Growing and Knowing: A Selection Guide for Children's Literature (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Growing and Knowing: A Selection Guide forChildren's Literature Margaret Mackey (bio) Growing and Knowing: A Selection Guide for Children's Literature. By Mary Trim. Munich: K.G.Saur, 2004 It is difficult to know where to begin in an evaluation of this book. The author claims that it "is the answer to [students'] repeated requests for a text book to which British students of children's literature can relate" (xv); later she suggests that "the primary aim of this work is to function as a general, foundational guide for the selection of children's literature within the setting of understanding how children develop, matching suggested books to stages of growth" (xvii, emphasis in original); the back cover describes it as "the essential reference work for professionals who work with children and their books." These are laudable ambitions; unfortunately the book does not live up to such all-encompassing descriptions. The writing is lamentable, and the lack of follow-up editing is a disgrace to the publisher. It is fair to begin with the good points. The book certainly attempts to be broad-based and child-centered. Throughout, the author focuses steadily on the developing child. Section titles ("The Developing Child," "The Knowing Child," "The Child, Growing with Genres," etc.) offer the potential for providing intelligent connections between children and their reading material. Actual children are represented by short quotes about their reading tastes at the end of every chapter. Technological change is reflected in a chapter on electronic [End Page 122] books, there is a chapter on making schools and libraries welcoming places for book-reading children (these two chapters were written, respectively, by Sally Maynard and Tricia Kings, according to a page on contributors, though they are not mentioned on the title page), and social plurality is addressed in a chapter on serving differing faith communities. All these elements predispose this reader to be sympathetic. Unfortunately, the flaws of this book outweigh its virtues. An "essential reference book" would have consistent headings, a reliable and useful index, and trustworthy bibliographic citations—and it would be nice to think that basic principles of punctuation would be applied. This book has none of the above. Headings are sometimes free-standing and sometimes serve as the opening phrase of the first sentence. An important body such as the International Board of Books for Young People is indexed as appearing only once, though I found it in more than one place in the book. Comma splices are painfully ubiquitous and sentence fragments abound. On at least one occasion where two sources are cited (Berry and Matsuomoto, p. 38), the later entry is buried under the former; thus the separate entry for Matsuomoto can only be located as part of the entry on Berry. The content is not completely reliable, either; for example, on page 92, Philip Pullman's "ambitious trilogy for older readers" is inaccurately named as The Dark is Rising, rather than His Dark Materials; it is correctly named in a different reference on page 123. In a third reference on page 124, Trim incorrectly suggests that Pullman's character Will has a daemon; the fact that he does not is significant at many points in the latter two books of Pullman's trilogy. Trim clearly appreciates Pullman's books; it is unfortunate that her comments are marred by such careless editing. These comments are perhaps picky, but they give some indication of how difficult it is to use this book. The apparatus is untrustworthy and the content is wobbly. The book struggles with problems of incoherence. Theorists are given haphazard treatment: Lacan rates a cursory paragraph, which is immediately followed by two pages on Maslow. Even where there is some substantive discussion of the importance of a theorist such as Vygotsky, the quality of the writing makes it difficult to follow the author's thread. For example, on page 7, Section 2.2 begins as follows (punctuation and grammar as in the original): 2.2 The implications of Vygotsky's theory For librarians and teachers, is, firstly, to intervene when needed and to allow library and classroom not to be 'no talking' areas, but those where students share...