| Children’s Literature Global and Local: Oslo: Novus, 2005. Review by Karen Sands-O’Connor, Buffalo State College. James Buzard, in Disorienting Fictions (2005) suggests that, “At the end of the twentieth century, the anthropological value of ‘culture,’ once heralded as a colossal advance in social thought, occupied an uncertain terrain” (3). This unease about culture, particularly its impact on children, permeates Children’s Literature Global and Local. The collection of essays, which came out of the 2003 Biennial Conference in Kristiansand, Norway of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature, makes a virtue of its uncertainties and indeterminacies, an attitude that raises interesting questions for the field of children’s literature in general. The first of these questions is what it means to edit a collection of essays originating from an international conference. Having attended the conference in Norway myself, I know that the editors had some difficult choices to make regarding paper selection. The editors acknowledge this challenge, writing in their introduction that they tried to be “as inclusive as possible while also producing a book that works in its own terms” (12). Inclusion of some implies exclusion of others, of course, and what seems noticeable is what is absent from this volume. Other than Kim Reynolds, there are no British or American scholars represented in this book. Since several of the essays concern identity politics—Beverly Naidoo’s essay argues that she, as a white author, can successfully represent non-white main characters and their concerns in her books, for example, while an essay by Carpenter, Hillel and van der Walt discuss “The extensive exploitation of indigenous traditions in and as children’s literature” (180)—the elision of American and British scholars indicates one of the persistent concerns of children’s literature. In other words, whose culture should predominate in the publishing of children’s books? Certainly, as Mieke Desmet points out, “it is obvious that there is an imbalance in the number of books that are exchanged and translated between countries” (218), the imbalance tipping heavily toward British and American children’s books. Desmet, in her article, is pointing out the difficulties inherent in trying to change that balance; the editors of the volume, by choosing not to include American and British scholars, seem to be making an attempt to redress a similar perceived imbalance in the scholarly world. However, the authors from English-speaking countries that remain in the collection are all from countries at one time dominated (politically or culturally) by Great Britain. These countries are either predominantly white (as in the case of Ireland) or, at very least, historically known as “white settler colonies” (Canada, Australia, South Africa). In many of the essays, questions of race and indigenous populations are being raised, but again, the absence of other, and non-white, scholars of English-speaking children’s literature (Caribbean scholars, scholars from Kenya, Filipino scholars for example) highlight issues of power and discourse: who should speak for and about children’s literature? This is not a criticism of the editors, who, as far as I know, did not have papers from these geographical areas to consider (who in fact work hard to try to get representation from many geographical areas at the IRSCL conferences), but a question that I think we, as a field, need to face and keep facing. Another question-raising balancing act taken on in this collection is that of age and/or experience—again, with regard to both audience and scholars. Aside from Margarita Slavova’s interesting historical essay on East Slavonic primers, not one other essay discusses books for the very young exclusively. Very few mention picture books at all. This seems, on the surface, rather curious in a scholarly examination of global children’s literature. Surely one of the advantages of the picture book is that, because of its dependence on the visual, it can more easily cross boundaries and cultures than children’s books more reliant on text? But print culture is no longer, according to many of the authors of these essays, the most relevant form of reading: media culture is. Partly because of this involvement in what Hans-Heino Ewers calls “multimedia system offers” (256) and Elise Seip Tønnessen refers to as the increasing “digitalisation of texts” (279), the essays in this collection give the ownership of a truly global culture to young adults, not to children. While Ewers and Tønnessen are optimistic about the possibilities of a multiplicity of technologies, Åsfrid Svensen in her essay discusses the negative side of technology: “the values and ways of thinking there can only lead to break-down, communication overload, disintegration and decay” (110). Sexuality, another locus of potential communication for teens, has also become fragmented: either, as Sharyn Pearce would have it, a site for “exchanges of consumer commodities . . . the body is something to sell and see” (139) or, as Victoria Flanagan suggests, for “exploring the relationships between individual selves and the social forces and ideologies which influence their formation” (127-128). In either case, sexuality, like technology, is a means of enforcing and reinforcing the capitalist system. Capitalism, which is often the face of evil in anti-globalization efforts, is subtly suggested as the true enemy—and true owner—of culture by several of the essays, including Lindsay Myers’s discussion of Italian fantasy and Mary Shine Thompson’s examination of Irish poetry anthologies. Young adults, who are seen, perhaps, as more able to choose than children their place in the Ideological State Apparatus, are thus the preferred focalization of these essays. The editors also make an effort to introduce the work of young scholars in the field. Chie Mizuma’s essay on “Performativity and Queerness in Peter Pan” could possibly have benefited from a reading of Jacqueline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan; or, the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction (1993), but it brings together many ideas found in more fragmented form elsewhere. Jana Pohl and Victoria Flanagan also show promise as scholars. Martina Seifert’s exemplary essay on German views of Canada through children’s literature clearly and easily crosses all kinds of global and local and social and aesthetic boundaries; it is unsurprising that she received the IRSCL’s research award at the Kristiansand conference. Seifert’s essay reminds us that the study of cross-cultural literature uncovers a map, but one that “does not reveal the source culture so much as it does the target culture” (227). Children’s Literature Global and Local, in raising so many questions about who children’s literature is for and what it should be, is urging cultural examination—not of the literature itself, but of the practice of academics who study it. Karen Sands-O’Connor |