Growing Out: Atemporal Figurations of Childhood in Literature and Theory

Reviewed by: The Bloomsbury Introduction to Children's and Young Adult Literature by Karen Coats Lara Saguisag (bio) Karen Coats. The Bloomsbury Introduction to Children's and Young Adult Literature. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Students, educators, and scholars who are seeking comprehensive and accessible critical introductions to the study of children's and young adult literature have a few notable titles to choose from. Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reimer's The Pleasures of Children's Literature, originally published in 1991 with a third edition released in 2003, remains an essential introductory handbook on children's literature studies. In the more recent Reading Children's Literature: A Critical Introduction (2013), Carrie Hintz and Eric Tribunella cover a wide variety of forms, genres, and themes and skillfully guide readers in using the lens of age, race, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, and ability to arrive at nuanced readings of texts for young people. It seems fair to expect that a new critical introduction to children's literature studies not only match the scope and accessibility of existing titles but also offer new perspectives and content. The Bloomsbury Introduction to Children's and Young Adult Literature by Karen Coats undoubtedly meets these expectations. This thoughtfully organized, wide-ranging, and innovative book draws from cultural studies, literary studies, and child development studies in its consideration of diverse forms and genres. Chapter 1 deftly illustrates how knowledge of the histories of ideologies of childhood is fundamental to understanding the histories of literature for young people. Chapter 3 works to demystify literary theory, assuring readers that "we are always already theorists" (84); framed by an anecdote in which a teenaged girl and her friends dissect her conversation with her crush, the chapter covers a variety of theoretical paradigms including formalism, deconstructionism, New Historicism, and reader response criticism. Other chapters provide substantial discussions of poetry, picture books, films, folk narratives, nonfiction, realistic fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction. Each chapter is supplemented by case studies, prompts for writing and discussion, and suggestions for further reading, including Internet sources. These supplements will likely be effective in generating vibrant classroom discussions, increasing student engagement, and helping emerging scholars become confident, independent researchers. The volume is primarily addressed to undergraduate and graduate students, but it will also appeal to educators who are looking for creative approaches to structuring and enlivening their courses as well as experienced scholars who are committed to keeping pace with contemporary debates that are animating children's and young adult literature studies. I do wish that chapter 6, which discusses images in children's literature, did more to clarify the differences between various visual-verbal narrative forms. The chapter certainly enables readers to develop a vocabulary to discuss [End Page 147] pictures in texts for young people. It historicizes the functions of illustrations in children's books and shows how attention to visual elements as well as issues of production and audience can yield varied and rich interpretations of visual-verbal narratives. But some discussion of, say, the different ideological frameworks and histories of picture books and comics may be necessary to illustrate the complex ways pictures in visual-verbal narratives for young people are apprehended by readers across time and culture. As the whole, the book instructs readers to be responsible, inquisitive scholars. And it does so in such an openhearted manner. In her introduction to the volume, the author provides a short biography and invites readers to "call her Karen" (5). As such, Karen not only models the practice of acknowledging one's cultural position; she also deliberately establishes a tone of affability, demonstrating that an intimate, personal approach is not necessarily incompatible with meaningful scholarship. In the final chapter, Karen invites new scholars to "[enter] the professional conversation," providing comprehensive lists of journals and professional associations as well as advice on research, writing, and disseminating one's work. Throughout the book, Karen cracks jokes, shares personal anecdotes, acknowledges questions she continues to wrestle with, and urges readers to disagree with and complicate the points that she makes. In short, she displays how pleasure, uncertainty, and exchange of knowledge are part and parcel of the practice of scholarship. Bloomsbury Introduction pays attention to recent trends in children's...

Reviewed by: The Edinburgh Companion to Children's Literature ed. by Clémentine Beauvais and Maria Nikolajeva Nina Goga Companions are needed both in life and literature. Old companions do not need to be rejected because new ones appear. New companions are not necessarily better than old ones, but they may be different and hence able to offer new perspectives, guide through unexplored fields, and confront or challenge with their surprising queries. This also applies to The Edinburgh Companion to Children's Literature, compiled and edited by Clémentine Beauvais and Maria Nikolajeva. The two editors have gathered together a team of twenty-four skilled researchers, including themselves. Even though most of them are affiliated with Anglo-American institutions, they still cover a wide range of topics. The Companion is structured in three parts. The first part contains eleven chapters dealing with contemporary directions in children's literature scholarship. Amongst these, there are several related to the larger field of ecocriticism, such as the chapters on posthumanism (Flanagan), animal studies (Jaques), feminist ecocriticism (Curry), and spatiality (Carroll). The large number of chapters concerned with environmental and ecocritical issues is indicative of overall changes within the field of children's literature research. In comparison, The Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature (2009) contains only one chapter on animal and object stories and one on fantasy's alternative geography. It seems that in 2009 these two chapters were samples of "what comes next?" The second part offers eight chapters on contemporary trends in children's and young adult literature, covering themes of great current interest, such as seriality (Kümmerling-Meibauer), translation (Lathey), and picturebooks in foreign language learning contexts (Mourão). It also covers chapters on what may be the most difficult field to circumscribe, namely digital or multimodal children's literature. More (technically) descriptive than literary explorative, these chapters may prove to be difficult for inexperienced students. Perhaps the field itself has grown too vast and disparate to be covered within a few chapters. The editors, Beauvais and Nikolajeva, state that their companion first of all seeks to "capture the most recent trends and phenomena in children's and young adult literature itself as well as international research; to anticipate the possible new avenues that research can take" (5). While the current trends and phenomena are considered in the first two parts, new avenues are explored in the third and final part, called "Unmapped Territories." Among the contributors to this part are, in addition to the editors themselves, three scholars who also authored other chapters in the volume (Kokkola, Joosen, and Flanagan). The nine chapters that constitute this part are generally shorter and more suggestive than the other chapters. The topics covered range from distant reading to evolutionary criticism and genetic studies. Regardless of the compelling labels, some of the proposed territories turn out to be less unmapped than one might initially think. Several chapters in the volume could be put forward as outstanding examples of academic thinking and writing; Vanessa Joosen's chapter on age studies in children's literature [End Page 69] is a case in point. Its purpose is "to explore how any age influences the human body, mind and behavior and how relationships between generations are shaped" (79). Joosen clearly states the focus of the chapter, maps the theoretical framework, and provides the readers with an instructive close reading of a selected children's book. Finally, the author calls upon other scholars to pay attention to age in children's literature: "children's literature studies needs to draw more on age studies to address the construction of age for young readers if it does not want to reproduce age-related prejudice naively" (88). It has been a true delight for the reviewer to discover The Edinburgh Companion to Children's Literature to be an up-to-date, wide-ranging, and future-oriented companion that can be recommended to a broad audience. It is an inspiring encouragement to map new territories of children's literature or to carefully reconsider and nuance those already sketched. Nina Goga Western Norway University of Applied Sciences Copyright © 2018 Bookbird, Inc.

