IRSCL NEWSLETTER
No. 51
Spring/Summer 2006
Letter from the President
This is a very full newsletter so I will be
brief. One reason for the length of the
newsletter is that this issue contains a large
number of reviews. It is good to see
members offering reviews regularly, and
after discussion with publishers we have
agreed to print them in their entirety in the
newsletter as well as on the web site as
publishers think of paper as a more
authoritative and enduring format.
With publishers in mind, I will
once more urge you all to make sure you
check the list of members’ publications
regularly and remember to order them for
your libraries and recommend them to
students and colleagues – it is only
through such grassroots activity that a
market in our field can be proven since
academic publishers are notoriously loathe
to spend money advertising books. The
IRSCL proceedings (listed at the end of
the newsletter) not only contain
colleagues’ work, but also generate
royalties for the Society so do remember
to order them too!
It has been very good to see the
IRSCL Award being recognised by
publishers: the English language edition of
Emer O’Sullivan’s 2001 Award- winning
Kinderliterarische Komparatistik has now
been published and a paperback edition of
Roni Natov’s The Poetics of Childhood
will appear in April of this year.
I am very pleased indeed to say
that our venue for the 2009 congress has
now been confirmed. 2009 marks the
IRSCL’s 40th anniversary. The IRSCL
was launched at a colloquium in Frankfurt
in 1969, so it is fitting that we return to
Frankfurt to celebrate this milestone. Our
member, Hans-Heino Ewers, warmly
invites IRSCL members to join in this
anniversary event at the Institut für
Jugendbuchforschung, Johann Wolfgang
Goethe Universität. Details will follow in
due course.
Kimberley Reynolds
As we announced at the last congress,
the 18th Biennial Congress of IRSCL will
be held at Kyoto International Conference
Hall, in Kyoto, Japan, August 25-29, 2007.
We, the members of IRSCL 2007 Japan
Committee are now preparing for
program, and the main theme of the
congress is decided: Power and Children‘s
Literature: Past, Present and Future.
The congress logo is above. We
associate the butterfly with power. There's
the famous chaos theory saying, "A
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butterfly flaps its wings in China and it
rains in Chicago." Even the smallest
action can have profound implications.
Children's books share with butterflies a
sense of being beautiful but not
particularly powerful. With this butterfly,
you can think about power in
unconventional ways.
Several keynote lecturers have
already agreed to come: Roberta Seelinger
Trites, Susan Napier, and Masahiko Nishi.
Prof. Trites from Illinois State University
specializes in YA literature, Prof. Napier
from Texas University majors in Japanese
animation films, and Prof. Nishi from
Ritsumei University will talk on the
relationship between children’s literature
and marginality. Besides lectures and
paper presentations, our program includes
evening attractions, such as watching a
Kamishibai play, folktale story-telling, and
so on. You can choose an excursion,
either to a well-known cultural treasure or
to the International Institute for Children’s
Literature, Osaka, where several welcome
programs are planned. Before and after the
congress, you can also explore Kyoto,
which is a city full of picturesque and
historical sights.
We are renewing the local homepage for
the Kyoto congress. See the latest news at
http://www.irscl.info/chirasi.htm
and
watch the IRSCL web site for more
information and the Call for papers.
IRSCL 17th Biennial Congress:
Contributions
If you have ideas for the newsletter or web
site or would like to offer your services in
developing either or both, please don’t
hesitate to contact Kim Reynolds. All
information for the next newsletter and
website should be sent to Kim Reynolds,
School of English Literature, Language and
Linguistics, University of Newcastle,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU UK
Email: Kim.Reynolds@ncl.ac.uk
Special offers to IRSCL members
The board is seeking ways to enhance what
membership in the IRSCL offers. We are
pleased to announce that in addition to the
newsletter, website, directory, discussion
list, archives, congress and other benefits of
IRSCL membership, members may now
subscribe to three major journals at a special
rate.
Those who would like to subscribe to
Canadian Children’s Literature (edited by
Perry Nodelman) at the IRSCL rate can do
so by going to
http://ccl.uwinnipeg.ca/irscl.shtml
Those who want to receive the Australian
journal Papers (edited by Clare Bradford) at
the discounted rate should contact Clare
Bradford at clarex@deakin.edu.au
There is also a special offer for The Lion and
the Unicorn which you can access via the
IRSCL web site (www.irscl.ac.uk).
EXPECTATIONSAND EXPERIENCES:
CHILDREN, CHILDHOOD AND
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
13 – 17 August, 2005
A special section on the web site recapping
and evaluating the events in Dublin is now
available.
New Members
We are pleased to welcome 6 new individual
members. Do please remember to mention
the Society to colleagues whose research
interests reflect those of the society and who
could benefit and contribute to the work of
the IRSCL. Information about the Society
and application forms can be found on the
web site: www.irscl.ac.uk.
Affiliated members: No new members
(details can be found on the web site).
Institutional members: No new members
(details can be found on the web site).
Individual members:
Dr. Yuko Ashitagawa, PhD student (2nd
PhD!), University of Tokyo (Japan)
Julie Cross, PhD student, Roehampton
University (UK)
Dr. William Gray, Reader in Literary
History and Hermeneutics, Department
of English, University of Chichester
(UK)
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Gill James, Part-time lecturer, PhD student
& writer, University of Portsmouth (UK)
Dr. Mari Jose Olaziregi, Lecturer in
contemporary Basque literature,
University of the Basque Country,
Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain)
Dr. Mikiko Chimori, Professor of English
Studies, Yamanashi Prefectural
University (Japan)
Members’ news and
announcements
Please send all items for this section to
Kim.Reynolds@ncl.ac.uk.
Mavis Reimer receives Canada Research
Chair at University of Winnipeg (extract
from public announcement)
Dr. Mavis Reimer, IRSCL board member.
has been named The University of
Winnipeg's Canada Research Chair in the
Culture of Childhood.
A five-year, $500,000 appointment,
this Canada Research Chair is unique in its
focus on the culture of childhood. The
overall objective of
Reimer's research is to account for the
cultural work of texts directed to children
and youth, to understand how actual children
assume the burden of meaning assigned to
the metaphorical figure of the child, and to
encourage the creation of critical and
resisting young readers.
Affiliated societies and organisations
We are happy to welcome appropriate
societies who would like to become
affiliated with the IRSCL. An
application and description of
eligibility can be found on the web
site under the heading ‘Join the
IRSCL’.
The Australasian Children's Literature
Association for Research (known as
ACLAR)
See CALLS FOR PAPERS (below)
The new website can be seen at
http://www,aclar.org.au
The Irish Society for the Study of
Children’s Literature (ISSCL)
Treasure Islands – Studies in Children’s
Literature, the proceedings of the ISSCL
2004 confrence, edited by Celia keenan and
Mary Shine Thompson was published by
Four Courts Press in 2005. Dr. Margaret
Kelleher, Department of English, NUI
Maynooth launched the collection on 17
February 2006 in the Church of Ireland
College of Higher Education before a large
crowd of supporters of children’s literature
studies.
The ISSCL recently held a
conference on the theme of ‘Irish Children’s
Literature: National and International
Contexts’. Elements explored included Irish
literature for children and its reception in
both Ireland and abroad, children’s culture
and the culture of childhood, and also papers
on radio and film for children in Ireland.
The keynote speaker, Professor Emer
O’Sullivan of the University of Luneburg,
Germany, presented a marvellous paper on
Irish children’s literature in translation. The
conference was attended by a large number
of delegates from both Ireland and abroad
who were treated to a wealth of excellent
papers.
Institutional members
Institutional membership is an effective way
to support the work of the IRSCL, to
disseminate information about the Society’s
activities and those of its members, and to
alert members to relevant activities and
resources at each others’ institutions. If
your university/institution/region has a
research centre, library collection or other
organisation that reflects the work of the
IRSCL, it would be helpful if you would
introduce the idea of institutional
membership. The annual fee for institutions
is just $60 (US).
News from Institutional members
National Center for the Study of Children’s
Literature, San Diego State University:
For detailed information on San Diego State
University’s “National Center for the Study
of Children’s Literature,” we invite the
curious to visit our website: wwwrohan.sdsu.edu/~childlit
Among highlights, we would list:
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Under the leadership of new faculty
member Phillip Serrato, the NCSCL will be
inaugurating a Latino/a Children’s Authors
Lecture Series with a public lecture by
Francisco Jiménez on March 29, 2006
The oldest site of its kind on the internet,
the NCSCL’s Children’s Book Review
Service provides timely evaluations of recent
books for the young. Some of these–along
with essays by Jerry Griswold, Peter
Neumeyer, Jerry Farber, Alida Allison, and
others–also appear in Parent’s Choice:
www.parentschoice.org
NCSCL faculty (including those mentioned
above, as well as June Cummins, Mary
Galbraith, and Antone Minard) regularly
discuss current children’s books and films
on the radio program “These Days.” Audio
links to these programs can be found at the
website: www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~childlit
Recent book publications by NCSCL
faculty include His Dark Materials
Illuminated: Critical Essays on Philip
Pullman’s Trilogy by Carole Scott (with
Millicent Lenz) and Children’s Literature
Studies: Cases and Discussions by Linda
Salem. Jerry Griswold’s Feeling Like a Kid:
Five Essential Themes in Children’s
Literature will be published by Johns
Hopkins University Press in Fall 2006.
Eight students in the M.A. Specialization in
Children’s Literature will be presenting
papers at the Children’s Literature
Association Convention in June 2006.
Besides the M.A. Specialization, the
NCSCL has recently created a shorter course
of study called the Graduate Certificate in
Children’s Literature.
Jerry Griswold, Director
Children’s Literature Unit, School of
English Literature, Language and
Linguistics, University of Newcastle, UK.
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, has agreed
to give the 2nd Fickling Lecture on 9
November at the University of Newcastle.
A complete programme of speakers, list of
other lectures and events can be found on
the CLU web site:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/childrensliterature/
The CLU together with Seven Stories, The
Centre for Children’s Books, is currently
recruiting its second fully-funded doctoral
student under the UK’s Arts and Humanities
Research Council’s Collaborative Doctoral
Awards. Details are available on the web
site. This position is not limited to UK
applicants.
In April the CLU and the School of English
will host both the annual IRSCL board
meeting and The Child and the Book
symposium (see conferences below or visit
the web site:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/niassh/childandtheboo
k/
Members’ publications
Peter Hunt (ed) Routledge Children’s
Literature: Critical Concepts in Literary
and Cultural Studies. This will be a fourvolume reference set, about 1500 pages in
total, consisting of the 99 most
important journal articles and book chapters
in English on the theory and criticism of the
subject. Publication, June/July 2006 Cost
UK£500. Full details can be found on the
IRSCL web site.
Innocence and Experience:
An Introduction to the Philosophy of
Children’s Literature by Morteza
Khosronejad, Nashr-e Markaz Publishing
Company, Tehran, Iran.
ISBN: 964-305-717-8
Published 2003 (in Persian)
Second Edition 2004
A detailed synopsis of this publication can
be found on the IRSCL web site
The Poetics of Childhood by Roni Natov –
the IRSCL Award book for 2005 – will be
available in a Routledge paperback edition
from April 2006.
Ariko Kawabata has a monograph coming
out in April, the English title of which is
Glimpses of the World of Fiction. More
details will appear on the website.
Members’ news
Patricia Dean and Dr. Ernest Bond,
Salisbury University, Maryland, USA
announce the Children’s Literature
International Summer School, June-July
2006: New Zealand and Australia
A full programme of speakers, events, and
tours. A complete programme is available on
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the IRSCL web site or contact:
elbond@salisbury.edu
Adrienne Gavin announces a new MA in
English: Children’s Literature that she has
been instrumental in developing at
Canterbury Christ Church University,
Canterbury (UK). Information is available
at www.canterbury.ac.uk.
Morteza Khosronejad wrote with the
following good news:
The launch of Shiraz University Center for
Children's Literature Studies (SUCCLS):
SUCCLS, the first academic centre in the
field in Iran. The members of SUCCLS are
all faculties of Shiraz University and
members of departments of Persian
Literature, English Literature, Librarianship,
Psychology, Preschool and Elementary
Education, and Foundations of Education.
The aims of SUCCLS as are writen in our
costitution are:
1. To list the research priorities in children's
literature studies.
2. To encourage academicians to propose
research proposals in the field of children's
literature.
3. To publish scientific and research
periodicals, papers, and books on children's
literature.
4. To establish a professional library of
children's literature, data bases, a documents
centre, an archive of illustrations, films,
slides, and softwares relevant to the
activities of the Center.
5. To develop high standards in teaching
children’s literature.
6. To encourage the inclusion of children's
literature courses in the curriculum of
Persian and English Literature programs
across all universities in Iran.
7. To organize workshops on teaching
children's literature, children's literature
theory and criticism, storytelling and
creative drama with the participation of
academicians, PhD and MA students,
preschool and school teachers, educators,
and librarians.
8. To provide consultations to publishers,
writers, poets, illustrators, and editors of
children's literature.
9. To encourage and contribute to MA
thesis and Ph.D. dissertations on children's
literature.
10. To introduce MA Program in children's
literature as an interdisciplinary field.
11. To communicate and exchange
information with similar institutions at both
national and international levels.
12. To hold festivals of The Best Works
Award (including research projects,
dissertations, books, stories, poems, picture
stories, illustrations, etc.) in the field of
children’s literature on the basis of academic
standards.
13. To organize seminars and conferences
to update the information and findings in the
field of Theory and Criticism of Children's
Literature and in teaching this subject as
well, at both national and international
levels.
Additionally, one of Morteza’s picture story
books --The Day My Giraffe Had a Sore
Throat (the book is in Persian)—has been
selected as the book of the year by Poopak
and Salambacheha (two magazines
published respectively for children and
young adults in Iran). As if that weren’t
enough, he has learned that his collection
(including ten picture story books), the first
series published in Iran to improve children's
philosophical thinking, has been selected as
the book of the year in The Second Bienal
Book of the Year Selection in Province of
Khorasan.
