Adulthood in Children's Literature by Vanessa Joosen

Abstract

Reviewed by: Adulthood in Children's Literature by Vanessa Joosen Jéssica Amanda de Souza Silva ADULTHOOD IN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE. By Vanessa Joosen. Series: Bloomsbury Perspectives on children's literature. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018, 243 pages. ISBN: 978-1-350-04978-9 While scholars of children's literature focus mostly on aspects linked to the children's universe, Vanessa Joosen, in her work Adulthood in Children's Literature, invites readers to look at an object of study that is little observed: the understanding of adulthood and how it is constructed and performed by adult characters in children's books. The cover image sets the scene. As the author explains in her introduction, the cover is taken from Marita De Sterck's and An Candaele's picture book Koekeloeren (2008), and shows the children watching their parents through a huge keyhole. As such, it presents the topic of the study and invites readers to explore the representation of adulthood as a stage of life in children's literature. Divided into six chapters, the book offers valuable contributions by analyzing well-known novels and picturebooks by Dutch, Flemish, and English writers and illustrators. The corpus encompasses children's books for children up to twelve years old, published between the 1970s and today, excluding those books intended for young adults, in which adulthood appears as a more frequent subject. Through a verb-iconic appreciation of the books, taking into account the social and historical context, Joosen examines how the idea of adulthood "is represented by adult characters... or expressed in meta-reflections" (p.19). To this end, Joosen draws on theories from childhood studies, children's literature studies, and, above all, Age Studies. Based on the assumption that "age and life course are socially constructed [factors]" (p.21), the historical and cultural context and other social factors—such as gender, sexuality, and economic class—must be taken into account. Her approach highlights the importance of interdisciplinary perspectives within children's literary studies as well as age studies. In her first chapter, based on Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), Joosen analyzes several literary works to reflect on the definition and relationship between "adulthood" and "childhood" in children's books. In the second chapter, she focuses on the study of adult characters who assume roles as protagonists by showing how their presence is important for the perception of the heterogeneity of adulthood. This overcomes closed and polarized visions about what it means to be a child versus what it means to be an adult. In this section, the author also emphasizes that the presence of these adult characters is important to raise awareness of intergenerational socialization and solidarity. The third chapter analyzes the representations of the body of the adult in children's literature. This is regardless of their role as parents, uncles, grandparents, teachers, and so on, focusing, mostly, on the representation of body hair as a marker of adulthood. Proposed by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, the concept of "infantilism" as a form of discrimination against children is thoroughly examined by Joosen in the fourth chapter. Here she also reveals adult characters that are considered hostile, intimidating, or [End Page 102] frightening to child readers. Such negative characters are contrasted with the sympathetic adult writer (the author's alter ego) in the next chapter. Finally, the sixth chapter focuses on the last stage of adult life, old age, emphasizing the intergenerational relationship of old characters and children. While there are many adults represented as "old mentor" or "old storyteller, "other narratives, reinforce stereotypes and prejudices by portraying the aging process as decline. Besides paving the way for new interdisciplinary research in children's literature studies and highlighting the potential for intergenerational dialogue that children's books can promote, Adulthood in Children's Literature legitimizes the topic of adulthood as a possible object of study among researchers in these fields, shedding light on what previously seemed to be, as the author herself states, a "blind space" (14). Jéssica Amanda de Souza Silva PhD Research in Literary Studies, University of Aveiro Copyright © 2021 Bookbird, Inc.