Dean of Arts and Humanities Wins
National Award for Book on Children’s Literature

Barry Jagoda | March 16, 2009

Seth Lerer

Seth Lerer, dean of Arts and Humanities, has won the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism for his work, “Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter.”  The honor was bestowed at a ceremony Thursday in New York City.

When accepting the award, Lerer, with a droll nod to his subject matter, thought it appropriate to "thank all the little people."

“Children’s Literature” is a scholarly book also aimed at an audience beyond academe, and selection by the National Book Critics is a good indicator that the work should find a wider readership. 
The new book is also a kind of “intellectual autobiography,” touching on Lerer's own youthful passion for reading and his experience as a parent. “I thought about it from a personal view, watching how my son grew into a reader,” he told a recent interviewer.

Lerer has expressed a continuing interest in how literature transforms lives. “[My book] offers more than just a chronicle of forms of fiction or the arts of illustration. It charts the makings of the literate imagination,” Lerer writes in the opening pages of the work. “It shows children finding worlds with the books and books in the world.”

Lerer, Distinguished Professor in the department of literature, joined UC San Diego as dean of Arts and Humanities on January 1, following a long tenure at Stanford University.