Members’ teaching and
supervisory expertise
Two directories containing information
about the courses members offer and their
examination expertise are being developed
on the website. The idea is for these to
provide a useful resource for members
seeking appropriate examiners for theses and
courses to recommend to students. Its value
depends on the information provided by
members, so please contact Kim Reynolds
with your details if you would like them
added to the directories.
Travel Grant
Since the Congress in South Africa (2001),
the IRSCL has awarded a number of travel
grants of not more than US $1,000 each to
members in need of financial assistance to
attend the biennial IRSCL congress. It has
not yet been decided if this tradition will be
continued for the 18th Biennial Congress in
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Kyoto, in 2007. If it is the case, an
announcement will be made in 2006. The
announcement will include
1) the number of travel grants
2) the criteria for awarding the grants
3) the precise requirements for applications
Notifications about applications will be
made by 1 May 2007.
collection of essays on multiculturalism and
children’s literature including contributions
by scholars from other nations including the
UK, Singapore, Australia, Canada, the
United States, New Zealand and South
Africa.
Grants and awards received
(Please send details of any events you are
organising to Kim Reynolds and remember
to provide new copy for conference
announcements after a call for papers has
expired. Full details of events are provided
on the website.)
This section is designed to share news and
good practice relating to research projects
and awards. Please contact Kim Reynolds
or Clare Bradford if you have information
for this section.
Research Grant: ‘Multiculturalism
and Children’s Literature’
Clare Bradford and her colleague Wenche
Ommundsen (both from Deakin University)
made a successful application for an
Australian Research Council (ARC) Grant
of $A267,000 for their project ‘Building
Cultural Citizenship: Multiculturalism and
Children’s Literature’. The project
commenced in 2005 and will continue until
2008. It is based on the idea that Australian
children’s texts advocate values relating to
multiculturalism, immigration and
community relations, and it investigates
these values in texts published from 1990 to
2003. While Clare specialises in Children’s
Literature, Wenche works in Diasporic
Studies, and the project aligns their areas of
research to produce the first major study of
the production and reception of Australian
multicultural literature for children,
including writing for children in languages
other than English. Like other
‘multicultural’ nations, Australia has
developed complex policies and practices
for dealing with cultural difference, and in
addition to bibliographical and textual
research the project involves interviews with
selected practitioners (teachers, librarians,
authors, publishers) to investigate their
views about the production and selection of
‘multicultural’ books for children. With
Debra Dudek, the Research Fellow funded
through the project, Clare and Wenche are
presenting a panel at the Postcolonial
Writing Conference in Calcutta, India, 2006.
As well as journal articles and book
chapters, the project will result in a
Forthcoming Conferences and Events
including calls for papers
Boys, Girls, Birds and Beasts: Gender
Construction and Animals in
Children's Literature
2006 MLA Convention
Philadelphia, December 27-30, 2006
This special session will examine how the
companionship of animals
guides and influences and/or determines
children's socialization and
emotional and sexual development in
literature for children and young
adults.
Please send abstracts electronically by
March 30th to:
Ms. Tali Noimann
tnoimann@honorscollege.cuny.edu
The 27th International Conference on the
Fantastic in the Arts, at the
Wyndham Fort Lauderdale Airport Hotel on
March 15-19, will focus on
the fantastic in media other than the written
word or film, including
comics and graphic novels, web design and
photo manipulation, cover
art and illustration, picture books and pulps,
film posters and CD
covers, trading cards and tarot cards,
cityscapes and landscapes, maps
and tattoos and costuming, not to mention
the stuff you hang on walls.
Examine the role of art and artists as
subjects of the fantastic, or
the influence of the fantastic, written or
filmed, on the world of
art. Details from: Joe Sutliff Sanders, Dept.
of English,
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Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington,
IL 61702-2900
(DR.JOESS@GMAIL.COM).
Organization web site:
http://www.iafa.org
Dream, Imagination and Reality in
Literature, International Literary
Conference, Tábor, 30th June – 2nd
July, 2006
Literature has always drawn inspiration from
two sources: one is reality, namely places,
things, people, and events that actually exist,
the other is the author`s imagination.
Idiosyncratic as any literary approach may
be, the non-literary reality always retains a
kind of reference – the literary reality either
strives to come as close to it as possible, or it
is more or less different from it. Just as a
realist cannot create a convincing evocation
of the objective reality without fantasy, the
author of fantasy- or science-fiction cannot
do without reality, even though it only were
to make contrast to his subject matter. Such
literature is something like dreaming awake
– it is the writer`s dream about what the
world might appear to be if it looked
different...Yet even a real dream can be, and
often becomes, literary inspiration. Neither
then does reality stay outside, for what else
is a dream than a transformation of our
actual experiences and our mind`s contents?
We can reflect upon the relation
between the literary and non-literary
realities, upon the sources of inspiration of
individual authors, or the whole movements,
genres, and various stages of literary
development, upon the motivational and
thematical function of a dream in a work of
literature; we can view a dream as
inspiration from the point of contents, logic,
or form.
The conference will be held between
30th June - 2nd July, 2006 (Friday – Sunday);
its venue will be Technical College, Tábor.
The participants can be offered
accommodation in the college hall of
residence, a boarding house, or a hotel.
The presentations (not longer than
20 minutes) will be given in French,
Spanish, and English in the three respective
sessions. The proceedings of the conference
will be published in the series Opera
Romanica.
The conference fee of 600 CZK (
EUR 20) is payable on registration.
Please return the registration form by 31st
March, 2006,
to the appropriate address:
Kateřina Drsková, katedra romanistiky
(French session)
email:kadr@pf.jcu.cz
Helena Zbudilová, katedra romanistiky
(Spanish session)
email:zbudil@pf.jcu.cz
Kamila Vránková, katedra anglistiky
(English session)
email:vrankova@pf.jcu.cz
Jitka Pečlová, secretary of English
department
e-mail:
peclova@pf.jcu.cz
phone: 387 773 222
Pedagogická fakulta Jihočeské univerzity
Jeronýmova 10
371 15 České Budějovice
Czech Republic
Children's Literature at the Edge: New
texts, new technologies, new readings,
new readers: Call for Papers
7th International Conference of the
Australasian Children’s Literature
Association for Research (ACLAR)
Melbourne, Australia 13-14 July 2006.
We welcome abstracts which address the
theme. Papers can address, but are not
limited to, the following:
 Emerging genres of children’s
literature
 Changing styles of narrative
 New technologies and their effects
on texts
 Traditional forms with a new twist
 New scholarly directions
 Cultural shifts and children’s texts
 New versions of older texts
 Marketing newness
Abstracts (of no more than 250 words) are
due by: 31 March 2006.
Please email or post abstracts to:
Prof Clare Bradford (email
clarex@deakin.edu.au)
Arts Faculty, Deakin University
221 Burwood Highway, Burwood 3125
Australia Phone: (03) 9244 6487
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Notification of the acceptance of proposals
will be made by 21 April 2006. For further
inquiries contact the conference convenors:
Clare Bradford (clarex@deakin.edu.au) or
Elizabeth Parsons (parsons@deakin.edu.au)
NEW JOURNAL: BOYHOOD STUDIES
- CALL FOR PAPERS
February 2006
http://www.boyhoodstudies.com
The journal will offer an interdisciplinary
platform for the study of
boys' lives. The scholarly study of boys and
boyhood has matured
considerably in recent years, most notably at
the intersection of
masculinity studies and childhood/youth
studies. The subject, politics
and cultures of "the boy" amount to large
subdomains of gender and
life phase studies. However, the multiplexity
of boys' lived
experiences seems to resist any disciplinary
confinement. Hence we
welcome critical discussions ranging
through the humanities,
anthropology, history, bioethics, and the
psychological and social
sciences. The journal has an explicit
international focus, and we
especially welcome contributions from
outside the Euro-American field.
Our website was launched this
month: http://www.boyhoodstudies.com.
The site reproduces this Call for Paper, and
includes a more detailed
introduction to the field, a large "core
bibliography" on
boys/boyhood, a list of 32 Editorial Board
Members, as well as a key
to our journal's proposed primary title,
THYMOS.
We hope you will be interested in
contributing to the inaugural (or
later) issue wit a text already completed or
one "about to be born".
Proposals should include a working title, a
brief prospectus or
abstract, academic or other formal
affiliations, and full contact
details. Final manuscripts will have to be
written in English.
Abstracts and proposals, and any inquiries,
should be send to the
Managing Editor:
diederikjanssen@gmail.com (that's:
diederikjanssen[at]gmail[dot]com ).
Proposals and manuscripts received
before May 1, 2006 will be
considered for the inaugural issue; those
received later than that
will be considered for subsequent issues.
Miles Groth, PhD, General Editor (Wagner
College, New York)
Diederik Janssen, MD, Managing Editor
(Independent scholar, The Netherlands)
Call for papers
HISTORICIDE AND REITERATION:
Innovation in the sciences, humanities
and the arts
Symposium, February 9-10, 2007
Faculty of Arts and Culture, Maastricht
University, The Netherlands
Please note: a longer version of this
announcement can be read on the web site
“Unlike art, science destroys its own past”,
or so Thomas Kuhn argued in his ‘Comment
on the Relations of Science and Art’ (The
Essential Tension: Selected Studies in
Scientific Tradition and Change, 1977, 340351, p.345). In the arts, older works continue
to play a vital and formative role in
contemporary innovations. In the sciences,
however, out of date theories and practices
are generally thought to have no use
whatsoever to the development of new
insights: science continually destroys its
own past. Hence, museums are crucial to art
(but not to science), while five-year-old
books become obsolete in science (but
certainly not in literature). Poetical and
aesthetic themes, motifs and representational
strategies are forever undead, it seems, ready
to reappear on the cultural scene at any time.
This symposium wants to
investigate the convergences and
divergences between the sciences and the
arts by taking our cue from the ways in
which they position themselves vis-à-vis
their past. It aims at a thorough evaluation of
the contrast between historicide and
reiteration as a potentially fruitful
perspective on the interrelations between the
three cultures. We propose the following
levels of inquiry:
a. The actual practice of art
and science. Do specific
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instances of scientific
innovation corroborate or
falsify the idea that the
creative reappropriation of
the past has nothing to
contribute to scientific
discovery? Is historicide in
the arts confined to the
occasional exception of the
historical avant-garde, or
does it constitute a more
substantial part of aesthetic
innovation?
b. The prototypical images of
art and science. Are they
supposed to be reiterating or
destroying their pasts, and
how do such assumptions
figure in the public selffashioning of scientists,
writers and artists? Do such
attitudes toward the past
also work internally as
codes of proper artistic or
scientific behaviour? If it
would be the case that
scientific innovation may be
prone to reiteration as well,
does this mean that
scientists unwittingly
reiterate the past and
therefore cultivate a deluded
self-image? Would a similar
argument apply to the
iconoclastic self-fashioning
of avant-garde artists?
c. The contents and products
of art and science. How do
views of the significance of
the past relate to scientific
theories, literary novels or
the subject-matter of
painting? Are scientific
accounts of, say, the human
life span or biological
evolution more inclined
towards linear, progressivist
accounts than literary genres
which also cover these
domains such as the
Bildungsroman or the
regional novel?
This symposium invites contributions from
the history and sociology of science, the
history of art, the history of literature,
literary theory, and philosophical aesthetics.
A selection of the papers will be published
in a peer-reviewed volume, to appear in the
series Arts, Sciences and Cultures of
Memory, edited by Kitty Zijlmans, Lies
Wesseling and Robert Zwijnenberg
(publisher: Equinox, London). If you are
interested in contributing, please send a 300word abstract before May 15, 2006 to:
Lies.Wesseling@LK.Unimaas.NL. We will
select the contributors to the symposium
before July 1, 2006. You may subsequently
be asked you to pre-circulate your paper
before January 14, 2007. Please make sure
your abstract contains the following items:
a. a concretely delineated case study
b. a specification of the level of
inquiry of your case study (a, b
and/or c)
c. an interdisciplinary scope:
contributions that engage in a
comparative analysis which crosses
the borders between the ‘three
cultures’ will be given priority.
The organizing committee:
Dr. René Gabriëls, Department of
Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Culture,
Maastricht University
Dr. Geert Somsen, Department of History,
Faculty of Arts and Culture, Maastricht
University
Dr. Elisabeth Wesseling, Department of
Literature and Art, Faculty of Arts and
Culture, Maastricht University
Prof. dr. Robert Zwijnenberg, Department of
Literature and Art, Faculty of Arts and
Culture, Maastricht University, Department
of the History of Art, Leiden University
Call for Papers
BRITISH IBBY/NCRCL MA
CONFERENCE, NOVEMBER 11TH
2006 (Roehampton University, London)
TIME EVERLASTING:
REPRESENTATIONS OF PAST,
PRESENT AND FUTURE IN
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE (working
title)
Crucial aspects of social, cultural and
individual development are related to the
child’s relationship with and understanding
9
of past, present and future. As an abstract
concept, the notion of time may be difficult
for children to grasp, but numerous authors
have presented young readers with engaging
narratives that deal with time from a range
of perspectives and through a variety of
genres. For their 2006 conference, the
British Section of IBBY (International
Board on Books for Young People) and the
NCRCL (National Centre for Research in
Children’s Literature) want to look at how
time is presented to young readers at the
dawn of a new millennium, looking back to
the past which has shaped their present and
forward to the future which young people
will grow into.
The conference will include keynote
talks by well-known writers and academics,
and we would like to include a wide range of
workshop sessions (lasting about 20
minutes) which might deal with some of the
following or other issues:


historical fiction
the recent popularity of historical
‘diaries’
 time fantasies – particularly those
involving the philosophy of time
 prehistorical fiction
 time-slip/time-travel fiction
 memory as a way back to the past
 science fiction – particularly that
which engages in visions of the
future
 postmodern constructions of time
 experimental fiction which plays
with narrative chronology/time
We would particularly welcome
contributions from academics and others
interested in any of these areas. Brief
accounts of papers given will be published
in the Spring 2007 issue of IBBYLink, the
journal of British IBBY, and we hope that
the proceedings of the conference will be
published shortly afterwards in full in book
form.