Celebrating Vibrant and Diverse Work Around Global Children's Literature Petros Panaou (bio) and Janelle Mathis (bio) With five peer-reviewed articles, two Children and Their Books contributions, an author interview, four Letters, an International Youth Library Report, eight Postcards, six Books on Books reviews, and Focus IBBY, this is one of the most content-rich issues we have edited so far. Only now, looking at it in its completed form, do we marvel in its riches and admire the vibrant and diverse scholarly, educational, and creative work around global children's literature it captures. The peer-reviewed articles in this open-theme issue are indicative of the diverse richness mentioned above. They explore such diverse topics such as play and adventure in Holocaust children's literature, Ecocriticism and the representation of forests by a beloved Swedish author, authenticity and Colonialism in graphic memoirs, rainbow families in global picturebooks, and a Lebanese illustrator's depiction of Arab youth and societies. In "The Holocaust as Adventure in Uri Orlev's Children's Books," Daniel Feldman argues that, by portraying war as an audacious game and survival as a thrilling adventure, Orlev's juvenile texts about the Holocaust forge a powerful connection between the child victim of the Holocaust and the contemporary reader of children's literature, who unite in imagining the rich, vivid, and sometimes terrifying world of the book as real. In "The Giving Trees," Rachel Sakrisson analyzes three picturebooks by Elsa Beskow, which present an alternative form of environmental activism. Sakrisson argues that Beskow's picturebooks, written prior to the rise of modern conservationism, promote a more accessible forest space than is typically encountered in children's literature. Mark D. McCarthy, in "Othering Authors in the Name of Authenticity," argues that the genre of graphic memoir troublingly lends itself to an affirmation of the West while audiences make this affirmation invisible by naming the authors Other. He asserts that when authors are "inside" another culture and their text aligns with Western values, the West and its worldview are affirmed from outside. And in "Global Rainbow Families," Jamie Campbell Naidoo and Kaitlyn Lynch provide insight into how children's books from specific countries depict physical contact between same-sex couples in picturebook illustrations and how this may influence understanding of LGBTQ families. [End Page 1] Finally, in "Picturing Arab Youth and Societies," Tina Sleiman highlights visual characteristics and elements observed in Ali Chamseddine's work, as well as how the illustrator's upbringing and social context influenced his depiction of Arabic youth and societies. The remaining texts in this issue complete the beautiful mosaic of global children's literature and its important place in the world in the current moment. We hope you enjoy reading all of them and share the marvel, admiration, and inspiration they have instilled in us. [End Page 2] Petros Panaou Petros Panaou is a clinical associate professor at the University of Georgia, Department of Language and Literacy Education, where he teaches children's literature and literacy courses. He chairs the annual Georgia Conference on Children's Literature and has also chaired the academic committee for the 36th IBBY Congress. Petros currently serves on the Newbery Awards committee and has served on USBBY's Outstanding International Books committee. He has authored a book and several articles and book chapters on international children's literature. He has translated two academic volumes and led multiple international grants. His unpublished novel for children and teens To Kinito (The Cellphone) was awarded a CYBBY honor in 2017. Janelle Mathis Janelle Mathis is a professor of literacy and children's literature at the University of North Texas, where she teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses centered on international children's literature and its applications in research and instruction. She presents regularly at international children's literature conferences, including IBBY Congresses and IRSCL, and has served on award committees, including the Outstanding International Books Award of USBBY. Janelle publishes on children's literature studies, and recently co-edited with Holly Johnson and Kathy Short a book titled Critical Content Analysis of Children's and Young Adult Literature (2017). Copyright © 2020 Bookbird, Inc.

