By Guy Spriggs
Joe Sutliff Sanders is a professor at Kansas State University specializing in children’s literature. But according to Sanders, he found his way into children’s literature – and eventually into a job at one of the field’s leading programs – by accident.
As he was finishing his dissertation at the University of Kentucky in 2005 and preparing to enter the job market, Sanders took note of a series of interesting job offers.
“I kept coming across all these children’s literature positions,” he explained. “I kept saying, ‘It’s too bad that I don’t do children’s literature.’”
Then, Sanders says, he realized that his whole project was directly related to his future field.
Sanders started applying for those positions and found himself in the middle of