The deadline for proposals is June
th
30 2006. Please email a 200 word abstract
(for a twenty minute paper) as an attached
Word document to Laura Atkins at
L.Atkins@roehampton.ac.uk. Please also
include a short biography and affiliation.
Contact Laura Atkins with questions
or for information about becoming a
sponsor or exhibitor at the conference:
Laura Atkins, Conference Manager,
National Centre for Research in Children's
Literature, Froebel College, Roehampton
University, Roehampton Lane, London
SW15 5PJ; 0208 392 3008
Call for Papers
International Symposium: Faith, Myth &
Literary Creation since 1850
Lille Catholic University, Lille, France
18th/19th May 2007
Religious faith, myths and legends have
always been present in literature. However,
their role has changed over time. Since the
middle of the 19th century, with the
diminishing role of religion in European
society, writers with some kind of belief
system, whether religious or political, have
tended to use myth in two different ways.
They have either retold the old, familiar
myths of the past (classical, Nordic,
Arthurian, medieval etc.) so that they carry a
new message to their own generation or
created their own, new myths as modern
vehicles of traditional truths. Many writers
have combined the two techniques.
We are seeking papers which explore either
of these uses of faith and myth in English,
French or other European literature since
1850. Contributors may wish to concentrate
on a single author or compare two or three
authors’ treatment of the same theme. Papers
may be delivered in English or French.
Academic panel: Suzanne Bray (Lille
Catholic University), Christine Fletcher
(University of Maryland University
College), Adrienne Gavin (Canterbury
Christ Church University), Emmanuel Godo
(Lille Catholic University), Daniel
Warzecha (Lille III University)
Please send any questions and propositions
for papers (250 to 300 words) to
suzanne.bray@icl-lille.fr by May 31st 2006
CALL FOR PAPERS: Canadian
Children’s Literature
CCL: Canadian Children's Literature/
Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse
is moving to the University of Winnipeg as
of January, 2005, with Perry Nodelman of
the Department of English as Editor and
Mavis Reimer of the Department of English
10
and Anne Rusnak of the Department of
French Studies and German Studies as
Associate Editors. The new editors are now
accepting submissions.
CCL: Canadian Children's
Literature/ Littérature canadienne pour la
jeunesse is a bilingual refereed academic
journal that advances knowledge and
understanding of texts of Canadian
children's literature in a range of media
in both English and French.
Articles may be submitted as attachments in
Word or RTF format to: ccl@uwinnipeg.ca
Alternately, submit three copies on
paper, along with a stamped, self-addressed
return envelope, to:
CCL
Department of English
University of Winnipeg
515 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg MB R3B 2E9
All submissions should conform to MLA
style. Since papers are vetted blind,
the name and contact information of the
author should be removed from the
submission and appear on a separate page
with your contact information (including
phone number and e-mail address).
Decisions about submitted papers should be
made within three months.
The 2nd World Children’s Literature
Convention & 8th Asia Children’s
Literature Convention: ‘Children’s
Literature and Peace’
Seoul, Korea 21 – 25 August, Grand
Hilton Seoul Hotel
The conference will highlight global issues
such as war, terrorism, violence, poverty,
abuses of human rights, exploitation and the
impact of human behaviour on the
environment with the aim of promoting
peace through mutual understanding
between nations.
Confirmed speakers include: Professor
Klaus Doderer (Germany); Professor Maria
Nikolajeva (Sweden); Professor Rutta
Kuivasmaki (Finland); Ms. Manarama Jafa
(India); Professor Anne Scott Macleod
(USA); Professor Zohar Shavit (Israel);
Professor Clare Bradford (Australia);
Professor Perry Nodelman (Canada)
Conference strands:
 Children’s literature and
ecology
 The future of fantasy in
juvenile fiction
 Children’s literature for
coexistence
 Critical approaches to
children’s literature
The conference organisers welcome all
writers, researchers, editors, translators, and
illustrators as well as academics working in
the area of Children’s Literature.
Complete details may be obtained from
Shin, Heonjae (hwangch@snue.ac.kr) or
Park, Sangjae (macaca@chollian.net)
Cost: $600 (4 nights and 5 days)
Paper Call
Submissions are invited for a book-length
collection of essays that explores the
narrative peculiarities, innovations, and
conventions of children's and/or young adult
literature. All narratological issues and
approaches are welcome, including such
matters as the narrator/narratee
relationship, perspective, focalization, voice,
implied author/audience, embedded/frame
narrative, chronotopes, plot dynamics,
character construction, the ethics of
narrative, genre/media’s influence on
children’s narrative, series/formula fiction,
metafiction, mode, paratextuality,
intertextuality, and more. Submissions might
focus on a close narratological reading of
one or more texts that tell us something
about children’s fiction, or they might be
more broadly theoretical in approach,
including examining the intersection of
narrative theory and other critical
approaches taken in the study of
children’s and/or young adult literature.
Please include a two-page abstract, tentative
project title, working bibliography,
curriculum vita, and e-mail contact
information.
Deadline for submissions: May 1, 2006 (email submissions are welcome).
Send papers and inquiries to:
Mike Cadden
Department of English, Foreign Languages,
and Journalism
Missouri Western State University
11
4525 Downs Dr.
St. Joseph, MO 64507
(816) 271-4576
cadden@missouriwestern.edu
Paper Call
The International Journal of Early
Childhood is a peer reviewed journal
connected to the World Organisation for
Early Childhood Education (OMEP)
with a circulation of aproximately 2,000.
This represents individual
members, organizations, and libraries in
over seventy countries
throughout the world. The journal is
distributed twice yearly and
features articles in English, French, and
Spanish.
The IJEC covers all aspects of early
childhood such as health, welfare
and education, involving programs and
experimental projects. For a quick
inspection inside the journal, do visit
http://www.ped.gu.se/users/pramling/ijec/in
dex.html.
The editors plan a Special Issue for
vol.39 no 2 (autumn of 2007)
concerning children's literature and
children's arts (theatre, film,
pictures) in a wide sense. We therefore
welcome suggestions for articles
as soon as possible. Final deadline for
submission is 1st of October
2006, since the review process takes
approximately 6 months to complete.
Manuscripts should be original and
not previously submitted for
publication elsewhere. Articles may be
written in English, French or
Spanish. A short summary of 200-300 words
in each language should
accompany the final version of the article.
Articles should not exceed
5.000 words, and be double-spaced with
one-inch margins, and follow the
APA style of reference. For more
information see http://www.apa.org
You are most welcome with
suggestions for articles. Please contact
Maj.Asplund.Carlsson@lit.gu.se, the main
editor for this issue.
Maj Asplund Carlsson, Ass.prof,
Department of Literature, Göteborg
University
Sweden
CALL FOR PAPERS: Storytelling: A
Critical Journal of Popular Narrative
The peer-reviewed, quarterly journal
Storytelling is dedicated to analyses of
popular narratives in the widest sense of the
phrase and as evidenced in the media and all
aspects of culture. Although past essays
have focused on children‘s literature,
comics, detective/crime fiction, film,
horror/gothic, popular music, romance,
science fiction, and television, submissions
are by no means confined to these areas.
Executive Editors: Bonnie Plummer and
Sharon Bailey, Eastern Kentucky
University, USA
Submission Details. Manuscripts should see
the narrative as a reflection of culture; use
theory to analyze the work, not work to
illustrate theory; employ scholarship; and be
written for the general audience. The
executive editors are especially interested in
visual accomplishments, bibliographies, and
interviews with creators of popular
narratives.
Submissions should include a short (50word) abstract, be between 10 to 15 doublespaced, typed pages (approximately 3,300 to
6,000 words), and follow the MLA Style
Manual by Joseph Gibaldi (2nd ed., 1998),
including parenthetical citations in text and
an alphabetized list of Works Cited. Authors
should submit two copies of their
manuscript with a stamped return envelope
if return of manuscript is desired.
Address submissions to:
Elizabeth Foxwell. Managing Editor,
Storytelling: A Critical Journal of Popular
Narrative
Heldref Publications
1319 Eighteenth St, NW
Washington, DC 20036-1802 USA
Email: storytelling@heldref.org
Book Reviews
We are always looking for reviewers.
Complete guidelines as well as a list of
books currently available for review and
comprehensive archive of the books that
have been reviewed to date can be found on
the appropriate section of the IRSCL web
site. Please contact the Reviews Editor,
Christine Wilkie-Stibbs if you are interested
in reviewing, and remember to instruct your
12
publisher to supply her with two copies of
any new publications you produce.
Christine Wilkie-Stibbs, University of
Warwick, CV4 7AL, UK. E-mail :
c.wilkie@warwick.ac.uk or
Cwilkiestibbs@aol.com.
Review guidelines
Reviews should be not more than 1,000
words with (as appropriate) a 200-300 word
English language summary. We anticipate
that reviews will be fair, balanced,
academically rigorous assessments of the
books, and that the reviews will be a reliable
source of information for colleagues'
professional needs.
If members have seen reviews of relevant
books in their local journals, it would be
helpful to have copies of these sent for a
'round up' feature.
Adrienne E. Gavin (2004), DARK
HORSE A Life of Anna Sewell, Sutton,
Stroud, pp 276, ISBN 0-7509-2838-7,
£20.00
Anna Sewell would have had no biography
if she had not written Black Beauty, but she
would still have deserved one. Adrienne
Gavin’s biography pays the one-book author
such skilled and sympathetic attention that,
like the best nineteenth-century novels, it
asserts the worth, intrinsic interest, and
remarkableness of any human life.
This is a meticulous biography of an
admirable woman. Anna was an assiduous
letter-writer and Adrienne Gavin makes
good use of her correspondence and that of
her relatives. She has also been ingenious
and resourceful in seeking out the maximum
evidence on her reticent subject, as her
Bibliography and notes prove. Without ever
straying into background padding, the book
sets the subject’s quiet life into the context
of her exciting times, occasionally using
such statistics as how many horses there
were in Victorian England but how few
people owned them. Such factual
underpinning reminds us how we get only a
partial and partisan view of Victorian
society from novelists – even such
expansive ones as Dickens or Eliot.
Anna kept no diary, so despite her
thorough scholarship her biographer
necessarily has to speculate about intimate
features or periods of Anna’s life for which
there is no firm evidence. For example,
Gavin supposes some unadmitted romantic
attractions, a putative visit to the Great
Exhibition, and what might have been
discussed in Anna’s (authenticated)
conversations with Tennyson. She almost
always qualifies these speculations with
‘surely’, ‘probably’, or ‘possibly’, but one
forgivable exception is the opening
paragraph in which the biographer
effectively engages our immediate sympathy
by using a novelistic dramatisation of
Anna’s mother ‘pausing’ while writing a
letter to look at her dying daughter who
‘shifted slightly’ before Mary ‘dipped her
pen in the inkwell and continued.’
Adrienne Gavin has made Mary
Sewell, Anna’s mother, a continual
beneficent presence in the book, which
thereby becomes almost a joint biography.
Mary was there at Anna’s death as well as
birth and they became each others’
soulmate, and partner in good works. They
were a matched pair of philanthropists with,
their biographer judges, Mary the more
imaginative and Anna fearless but more
circumspect. The book tells how they
promoted children’s and adults’ education,
temperance, the rehabilitation of prisoners,
and the relief of the poor and of any other
local distress they could find. Their tireless
and effective do-gooding was informed by
the principles of their native Quakerism,
though both were exploratory and eclectic in
their religious reading and church-going.
One of the most interesting parts of the book
is its account of how each of them
renounced formal membership of the
Quakers (Anna was actually expelled)
without losing their own faith or their
network of Quaker friends.
Another fascinating section is the
account of Mary’s successful and
enlightened teaching of Anna and her
brother. She set out to teach them virtue but
in a way that was ‘”stimulating, animating,
affectionate [and not] depressing”’ (22). She
taught them obedience ‘through habit’,
independence but with self-restraint,
responsibility but without anxiety, and
knowledge about - and respect for - the
natural world by observation, collection and
experiment which did not involve killing.
13
Like one of her sisters and an aunt, Mary
preceded Anna as a writer, publishing
educative books on nature and religion for
both adults and children, with Anna
eventually as effectively her editor.
Adrienne Gavin quotes from Walks with
Mamma, one of Mary’s early books, a
monosyllabic reading primer originally for
Anna and Philip (20-21)., which is as
strained as, but more engagingly
bloodthirsty than most 20th century reading
primers.
Like 30% of her generation, Anna
remained unmarried. She lived a life of
‘selflessness and charity’ (146), despite
being lame from childhood and increasingly
incapacitated by a debilitating illness (which
Adrienne Gavin suggests may have been a
form of lupus). As well as her charity work
and correspondence, she read (mostly
newspapers and devotional books it would
seem from the biography). She also rode,
drove or walked whenever she was fit, kept
animals (especially bees), helped to manage
the domestic economy, and visited relatives
for long periods.
When illness increasingly, then
finally, bound her to the house and deprived
her of the company of horses, Anna
painstakingly pencilled her best-seller. It
took her five years, on and off, but we are
given few details of the composition
process, presumably because few exist. She
was, as ever, in the care of the indefatigable
mother who was at the same time nursing
her ailing husband Isaac and continuing both
her philanthropy and her own bread-winning
writing. Black Beauty could be seen as the
continuation of Anna’s good works by other
means. It was intended for adults as much as
for children, especially adults who worked
with horses. Its admonitions also
prominently included incidents cautioning
against drinking, hunting, irresponsible
smoking, war, ignorance, party political
activity and not keeping Sunday as a day of
rest, all hobby-horses of the novelist.
