This handbook provides a comprehensive review of the research and practice of engaging with children's and young adult literature in education. Drawing across scholarship focused on genre, creation, and utilization of children's literature, it provides a unique perspective on the role that children's literature can play in educational spaces from age 2 to 18, and from picture books to YA literature.

The volume is divided into two main sections: first, a review of the history of children's literature and its application in education; and second, a discussion of methodological approaches for studying children's literature in educating young people - particularly in relation to critical literacy and multimodality. The chapters cover a range of topics including diversity, intersectionality, transactional theory, representation, trauma-informed pedagogy, anti-racism, immigration, folk and fairy tales and more.

Written by leading scholars based in Australia, the US, Norway, South Korea, and the UK, the handbook represents the global use of children's literature in schools, revealing connections across international contexts while also honoring the differences in how literature is conceptualized and utilized across the world.

Katrina Bartow Jacobs is Associate Professor of Practice, Language, Literacy and Culture at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.

Patricia Crawford is Professor of Early Childhood, Language, Literacy and Culture at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.