Reviewed by: Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children’s Literature in America Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (bio) Beverly Lyon Clark . Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children’s Literature in America. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 2003. The reception of children's literature in general, and the history of children's literature research in particular, are areas of research long in need of further exploration. Clark's engaging study is a detailed and thorough analysis which focuses on the marginalization of children's [End Page 112] literature in the United States, both by the mainstream critical establishment and within the academy. Based on the study of primary materials such as reviews and articles in both the popular press and scholarly journals, lists of recommended books, anthologies, and literary histories, Clark's monograph sheds light on the changing attitudes toward children's literature and childhood in America in the course of 150 years. Whereas children's literature was highly regarded by the nineteenth-century cultural elite, many critics and scholars have been dismissive of this topic since the beginning of the twentieth century, downplaying children's literature as "kiddie lit" and "childish." These devaluative terms reveal fundamental shifts in the assessment of the literary value of books read by both children and adults, leading to an increasing bifurcation of high and low literature. Clark divides her book into eight chapters. In the first chapter she gives a summary of the central theoretical concepts she employs, ranging from reception theory to gender studies, literary studies, and cultural studies. Overall, however, Clark reflects on the causes for the disregard of children's literature by theoretical approaches such as New Criticism, poststructuralism, postcolonial theory, and New Historicism. Whereas these theories reach out across the boundaries marked by gender, race, ethnicity, and class, they generally do not consider age as a relevant analytical category. Even scholars who specialize in feminist studies have rarely recognized the position of the child, although in nineteenth-century literary criticism children's books were often regarded as suitable reading for both women and children. This once-firm connection between feminism and childhood has nonetheless been weakened in favor of an adult-centered perspective influenced by the image of childhood as a stage of immaturity which needs to be surpassed. In the next chapter Clark turns to two key figures in the representation of childhood at the turn of the century. By opposing Frances Hodgson Burnett's bestselling children's book Little Lord Fauntleroy to Henry James' adult novel What Maisie Knew, a text written from the child's point of view, Clark stresses the complexity of the changing attitudes toward childhood. The close textual analysis of these books demonstrates the depth of Clark's understanding of both contemporary literary conventions and the discussion of gender issues. Whereas Burnett's contributions to children's literature were regarded as "great literature," thus stressing her critical acclaim in the nineteenth century, her works disappeared from lists of recommended reading after 1910. In order to gain reputation in the academy, James and his circle stressed the unsurmountable opposition of childhood and maturity, thus supporting [End Page 113] the bifurcation of children's and adult literature. In addition, James's main thesis, which is based on an "incongruity between attention to youth and attention to style" (36), leads frequently to an "invisibility" of children's books in the popular press and in academic and literary circles. Against this background, in the third chapter Clark offers a sketch of the changing institutional frameworks associated with literature, based on an extensive reading of American periodicals from the mid-1850s to the end of the twentieth century and on a concise study of three important literary histories: Cambridge History of American Literature (1917-21), Literary History of the United States (1948), and Columbia History of the United States (1988). America's most well-known literary journals regularly reviewed books written for both children and adults. Clark focuses on the decisive role of Horace Scudder, William Dean Howells, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich, all of whom advocated and published children's literature and contributed to its high esteem with reviews in journals such as Youth's Companion and...

The Year's Work in Children's Literature Studies: 1988 Gillian Adams Readers will note that the bibliography for 1988 is more than double the size of that for 1987. The increase in size is not only because we have consulted more journals and accessed more data bases, but also because of an increasing interest in children's literature studies. Three new journals exclusively devoted to children's literature have recently appeared: Five Owls, the International Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship, and the New Advocate, an attractive rebirth of the Advocate. Thus the demise of Phaedrus, which ceases publication after volume 13, 1988, has already been compensated for in regard to the quantity of articles, if not in regard to its special contributions to the field. Let us hope that Phaedrus will also be reborn, perhaps under the aegis of a Comparative Literature Department, the logical place for a journal of its international orientation. A final reason for the large size of the bibliography is its inclusive nature. If the question of what should properly constitute its subject is addressed from the point of view of audience rather than authors and publishers and their intentions, the definition of children's literature must be inclusive rather than exclusive: works for which there is compelling evidence that they have been read and enjoyed by a substantial number of children over a period of years. A theoretical basis for such a view is provided by Reception Aesthetics, which rejects the idea of a natural dichotomy between children's and adult literature; see, for example, Dagmar Grenz's article on E.T.A. Hoffmann. A complex literary text, then, has a range of possibilities which allows its readers to understand it differently but adequately; if the possibilities of an "adult" book like Robinson Crusoe admit of enjoyment and understanding by an audience that includes a substantial number of children, articles about it, particularly those of a sufficiently generalized nature to illuminate what children may understand and appreciate, belong in a bibliography of children's literature. Indeed, several articles in this bibliography address the child or young adult audience for works usually assumed to be for adults, for example Alan MacGregor's article on Sir Walter Scott. On the other hand, articles about a work for children appropriated by adults like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn also belong in the bibliography since the book continues to be enjoyed by some children. Two recent critical articles appearing in scholarly journals usually devoted to adult literature recognize that the work is, in fact, a children's book; the one by Alan Gribben places it in the context of the boy book. This bibliography differs from that of 1987 not only in size, but in the number and nature of the categories into which it is classified. It is our hope that the classification system will aid the researcher in determining what has been neglected as well as what has already been more than adequately covered. Of note is the opportunity for further studies signaled by the articles, primarily short memorials, on members of the profession who have recently died. E.M. Bodecker, Elizabeth Cleaver, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Eleanor Estes, Paul Galdone, Roger Lancelyn Green, Joan Hassell, Virginia Haviland, Charles Keeping, Ann Lawrence, Ursula Nordstrom, and Noel Streatfield are some of these authors, illustrators, editors, and critics whose work deserves a more thorough evaluation. The revised categories, then, afford a picture of the current preoccupations of scholars of children's literature and related subjects. "Canon and Censorship" demonstrates a concern not only with overt censorship, particularly with the bowdlerizing and sanitizing of authors like Lofting and Potter, but with the censorship exercised by the formation of a canon of "good" books which excludes "rubbish" or dismisses older works as no longer relevant. Over 40 articles in "Curriculum" advocate using "real" books to teach reading or describe ways of doing so; only a few articles discuss the problems that can arise. "Collections and Exhibitions" is a new category, added because there were enough items to set it off by itself. Several important private collections of children's literature have recently passed to public institutions, and further information is...

