Editorial: Teaching children’s literature in the university: New perspectives and challenges for the future

Children’s literature is an area of frequent scholarship, reflecting its influential position in telling stories, developing literacy, and sharing knowledge in many cultures. At its best, children’s literature is transformative in the lives of children and their adult reading companions, and as such plays an important role in society. Indeed, in the last several decades, children’s literature has become an important focus of teaching and research in centres for literature and literary criticism, education, and library/information sciences in universities across the world. In this Special Issue "Building dialogic spaces: Teaching children’s literature at the university", our contributors share their approaches to teaching children’s literature in universities across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australasia. The thirteen articles in the special issue are arranged into three sections: Connecting across Students and Courses; Opening Spaces for Dialogue of Children’s Literature; and Encouraging Critical Reading of Picturebooks.