The values that had informed
Anna’s life are those which, implicitly and
explicitly, permeate her famous book, and,
arguably are part of the explanation for its
extraordinary popularity. In Black Beauty
there is propaganda against cruelty to
animals, an emphasis on disciplined
upbringing (which may specially endear the
book to adults who buy it for children), the
implication that ‘good breeding’ acquired
through hard work and self-restraint has
more validity than that which is the product
only of hereditary wealth and title, and the
deeply English preference for the
countryside and its ways rather than the
town. As her biographer makes clear, these
can be traced in Black Beauty’s creator,
who, as she says, could well be one of the
‘gracious ladies’ who so forthrightly and
expertly remonstrate with abusers of horses
in her novel. Adrienne Gavin uses many
quotations from the novel as epigraphs to
chapters and says:
for Anna[,] controlling herself,
seeing things clearly and
accepting her situation with
equanimity and true faith was her
determined mission (110)
This is what Black Beauty learns and
advocates and it is the lesson of Anna’s
book, as it is of her mother’s smaller-scale
didactic works.
‘Black Beauty is the autobiography
not only of a horse but also of Anna herself’
(206). As well as the values, the events of
the plot of the novel, or its plots, could also
be paralleled by some features of Anna
Sewell’s life. Within its over-arching cyclic
pattern from Arcadian infancy to Arcadian
retirement it is an episodic novel, alternating
dramatic events with more homiletic
sections, as, presumably did Walks with
Mamma. In particular, as Adrienne Gavin
says, Black Beauty’s abrupt moves between
owners, rural and urban, reflect the Sewell
family’s frequent house-moves – disruptive
to their philanthropic projects –forced on
them by Isaac Sewell’s often unsuccessful
attempts to establish himself in the
businesses of drapery, then banking, with
some brewing, coal-trading and ship-owning
on the side.
Black Beauty was published in
1877, just before Anna’s death at the age of
58. After a slow start it became a rampant
best-seller (and source of unscrupulous
adaptation) largely, at first, because
campaigners against animal cruelty,
especially in the U.S.A., bought it for free
distribution, in one case as ‘The Uncle
Tom’s Cabin of the Horse’. Adrienne
Gavin’s account of the book’s publication
history is the one part of the book that is
14
hard-going, but only because, quite properly,
it exhaustively details its unparalleled
runaway and continuing success.
The author’s restrained and moving
account of Anna’s death, based on the aged
but ever-active Mary’s account, acts almost
as an epilogue to the book, as does the brief
coda on the recent destruction of the Sewell
graves.
The book is well produced with a
family tree, photographs and source list, is
clearly written, and beautifully judged in its
contents. It is an engaging, dignifying,
persuasive, and salutary life of a woman
whose virtues might otherwise seem strange
and unattractive to readers in our brasher,
competitive and celebrity-centred culture.
Andrew Stibbs, Recent former Senior
Lecturer,
University of Leeds, UK
Dark Horse (2)
Anna Sewell is quite literally a one book
writer, and this book, Black Beauty: His
Grooms and Companions. The
Autobiography of a Horse, was written in
the last seven years of her life. Adrienne E.
Gavin’s biography therefore concentrates for
the most part on Sewell’s life, with only a
single chapter of two dozen pages allotted to
the novel itself, and few more pages
chronicling the writing thereof. Even in her
discussion of Black Beauty Gavin asserts
that it is ‘the autobiography not only of a
horse but also of Anna herself’ (206), a
dangerous statement but one which Gavin
clearly believes, having already published an
article in 1999 on ‘Reading Anna Sewell’s
Black Beauty as Autobiography’1. Gavin’s
statement is followed by one of her far too
numerous speculative comments on Sewell’s
life,
The opening of the novel and
Birtwick Park were surely based
on Dudwick Park [her
grandparents’ home], Farmer Grey
on her grandfather Wright or
Philip [her brother], the Gordons
on her Aunt and Uncle Wright, the
three Misses Blomefield (one even
called Ellen) on her three aunts at
Dudwick Cottage, and Anna
herself and Mary [her mother] as
models for characters who step in
to prevent cruelty.
(206)
That Gavin considers that Black Beauty
mirrors its author’s life is evident in the
quotations beneath each chapter heading, all
considered as apt a description of that
particular period in Sewell’s life, as they
were in the horse’s story.
It would be interesting to count the
occurrences of sentences involving ‘surely’,
probably’ and ‘possibly’ within Gavin’s
text, but their annoying regularity goes a
long way to destroying what is an otherwise
extensively researched account of Sewell,
and thereby does a grave disservice to her
life of a hitherto biographically underrepresented author. Although she was a
regular and voluminous correspondent,
Sewell left no diaries, and Gavin has seen fit
to elaborate on the facts of her life with a
large amount of conjecture, particularly in
those areas which consider any romantic
attachment Sewell might have made. Sewell
made no reference to such matters in her
letters, but Gavin scatters her text with
possible expectations of marriage which her
subject might have entertained.
Gavin has been unwisely tempted into
expanding Sewell’s recorded travels with
conjectural visits, both to family and to
those visitor attractions which became
obligatory for the more mobile Victorian
public. So, in the space of three paragraphs
between pages 114 and 115 readers are told,
…possibly the Buxton stop was en
route…Anna surely travelled down
to see her new niece, possibly also
visiting the Royal Pavilion…she
would almost certainly that
summer have visited the Great
Exhibition [followed by a
description of this exhibition
which we have no evidence that
Sewell visited]…Anna probably
took in other London sights…She
may have been one of the 145, 000
visitors to London Zoo in August
1851…
Gavin has clearly undertaken extensive and
meticulous research, and it is almost as if,
having gone to so much trouble, she is
unwilling to select evidence to support what
she knows Sewell actually did, preferring
15
instead to include extra detail and postulate
unsubstantiated visits to flesh out the meagre
record of her actual visits. It would have
been less irritating had she reserved this
information, which in itself has considerable
interest for readers, for a general background
to each period of Sewell’s life, rather than
including it within the verifiable account.
The continual use of these qualifying
phrases ‘surely ‘and ‘almost certainly’ also
add an undesirably gushing note which sits
uneasily within such a well-researched book.
This is a painstaking account of
Sewell’s life, very fully annotated, with a
bibliography which would be extremely
useful to scholars of Black Beauty and its
author. It is an anomaly therefore that the
text itself is, I feel, far less scholarly in its
approach, and therefore more suited to a
popular than an academic audience.
‘The Autobiography of a Horse: reading Anna
Sewell’s Black Beauty as Autobiography’ in
Martin Hewitt (ed.), Representing Victorian
Lives, Leeds Working Papers in Victorian
Studies, vol. 2 (Leeds, Leeds Centre for
Victorian Studies, 1999), pp. 51-62
Bridget Carrington
PhD student, Roehampton University
Children’s Literature: New Approaches,
Karin-Lesnik-Oberstein, (ed). London:
Pargrave-Macmillan, 2004. ISSN 1-4391737-X (cloth); 1-439-1738-8 (paper)
The publishers, Palgrave-Macmillan, bill
Karín Lesnik-Oberstein’s edited volume,
Children's Literature: New Approaches as
“a guide for graduate and upper-level
undergraduate students of children's
literature.” Since this 221 page volume
retails at an affordable £16.99 in the UK
(although it is more expensive in central
Europe and the USA), it is more likely than
books published in the Routledge series
edited by Jack Zipes or Scarecrow’s
children’s literature series to reach its
intended readership. The novice scholars for
whom this text has been produced are,
however, likely to be confused by the “new
approaches” Lesnik-Oberstein outlines in
the introduction to this volume since
familiarity with the history of children’s
literature criticism is assumed.
So what is “new” about the
approaches offered by this volume? For
once, the adjective is not merely a marketing
device. In the first chapter, Lesnik-Oberstein
critiques established ways of studying
children’s literature. Although her
arguments will not be “new” to those who
are familiar with her earlier works, they do
depart from the approaches offered by
numerous other critics (with the possible
exception of Jacqueline Rose). LesnikOberstein suggests that there is a lack of
clarity as to “what . . . constitutes an
‘academic’ study of children’s literature and
its criticism as opposed to, say, educational
or librarianship courses and publications on
children’s fiction” (1). In other words, she
regards educational and librarianship
scholarship as non-academic and is
dismissive of the possibility that the
intersections between these various
disciplines might be a source of value (see
also Lesnik-Oberstein 2004b). Instead she
deconstructs well-known works of
children’s literary criticism, particularly
focussing on Rod McGillis’s The Nimble
Reader and David Rudd’s Enid Blyton and
the Mystery of Children’s Literature, in
order to define her position as one of
opposition.
Lesnik-Oberstein suggests that the
main goal of children’s literature criticism to
date has been “the choosing of good books
for children” through a thorough knowledge
of both the child and the book (4). She
builds her argument by questioning whether
either of these entities is ‘knowable’, and is
particularly keen to point out the ways in
which critics have conflated real, flesh-andblood children with generalised notions of
the child, the child reader and childhood.
Her argumentation relies on what at first
appears to be hair-splitting distinctions in
the search of flaws in various critics’
presentations of their ideas, but gradually
builds towards identifying a central problem
in the criticism of children’s literature:
There is, after all, of course, no
conclusive evidence of which
critic predicts better than which
other critic which children will
like which book and why; or a
critical method that addresses
once and for all the demands
made by children’s literature of
itself to find the way to
improved literacy, education,
16
morality and emotional wellbeing through the reading of
suitable children’s books.
Indeed, how could there be?
(19)
In a text intended for novice critics,
Lesnik-Oberstein is undoubtedly right to
begin by questioning the purpose of literary
criticism in general and the criticism of
children’s literature in particular. Many
established critics would do well to return to
this basic question. It seems to me that
Lesnik-Oberstein’s comment on the lack of
evidence as to the success of existing
criticism is something all literary critics
would do well to address. And this is why I
find myself so disappointed by her own
response.
Instead of considering ways in which
children’s literature scholars might seek the
evidence she has established is lacking,
Lesnik-Oberstein’s solution is to give up and
declare the task impossible. She concludes:
“children’s literature as it stands, and as it
defines itself, cannot succeed in achieving
its own aim: finding the good book for the
child, through knowing the child and the
book” (19). Having followed her detailed
arguments and critiques of why critics such
as Rudd, McGillis, Sell and Hunt are
wrongheaded in their pursuit of finding
ways of choosing good books for children, I
think readers should be forgiven for
expecting an equally detailed explication of
Lesnik-Oberstein’s own goals and an
overview of what she considers to be the
purpose of literary criticism. Such readers
will be disappointed. The only solution that
is offered is a single sentence stating that the
authors of the papers in the volume write
and think about children’s literature without
“re-introduc[ing] at some point, overtly or
indirectly - the real child, and a wider real of
which it is a part” (19). What this statement
does not explain is how critics taking this
approach will define their field. Indeed I
look forwards to seeing how LesnikOberstein and her followers will define
children’s literature without referring to
children, child readers, implied readers or
childhood in future publications as none of
them has undertaken this task in the volume
under review. And even if it were possible to
define children’s literature without making
real world references, the purpose of such
forms of criticism remain a mystery.
I understand Lesnik-Oberstein’s
statement as proposing that the academic
study of children’s literature should in some
way sever itself from its pedagogical roots,
almost as if there were something rather
shameful or inappropriate about the history
of children’s literature criticism. LesnikOberstein’s onslaught into the various works
she cites implies that there is something
fundamentally wrong with the premise of
trying to find ways of matching children and
books. Not only does this devalue some of
the finest work of children’s literary
criticism, it dismisses something that
children’s literature scholars have to offer to
the wider field of literary criticism. Critics
of mainstream literature have much to learn
from the anti-elitism and celebration of the
reader found in children’s literature
research. For this reason, I find her critique
of David Rudd’s Enid Blyton and the
Mystery of Children’s Literature particularly
unfortunate since this work goes further than
most in seeking a method of evaluating what
constitutes finding good books for children.
But enough. The criticism of
children’s literature will certainly not
develop if critics merely pick holes in one
another’s arguments or attempt to substitute
one set of beliefs for another. A more
productive way to evaluate the value of this
‘new’ approach is to see how effectively the
articles in the collection manage to do what
Lesnik-Oberstein claims they do: offer
insights into children’s literature without
making references to the real world.
The first article by Sue Walsh
certainly lives up to Lesnik-Oberstein’s
claims. Walsh provides a detailed and
illuminating investigation of the ways in
which critics have conflated biographical
studies of Kipling with studies of his Just So
Stories in order to expose some of the
sloppy argumentation that has arisen in this
type of criticism. However, after this good
start, the remaining articles in the volume
return to making conventional references to
children, child readers and the real world.
Hillis Miller’s article on The Swiss Family
Robinson, for example, returns to the forms
of criticism that Walsh criticises as he
weaves biographical information about
Wyss’s life and the production the novel as
17
well as autobiographical information about
his own childhood reading into his
discussion. The result is an article that plots
changes in the reading processes that is
valuable precisely because it makes
references to a particular real world reader:
Hillis Miller himself.
The remaining seven articles, most of
which have been written by less well
established scholars than those mentioned so
far, offer detailed, interesting analyses of a
range of topics relevant for graduate studies
of children’s literature. All of them are
worth reading; all of them make references
to real world phenomena. A particularly
noteworthy argument is Christine Sutphin’s
interrogation of existing scholarly
generalisations about Victorian views of
childhood. She draws attention to the ways
in which a collection of illustrated poetry,
Home Thoughts and Home Scenes,
contradicts these generalisations. She then
goes on to offer her own view of how
Victorians viewed childhood, and in the
process makes real world references of the
kind that Lesnik-Oberstein eschews.
Children’s Literature: New
Approaches offers food for thought. If we
can regard Lesnik-Oberstein’s new
approaches as a complement to other
approaches within a growing and divergent
field of scholarship, we should welcome the
appearance of this volume. Even if we do
not agree with the solutions it offers, we
must accept that it is posing serious
questions that critics need to address. In
time, I believe that Lesnik-Oberstein’s
introduction will become a classic article
which will enable future scholars of
children’s literature to define their position
on various debates in a more precise
manner. The questions she poses and the
critique of existing criticism she offers may
prove helpful for those who seek answers.
