Morag Styles
Position/Status
Reader in Children's Literature and Education
Fellow of Homerton College
E-mail Address: ms104@cam.ac.uk
Phone: 01223 767546
Qualifications
BSc Social Science, PGCE
Membership of Professional Bodies/Associations
Syndic Cambridge University Library
Board of New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship
Member of International Research Society for Children's Literature
Profile
Morag Styles taught at Homerton College for many years and is now Reader at the Faculty of Education. She has written and lectured widely on children's literature, poetry, visual literacy and the history of reading. She has organised many international conferences on children's literature as well as being responsible for two major exhibitions at the Fitzwilliam Museum.
Academic Area/Links
Children's Literature and its history
Poetry
Reading
Visual Literacy
English in Education
Research Topics
Morag Styles wrote the first history of poetry for children to be published in the UK- From the Garden to the Street: 300 Years of Poetry for Children (1998) Cassell
Morag Styles completed a research project on visual literacy (Reading Pictures) in 2001 which was supported by AHRB, Arts Council and British Academy grants and resulted in Children Reading Pictures: Interpreting Visual Texts (2003) (with Evelyn Arizpe, Glasgow University).
Morag Styles has recently completed a project on domestic literacy in the first half of the eighteenth century, supported by British Academy grants, a Helm Fellowship and Faculty of Education s Research & Development Fund. The outcome, Reading Lessons from the Eighteenth Century: Mothers, Children & Texts, was published in 2006 (with Evelyn Arizpe, Glasgow University).
Current Research Projects
Morag Styles is currently collaborating with Martin Salisbury who runs the MA Course in Illustrated Books for Children at Anglia Ruskin School of Art. They are currently running a second seminar series, Words about Pictures, Pictures about Words. The first series featured Quentin Blake and Charlotte Voake.
Morag Styles has been working with Dominic Wyse on an article and possible research project on the learning and teaching of phonics post Rose Report.
Morag Styles is about to embark on new research on children's responses to postmodern picturebooks in preparation for a chapter to be included in Postmodern Picturebooks: Play, Parody, and Self-Referentiality, edited by Larry Sipe and Sylvia Pantaleo. This research will also form the basis of a paper to be given at a Conference at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, September 27-29, 2007.
Morag Styles' latest conference, Acts of Reading: Teachers, Texts and Childhood takes place at the Faculty of Education on 19 & 20 April 2007. Places still available (contact Jan Oram jo221@cam.ac.uk
Course Involvement
Morag Styles was Language Co-ordinator at Homerton College for many years. She now teaches on undergraduate and higher degree courses, including the M.Ed and M.Phil thematic route, Critical Approaches to Children's Literature and final year tripos course, Children & Literature. She is currently supervising four students on doctoral work in children's literature and visual literacy.
Selected Publications
ARIZPE, E. & STYLES, M. (in-press 2007) 'A Critical Review of Research into Children's Responses to Multimodal Texts' The Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy through the Communicative and Visual Arts Volume II, edited by Flood, Brice Heath & Lapp, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey.
WYSE, D., & STYLES, M. (in-press 2007) Synthetic phonics and the teaching of reading: The debate surrounding England's 'Rose Report'. Literacy, 47(1).
ARIZPE, E. & STYLES, M. (2006) Reading Lessons from the Eighteenth Century: Mothers, Children and Texts, Lichfield, Pied Piper Press (pp. 243).
STYLES, M. (Ed.) (2005) Fiction for Children Comes of Age New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship 11 (2) (pp. 111-115 & 147-149).
STYLES, M. & ARIZPE, E. (2004) 'Reading Lessons from the Eighteenth Century' Children's Literature in Education 35 (1) (pp. 53 - 69).
ARIZPE, E. & STYLES, M. (2004) 'Seeing, Thinking and Knowing'(pp.185 - 199) in GRAINGER, T. (ed.) The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Literacy and Literature London, Routledge (pp. 309).
ARIZPE, E. & STYLES, M. (2004) "'Love to Learn your Book": children's experiences of text in the eighteenth century', History of Education, 33 (3) (pp. 337-353)
HUNT, P. (ed) 2nd edition (2004) International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature, London, Routledge
- STYLES, M. (2004) Poetry (pp. 396-418)
STYLES, M. (2004)'The Play's the Thing: the Ludic and the Ludicrous in Poetry for Children' in Seriously Playful: Genre, Performance and Text, Pearce, S. & Mallan, K. (eds.) Post Pressed, Flaxton, Qld, Australia (pp 1-18).
ARIZPE, E. & STYLES, M. (2003) Children Reading Pictures:Interpreting Visual Texts London, Routledge (pp. 270). Translated into Spanish and Korean.
STYLES, M. & BEARNE, E. (eds.) (2003) Art, Narrative & Childhood, Stoke-on-Trent, Trentham Books (pp.157).
- ARIZPE, E. & STYLES, M. 'Picturebooks and Metaliteracy: How children describe the processes of creation and reception' (pp.115 - 125).
ARIZPE, E. & STYLES, M. (2002) 'On a Walk with Lily: How Children Link Words and Pictures along the Way' (pp. 33 - 49) in BULL, G. & ANSTEY, M. (eds.) Crossing the Boundaries :Exploring Visual Texts, Sydney, Pearson. (pp.338).
STYLES, M. (2001) 'Versions of Childhood in Contemporary British Poetry for Children' (pp. 165-177) in DAVIS, R. & BAENA, R. (eds.) Small Worlds:Transcultural Visions of Childhood, Navarra, Ediciones Universidad de Navarra.
STYLES, M. 'The Capacity to Amuse: a Historical and Critical Investigation into Comic Verse for Children' (pp. 139 - 160) in TOSI, L. (ed.) (2001) Hearts of Lightness: the Magic of Children's Literature, Venice, Universita Ca' Foscari di Venezia.
WATSON, V. (ed.) (2001) The International Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English , Cambridge, CUP
- STYLES, M. (Poetry Editor)
STYLES, M. & BECK, J. (eds.) (2000) The Curriculum of the Future, Special Issue, Cambridge Journal of Education, 30,1.
STYLES, M.(1998) From The Garden to the Street: Three Hundred Years of Poetry for Children, London, Cassell (pp. 304).
HILTON, M., STYLES, M., WATSON, V.(eds.) (1997) Opening the Nursery Door: Reading, Writing and Childhood:1600 - 1900, London, Routledge (pp. 242). - STYLES, M. "'Of the Spontaneous Kind": Women Writing Poetry for Children from Jane Johnson to Christina Rossetti' (pp.142-160).
WATSON, V. & STYLES, M. (eds.) (1996) Talking Pictures: Pictorial Texts and Young Readers, London, Hodder & Stoughton (pp. 188). Translated into Japanese, Kashiwashobo Publishing Company, 2002. )
- STYLES, M. 'Inside the Tunnel: A Radical Kind of Reading - Picturebooks, Pupils and Post-modernism' ( pp. 23- 47).