From Tongue to Text: A New Reading of Children's Poetry

The connection between childhood and poetry runs deep. And yet, poetry written for children has been neglected by criticism and resists prevailing theories of childrens literature. Drawing on Walter Ongs theory of orality and on Iain McGilChrists work on brain function, this book develops a new theoretical framework for the study of childrens poetry. From Tongue to Text argues that the poem is a multimodal form that exists in the borderlands between the world of experience and the world of language and between orality and literacy places that children themselves inhabit. Engaging with a wide range of poetry from nursery rhymes and Christina Rossetti to Michael Rosen and Carol Ann Duffy, Debbie Pullinger demonstrates how these tactful works are shaped by the dynamics of orality and textuality.