Human Rights in Children's Literature

This project focuses on how children learn about and understand their own rights and their responsibilities to respect the rights of others.  If children, and the adults who care for them, are to secure their rights, they have to know what rights children have.  The project draws upon children's rights law, human rights theory, human rights education research, and literary theory to explore these questions.

A number of the existing resources address children’s rights education—such as child-friendly versions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—but they tend to have limited distribution. Organizations such as UNICEF, Amnesty International, and the Peace Education Program at Columbia University have published creative curricula to teach children about their rights and responsibilities. Another arguably more readily available resource offers children opportunities to learn about their rights and the rights of others: children's literature. Many of the books children read and have read to them at home and at school are a source of rights discourse.

This project explores the human rights discourses in children's literature.

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