What the collection of articles included in
this volume demonstrate, however, is the
difficulty of producing criticism without
making real world references. Given the
generally high quality of these articles, I
think we can also question what the value of
forms of criticism that do live up to LesnikOberstein’s ideals might be.
References
Lesnik-Oberstein, Karín (ed.) 2004a. Children’s
Literature: New Approaches. Basingstoke
and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lesnik-Oberstein, Karín. 2004b. Review:
Children’s Literature ans Communication:
The ChiLPA Project. The Modern
Language Review p. 445.
McGillis, Roderick. 1996. The Nimble Reader:
Literary Theory and Children’s
Literature. New York: Twayne
Publishers.
Rudd, David. 2000. Enid Blyton and the Mystery
of Children’s Literature. Basingstoke and
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Anne Lundin, Constructing the Canon of
Children’s Literature. New York:
Routledge, 2004. ISBN: 0-815-33841-4
Anne Lundin’s Constructing the Canon of
Children’s Literature is a historical analysis
of how children’s literature has been
canonised. Constructing the Canon of
Children’s Literature is divided into three
chapters: Chapter 1: “Best Books: The
Librarian”, Chapter 2: “Best Books: The
Scholar” and Chapter 3: “Best Books: The
Reader”. The canonisation is thus described
from three different perspectives: the
librarian’s, the scholar’s and the reader’s.
The three chapters are structured historically
with the main emphasis on the period from
the latter half of the nineteenth century up
through the twentieth. Anne Lundin gives a
historical account of how children’s books
have been received and how their reception
has been imparted to others. She shows how
the construction of a canon depends to a
large extent on who is constructing it, but
she also points out that a canon is very often
influenced by personal preferences and
childhood reading experiences.
In Chapter 1: “Best Books: The
Librarian” Lundin describes the great
significance of the librarian for the
canonisation of children’s literature and the
dissemination of children’s literature in
general and a canon in particular. Anne
Lundin argues that the librarian’s role in the
promotion of children’s literature has been
overlooked and in this regard explains how a
number of mostly female librarians from the
second half of the 19th century onwards
have made it their task to canonise and
promote good children’s literature. Lundin
writes about the librarians’ canon: “Their
18
canon was geared toward ‘best books’ from
an adult perspective, and with a female slant
of that.” (p. 4) The canon was and is
influenced by what is thought to be suitable
reading material for children at any given
time; it is rarely based on any considered
documented criteria, but independently
based on the respective librarian’s attitudes
and judgements. However, Lundin makes
the important point that the pioneers’ canon
was rooted in cultural rather than individual
ideas. Thus the books were selected
according to educational considerations.
Chapter 2: “Best Books: The
Scholar” is Lundin’s account of the scholar
or researcher’s role in the canonisation of
children’s literature. It is built around a
selection of 20th century reviews of what
have become known as “touchstones”. This
section of the book shows how the
touchstones in children’s literature have
been judged by the academic world and are
an interesting study of critiques of children’s
books. It might have been more enlightening
if Lundin had chosen fewer books and had
found more opinions of individual works.
Equally, it would have been beneficial if
Lundin had commented on the reviews
instead of letting them stand without
comment.
I also have some reservations about
chapter 3: “Best Books: The Reader”. The
problematic nature of this field is inherent
as, on the face of it, it is difficult to make
any statements about readers’ reception of a
particular work and so there can be a
tendency to rely on one’s own reading
experiences or public figures’
pronouncements. However, Lundin looks at
the significance of reading for the individual
and draws on her own experiences. Lundin
argues that reading is a social practice and a
private experience. She talks about reading
books and literature’s enormous influence
on the reader. Lundin asserts that “books not
only speak of other books as a common
landscape, but also of other places, lived,
remembered, read, re-created. […]
Landscape, then, may be the construction of
stories that we tell ourselves about
ourselves, which arise from frameworks of
national identity, ideology narrative
tradition, and the imagination.” (p. 115)
The idea of seeing the
canonisation of children’s books from these
three points of view is interesting and
innovative; unfortunately, Lundin’s
presentation is very subjective. The strength
of the book is the first chapter, in which
Lundin reveals what pioneers the first
librarians really were when they sat down to
construct a canon.
One of Lundin’s points is that
“Children’s literature is an intersection of
two powerful ideological positions: our
ideas about childhood and our ideas about
literature, ideas often conflicted beyond own
knowing.” (p. 147) This is a discussion
which is not only interesting with respect to
the canonisation of children’s literature, but
also with respect to children’s literature as a
field of research.
Anette Øster, Ph.D student at the Centre for
Children’s Literature,
The Danish University of Education,
Denmark
The Presence of the Past in Children’s
Literature, Contributions to the Study
of World Literature, Number 120
Edited by Ann Lawson Lucas
Hardback, xxi + 242 pages, £36.99 and US
$63.95
Westport, Connecticut and London:
Praeger, 2003, ISBN: 0-313-32483-2
This publication is a collection of 23 of the
hundred or so papers presented at the 13th
Biennial IRSCL Congress held in York, UK
in 1997. In her introduction, the editor, Ann
Lawson Lucas – formerly Senior Lecturer in
Italian at the University of Hull, and
translator of the OUP Adventures of
Pinnochio, concedes that this collection
‘cannot adequately convey the breadth of
diversity or the depth of common ground’
but intends that it should ‘provide an
impression of all the dominant themes and
approaches which were present in the
conference program’. To this purpose she
has grouped the papers within seven themes
arranged in an order reflecting the
chronology of the works discussed, although
the book is essentially concerned with the
representation and mediation of the past in
children’s literature, and not with the history
of children’s literature itself. Lucas’s
introduction, persuasively written and easily
read, offers an overview of the succeeding
chapters, emphasizing the relatively short
19
time in which the application of critical
theory to literature for children has been
carried out, and summarizing both the
importance of examining the range of
possible approaches and the content of the
fictional depiction of history and the past in
general, and the relevance of doing so within
the context of children’s literature of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries in
particular.
Entirely logically, Lucas’s
organization of the papers begins with
considerations of the application of literary
theory together with an investigation of
fashions in criticism and publishing and the
pressure this exerts on writers and readers.
The positioning of these three essays on
theoretical approaches immediately offers
enormously important areas for discussion,
particularly the issues surrounding
narrational objectivity, and reflect the
modern realization that the importance of
children’s literature to the infinitely vaster
canon of literature in general can only be
fully appreciated when it is rigorously
examined in the light of that same
theoretical criticism applied to literature as a
whole. This exposition of theory
particularly pertinent to historically based
literature permits readers better to
interrogate the papers about the literature
itself which then follow.
The four chapters of Part II are
concerned with adapting archetypes from
fact and fiction, and examine different
fictional representations of Jeanne d’Arc,
Afonso Henriques and the genre of the
Robinsonnade, which reflect as much of the
political climate and ideology of the writer’s
times as they do that of the historical figure
and period written about. G.A. Henty looms
large in the third theme, ‘Adventures in
History’ which contains two papers, the first
of which examines his work in the context
of Victorian and Edwardian constructions of
history, the second comparing With Clive in
India with Pullman’s The Tin Princess,
papers which both illuminate and invite
further investigation. Four chapters on
colonial and postcolonial writing form Part
IV, respectively arguing the diminution of
Lofting’s own anti-imperialist attitudes in
his characterization of Dolittle, discussing
the representations of indigenous peoples in
the children’s literature of their countries,
slavery and the Irish potato famine, and
focussing on the difficulty of presenting
these topics for children.
With the fifth theme the book
reaches World War II, and here three papers
consider the complexity of intention and
reaction in literature concerned with
warfare. ‘On the Use of Books for Children’
argues that the creation of the German
National Myth lies largely within
contemporary children’s literature,
extrapolating the thesis into an examination
of what modern German children’s literature
on the subject tells us about modern
Germany. Our reaction to the unabridged
publication of Anne Frank’s diary is debated
in the second paper, while the third
compares ‘The Autobiographical
Representation of History in Text and Image
in Michael Foreman’s War Boy and Tomi
Ungerer’s Die Gedanken sind frei’,
revealing that therein lies a commentary not
only on the past depicted, but equally on our
own times. Time-slip stories, modern and
postmodern, feature in Part VI, with
perennially popular authors such as Boston,
Pearce and Nesbit, whose treatment of time,
place, identity and changing values are
under consideration in the first paper, Pearce
and Boston appearing again, together with
Aiken, Farmer and Lively in the second, an
examination of the importance of memories
(particularly women’s memories} in
recreating the past in the consciousness of
the present. Gender issues form the final
theme in this book, from Dan Dare and the
Eagle – so typical of post Second World
War gender stereotyping - through an
empathetic interpretation of the shift in
gender roles in the course of Le Guin’s
writing of the Earthsea saga, to ‘Witchfigures in Recent Children’s Fiction’.
The Afterword, concerned with the
future of children’s literature, is tantalizingly
entitled ‘The Duty of Internet
Internationalism: Roald Dahls of the World
Unite!’, and puts forward a very personal
view of the future of the genre, and of the
place of criticism in the field of children’s
literature, apparently arguing that its
creation, position and importance should
place it above and beyond criticism Written
by a recent recipient of the IRSCL Honor
Book Award, this is a surprising and
contentious thesis, and one that will
20
certainly invite discussion, but it is perhaps
slightly misplaced in a volume such as this.
Well served by annotation and
bibliographical detail, The Presence of the
Past in Children’s Literature is a valuable,
though far from exhaustive, collection of
current work in this area, and one which
offers differing but equally valid critically
informed perspectives on a particularly
popular and rich area of children’s literature.
Review by Bridget Carrington,
PhD student at Roehampton University,
London
Sebastien Chapleau (ed) New Voices in
Children’s Literature Criticism.
Lichfield, Staffordshire: Pied Piper
Publishing, 2004. ISBN 0 9546384 4 1.
131 pages.
A logical place to start with a review is with
the title, in this case: New Voices in
Children’s Literature Criticism. I am fully
aware that publishers can be very directive
about what the title should be because they
see it as part of their marketing strategy. As
a “consumer” of this collection, my initial
question is: “who is the projected reader for
this text?” If it is the general reader
interested in children’s literature, then they
would not actually have any realisation as to
who really are the “new (critical) voices” in
this collection unless they studied the
biographical information; nor would they
particularly know who are the established
academics, such as Perry Nodelman and
Peter Hunt who have done so much,
amongst others, to establish and develop the
field. For the less informed reader, more
attention could have been given to this
subject in the editorial introduction. More
could have been said here also about the
way that the essays demonstrate the critical
development of the field and how they sit
within the intentions and themes of this
particular collection of thirteen essays.
Instead, the very short editorial introduction
focuses on the much debated topic of the
field of children’s literature, which topic
critics of children’s literature and academics
working in the field are seemingly endlessly
explaining and justifying, and which seems
to me to be an unnecessarily defensive
position to adopt in light of the maturity of
the discipline. What have not been properly
developed by Sebastien Chapleau in his
editorial introduction are the commonalities
and the connections in this collection of
essays. The “real” guide for the reader could
have been a realisation that there is a new
conversational topic emerging from both the
new and the established voices in the
criticism of children’s literature. That topic
is the breaking down and questioning of
boundaries, and this, for me, was the
centrally interesting and informative line of
thought permeating this collection. Hence
my title for this collection would have been
Questioning Boundaries: extending new
lines of thought in the criticism of children’s
literature. The introductory essay could
have traced the critical positions leading to
the development of new lines of thought
which are embedded here, and thus usefully
placed the new voices in the contemporary
debate. Instead of Chapleau’s negative
statement “we seem to be going backwards,”
we could have had a stronger, confident, and
more accurate comment that the study of
children’s literature continues to forge
ahead, questioning the old and breaking new
boundaries. Wisdom in hindsight is a
position which the critical reviewer always
enjoys!
I understand this state of affairs all
too readily, however, from my recent
experience of giving a professorial inaugural
lecture where I was all set not to have to
enter into this debate, while at the same time
aware that I was addressing an audience
ranging from those who were far more
knowledgeable than I, to colleagues in
English and other subject domains, and nonacademic. I felt it necessary to begin by
attempting to define the field. The reasons
for this were that colleagues in the field
should know what my particular critical
stance is; that academics in English and
other subject domains should realise that this
is a serious and intellectually challenging
area; and that those outside academia should
realise that we, as academics in the field,
have an important and relevant contribution
to make which potentially affects the ways
in which they and their children view and
understand literature and matters of culture.
I wanted to convince all parties that the
work we do is centrally important; though
some people have yet to be convinced. It
21
saddens me to think that such an approach is
still necessary when there is a wealth of
sophisticated and highly developed criticism
built by a generation of scholars which is the
inheritance of the new generation who are
taking on and continuing the challenge in
stimulating and diverse ways.
My intention in the following review is to
identify some of the connections I perceive
to permeate this collection, and to discuss
them in a representative selection since to
consider each in detail would require an
article of considerable length.
Perry Nodelman’s Preface “‘There’s
Like No Books About Anything’” takes the
above as his subject and makes a case for the
fact that there is an extant strength and
necessary critical expertise to address the
study of literature for children. Perry
Nodelman rightly and convincingly attests to
the need for diversity, and draws attention to
the “tolerance” required to enable the
complexity of this multi-faceted field to be
interrogated and appropriately developed.
His essay speaks out against the
trivialisation of the study of children’s
literature. He clearly demonstrates the
difference between the deep academic study
of the subject and the populist attitude which
also invades academia – three cheers here!
Peter Hunt’s essay “The
Knowledge: What Do You Need to Know to
Know Children’s Literature?” rightly and
convincingly argues for criticism and theory
which “must emanate from children’s
books,” (16) and thereby achieves a
coherence whilst interrogating the related
areas of critical and practical interest. The
study of children’s literature is then placed
firmly in the particular literary, aesthetic and
cultural system(s) applicable to any culture
and the determination to understand such,
and enables informed reading and
understanding across and within subject
boundaries, theoretical perspectives and
cultural situation(s).
