Facts as Art

Abstract

Facts as Art Perry Nodelman In the Proceedings section of this issue, you'll find versions of the talks given at the 1985 ChLA conference in Ann Arbor by Lloyd Alexander, Nancy Willard, and Milton Meltzer. Also, Rosemary Sutcliff has kindly given us permission to reprint her letter to the Association in response to the naming of her Mark of the Horse-Lord as first recipient of the ChLA's Phoenix Award. To represent the many fine papers given in Ann Arbor, we include essays based on the five of those papers that the conference paper call committee considered most suitable for publication; among these is the one paper the committee thought most deserving of presentation at a plenary session, George Shannon's "All Times in One: Four Characters and Their Vessels of Time." Since the ChLA board has decided to return next year to the publication of more complete Conference Proceedings in a separate volume, this is the last Proceedings issue of the Quarterly. One result of that change is that it has given me some future issues of the Quarterly to fill; one result of this year's conference is that it gave me the idea for an excellent way of filling one of them. In the question period following his talk on biography, Milton Meltzer insisted that critics and scholars of children's literature have been remiss in ignoring nonfiction as a subject for analysis and discussion; as he has since written in a letter to me, "What I said in the discussion following my paper may have upset some, but it was intended to spur concern and, God willing, action. " I share his hope it did upset some, for he's right: action is needed. As I browse through the issues of the Quarterly I've edited in the past three years, I can find exactly one article about non-fiction; Jon Stott's discussion of David Macaulay's picture books in the Spring 1983 issue is the only article in twelve Quarterlies that deals with this important part of literature for children. I'm embarassed about that—but not surprised by it. Most of us who think and write about children's literature have had the sort of literary training that focuses on fiction and poetry, and just about ignores other kinds of literature. Beyond the occasional tract or sermon in a course in seventeenth century literature, the only non-fictional prose most students of literature study are those monumental (and often monumentally boring) books by Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold and Cardinal Newman that scholars of the Victorian period seem to adore. I don't imagine I am alone in having to admit that the one course I dropped as an undergraduate was the one in Victorian Literature, and that my reason for dropping it was my distaste for those supremely non-fictional tomes by Carlyle and Arnold and Newman. Indeed, it was my distaste for those monstrosities that made me what I am today; for of course, my graduate school advisor forced me to take a course in the one period of literature I had successfully avoided as an undergraduate, and that course in Victorian poetry led me to an enthusiasm for Tennyson that eventually resulted in my writing my dissertation on him. It wasn't until I'd finished that dissertation and began applying for a job that I realized the enormity of what I'd done: having written a dissertation on Tennyson, I was now a full-fledged Victorian specialist—and as such, I was expected to spend my whole life teaching, guess what? Carlyle. And Newman. And a lot more of Arnold than just his fine poems. Augh. When a chance to teach children's literature developed, I leaped at it; for, I thought, even stories about cuddly bunnies would be better than Culture and Anarchy. And they were; I've learned a lot more about culture and anarchy from Beatrix Potter than I ever did from Matthew Arnold. So I have to admit to a prejudice about non-fiction—and also, to some doubt about how one might go about being an analytical reader of it. The obvious questions...