Reviewed by: Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature by Roberta Seelinger Trites Adrienne Kertzer (bio) Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature. By Roberta Seelinger Trites. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018. Roberta Seelinger Trites begins this volume with a definition of feminism that has much in common with the one that she used in Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels (1997). She also admits that she continues to "believe that most aspects of life are mediated by language and discourse" (xvi). Despite these links to her earlier work, however, Twenty-First-Century Feminisms offers a strikingly different theoretical perspective on children's and adolescent literature. It has much to offer anyone interested in how the principles of material feminism inform various contemporary feminisms and how reading literature for young people through the lens of material feminism can bring into focus similarities between apparently different theoretical approaches. In her introduction, Trites identifies three objectives: "to show how authors . . . are employing various forms of feminism to break down binaries in complex and creative ways" (xii); "to interrogate the ways that material feminism can expand our understanding of materiality, maturation, and gender—especially girlhood—in preadolescent and adolescent narratives" (xxiv); and "to explore how representations of materiality affect the relationship between gender and empowerment in literature for youth" (xxv). In insisting that these objectives should not be regarded as a dismissal of her earlier work, she follows the example of Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, who suggest that material feminists share a desire "to build on rather than abandon the lessons learned in the linguistic turn" (Alaimo and Hekman, "Introduction" 6). Claiming that "feminist theory is at an impasse" because of the mistaken belief "that the real/material is entirely constituted by language" (1, 2), Alaimo and Hekman write that "we need a way to talk about the materiality of the body as itself an active, sometimes recalcitrant, force. Women have bodies. . . . We need a way to talk about these bodies and the materiality they inhabit" (4; orig. emphasis). In the six chapters of Twenty-First-Century Feminisms, Trites responds to this invitation by examining how more than thirty texts offer different ways of talking about bodies and materiality. Trites suggests that while her earlier work "focused on how authors construct gender discursively," she now wants to ask, "Why do they do so?" (xxv; orig. emphasis). However, precisely because literary texts "are always and only discursive," her question—"What pertinence, then, does [End Page 476] material feminism have to the study of children's literature?" (xviii)—is not strictly a "why" question. Rather, it asks how we might understand material feminism as informing the practices of the writers, readers, and scholars who deal with texts. Trites's answer is that whereas the linguistic turn directed attention to epistemology—"how we know what we know" (xvii)—material feminism raises "metaphysical questions of ontology, that is, questions of being and evaluations of what constitutes reality" (xvii–xviii). Acknowledging that her earlier work emphasized "the epistemological at the expense of the ontological," she sees the principles of material feminism as permitting her to explore how texts "engage . . . child readers in ontological questions about how gender intersects with the material world" (xviii). Trites's acknowledgment that "literature is representational" (xviii) exists in productive tension with the perspective of philosopher Karen Barad. Her first chapter, "Becoming, Mattering, and 'Knowing in Being' in Feminist Novels for the Young," provides a detailed introduction to Barad's theories and terminology (and use of italics). Challenging the belief in "the ontological distinction between representations and that which they purport to represent," Barad objects to "Thingification" (Barad 123, 130). To convey that matter is "not a thing, but a doing" (139), she coins the neologism "intra-activity," which "signifies the mutual constitution of entangled agencies" (qtd. in Trites 11). Barad prefers "intra-action" to "interaction" because the latter "presumes the prior existence of independent entities" (Barad 133). When Trites proposes that "children's and adolescent literature offers material feminism . . . the opportunity . . . to concentrate on a stage of life that is largely implicated in processes of becoming" (30), she is clearly invoking Barad...

Association for Childhood Education International (1989). Bibliography of books for children. Wheaton, MD: Author. Beaty, J. J. (1997). Building bridges with multicultural books for children 3-5. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bishop, R. S. (1994). Kaleidoscope: A multicultural booklist for grades K-8. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Bosma, B., & Goth, N. D. (Eds.) (1995). Children's literature in an integrated curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press/International Reading Association. Day, F. A. (1994). Multicultural voices in contemporary literature: A resource for teachers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Dreyer, S. S. (1989). The bookfinder: A guide to children's books about the needs and problems of youth aged 2-15. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service. Dyson, A. H., & Genishi, C. (Eds.). The need for story: Cultural diversity in classroom and community. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Garcia, J., & Pugh, S. L. (1992). Children's nonfiction multicultural literature: Some promises and disappointments. Equity and Excellence, 25(2-4), 151-154. Gillespie, J. T. (1990). Best books for children: Preschool through grade 6. New York: Bowker. Harms, J. M. (1996). Picture books to enhance the curriculum. New York: H.W. Wilson. Huck, C. S., Hepler, S., & Hickman, J. (1994). Children's literature in the elementary school (4th ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Jalongo, M. R. (1988/1993). Young children and picture books: Literature from infancy to six. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children. Jensen, J. M., & Roser, N. L. (1993). Adventuring with books: A book list for preKgrade 6. Urbana, IL: National Council of teachers of English. Kraus, N. (1997). Storytelling figures: A Pueblo tradition. Book Links, 7(3), 32-36. Kruse, G. M. (February, 1992). No single season: Multicultural literature for all children. Wilson Library Bulletin, 30-31. Kruse, G. M., & Horning, K. T. (1991). Multicultural literature for children and young adults: A selected listing of books 1980-1990 by and about people of color. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Department of Education. Lima, C. W., & Lima, J. A. (1993). A to zoo: Subject access to children's picture books. New York: Bowker. Micklos, J. (1995/1996). 30 years of minorities in children's books. Reading Today, 13(1), 61-64. Miller-Lachman, L. (1991). Our family, our friends, our world: An annotated guide to significant multicultural books for children and teenagers. New York: Bowker. New York Public Library (1989). The black experience in children's books. New York: Author. Norton, D. E. (1995). Through the eyes of a child: Introduction to children's literature. Columbus, OH: Merrill. Oliver, E. I. (1994). Crossing the mainstream: Multicultural perspectives in teaching literature. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Raines, S., & Isbell, B. (1994). Stories: Children's literature in early education. Albany, NY: Delmar. Rothlein, L., & Meinbach, A. M. (1991). The literature connection: Using children's books in the classroom. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman/GoodYear. Rothlein, L., & Meinbach, A. M. (1996). Legacies: Using children's literature in the classroom. New York: HarperCollins. Rudman, M. K. (1993). Children's literature: Resource for the classroom. Norwood, MA: ChristopherGordon. Sims, R. (1982). Shadow and substance: Afro-American experience in contemporary children's fiction. Urbana, IL: NCTE. Slapin, B., & Seale, D. (1991). Through Indian eyes: The native experience in books for children. Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers. Smith, C. A. (1989). From wonder to wisdom: Using Stories to help children grow. New York: Penguin. Smith, K. P. (1993). The multicultural ethic and connec-