For me, Rebecca Rabinowitz’s
“Messy New Freedoms: Queer Theory and
Children’s Literature,” reads as a key essay
in this collection. Rebecca Rabinowitz
briefly and informatively traces the
development of queer theory and continues
by arguing for the application of such to the
critical reading of children’s literature in
order to deconstruct binary oppositions. As
she points out leading theorists problematise
extant “givens”:
Rather than offering a stable new set of
paradigms for sex, gender, and sexuality,
queer theory looks at traditional
categories and gleefully makes ‘trouble’
for them. (19)
The focus of the essay is rightly on sex,
gender and sexuality. However, if one
adopts this critically questioning approach
and applies this mode of thinking to
children’s literature criticism in a very
conscious way, then the clouding
“protectiveness” of binary opposition would
be removed and the embedded deeper
complexities would be opened to
interrogation and analysis bringing far more
sophisticated understanding. For example
the “givenness” of concepts such as
childhood and the literary construction of
the child from a centrally Anglo-American
perspective would come into question as
would the dominant critical perspective, a
point which I shall return to later.
Vanessa Joosen’s “The Apple That
Was Not Poisoned: Intertextuality in
Feminist Fairytale Adaptations” is a clearly
structured discussion of the relationship
between “the theoretical feminist discussion
on fairytales and fictional adaptations of the
same stories.” (29). Here Joosen selects a set
of conclusions as exemplars drawn by
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in The
Madwoman in the Attic (1979), from their
critical analysis of “Snow White.” Vanessa
Joosen sets this in tabular form against a
conscious employment of theoretical
positions by the feminist writer Linda
Kavanagh in her re-writing of the same tale.
The presentational format adopted enables a
direct comparison to be made in the reading
process, thus demonstrating the repression
and disempowerment of the female
protagonist in the traditional tale made by
Gilbert and Gubar, and the move toward
liberation and empowerment in Kavanagh’s
re-writing. Interestingly, to me, the
boundary is made evident here as one
physically reads across the page; the
questions lie in the blank central column
which is written “into” by the literary critic.
The historical overview of post-Gilbert and
Gubar feminist critical analysis of fairy tales
and the development of retellings concludes
22
with a discussion of Emma Donoghue’s
collection of fairy tales Kissing the Witch
(Donoghue, 1997) described by Elizabeth
Wanning Harries as disrupting “the usual
patterns of heterosexual desire” (Harries,
2000) and by Vanessa Joosen as taking on
“issues addressed by feminist and lesbian
critics” (35) and also providing “the reader
with a positive alternative to the patriarchal
view of women.”(35) In this short but
informative essay, Vanessa Joosen provides
an indicative development of the cross-over
between theory and practice; that is, feminist
theory, critical practice and the practice of
writing where the boundaries are made
evident by critics, and writers re-write and
blur those conventions. As Joosen concludes
“Retelling then not only implies rereading,
but most importantly rethinking” (36), and
has provided an indicative approach in her
contribution to this collection.
“All There in Black and White:
Examining Race and Ethnicity in Children’s
Literature” by Karen Sands-O’Connor,
certainly caused me to do some rereading,
rethinking and the desire to retell, to give an
alternative point of view; to question a
boundary which was being, to me as a nonAmerican, falsely erected. The thrust of the
argument interestingly deals with the
significance of “identification,” and
certainly makes sense in deconstructing the
mythic status (according to some groups of
undergraduate students in particular)
attributed to this aspect of reading. Karen
Sands-O’Connor writes:
While I am not arguing that identification
is insignificant in a reader’s perception
both of books and of the surrounding
world, I am suggesting that focusing on
reader identification as the sole reason
for publishing and promoting books
about race and ethnicity is an
increasingly untenable practice. As the
plurality of the world increases, the
likelihood that a simple connection can
be made between the reader and any
given character based on one aspect of a
person’s humanity steadily decreases.
(39)
What Karen Sands-O’Connor is rightly
calling for is discussion of the literary and
aesthetic elements of texts rather than what I
would nominate as a reductive critical
practice which works from the point of
identification with the characters and is only
interested in “issues.” Here we are in
agreement. Where I deviate from the line of
argument proposed here is in the importance
given to African-American children’s
literature. Karen Sands-O’Connor-states:
Children’s literature scholars who want
to focus on race or ethnicity have almost
exclusively based their research on a
single type of children’s literature –
African-American children’s literature.
(40)
Perhaps this is true from an American
perspective. Reviewing the bibliography for
this essay I was drawn to the absence of any
mention of Clare Bradford’s Reading Race:
Aboriginality in Australian Children’s
Literature (2001), for example. I also think
of my own work which can be qualified as
examining race and ethnicity, and deals with
the Irish situation in particular. Perhaps I am
misguided here, but I felt as though this was
very much an American-centric critical view
which is fine if such a viewpoint is clearly
stated and the work adjusted accordingly. In
short, I agree with the thrust of the argument
overall, that there needs to be a more
internationally inclusive perspective on the
matter, but question the premise of the
African-American children’s literature as a
dominant model outside the United States of
America. Ironically, although Karen SandsO’Connor is calling for boundaries to be
removed, and has drawn attention to one
nationally, she has inadvertently raised one
on an international scale.
The inclusion of two essays which
focus on the discussion of children’s
literature from an international perspective
was refreshing. Gabriele ThomsonWohlgemuth’s “Children’s Literature in
Translation from East to West,” takes
children’s literature under the East German
regime as the subject. Whilst Dominique
Sandis’ “Proposing a Methodology for the
Study of Nation(ality) in Children’s
Literature,” engages with questions of
methodology. These are two subject areas in
which I am particularly interested; in
wishing to see more critical work on texts
outside England and America, and in
working with my research students to
formulate methodological approaches to the
23
study of nationality in children’s literature
(see Palsdottir & Williams). The boundaries
raised by publishers in the availability and
distribution of both primary and critical
texts, and the lack of translation of work into
English is a problem which needs to be
addressed, not only in our critical practice,
but also in terms of critical awareness. At
conferences and in interaction with
colleagues from Europe, Australia and
Canada, for example, one realises that there
is a wealth of texts and critical material and
alternative views which are somewhat muted
in the larger critical arena. Perhaps an
association such as IRSCL might enable the
translation of some critical works – now this
would be a breakthrough!
Most helpfully, for the thematic
nature of this review, David Rudd’s essay is
entitled ‘Border Crossings: Carrie’s War,
Children’s Literature and Hybridity’. Here
David Rudd fluently and most interestingly
discusses Bawden’s novel from a position of
the colonisation of the child and childhood,
engaging in debate with the work of
Jacqueline Rose, and drawing on theoretical
perspectives proposed by Perry Nodelman,
Homi Bhabha and Edward Said. For those
unfamiliar with the text, Carrie’s War is the
story of a woman who returns to Wales
where she was evacuated as a child with her
brother during the Second World War, and
placed with a Welsh couple, an unmarried
brother and sister. David Rudd’s analysis
examines a wide range of considerations
related to notions of colonisation: patriarchy;
repression; Welshness; and adult-child
power relations. In my reading of Nina
Bawden’s the text, on her return as an adult,
Carrie is re-constructing her childhood and
thereby colonising herself within the
memory in which she is enslaved and from
which she wants to break free by coming to
know. Rudd concludes his analysis as
follows:
...adult and child categories and
dislocated, and a general sense of inbetweeness is fostered, where
identities ‘ are continually,
contingently, ‘opening out’
remaking the boundaries (Bhabha:
219). So while adults might seek to
colonise the child through
‘children’s literature’, their ability to
fix the child, let alone to secure the
adult, remains remarkably tenuous.
(69)
Reading Katrien Vloeberghs’
“Constructions of Childhood and Giorgio
Agamben’s Infantia” alongside Ann
Alston’s “There’s No Place Like Home: The
Ideological and Mythical Construction of
House and Home in Children’s Literature,”
makes an interesting contrast in subject
matter. Whilst Vloebergh’s introduces
Giorgio Agamben’s theoretical construction
of childhood as a “disruptive” space, in
relation to the dominant Enlightenment and
Romantic models of childhood, Alston is
arguing against the dominance and the
stability of the middle class. These two
essays provide an insight into the breadth
and “inconsistencies” which are presented in
the study of children’s literature. Vloeberghs
explains Agamben’s theoretical concept of
Infantia aligning his work with that of Julia
Kristeva and Jean François Lyotard which
“endow the concept of infancy with an
anarchic dimension, with a genuine power of
resistance against smooth integration into a
linear development, subject formation and
the symbolic order” (72). Ann Alston’s
essay critiques the middle-class nostalgic
constructions of the (English) home (again
the cultural specificity of this subject matter
is not really identified) as the dominant ideal
embedded in writing for children which
exists in absentia where the non-functional
home is depicted. On reflection, both essays
point to the revolutionary potential of
children’s literature as writers and readers
can potentially re-fashion childhood, remake reality. In The Cat in the Hat by
Seuss, the contest is between chaos and
order; the adult and child knowing and
unknowing their shared but separate worlds.
In the UK children subvert adult culture in
their playground games and rhymes and in
the stories and shared discourses they create
which appropriate “shared culture” and then
create that from which the adult is excluded.
Repeatedly, boundaries are laid down,
crossed and even occasionally playfully and
anarchically picked up and used as skipping
ropes. Most importantly we need critical
voices, both familiar and new to question
and to make aware to stimulate and extend
thinking and provoke debate – which this
collection has certainly done for me.
24
Professor Jean Webb,
University College Worcester, UK
Margaret Meek and Victor Watson,
Coming of Age in Children’s
Literature: Growth and Maturity in the
Work of Philippa Pearce, Cynthia Voigt
and Jan Mark (London and New
York, Continuum, 2002 and 2003).
ISBN 08264-7757-7
And
Nicholas Tucker Darkness Visible:
Inside the world of Philip Pullman
(Duxford, Cambridge, Wizard Books,
2003).ISBN 0-84046-482-8
Now and then reading a work of criticism
produces the same pleasure that can be had
from literature itself, so fine is the writing,
so thought-provoking are the insights that
the writers bring to their task. Margaret
Meek and Victor Watson’s Coming of Age
in Children’s Literature gives this pleasure;
reading it, you are aware of being in the
presence of those who are not only
possessed of very considerable critical
insight, but of a power with words which is
far from common, in any literary discourse.
Both Meek and Watson are critically acute,
and as capable of thinking with Barthes and
Derrida as they are with the earlier work of
the New Critics. To add to this, they know
their way around children’s literature
criticism, and the history of the children’s
book; equally importantly Meek, in
particular, speaks with authority about the
way children read, a relatively uncommon
accomplishment. In Coming of Age in
Children’s Literature they discuss in detail
the ways in which the work of Philippa
Pearce, Jan Mark and Cynthia Voigt give an
account of maturation, a theme notable for
its focus on “reflection, epiphany and the
symbolism of place” as Watson has it (6).
Watson’s introduction takes us from
Defoe, in whose work, he argues, we see
“the origins of children’s fiction” (5) to the
novels of Jane Gardam, J.D. Salinger and
Aidan Chambers. The issue of maturation,
as Watson sees it, is unavoidable in
children’s novels; both child reader and
fictional child character are inevitably
caught up in the processes of learning and
development--unless, of course, this truth is
actively denied, and child characters, and
their readers, are left to languish in
impossible neverlands. However, the three
authors Meek and Watson have chosen to
discuss in detail, “reflective and wordperfect writers…meticulous…with the inner
and outer lives of their protagonists,” are
exemplary in their attention to the
necessities and difficulties of growing up
(41). Meek’s chapter on Pearce follows
Watson’s introduction. She begins with
those books which can be read aloud, and
her account of this reading, and of its value,
is made simply: “the intellectual and
emotional aspects of children’s experience
[of the world of adults via television and so
on] …have been shown to derive coherence
and a depth of understanding from the
reading of fictive narratives” she says (45).
To reading we can add listening: children
who have others read to them become good
listeners, and later, readers. Meek goes on
to show how complex reading really is:
“See how many things the reader is invited
to notice almost at once,” Meek says, as she
begins a close-reading of a paragraph from
Pearce’s story The Rope (47). In this
“noticing” the reader (or listener) discovers
that “ imagination makes it possible to hold
together two different worlds in
…[the]…head at the same time, the
everyday one and the world in the story.” If
this seems an unlikely proposition, she says,
“ask children where they are when they
read”; she has clearly done so, and the
answer is that they can be in both places,
fictional and real, at once (46). Here she is
writing about children who have not yet
learned, as older children will do if they are
to become a competent readers, to “lose”
themselves in world of the text, for so long
as the text can assert itself. This is surely a
vital reminder, and an encouraging one,
because it recognizes the child’s intellectual
capacity, and allows us to think anew about
the process of becoming a reader, one which
we know very well in the abstract, but may
forget when faced with an adult’s critical
appraisals of, say, fairytales or picture
books. We are not in the same place as
child readers, and we both expect too little
and too much from them if we forget this.
With this timely reminder in place,
Meek goes on to discuss Pearce’s famous
novels, including Minnow on the Say, Tom’s
25
Midnight Garden, and The Way to Sattin
Shore. In her readings of these texts she
draws attention to what she calls “latent
sense,” found, for example, in a scene in
which David, one of the two central
characters in Minnow on the Say, is paddling
upstream. He passes a couple on the river’s
bank, the man asleep, the girl picking
daisies. The scene takes place in a river
which runs through two villages; everyone
knows everyone else’s business. She calls
to David, telling him to beware the weir
around the bend; there is no weir, no danger
at all. “David is still too young, too
preoccupied, to interpret the scene of the
two people who probably believed they
wouldn’t be seen,” Meek writes (62): the
girl deflects David by suggesting there is
danger ahead. Thinking with Frank
Kermode, from whom she takes the idea of
latent sense, Meek suggests that it is in such
moments that the author’s skill and insight,
the capacity to produce a narrative of depth,
is discernable. While unarticulated, this
“depth” is nonetheless experienced, an
experience which allows the maturation of
the child reader’s imagination. The child
reader’s agency is as much an issue for the
older reader, then, as it is for the younger,
who is, according to Meek, capable of being
in two places—real and fictional—at once.
