This undergraduate certificate is ideal for students in programs such as Children, Childhood & Youth; English; and Humanities in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, as well as those in the Concurrent Education program in the Faculty of Education. Students will acquire a host of valuable skills including assessment, research, and critical/analytical skills that are required for those aspiring to careers in the education or library sectors, and to graduate degrees in Education, English and Children’s Literatures, and Childhood Studies. 

This certificate recognizes and values the importance of children’s literature in the study of children, childhood, and youth. It reviews many of the methodological approaches that have governed and continue to govern the literature intended for young people. It analyzes the significant ways in which children and youth are constructed differently in literature in various times, spaces, and cultures, and by means of a variety of literary forms and genres. This cross-disciplinary certificate allows students to engage with texts in the field to examine how modes of representation shape our perceptions of children and youth in the contemporary world. The objectives of the certificate in children’s literature are to provide students majoring in humanities-related disciplines with critical cultural, social and textual perspectives on children’s literature studies.