| Modern Children’s Literature: an Introduction Palgrave, 2005 Modern Children’s Literature is based on a long-running course at the University of Roehampton. It is always interesting to see how other people’s courses are put together, and pleasing that all the effort and experience that goes into teaching a successful course should be recorded and disseminated beyond particular institutions. Though the course has been running since the 1970s, what strikes me most about this collection is its up-to-date and forward-looking quality. In her Introduction, Reynolds briskly dismisses as too ‘well-trodden’ to need repeating the tangled and contentious debates that have hitherto taken up much of the time of children’s literature critics: ‘What is children’s literature?’; ‘What status is it given in academia?’; ‘How is the child constructed?’ etc. The reader is referred to ‘Further Reading’ if they wish to follow these up. Instead, the book consists of a hands-on, wide-ranging and theoretically eclectic collection of essays, which concentrates on ‘applying and advancing’ existing ideas. The collection is especially notable for the wide range of genres covered, such as school stories, the literature of war, historical novels, picturebooks, electronic texts, and many others. I was disappointed to find that animal stories were not included, but every reader can think up an omission. As someone who studies children’s literature from the 1780s, I also found some of the ‘historical background’ a little superficial, reaching back only to the beginning of the twentieth-century, and suggesting for instance that earlier children’s literature had no interest in ‘social issues’. Eighteenth and nineteenth-century children’s literature is full of concern for issues such as class inequalities, poverty, the treatment of animals, slavery. This is, however, a book on ‘modern’ children’s literature and its characteristic genres. Moreover, as well as addressing itself to a generic type, each chapter also applies specific theoretical approaches. A couple of titles should make clear what I mean – for instance, Pat Pinsent’s ‘Theories of Genre and Gender: Change and Continuity in the School Story’, or Susan Hancock’s ‘Fantasy, Psychology and Feminism: Jungian Readings of Classic British Fantasy Fiction’. Combining all these approaches could be confusing for a student reader, but the layout of the book aims to clarify what is going on. Theoretical concepts and terms, some of which may apply to more than one chapter, are introduced in separate numbered ‘boxes’ in the text, and referred to in individual chapters as necessary. So ideas and approaches such as ‘genre’, ‘new historicism’, ‘postmodernism’ are each given their own box when they first turn up, as is a list of useful terms in the analysis of picturebooks. The book thus also serves as an introduction to a variety of theoretical approaches and terms, which are exemplified through the literature: it could be useful on a theory course, suggesting non-threatening ways in which theoretical concepts can be illustrated. Each chapter is also followed by a useful list of further reading. As I have indicated, then, the chapters, which are quite short, contain a lot of material, including detailed close-readings, and reference to up to five books. I must admit to preferring the chapters that dealt with fewer texts in more detail – some of the others read too much like a list of plot-summaries. On the other hand, I can see that even these would be useful to anyone planning a course, or looking for material for an essay or dissertation. This book, as it claims, is an ‘Introduction’, and could be taken further in a variety of ways by its readers. Rather than being complete in itself, it invites further debates and applications. I found Gillian Lathey’s two chapters on war literature for children the most thought-provoking. The subject inevitably raises the question of (dare I say it?) ‘what is children’s literature?’, as of course does a collection that includes essays on picturebooks for infants and novels for adolescents. Tess Cosslett, University of Lancaster, UK. |