For an example of how to write readable,
jargon-free, and thought-provoking criticism
while in full possession of an arsenal of
theory and experience, keeping the child
reader in view all the time, you can’t do
better than turn to the work of Meek and
Watson.
Nicholas Tucker’s book “looks at
the world of Philip Pullman” as the blurb
has it. It tells of Pullman’s life so far, and
seeks to identify the influences for his work,
notably, but not solely, in the novels which
make up the sequence His Dark Materials.
The first two-thirds of the book gives, first, a
brief biography of Pullman, and then
outlines the plots, themes, and
characterizations in Pullman’s published
work. The final third begins with
“Influences and Comparisons”; Milton,
Blake, von Kleist and C.S. Lewis are
discussed (the latter, we are told, Pullman is
on record as despising, though, rather
frustratingly, we aren’t given any fuller
account of this “record”); Pullman’s
philosophy follows. Without a bibliography
or index, this book does not offer the same
scope for the specialist reader or researcher
as does Meek and Watson’s. It seems likely
that Tucker’s book hopes to interest the
general reader; given the popular as well as
literary success of Pullman’s novels, the
existence of such an audience seems likely.
There is no doubt that Pullman has become,
among other things, a celebrity writer. As a
book for those who want to know about this
author, Tucker’s work is interesting and
insightful. What it can be for the critic of
children’s literature depends, I think, upon
where that critic is coming from: there are
many exits and entrances to such criticism.
Valerie Krips, Associate Professor
English Department, University of
Pittsburgh
Brown Gold: Milestones of AfricanAmericanChildren’s Picture Books, 1845 –
2002, by Michelle H. Martin, New York &
London: Routledge, 2004 ISBN: 0-41593857-0 pp. 229
In this scholarly but altogether readable
work on African-American children’s
literature is viewed from a broad culturalhistorical perspective. The dramatic
evolution of this body of literature over a
157 year period is vividly but critically
discussed and portrayed by means of several
reprinted illustrations. Not only is racial
discrimination on the part of some authors
examined in this literature, but also racial
discrimination against African-American
children’s book authors on the part of the
dominant publishing world.
Section 1 consisting of three
chapters, gives an overview of the history of
African-American children’s picture books,
focusing on selected titles such as Helen
Bannerman’s The story of little black Sambo
(1899) and Heinrich Hoffmann’s
Struwwelpeter (1845) which includes the
racist story, “The story of the inky boys” as
well as the McLaughlin Brother’s The ten
little niggers (1857). Although the first two
titles are not originally American, the author
argues that their dynamics had a profound
influence on the development of the
African-American children’s picture book
genre.
The author, Michelle Martin
describes how, until the 1920’s, the
26
antecedents of these books were “by them,
for them”, i.e. they were written primarily
by white authors for white readers with the
black as the centre of ridicule. From the
1920’s out of the Civil Rights and Black
Arts Movement, a number of black authors
emerged who wrote “FUBU” picture books,
i.e. “for us, by us” to help black children to
improve their self esteem and celebrate their
blackness in a society that devalued them.
Martin compellingly demonstrates how
since the fifties, African-American
children’s picture books have made great
strides to become today a genre “by us, for
everyone”. She does not adhere to the
opinion of some critics, that non AfricanAmerican authors cannot make affirming
contributions to the children’s picture book
genre about the black experience, quoting
Ezra Jack Keats and William Miller as
examples. She believes that the inclusive
nature of modern African-American
children’s picture books as well as greater
access to publishing, has secured a
widespread readership of this genre, the
function of which is to build bridges
between people and be catalysts for
embracing difference (p. 72).
In Section 2 a chapter deals with the
Coretta Scott King Award Picture Books.
From a critical analysis of the first awardwinning title, George Ford’s Ray Charles
(1970), which is today considered to be a
traditional and flawed work, the author
discusses several other award-winning titles
such as Camille Yarborough and Carole
Byard’s Cornrows (1979), John Steptoe’s
Cinderella-like Mufaro’s beautiful
daughters: an African tale (1988) in which
black is beautiful; stories from family lore
and intergenerational relationships such as
Valerie Flournoy and Jerry Pinkney’s The
patchwork quilt (1985) and Patricia Mc
Kissack and Jerry Pinkney’s Mirandy and
Brother Wind” (1989). An impressive
analysis follows of the musical quality of
Nathaniel talking (1988) by Eloise
Greenfield and Jan Spivey Gilchrist, a text
in poetic first person narrative, written in
Black English vernacular in the rhythm of
rap and twelve blues poems. Some other
award-winning titles discussed are the
opera-based Aida (1990) by Leo and Anne
Dillon, celebrating the life of famous
African American soprano Leontyne Price
and The middle passage: white ships, black
cargo” (1995) a wordless, visually rich,
oversized picture book by Tom Feelings,
that portrays the painful history of slavery.
Martin also distinguishes herself in
the way she evaluates and describes
illustrations: in In the time of the drums
(1999) by Kim Siegelson and Brian Pinkney,
a retelling of the legend of the mass suicide
of a group of Ibo slaves, she refers to the
“swirly luminescent scratchboard
illustrations (that)…. convey a constant
sense of motion” (p. 101). The collage work
of Bryan Collier in Uptown (2000) is vividly
described as an example of the art work of
the postmodern era. Patricia Mc Kissack and
Jerry Pinkney’s Goin’ someplace special
(2001) an autobiographical story of the
racial discrimination experienced by small
‘Tricia Ann while traveling to the Nashville
public library, one of the few places where
blacks were treated with respect in the
1950’s, the “color principle” is emphasized.
It “encourages the reader to focus on the
positive energy that ‘Tricia Ann (dressed in
a vibrant blue dress with yellow and orange
flowers) exudes rather than the negativity
that surrounds her until she reaches the
library” (p. 103).
The following chapter examines the
development of second generation AfricanAmerican children’s picture book authors
“during this Golden Age of African
American children’s picture books” (p.105).
The discussion as well as the presentation of
interviews with members of the Pinkney,
Myers, Steptoe and Crews families show
that the children generally have developed
their own styles but all of them “carrying on
and expanding a family vision that they have
inherited” (p.106).
Section 3, the last part of this book,
addresses the place of black picture books
within academia. It consists of four chapters.
For the analysis of chosen titles in the first
chapter, “Historical America through the
eyes of the black child”, Martin uses as a
tool, the revision of the social theory of Karl
Marx by Louis Althusser who separates the
Repressive State Apparatus (the
government, the army, the police, the
prisons) from the Ideological State
Apparatus (religion, education, the family,
the legal system, the political system,
culture). She presents picture books that
27
show how oppressors underestimated the
Ideological Apparatus under which the
African-American community operated and
how this enabled the protagonists to behave
subversively without the oppressors
realizing it. She also shows how these books
convey the alternative ideological systems
that were created to effectively aid
protagonists to overcome oppression and
survive the dominant ideological systems
that restricted their freedoms. In this respect
the following titles are analysed: Ebony sea
(1995) by Irene Smalls and Jon Onye
Lockard, The bus ride (1998) by William
Miller and John Ward, Li’l Sis and Uncle
Willie (1991) by Gwen Everett, Martin’s big
words: the life of Dr. Martin Luther King jr.
(2001) by Doreen Rappaport and Bryan
Collier. Books analysed that show how the
acquisition of literacy prevents the
enslavement of the mind are: Mary Bradby’s
More than anything else ((1995), William
Miller’s Richard Wright and the library
card (1997), Robert Coles’s The story of
Ruby Bridges (1995) and Ruby Bridges’s
autobiographical picture book, Through my
eyes (1999). All these books set in the
segregated America, are portrayed to show
that it was a subversive act in itself to obtain
access to literacy.
Another subgenre of AfricanAmerican culture, religion, is discussed in
the chapter, “Just build me a cabin in the
corner of Glory Land: depictions of heaven
in African-American children’s picture
books”. Martin shows how this literature
emerged as metaphors out of slavery from
Negro spirituals and gospel songs. Arna
Bontemps ‘s Bubber goes to heaven, written
in 1930 but only published in 1998, and
Julius Lester and Joe Cepeda’s What a truly
cool world (1999), creatively deconstruct
and transform traditional Judeo-Christian
concepts of heaven, infusing black culture,
history and black modes of discourse into
that which is sacred. In Carolivia Herron and
Joe Cepeda’s Nappy hair (1997), the angels
try to talk God out of giving Brenda at birth
such nappy (kinky) hair, but God insists,
setting a new standard of beauty. Martin also
discusses the brilliant colours used to depict
heaven by Jan Spivey Gilchrist in her picture
book, Madelia (1997), including purple,
blue and hot pink horses. In Bubber goes to
heaven, band music is played and people in
heaven enjoy pancakes, oranges, stick
candy, chocolate bars, apple pie, doughnuts
and soda pop (p.161). The author contrasts
these books with the “straight” and reverent,
Bible-based depictions of heaven by Della
Reese, God inside of me (1999) and Maria
Shriver, What’s heaven? (1999).
The focus of the chapter, “’Ain’t I
fine!’: black modes of discourse in
contemporary African-American children’s
picture books”, is on the form of certain
texts, specifically the stylized language,
rather than the content. Mentioning that
“double-voicedness” of black literary texts is
the result of the dual audience for which
books are written: a black or a white
audience, Martin prefers to focus on
traditionally black modes of storytelling
when they get translated into picture book
form for contemporary American child
readers (p.65). In this respect, text extracts
from Madelia by Jan Spivey Gilchrist, Sam
and the tigers: a new telling of Little Black
Sambo by Julius Lester and Brian Pinkney
and What a cool world by Julius Lester and
Joe Cepeda are analysed. She shows how the
humour in these texts are not at the expense
of blacks but an invitation to the reader to
laugh with the speakers. Examples are given
of the humorous bantering and bargaining of
protagonists with their antagonists, while
stroking their egos. The author argues that
the literary function of these books is to
teach African-American children linguistic
skills that will help them survive and
negotiate relationships with other people,
while nonblack readers are given “a glimpse
into a community of which they know very
little” (p. 176). This will hopefully lead to
cross-cultural understanding.
In the final chapter, “’Why are we
reading this stuff?’: a pedagogy of teaching
African-American children’s picture books”,
Martin discusses the pedagogical
possibilities for these books within college
classes in Children’s Literature and Young
Adult Literature. Suggestions are given of
the texts and methodologies used within a
fifteen week Children’s Literature course for
teachers preparing for early elementary
education and a Young Adult Literature
course for those students preparing for
middle grade education.
Brown Gold: milestones of AfricanAmerican children’s picture books, 184528
2002 consists of a total of 229 pages. There
is a section of detailed notes to each chapter,
a bibliography and an index. The book is
suitable for children’s literature specialists
such as academics, general readers
interested in children’s literature and/or
African-American culture and English
teachers, not only in America, but also in the
English-speaking world, particularly in
Africa. Michelle Martin has herewith
produced a seminal work on the evolution of
a longtime devalued subgenre of American
children’s literature to a literature that has
much to give to all.
Professor Andree-Jeanne Tötemeyer
Chairperson, Namibian Children’s Book
Forum
Andrew O’Malley, The Making of the
Modern Child: Children’s Literature and
Childhood in the Late Eighteenth Century.
New York: Routledge, 2003; pp. 1-189.
ISBN 0-415-94299-3
Anyone living outside Britain who embarks
on a consideration of the English class
system, as Andrew O’Malley does, is to be
congratulated on his courage. His title lacks
geographical definition, but that of the
Introduction, “The English Middle Classes
of the Late Eighteenth Century and the
Impetus for Pedagogical Reform”, provides
a clearer impression of the book’s general
orientation. Not truly the subject of the book
but providing evidence for its argument, it is
doubtful whether “children’s literature”
should appear on the cover: “Childhood and
Children’s Culture” would be better (he
includes toys, games, diaries, as well as
class attitudes, morality, education and
discipline). For, strangely, coming from an
Assistant Professor of English (at the
University of Winnipeg, Canada), this is
really a book of social history, not literary
history or criticism.
It is a fact universally acknowledged
that publishers’ cover blurbs sometimes
serve nobody’s interests by arousing
expectations inappropriately: “With
unprecedented breadth of perspective and
textual focus, this authoritative study
illuminates at long last the complex making
of the modern child”. It’s a bold blurb-writer
who does not rank Roy Porter and John
Rowe Townsend as long-established
precedents, when both are acknowledged in
the text. And then there’s the notion that the
modern child was “made” in a couple of
decades; yet the author cites Raymond
Williams’ condemnation of the epochal view
of culture (26-7).
The volume bears witness to
specialized research, varied secondary
reading and detailed knowledge of some
aspects of English (note, not British) society
in the late eighteenth century. The book is
short for such a hefty project at only 135
pages of text, including 14 black-and-white
figures. There are nearly 30 pages of good,
interesting endnotes, plus useful
bibliographies and index, though some of
the material in the notes could have
enlivened the text, and endnotes are more
user-friendly if numbered consecutively
throughout.
It is a pity that the somewhat
heterogeneous substance of the work loses
both continuity and persuasiveness because
of inappropriate organization, making the
book lack a sense of direction and a
cohesive argument. The Introduction barely
mentions any children’s books. It is
concerned with the new rationalist-minded
middle classes and with the history of ideas,
taking John Locke as presiding genius.
There is no clear explanation of why, as
implied, Locke’s thoughts on education
(1693) and on the tabula rasa of children’s
minds were still potent after a hundred
years, or why advanced thought (often
represented here by Joseph Priestley, the
Edgeworths, Catharine Macaulay, Mary
Wollstonecraft) tended – if it really did – to
prefer old Locke to newer Rousseau (Émile,
1762). And how far was the middle-class
moral minority in step with the
progressives? The author does not always
provide sufficient historical perspective or
contextualization: at the beginning, a few
more lines on the development of the middle
classes would have helped, as also
something on the general nature of
Enlightenment culture, while Chapter 1
could have outlined the past history of the
chapbook.