New Voices in Children's Literature Criticism, ed. Sebastien Chapleau. Lichfield, Staffordshire, UK: Pied Piper Publishing, 2004. The title made me smile: New Voices in Children's Literature Criticism. The presence of new voices, I realized, necessarily signaled the unspoken assumption of old voices. In the world of children's literature as an academic discipline, the very existence of an older generation of scholars is a novelty. Hence the initial smile. But at this point I would also like to say that I remained cheerful as I read through the entire slim volume (128 pages) of essays. Despite the fact that the fourteen essays in the collection are all very short (less than ten pages each), they demonstrate what is best about the current state of children's literature scholarship. All are well researched and well written, and cover a wide range of contemporary critical discourses: gender and queer theory, feminist theory, race, cultural production (publishing), ideology, postcolonial discourse, textual analysis, constructions of childhood, adult/child relations (stemming from reader response theory), methodologies and translation. Slim as the volume itself is, the essays map quite a large area of the critical landscape of children's literature scholarship as it has been unfolding in these first years of the twenty-first century. Although all the essays are written in English, their authors demonstrate that scholarship in the field is now multinational. Let me begin at the beginning: New Voices opens with old(er) voices—Peter Hunt and Perry Nodelman. Though both have just retired from their respective institutions, Peter from the University of Wales, Cardiff and Perry from the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba—they're not that old. Both are, however (I trust they'll forgive me for saying so), among the "founding fathers" of contemporary literary scholarship in children's literature. Both are literary scholars who spent their working lives in English departments, which have not, until recently, been particularly hospitable places for children's literature scholarship or teaching. There had been scattered courses and programs, and there had been scholarly journals such as Signal, Children's Literature, and The Lion and the Unicorn, but it wasn't until the 1990s that the scholarly apparatus in the field began to acquire [End Page 246] the critical mass necessary to support the academic discipline of children's literature studies. And it appears that within the next few years, there will be several new massive scholarly reference works (currently in production) on children's literature in print. All will take as normal the idea that children's literature studies include scholarship in education, library science, visual literacy, publishing, book history, educational history, and a number of contemporary theoretical discourses including gender theories, cultural studies, semiotics, ideology, and reader response theories. But that "new normal" has been hard won—which brings me to Perry's introductory essay. The title of Perry's essay, "Like There's No Books About Anything," is a quotation from Madonna—an explanation of her reasons for getting into the business of writing children's books. She didn't like what she saw, so she figured it was something anyone could do (rather like being a rock star). Children's literature criticism has often suffered from the same kind of anyone-can-do it attitude—as in, for example, Inside Picture Books (Yale, 1999) by Ellen Handler Spitz. A lecturer by trade in art and psychology, Spitz wrote about picture books, assuming that she didn't have to do any critical reading on the subject—so she didn't bother with work by Perry or by Jane Doonan, for example, on picture books. The newer voices in New Voices make no such assumptions. They do their homework. As Peter Hunt points out in his essay, "The Knowledge: What Do You Need to Know to Know Children's Literature," a children's literature scholar needs to know a lot about a lot of different things—though the "bewildering range of subjects and approaches" (11) may initially be overwhelming...

