Literature: all works of imagination which are transmitted primarily by means of the written word or spoken narrative that is, in the main, novels, stories, and poetry.
John Rowe Townsend
Peter Hunt
Literature is: the imaginative shaping of life and thought into the forms and structures of language . . . The province of literature is the human condition. Literature illumines life by shaping our insight.
Charlotte Huck
Literature is reading that, by means of imaginative and artistic qualities, provides pleasure and understanding.
Rebecca Lukens
Words are merely words, but real literature for any age is words chosen with skill and artistry to give readers pleasure and to help them understand themselves and others.
Rebecca Lukens
To be childrens literature, a work must speak to and about the experience of the child. Though boundaries in terms of subject matter are open, that principle is still unchanged. It may be that a book will deal with harsh realities, but to be a work of childrens literature, the book must somehow deal with these realities in a way that the child reader can understand from within his or her experience. Winters and Schmidt, 2001, 16
This is what makes good literature: it deals with deep human problems in a way that teaches us right and wrong, not by preachy moralizing, but by a gripping story. Charles Colson