New Voices in Children's Literature Criticism
Edited by Sebastien Chapleau

Lichfield, Staffordshire: Pied Piper Publishing, 2004. ISBN 0954638441. 131 pages.

Reviewed by Professor Jean Webb, University College Worcester, UK.

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 non-academic. 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 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 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 non-American, 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 Sands-O'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 Thomson-Wohlgemuth'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 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. David concludes his analysis as follows:

...adult and child categories and dislocated, and a general sense of in-betweeness 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, re-make 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.

Professor Jean Webb