Reviewed by: Constructing the Canon of Children’s Literature: Beyond Library Walls and Ivory Towers Marla J. Ehlers (bio) Anne Lundin . Constructing the Canon of Children’s Literature: Beyond Library Walls and Ivory Towers. New York: Routledge, 2004. Charge any group of children's librarians or children's literature scholars with creating a definitive canon of children's literature, and before a single text makes the cut both groups will be discussing passionately (rather, arguing vehemently) over the canon's principles and parameters, even whether a canon should be formed at all. Anne Lundin demonstrates in her history Constructing the Canon of Children's Literature: Beyond Library Walls and Ivory Towers that such discussion is not new to either field but is core to each discipline's formation as a profession. Lundin achieves this through unearthing the early histories of both children's librarianship and children's literature studies, revealing that each profession similarly strove for validation by means of a thoughtfully constructed canon. The result is a text which affirms the two disciplines while offering in a single volume a valuable overview of their beginnings and the origins of their respective canons of children's literature. Lundin, both scholar and librarian, is uniquely positioned to bridge these two fields and serve as interpreter of their parallel histories. With enthusiasm and admiration for the pioneers in children's librarianship and children's literature studies, Lundin traces their efforts to establish lists of "Best Books" and describes the debt each field owes the other, albeit most unknowingly. She concludes her slim history with an exploration [End Page 147] of the role readers play in creating official canons as well as their own personal paracanons. As Romanticism bloomed in late nineteenth-century America, children's librarians established tentative roots in the newly created field of professional librarianship. With a number of powerfully motivated women brimming with near missionary zeal for bringing the right book to the right child at the right time, children's librarians were unique among their colleagues: they were more than simple caretakers, collecting materials for their users; they assumed the role of "a self-determined cultural authority within the garden walls of children's literature" (2). Matriarchs such as Caroline Hewins and Anne Carroll Moore worked with editors, authors, and publishers such as Horace Scudder, Mary Mapes Dodge, Bertha Mahony Miller, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Walter de la Mare, Paul Hazard, and others as advocates for children's literature at all its stages, from writing to editing to publishing to ultimately placing it in the hands of readers. From the beginning, selection guides, suggested gift book lists, and reviews formed the fruit of early librarians' efforts, delineating the literature's initial canon. Through her chapter "Best Books: The Librarian," Lundin introduces her scholarly colleagues to the formative influences in this golden age of children's literature. Extensively researched, this section offers an accessible history for non-librarians while providing those in the field with a comprehensive overview of the crucial role their predecessors played in establishing both the profession and the literature they cultivated. In particular, the passages on Anne Carroll Moore and her efforts in conjunction with other advocates present a concise yet clear picture of this legendary figure, valuable to students and scholars of both children's librarianship and children's literature studies. Given this strong beginning as founders and critics of children's literature, how is it that children's librarians ceded the field to scholars? Lundin outlines this transfer in "Best Books: The Scholar." Concurring with historian Anne MacLeod, Lundin posits that children's librarians remained in their carefully cultivated, idealized, walled garden of narrowly defined quality literature, unable to assimilate the growing shifts in literature and culture (54–55). As the relevance of their canon lessened in the mid-twentieth century, librarians began to lose authority over its construction, an authority scholars assumed as they made tentative steps toward establishing the study of children's literature as a serious scholarly pursuit. Much like children's librarians, early children's literature scholars found themselves a poor relation at their profession's banquet. Unaware [End Page 148] of (or perhaps unwilling to acknowledge, Lundin suggests...

Introduction Maria Nikolajeva The purpose of this new column is to introduce a wider perspective on international scholarship in children's literature to the audience of the Children's Literature Association Quarterly. Recently the International Committee of the Children's Literature Association has taken some steps to bring more international research and criticism to the attention of its members. These steps include special panels and sessions at the annual conferences, a travel grant intended to bring one distinguished international scholar to each conference, and various other endeavors. A vast amount of research carried out in European countries and elsewhere is basically unknown in the English-speaking world. The language barrier is just one reason. It is also the relatively deliberate self-isolation of some nations, often due to historical and political reasons. As a result, scholars focus consciously on their national children's literature and thus develop a sense of self-sufficiency in regard to the development of theory and criticism. There are some obvious parallels within general criticism. For instance, the French and Anglo-American feminist theory developed in happy, almost mutual ignorance. However, by now the two directions have not only discovered each other, but successfully incorporated each other's achievements. It is to be hoped that children's literature criticism can also benefit from a broader acquaintance with scholarly results from other countries and cultures. Starting the column with a survey of German research was a very deliberate decision to highlight the enormous diversity of approaches and priorities within our discipline. From Hans-Heino Ewers' essay we can clearly see that the predominantly text-oriented, decontextualized study of children's literature in the wake of New Criticism, which I find prevalent in English-language criticism, is not the only possible strategy. It is illuminating that the enormous corpus of still uncollected and uncatalogued children's literature written in German stimulates almost obsessive bibliographical and historical research. In fact, annotated bibliographies and historical surveys seem not only to comprise the bulk of scholarly publications, but they also enjoy in the first place a higher status than generic or thematic studies. Peter Hunt has repeatedly questioned children's literature scholars' focus on "books that were for children" rather than "books that are for children" (see e.g., Hunt, "Dragons"). His skepticism is still more relevant for German research that obviously neglects contemporary and popular children's books in favor of old and forgotten texts. Given the political history of Germany in the twentieth century, this scholarly strategy is hardly unexpected. (It reminds me of Mikhail Bakhtin, who preferred to theorize around Rabelais as a way to avoid contemporary ideologically charged literature.) At the same time, the relatively low prestige of children's literature research apparently precludes considering the history of children's literature in a broader context of the mainstream, as do some recent Anglo-American publications, for instance, Introducing Children's Literature, by Deborah Cogan Thacker and Jean Webb. The question that has preoccupied most of the leading children's literature scholars in the English-speaking world, such as Alison Lurie, Jacqueline Rose, Perry Nodelman, Peter Hunt, Rod McGillis, or John Stephens, concerning the definition and essence of children's literature, appears extraneous to German research. Instead, the objective is a meticulous classification and description of a corpus of predefined texts. Thus, German children's literature criticism, as Hans-Heino Ewers himself comments, lacks the diversity of approaches notable in Anglo-American research and gives some directions priority over others. This is perhaps the result of a conscious self-isolation of German scholarship that refrains from acknowledging and utilizing the achievements of international research. But as a result, it appears considerably more consolidated and purposeful, as if working toward the same well-defined goal. In this light, it is remarkable for me as a Swedish scholar to see how influential the Grand Old Man Göte Klingberg seems to be in Germany. Klingberg was the pioneer of children's literature studies in Sweden in the '60s and early '70s, completing the first Swedish Ph.D. dissertation in children's literature, and paving the way for the first generation of serious scholars. While he is still highly acclaimed for...

