Coming of Age in Children's Literature: Growth and Maturity in the Work of Phillippa Pearce, Cynthia Voigt and Jan Mark

Edited by Morag Styles and written by an interational team of acknowledged experts, this series provides jargon-free, critical discussion and a comprehensive guide to literary and popular texts for children. Each book introduces the reader to a major genre of children's literature, covering key authors, major works and contexts in which those texts are published.

Margaret Meek and Victor Watson provide a profound and revealing examiniation of the treatment of personal development, maturation and rites of passage in literature written for children and adolescents. Including a broad survey of the theme across a number of genres and an in-depth analysis of the work of key writers, the authors work towards an answer to the question "What is a classic?"

Margaret Meek is Reader Emeritus at the Institute of Education in London. Victor Watson is Assistant Director of Research at Homerton College, Cambridge.