Bixler Accepts Criticism Award

Abstract

Bixler Accepts Criticism Award Phyllis Bixler The Children's Literature Association Criticism Award is a special honor because it comes from persons who like myself are studying, teaching, and writing about children's literature. It is also an honor to follow two Award winners who have been contributors to the field much longer than I have, Aiden Chambers and Leonard Clark. To thank the Children's Literature Association for this award, I would like to mention some of the ways I have benefited from its services. In doing so, I am sure that I speak for many other members, especially those who like myself have begun professional careers in children's literature during the past five or ten years. Perhaps most obviously, I am grateful for the Association's affiliated journal, Children's Literature, which published my article. At a time when academic survival is not easy, Children's Literature and the expanded Quarterly have provided needed outlets for publication, and I have often found that the varied materials in these journals could inform my teaching as well as stimulate my research. The Association is to be commended also for its recently established Fellowship Awards to further encourage scholarship in the field. Click for larger view View full resolution Illustration by Anne Burgess for Dusk to Dawn: Poems of Night, selected by Helen Hill, Agnes Perkins, and Alethea Helbig, to be published by Crowell Junior Books, Spring 1981. In comparing the content of my article on Frances Hodgson Burnett with that of the two previous award winning articles, I notice something [End Page 1] else I appreciate about the Association—its encouragement of a variety of approaches to children's literature. The previous essays both addressed the issue of the special audience for children's literatures Chambers suggested ways of finding "The Reader in the Book" and Clark explored relationships between "Poetry and Children" (emphasis added). Since the most distinguishing feature of children's literature is its special audience, this kind of study is essential. Also needed, however, are more traditional literary studies such as mine of Burnett, essays which emphasize the relationship between the teller and the tale rather than that between the tale and the audience. Dialogue is sometimes difficult among persons who approach children's literature from different academic disciplines or professional concerns, but we can learn much from such interchanges. I hope that through its membership, its meetings, its journals and other activities, the Association will continue to encourage a variety of approaches to children's literature. I would like to end on a more personal note. Not least of what I owe the Association are the professional and personal friendships it has enabled me to make and continue. And I look for more. Thank you. Phyllis Bixler Kansas State University Copyright © 1980 Children's Literature Association