference books. These include International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature (2004).
He has edited five classic children's books. These were for Oxford University Press. He is a top expert on The Wind in the Willows. He has written two books about it. This is interesting because he believes it is not really a children's book.
His newer work includes a book called The Fabulous Journeys of Alice and Pinocchio (2018). He also wrote three books for the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
His Own Stories
Peter Hunt also writes his own stories. He tries to make the child reader an active part of the story. He has written four children's books. These books are a bit experimental. One of them, A Step off the Path (1985), was called 'the first post-modern children’s novel'. It played with how stories are told.
In recent years, he has written seven experimental novels. He printed these privately for his grandchildren.
Awards and Honors
Peter Hunt has received many awards for his work.
- 1995: He received the Distinguished Scholarship Award. This was from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.
- 2003: He won the Brothers Grimm Award. This was for his great work in children's literature. It came from the International Institute for Children's Literature in Osaka.
- 2018: He received a Lifetime Achievement Award. This was from the Universita degli Suor Orsula Benincasa in Naples.
- 2020: He was given the Anne Devereaux Jordan Award. This award is for outstanding service to children's literature. It came from the Children's Literature Association in the USA.