Reviewed by: Reading in the Dark: Horror in Children's Literature and Culture ed. by Jessica R. McCort Tiffany Morin (bio) Reading in the Dark: Horror in Children's Literature and Culture. Edited by Jessica R. McCort. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016. Horror has long found a place in children's stories, from the Grimms' fairy tales to the Goosebumps books. Early on, this fear served a didactic function, as it was used to encourage childhood mindfulness. Since the days of the Brothers Grimm, however, the relationship between horror and children's literature has grown more complicated. As it is only in recent decades that horror has been recognized as a genre within children's and adolescent fiction, there remains quite a bit of ground to be covered in studying it. Jessica McCort's goal in developing this book was to "examine a variety of texts that engage, both overtly and subtly, with constructs of gothic horror in order to begin to demonstrate the pervasiveness and the appeal of horror in children's and young adult literature, film, and television," with the intention of looking "for patterns in the narratives' rules of engagement with the horror genre, as well as with their audiences" (5). While some adults argue that horror fiction is inappropriate for child and young adult readers, many of the chapters in this book suggest that "elements of horror can be viewed as beneficial for young readers and viewers because they encourage children to recognize that there are real dangers in the world they will have to confront, unveiling the terror in the familiar" (22). Ultimately, children are better equipped to deal with real horror after confronting it in the safety of a fictitious world. The first chapter, Justine Gieni's "Punishing the Abject Child: The Delight and Discipline of Body Horror in Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter," discusses how the German psychiatrist's 1854 children's book uses frightening stories to teach children about "etiquette, safety, and hygiene" (37). As a picture book, Struwwelpeter might be presumed to be aimed at young children; however, the verses have found audiences of many ages. Scholars interested in children's picture books or childhood studies are thus not the only ones who might find this essay worth their attention; scholars of nineteenth-century German literature should consider Gieni's ideas as well. Gieni maintains that "Hoffman's use of violence is not gratuitous or pedagogical, but rather a transgressive and satirical indictment of a historically and culturally specific social order" (38). This claim undoes the idea that Struwwelpeter is a didactic text; Gieni sees it rather [End Page 253] as an ambiguous work that uses horror to question the "dominant social order" (38) while delighting its audiences. Gieni argues that because the gruesome punishments are so exaggerated, they become amusing, helping children to "face their fears through laughter" (39). She analyzes three examples from Struwwelpeter to show how they function to inspire reactions of fear and laughter as satire within nineteenth-century German discourse. That modern readers are often shocked by the content, Gieni suggests, "reveals as much, if not more, about culture today" as it does about Hoffman's outlook (57). While the appropriateness of Struwwelpeter for the modern child is still in question, this essay makes an interesting addition to the conversation about the book's literary value. In the second chapter, "A Wonderful Horrid Thing: Edward Gorey, Charles Dickens, and Drawing the Horror out of Childhood Death," A. Robin Hoffman discusses how children's literature deals with the concept of a child's death. This essay would be especially interesting to scholars whose interests fall within the Victorian era. The chapter explores how Dickens influenced Gorey's writing, contrasting the two authors' treatments of child deaths. While the children in Dickens's stories highlight the sacredness of childhood, which renders their deaths—represented primarily through words—even more tragic, Gorey's work is satiric and does not shy away from showing death in pictures. Hoffman compares the illustrations in each author's stories, noting of Gorey that "the page layouts and elements of book design interact with twentieth-century American attitudes to render childhood death an object...

Boys are Reading, but their Choices are not Valued by Teachers and Librarians

Reviewed by: Children's Literature and Imaginative Geography ed. by Aïda Hudson Heather Cyr (bio) Aïda Hudson, ed. Children's Literature and Imaginative Geography. Wilfred Laurier UP, 2018. Edited by Aida Hudson, Children's Literature and Imaginative Geography is a beautifully designed book that collects together a wide range of essays on geographies in literature for young people, adding to the larger conversations, perspectives, and challenges within this fertile area of criticism. The four main sections of the text—"Geographical Imaginaries," "Gardens and Green Spaces," "Fantasy Worlds and Re-Enchantment," and "Space and Gender"—give [End Page 345] an idea of how varied readings that proceed from the interrelated foci of space/place and landscape can be and what rich ground children's literature is for the spatial turn. Many edited collections that examine place and space within children's literature focus on a specific location, geographical topos, or specific theoretical framework as a guiding point: for example, Padraic Whyte and Keith O'Sullivan's Children's Literature and New York City (2014), Mary Shine Thompson and Celia Keenan's Treasure Islands: Studies in Children's Literature (2006), and Sidney I. Dobrin and Kenneth B. Kidd's Wild Things: Children's Literature and Ecocriticism (2004). Indeed, there have been several entries in the last few years digging quite deeply into the function of mapping in children's literature, such as the special issue of Children's Literature in Education edited by Anthony Pavlik and Hazel Sheeky Bird (2017) not to mention Stefan Ekman's important work on maps and settings in fantasy literature (2013). However, this collection, perhaps to its detriment, takes a different tack, focusing instead on a broadly imagined conception. Hudson's introduction starts with a breakdown of the word "geography" as "imaged earth writing" (1) and then draws upon Edward Said's definition in Orientalism (1978) of "imaginative geographies" as a dualistic concept of familiar-unfamiliar or "our land-barbarian land" (54). Starting with the "universal practice" that "Every individual whether young or old has been exposed to familiar and unfamiliar places . . . whether in life or literature" (4), Hudson shows how widely Said's conception of "imaginative geography" applies. She demonstrates a short "worlding" of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, folds in concepts from environmentalism (specifically environmentalist Gerald Buell's "place attachment," in which she sees Said's influence), turns backward to Tolkien's definitions of myth and the grounding of fantastic Middle Earth in Tolkien's very real experiences of war, and moves toward contemporary Indigenous Literature, giving examples of novels that "may reflect the anger of peoples who have been dispossessed and displaced, but they also often evoke rootedness in the land and an affirmation of Indigenous culture" (12). The introduction casts a deliberately wide net that goes on to define the collection's many varied imagined geographies; however, the collection may have benefitted from both a tighter focus and more interaction with recent children's literature scholarship about place and space. As Hudson's introduction acknowledges, the collection is mostly focused on the Northern Hemisphere: it includes essays on Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling's Britain, Irish writers both at home and within the Irish diaspora, Kenneth Grahame's Edenic England, and Ursula K. Le Guin's fantastic Earthsea. As Hudson is co-editor of Windows and Words: A Look at Canadian Children's Literature in English (2003), it is no surprise that much of [End Page 346] the collection focuses on Canadian children's literature and other works that examine the North. In the first section, an intriguing entry is Cory Sampson's essay "Pullman and Imperialism: Navigating the Geographic Imagination in The Golden Compass," which interrogates the imperial foundations of Lyra's steampunk world, arguing that the genre relies on imperialist tropes to generate wonder. This is placed side-by-side with Colleen M. Franklin's "Nineteenth-Century British Children's Literature and the North," which examines the "sublime quest" of British explorers in the Canadian north that "became a trope for self-conquest" (Hudson 15) that continues through to Pullman's work. An enriching aspect of the collection is the move from these British-centered conceptions...

