Illinois State University’s annual Lois Lenski Children’s Literature Lecture will feature Dr. Niall Nance-Carroll with the talk “The First Hundred Years of Winnie-the-Pooh” at 7 p.m. Monday, March 21, in Stevenson Hall, room 101.
Nance-Carroll, an Illinois State alum who now teaches with Eastern Illinois University, will discuss the history and evolution of “the best bear in all the world” from Christopher Milne’s beloved stuffed animals that became the models for A.A. Milne’s two volumes of Pooh stories, illustrated by Ernest Shepard, and subsequently popularized by Disney animation.
This presentation is free and open to the public as well as members of the ISU community. Those attending the event are asked to wear masks.
Niall-Carroll has published extensively on the Pooh stories including chapters in Positioning Pooh: Edward Bear After One Hundred Years (2021), Ethics and Children’s Literature (2014), and in The Lion and the Unicorn. He was awarded the Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award by the Children’s Literature Association in 2016 and the Children’s Literature in Education Emerging Scholar Award in 2013.
Nance-Carroll earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees as well as a Ph.D. in English from Illinois State University. His dissertation was “The Stuff of Everyday Life: A Bakhtinian Reading of the Prosaic Worlds of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, and David Lodge’s Souls and Bodies.”
The annual Lois Lenski Children’s Literature Lecture is co-sponsored by ISU’s Department of English and Milner Library.
For additional information, contact Professor of English Jan Susina at (309) 438-3739 or jcsusina@ilstu.edu.
