Edging the Boundaries is a genre-based children's literature text that emphasizes issues in thinking and writing about the literary qualities of children's literature.

This book examines the field by defining and discussing literature genres and their qualities. It is designed with the belief that students will use and retain constructed knowledge longer than received knowledge. To foster constructed knowledge, all chapters maintain a similar sequence of questions based on student opinions, information and issues about literary genres, writing/thinking opportunities, teaching pointers for classroom use, and examples of the best authors and illustrators in each genre. Professors can use any of these approaches interactively with individual or groups.