A hallmark of the Center for the Study of Children's Literature is the Summer Institute held every other year. The intensive long weekend program offers students an opportunity to meet with authors, illustrators, editors, and others committed to the study of children's literature. Guest lecturers have included Newbery Medal winners Paula Fox and Lois Lowry; Caldecott Medal winners Maurice Sendak, Paul O. Zelinsky, Ed Young, Allen Say, David Wiesner and David Macaulay; British author Anne Fine; authors Jacqueline Woodson, Patricia C. McKissack, Avi, and Julius Lester; regional authors Natalie Babbitt, Nancy Garden, and Robert Cormier; poets Nancy Willard, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Paul Janeczko; illustrators Jerry Pinkney, Trina Schart Hyman and Robert Sabuda; editor Roger Sutton; and child development theorist David Elkind.
2009 Institute: Crimes and Misdemeanors
Thursday, July 23 — Sunday, July 26, 2009
Speakers scheduled to appear include: Gareth Hinds, Lenore Look, Marilyn Nelson, Martha Brooks, Kevin Henkes, Avi, Blue Balliett, JonArno Lawson, Natalie Babbitt, Ellen Levine, Kristin Cashore, Jack Gantos, and M.T. Anderson. The seminar will be lead by Roger Sutton, current editor in chief of The Horn Book Magazine.
Past Institutes
The following is a list of past institutes held by Simmons College:
- 2007: Food, Glorious Food
- 2005: Let's Dance: Performative Aspects of Literature for Children and Young Adults.
- 2003: Midnight Gardens: Themes of Good and Evil in the Garden of Children's Literature
- 2001: Brave New Worlds: Looking Towards the Future
- 1999: Halos & Hooligans: Images of the Child at the Turn of the 21st Century
- 1997: As Time Goes By: the Many Ways Time is Constructed, Interpreted, and Revisioned in Literature and Life
- 1995: A Room of One's Own: Actual and Metaphorical Constructs of Creativity, Space, and Identity
Symposium Graduate Credit
The symposium earns four semester hours of graduate credit; enrollment in the institute is on a non-credit basis.