The aim of this research is to extract the potential of hyperspectral imagery acquired by the hyperion sensor for improved species level discrimination of pure and mixed mangrove patches growing in natural habitats. The radiations that emanate from these pure and mixed mangrove stands are both linear and nonlinear in nature that may be suitably modeled for accurate endmember detection and abundance estimation. While linear interactions are usually taken care of by extant linear spectral unmixing models, it is difficult to compute the intricate cobweb of non-linear interactions resulting out of pure and mixed pixels. The closed-patch mangrove forest of Sunderban are particularly characterized by mixed stands (pixels) that bears several mangrove species (endmembers) embedded in close system. In order to fully characterize these non-linear interactions, a new ‘higher order non-linear spectral unmixing model’ has been developed in this study. This new model helps to overcome the limitations of the prevalent linear spectral unmixing models that take care of single interactions. The developed model further leads to better characterization of intra-species interactions between similar mangrove species of pure stands and gives rise to more accurate fractional abundance data than the linear models. Attempt has been made to apply the developed non-linear model at several key mangrove patches of Sunderban. The application proved highly successful in identification of admixtures of mangrove endmembers comprising Excoecariaagallocha, Ceriopsdecandra, Avicennia marina and Phoenixpaludosa.

The Year's Work in Children's Literature Studies: 1987 Compiled and edited by Gillian Adams with the assistance of members of the ChLA Awards Committee: Celia Anderson, Geraldine DeLuca, James Geliert, Joan Glazer, and Anita Wihon. This is the second bibliography of articles compiled by the Awards Committee in ChLAQ; the first, for 1982, appeared in 1983. Since that time interest in children's studies has increased, and articles on children's literature and related areas are appearing with greater frequency in journals not exclusively devoted to the subject. The question of what properly constitutes children's literature continues to be hotly debated. I have made my decisions on what to include on two bases, at least one of which is suspect: I have included works like Uncle Tom's Cabin or Ivanhoe because they were read to me or given to me by family members to read as children's literature before I reached the age of 13; and because they appear in Carpenter and Pritchard's Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. I have also included important articles peripheral to children's literature, for example one on Nineteenth-Century views of corporal punishment, because they throw light on children's literature of the period. The editor has requested that articles be placed in categories. The categories to be found in other bibliographies I have consulted do not fit the peculiar demands of children's studies, thus I found it best to use the categories found in the tables of contents of ChLAQ for 1987, with some additions. I have used the MLA biographical format with two exceptions: I have omitted the year since all articles cited, unless otherwise noted, appeared in 1987, and I have given the volume number of continuously paged journals, when transmitted to me by other members of the committee, for the greater convenience of researchers. In a few cases where the volume and number are not immediately obvious (e.g. School Library Journal), I have given the month and year. Those articles deemed by the committee as particularly worthy of note, either because of intrinsic merit or because they covered new ground, have an asterisk. In an enterprise of this nature significant errors and omissions are inevitable. The committee welcomes notices of journals that should be searched and of articles that should have been included this year or that should appear next year. Omitted articles will appear in the 1988 bibliography, closing date July 1. Please send a photocopy or offprint of the article, particularly if it occurs in an unusual journal or a book of essays, if possible, otherwise send a notice in MLA format with a brief description (filecard preferred) to Gillian Adams, 4105 Ave C, Austin, TX, 78751. Journals Searched, with Abbreviations A B Bookman's Weekly & Yearbook ATQ: A Journal of New England Writing American Anthropologist American Literature American Literary Realism American Quarterly American Studies American Studies International Arizona Quarterly BB Baum Bugle Biography Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly Book Research Quarterly Bulletin: Newsletter of the Children's Literature Assembly of NCTE Cahiers de Civilisation Medievale CCL Canadian Children's Literature Canadian Literature CLW Catholic Library World CLa Child Language Children Today CE Childhood Education CL Children's Literature ChLAQ Children's Literature Association Quarterly CLE Children's Literature in Education Christianity and Literature CLA Journal College English Columbia Library Columns Comparative Literature Comparative Literature Studies Contemporary Literature Critical Inquiry Critical Quarterly Critical Texts Criticism CI Curriculum Inquiry Dalhousie Review DQ Dickens Quarterly DSA Dickens Studies Annual Dickensian The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation Eighteenth Century Life Eighteenth Century Studies Emergency Librarian ESJ Elementary School Journal English Education EJ English Journal ELN (English Language Notes) English Literature in Transition English Literary Renaissance EQ English Quarterly English Studies [End Page 81] English Studies in Canada Essays in Criticism ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance Extrapolation Feminist Studies Five Owls Foundation French Historical Studies French Review French Studies Frontiers Genre Helicon Nine History of Education Quarterly History Today HB The Horn Book Hudson Review Italica Journal of American Culture Journal of American Folklore Journal of American Studies Journal of European Studies Journal of the History of Ideas Journal of Medieval History...