| Studies
in Children's Literature, 1500-2000 Four Courts Press, 2004. ISBN 1-85182-85302. 182pp. Review by Adrienne Kertzer, University of Calgary Studies in Children's Literature, 1500-2000, edited by Celia Keenan and Mary Shine Thompson, contains selected papers from the inaugural conference of the Irish Society for the Study of Children's Literature (ISSCL). The editors never say when and where that conference took place, and undoubtedly this omission will not bother some readers. The rest of us, noting that Keenan in her preface thanks "a number of people" at St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin, are left to guess that the conference took place there. Comparable assumptions regarding knowledge appear elsewhere in the volume, even though the editors believe that readers, including those familiar with the Irish literary canon, are not likely to know much about Irish children's literature. Despite the editors' expectation of readers' ignorance-"this collection takes Irish literature . . . onto roads and flight-paths less traveled"-several contributors write as though readers already know something about the subject. For example, in "The Talbot Press and Its Religious Publications for Children," Mary Flynn writes that the Talbot Press "was born" in 1913 and implies that the press no longer exists. Yet Flynn never actually states when it ceased operations. The subtitle of an article she cites in a footnote-"sixty golden years of Dublin publishing"-may be a clue, but surely conference proceedings should not resemble whodunits. According to Thompson, Studies in Children's Literature, 1500-2000 "challenges presumptions that children's literature and Irish studies are fixed, self-contained discourses." Interrogating "the relationship between aspects of Irish studies and their British and global contexts," the collection challenges notions of Irish studies and children's literature. Its organization-essays on Irish children's literature in the company of essays on other children's literatures-reflects this aim while unintentionally revealing the power of traditional categories. Except for one essay, Declan Kiberd's "School Stories," readers can easily categorize the essays as being about either Irish children's literature or "children's literature" (the binary implying that children's literature continues to exclude texts by Irish writers). Kiberd's status as an expert on Irish literature is reflected in the way he is cited by several of the other authors; his contribution serves to undercut the Irish studies/children's literature divide. Yet his wide-ranging essay considers Irish school stories only at its end, a structure that may also and inadvertently demonstrate how unusual thinking about Irish children's literature in relation to other children's literatures remains. The editors also use the collection to show off the work of Irish graduate students whose research includes work on children's literature of many countries. Keenan directs the MA in children's literature at St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra, and four of the contributors hold MA's from the college. The other contributors include internationally recognized scholars of children's literature such as Sandra Beckett, Kimberley Reynolds, David Rudd, and Deborah Thacker. The result is a collection uncertain about its implied readership, an uncertainty that is likely to alienate readers either because some contributors take far too long to announce what the specific subject of their paper is, or because factual information about the writers and their works is not always provided (readers who consult the footnotes for such information do not know whether the dates there refer to first publication or to later reprints). Keenan describes Studies in Children's Literature, 1500-2000 as "a new and exciting departure in the Irish context, opening up an interesting dialogue between Irish and international studies in children's literature." The possibilities of such dialogue would have been better realized had the editors insisted that conference papers revised for publication be more attentive to the needs of an international readership. Readers willing to disregard these uncertainties will find much that is useful, and not just about Irish children's literature: Declan Kiberd's observation that the Irish school story presents a "cross between American-style summer camp and British boarding school"; David Rudd's "Golliwog: Genealogy of a Non-PC Icon" that argues how changing cultural attitudes towards the children's book figure of the golliwog confirm how "meaning is both socially constructed and historically variable"; Kimberley Reynolds's objection to the "potentially enervating and narcissistic" directions of young adult literature in "Alchemy and Alco Pops: Breaking the Ideology Trap," and Sandra L. Beckett's "Artists' Books for a Cross-Audience." Of the essays that focus solely on Irish children's literature, the most compelling is Ciara Ní Bhroin's "Forging National Identity: the Adventure Stories of Eilís Dillon." Applying postcolonial theory, Ní Bhroin proposes that Dillon uses the genre of British imperial adventure "to create a decolonizing, distinctively Irish literature." Contrasting Dillon's stories with those of Maria Edgeworth, Ní Bhroin draws further comparisons between Dillon's emphasis on community and the different patterns evident in teen fiction published elsewhere in the late 1970s. The seventeen essays are organized in a roughly chronological order; despite the collection's subtitle, all but the first-A. J. Piesse's "Reading English Renaissance Children and the Early Modern Stage"-are on either nineteenth or twentieth-century works. In addition to Ní Bhroin's and Flynn's essays, there are four other essays on Irish children's literature. Robert Dunbar's "Rebuilding Castle Blair: A Reading of Flora Shaw's 1878 Children's Novel" foregrounds Shaw's attention to political complexities, and reads Castle Blair as a children's literature version of the Irish big house novel. Noting how many children's historical novels examine the Irish famine, Dunbar praises Shaw's unusual willingness to confront contemporary political events, "deal[ing] with a period that has remained virtually untouched since then in any children's literature." In "The Wild Irish Girls of L.T. Meade and Mrs. George De Horne Vaizey," Carole Dunbar contrasts Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan's The Wild Irish Girl with the representation of "wild Irish" as animal-like and barbaric in the work of two later writers. (Readers interested in when exactly Meade and Vaizey published their novels must consult the publication information in the footnotes; the essay proper refers only to "nineteenth-/early twentieth century" fiction.) Pádraic Whyte in "Wars of Independence: the Construction of Irish Histories in the Work of Gerard Whelan and Siobhán Parkinson," reads the different representations of Irish history against claims that Ireland in the 1990s produced a view of national history "that massages conflict out of representation." Unlike some of the other contributors, Whyte helpfully provides parenthetical statements to gloss historical references that some readers may not know. In contrast, when Margaret Burke offers a new reading of Patricia Lynch in "The Development of Patricia Lynch's Writing in the Light of an Exploration of New Archival Material," Burke premises her new reading on the assumption that readers already know Lynch's work. But those of us who do not will be frustrated, ignorant of when Lynch lived and when exactly she published her books. Explaining that she "hope[s] to show the development in Patricia Lynch's thinking from these earliest stories [for adults] to her mature work," Burke cautions her readers that many of the archival cuttings that she cites are undated. This does not explain why she refers to Lynch "[a]s one of a small number of children's writers, writing during the early years of Irish independence," yet gives no dates for any of Lynch's children's books earlier than the 1950s. Imagining a chronology that Burke fails to provide, readers cannot know whether it corresponds to the one Burke has in mind. For example, initially I guessed that Lynch wrote journalism and adult stories before turning to children's books. But uncertain how to reconcile this chronology with Burke's reference to Lynch as a children's writer during the early years of Irish independence, I consulted my Oxford Companion to Children's Literature to learn that Lynch lived 1898-1972 and published her children's books between 1925 and 1967. At the conclusion of her essay, Burke wonders whether Lynch's minimal reference to her children's writing in an unpublished draft, "A Storyteller Grows Up," suggests that Lynch doubted "the value of her children's writing in comparison with her earlier political material." Readers unwilling to consult other texts are likely to have far more questions, including when did Lynch write those children's books, and if she completed "A Storyteller Grows Up" after her husband died, just when was that? Most importantly, they may ask whether the desired dialogue between any specific culture's children's literature and international studies in children's literature always demands a bilingual fluency that too few of us possess. Studies in Children's Literature, 1500-2000 may take too much for granted, but in doing so, it encourages us to undertake the reading and writing that would make our discipline truly international. Adrienne Kertzer, University of Calgary |