The ordering of the main chapters
(1-5) is chiefly responsible for the
discomforts of the reader. After two chapters
which give prominence to books for children
(chapbooks and “transitional books”, and
“class relations” in children’s books), there
29
is a major interruption at the heart of the
volume when chapter 3 (about medical
history and midwifery) proves not to be
concerned with children’s literature at all
and barely indeed with children, while
chapter 4 (on some pedagogical theories and
discipline) is so only to a limited extent. The
most attractive and fluent in the book,
Chapter 5 returns to literature, including
instructional books, and the gender roles
promoted by book production and content
(more egalitarian than you might think:
Arithmetic and Zoology were for both boys
and girls). The shorter, forward-looking
Conclusion, which addresses poetry, is the
most wholeheartedly literary chapter of all.
To my mind, the discussion of maternity and
midwifery is a mistaken inclusion, but it
would be better located directly after the
non-literary Introduction, along with the
successful (fourth) chapter on pedagogical
systems. There would then be an
uninterrupted flow of four chapters which
use children’s books to illustrate societal
change: 1) “plebeian” chapbooks and
middle-class transitional books, 2) “class
relations” (or more accurately, middle-class
attitudes to the poor) as treated in middleclass children’s books, 3) the cultural
shaping of middle-class gender roles, plus,
in the Conclusion, the character of early
nineteenth-century children’s literature and
the move from the rational to the fantastic,
from Blake to Roscoe.
Many matters of detail invite
comment. Newbery’s view that fairies are
“the Frolicks of a distempered brain” (25),
echoed by rationalist writers of the late
Enlightenment, ought to be qualified by the
fact that the literary fairy tale (both
Occidental and Oriental) experienced a
“golden age” in the eighteenth century. Its
condemnation as the culture of the poor
needs to be accompanied by an awareness of
its courtly origins in Italy and France, and of
upper- and middle-class translations in
England. (Incidentally, neither the Comtesse
de Genlis nor Lady Ellenor Fenn would have
considered themselves as middle-class: 35,
40.) Under the rubric of “Class Relations”,
the author neglects middle-class views on
the aristocracy: out of 26 pages, only 3½
address attitudes to the upper classes, and
these passages are simplistic, anecdotal and
apparently prejudiced (61-2). It is not always
clear whether the author is speaking in his
own voice or is reflecting a general opinion
of the time: the statement that “The upper
classes owed their degenerate and weakened
condition in large part to their absolute
dependence on the lower orders for their
survival” (61) clearly does not refer to the
Pitts and the Wellesleys among the ruling
classes, some of them pioneers of Empire
and military leaders as well as politicians.
There are insufficient dates of
publication in the text, in social history a
crucial part of books’ significance. The
reasons for the inclusion of a French writer
(Madame de Genlis) and an Indian system of
education (Bell’s at Madras) needed to be
made more explicit. Usually cogent, the
language is not always felicitous. The
frequent reiteration of “plebeian” to replace
“of the poor” is irksome since it now carries
something of a pejorative and urban
connotation. Personally I loathe the selfconscious use of the pronouns “she” and
“her” to represent any person or any child,
and I say this as a feminist – and egalitarian:
in the parlance of the nursery, “two wrongs
don’t make a right”. Besides, is the author
saying that only girls possessed Newbery or
Darton personal organizers? The answer is
“No” (105). Modern idioms may be intended
to lighten the academic tone, but instead
tend to trivialize the thought: was “handson” of male midwives’ training a joke or
not? (71) Derivatives of “Enlightenment”
need a capital E, as in the remark that “many
enlightened physicians” argued that
midwifery should be practised by male
specialists (69). I flinched at the repeated
use of the expression “lottery mentality” to
describe the cultural preferences of the poor:
the author means that they liked fairy tales
because their only hope of relief from a life
of unimaginable toil and deprivation was a
stroke of improbable luck.
The separate parts of this book are
often interesting and illuminating, but an
opportunity was missed for a more
thorough-going analysis of the period’s
middle-class culture of childhood or
conversely a comprehensive examination of
its children’s books (no Robinsonnades or
Sandford and Merton here, though the latter
would have contributed admirably to the
scrutiny of class). Under both heads, the
30
book offers thought-provoking glimpses, as
well as some revealing detail.
Ann Lawson Lucas
University of Hull, UK.
Steven Swann Jones, The Fairy Tale: The
Magic Mirror of the Imagination
New York & London: Routledge, 2002
Xvii + 156, ISBN 0-415-93891-0
Excellent work on the fairy tale is available
to my students. I regularly refer them to
Maria Tatar, Jack Zipes, Alan Dundes,
Bengt Holbek, Ruth Bottigheimer and
others. All of these scholars, however, have
particular interests, and I have often felt the
need for a fairy tale “textbook,” a concise
and approachable monograph which would
introduce the oral origins of the fairy tale
and explain something of the history and
practice of the study of oral literatures, as
well as the fairy tale’s various entries into
and diverse formations in written literature,
the history of the great national collections,
infantilisation, feminist (and other) rewriting, and the range of other critical
approaches. Steven Swann Jones’s The
Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of the
Imagination, originally brought out by
Twayne and now available in paperback in
Routledge’s “Genres in Context,” seems
intended to fill the niche I have described,
and although falling somewhat short of my
ideal, is a welcome addition to what is now
available to the student.
Brief introductory chapters on the
folklore origins and literary history of the
fairy tale provide useful starting-points, and
equally useful is the final Bibliographic
Essay, a historical survey of schools of fairy
tale scholarship and interpretation. My
dissatisfaction with the book mainly relates
to Jones’s understanding of fairy tale as a
genre, which means that his net has been
cast widely. The result is a kind of bottom
trawling able to catch almost anything with
fantastic elements; thus Hugh Lofting’s Dr
Dolittle books – not, in my view, at all like
fairy tales - get a mention, on the grounds
that they make use of a familiar fairy tale
motif, the talking animal. C. S. Lewis, J.R.R.
Tolkien, Mary Norton, and E.B.White
(Charlottte’s Web and Stuart Little) are also
mentioned under the rubric of “fairy tale”
(42) - I would prefer the descriptor “fantasy
for children” - while Swann’s chapter called
The Fairy Tale Influence deals with three
enormously different children’s books.
Lumping together L. Frank Baum’s The
Wizard of Oz, Maurice Sendak’s Where the
Wild Things Are, and Dr Seuss’s The Cat in
the Hat on the grounds that “each depicted a
protagonist’s exploration of magical worlds
and the spiritual and personal enlightenment
that accrues from the enlarged sense of the
world promoted by these explorations”
requires so high a degree of generalisation as
to obscure each book’s individuality.
Fantasy, children’s literature, the picture
book (three overlapping but far from
identical categories) should not be subsumed
into the literary fairy tale like this.
Moreover, there is danger in Jones’s
approach, of reinforcing the erroneous idea
that the literary fairy tale is a genre for
children or young people only.
On the plus side, though, Jones’s
willingness to offer an overall concept of
fairy tale, his confidence in defining it and
identifying its “thematic core,” will also give
students confidence, and should provoke
plenty of thinking and discussion in class
about just what does characterise this genre
– and, indeed, on whether the fairy tale
should be seen as a whole anyway, or as a
set of related sub-genres. Such a discussion
might also raise the question whether the
happy ending is as essential to the genre as
Jones claims: there certainly are recorded
Little Red Riding Hoods and wives of
Bluebeard-types who meet a grisly end. Nor
are all fairy tale protagonists “good and
deserving” (17) - surely the hero of “Puss in
Boots” is a case in point?
In Jones’s interpretations of four
tales (“Three Hairs from the Devil’s Beard,”
“Faithful John,” “The Speaking Horsehead”
and “The Search for the Lost Husband”) I
find much to disagree with, but these are
also the most original and valuable part of
the book, of much interest to specialist as
well as novice readers. Jones’s readings are
grounded in his basic claim, that the fantasy
element in fairy tales points to a
psychological subtext: “fairy tales speak the
language of the unconscious mind” (11).
What Jones calls “ the poetic and
exaggerated symbolism of fantasy”(11) is an
area where students – indeed, all of us –
acknowledge mysteries and look for
31
guidance. The heroine tells her secret to an
iron stove. What can that mean? Swann’s
answers to such questions are offered very
definitely. It is a pity that the plurality of
interpretation acknowledged in his Preface
and Bibliographic Essay has been
abandoned in these chapters. However, in an
introductory textbook a narrow focus and
consistency of interpretive approach do have
benefits. The readings are sufficiently
developed to demonstrate the explanatory
possibilities of Jones’s psychological
approach, but will also provoke formulation
of alternative readings.
Aspects of the book’s production are
unsatisfactory. Routledge is supposedly a
top academic publisher, but The Fairy Tale
offers disheartening evidence of editorial
ignorance: an unfortunately misplaced
comma on p. 11 has turned Geza Roheim
into two scholars, Geza and Roheim;
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s name is misspelt, as are Asbjörnsen’s and Dasent’s;
Asbjörnsen and Moe are not in the index,
and Hans Christian Andersen is spelled
differently on p. 43 from earlier, correct,
spellings. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was
not really published at “mid-century,” and
whether “Aladdin’s Lamp” does directly
owe its existence “to folk tradition” (3) must
now be regarded as debatable. For readers
making a first foray into this field of study,
minor slips are likely to produce confusion
and uncertainty.
Rosemary Lovell-Smith,
University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Aspects and issues in the history of children’s
literature. Edited by Maria Nikolajeva.
Westport (CT) / London: Greenwood Press,
1995. 224 p. ISBN 0-313-29614-6. $ 62.95.
Reflections of Change; Children’s Literature
since 1945. Edited by Sandra L. Beckett.
Westport (CT) / London: Greenwood Press,
1997. 216 p. ISBN 0-313-30145-X. $ 60.00.
The Presence of the Past in Children’s
Literature. Edited by Ann Lawson Lucas.
Westport (CT) / London: Praeger Publishers,
2003. 264 p. ISBN 0-313-32483-2. $ 63.95.
Children’s Literature and the Fin de Siècle.
Edited by Roderick McGillis. Westport
(CT)/ London: Praeger Publishers, 2003.
232 p. ISBN 0-313-32120-5. $ 59.95.
Change and Renewal in Children’s
Literature. Edited by Thomas van der Walt,
assisted by Félicité Fairer-Wessels and
Judith Inggs. Westport (CT) / London:
Praeger Publishers, 2004. 256 p. ISBN 0-27598185-1. $ 64.95.
Books may be ordered from bookshops or
from Greenwood Press:
http://www.greenwood.com
IRSCL Publications
(proceedings of biennial
congresses)
The proceedings of the last IRSCL
congress in Kristiansand are now
available.
Children’s Literature Global and
Local: Social and Aesthetic
Perspectives was edited by Emer
O’Sullivan, Kimberley Reynolds and
Rolf Romøren (Oslo: Novus Press,
2005). The volume contains 20 essays
by the following contributors: Clare
Bradford, Carole Carpenter, Valerie
Coghlan, Mieke K.T. Desmet, HansHeino Ewers, Victoria Flanagan,
Margot Hillel, Elwyn Jenkins, Lindsay
Myers, Chie Mizuma, Sharyn Pearce,
Jana Pohl, Beverley Naidoo, Mavis
Reimer, Martina Seifert, Anna
Karlskov Skyggebjerg, Margarita
Slavova, Asfrid Svensen, Mary Shine
Thompson, Elise Seip Tønnessen,
Thomas van der Walt, Marina
Warner, and Boel Westin, with an
Introduction by the editors.
An order form is available on the
website or from
NOVUS PRESS, E-mail:
novus@novus.no HERMAN FOSS
GATE 19, Telefax: +47 2271 8107 NO0171 OSLO, NORWAY
Price 30 Euros
Contact the board
32
President: Kimberley Reynolds
Kim.Reynolds@ncl.ac.uk
Vice-President: Clare Bradford
clarex@deakin.edu.au
Treasurer and Membership Secretary: Dan
Hade ddh2@psu,edu
Secretary: Morag Styles ms104@cam.ac.uk
Board members:
Ariko Kawabata (responsible for 2007
congress): ariko@cat.email.ne.jp
Mavis Reimer (responsible for archives):
m.reimer@uwinnipeg.ca
Useful Resource
WWW.BRAW.ORG.UK
BRAW (Books, Reading and Writing),
information on contemporary Scottish
children’s authors, illustrators and their
books.
Useful list of publications – our member Debbie Thacker has received
requests for information about the following specialist publications.
THE CYDER PRESS
Established in 1998 at the University of Gloucestershire
Eleanor Farjeon's poems for children, Come Christmas
(1927 - with the original wood-cut illustrations by Molly McArthur), introduced by Anne
Harvey, writer, actor and compiler of the acclaimed anthology, Adlestrop Revisited, 1999.
ISBN 1 86174 0883 Price £5.00
a facsimile of the first edition of Edward Thomas’s only book specifically for children,
Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds (Duckworth, 1915), with full-colour frontispiece and title-page,
introduced by Richard Emeny, past secretary of the Edward Thomas Fellowship.
ISBN 1 86174 1111 Price £5.00
As Told to a Child, a 'fine-art' limited and numbered edition of Robert Frost's
little-known children's stories, with colour plates of illustrations by his own children,
introduced by Lesley Lee Francis, Frost's granddaughter, and
author of The Frost Family's Adventure in Poetry (1994).
ISBN 1 86174 1006 Price £25.00
Please include 50p p&p - or £1.50 outside EU for each copy ordered - and £1 p&p - £3
outside EU - for Robert Frost’s As Told to a Child. Cheques should be made payable to
‘University of Gloucestershire’, and addressed to:
The Cyder Press,
Department of Humanities,
University of Gloucestershire,
Francis Close Hall,
Swindon Road,
Cheltenham
Gloucestershire, GL50 4AZ
For details of other publication or to buy on-line please see our website.
www.cyderpress.co.uk
Email: cyderpress@glos.ac.uk
33