Our artist, Ana Gamaza, has created a wonderful graphic, which illustrates the landscape of children's literature. We can think of this landscape as a river which flows west through the genres of literature, a bit fantastical, I know, but useful in visualizing the landscape.
This river of text branches into the lower fork, which is fantasy, and the upper fork, which is reality. On the lower fork, you can see those genres which are rooted in imagination: picture books, traditional fantasy, folklore, poetry, and some prose.
On the upper fork, we can see those genres which, although also the product of imagination, are often shaped by the real world and natural laws. Those are science fiction and modern fantasy.
Smack dab in the middle are those solid genres which are grounded in reality: informational books, contemporary realistic fiction, biography, historical fiction.
We must note, however, that this landscape is fluid -the pun intended- and that sometimes genre boundaries change. Prose will be both narration and real, for example, or contemporary realistic fiction may drift into magic realism. Nevertheless, this illustration will give you an idea of the landscape of the literature we study here. Enjoy its beauty and note that you can roll over the genre titles to see a very brief descripton of each genre.