Metaphysics of Children's Literature: Climbing Fuzzy Mountains by Lisa Sainsbury

Abstract

Reviewed by: Metaphysics of Children's Literature: Climbing Fuzzy Mountains by Lisa Sainsbury Samantha Piede (bio) Metaphysics of Children's Literature: Climbing Fuzzy Mountains. By Lisa Sainsbury. Blooms-bury Academic, 2021. Lisa Sainsbury's Metaphysics of Children's Literature: Climbing Fuzzy Mountains is, as the author aptly explains, "a book about something and nothing"—in the most literal sense (11). The book takes seriously problems of ontological "fuzziness"—the nebulous territory of "being"—embedded within children's literature, as well as its role in stimulating a child's philosophical wonder (5). In the introduction, Sainsbury finds such "fuzziness" in Tove Jansson's Comet in Moominland (1946), when characters Moomintroll and Sniff embark on an "irregular journey" to the Lonely Mountains. She notes that "much of the language accompanying their expedition exacerbates this sense of something murky and increasingly strange in the world about them," though this eeriness never takes clear form (4). She holds that what these characters have encountered is a "fuzzy mountain": something imbued with "vagueness." But in what sense? One could argue, Sainsbury notes, that such vagueness is best explained by philosophers Tim Crane and Kaitlin Farkas's concept of "borderline cases, whereby the identity of entities is difficult to establish" or, alternatively, by Gareth Evans and David Lewis's [End Page 434] notion that such vagueness stems not from the nature of the world, but from its relation to language. However, for Sainsbury, such solution-seeking may be beyond the point. She notes, "The purpose of this poetic and visual language … is not to find a solution to philosophical problems—in the manner attempted by Quine and company—but to identify and engage with such conundrums through the conditions of children's literature" (5). In the case of Comet in Moominland, and many of the other titles cited within this ambitious book, Sainsbury highlights the vast potential of children's books to "make an ontological philosophy of childhood through their metaphysical groundwork and an engagement with childness in the astonishment of being" (7). Throughout the book, Sainsbury avoids classifying certain children's books into a uniquely "philosophical" genre and instead explores metaphysical structures embedded within children's literature of varying forms and styles: young adult novels (The Wild Robot, The Nowhere Girls), picture books (The Baby's Catalogue), poetry (Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies series), comics (Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes series), and many staples of the Western children's literary canon (e.g., Joan G. Robinson's When Marnie Was There, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows). The bibliography is notably limited to English-language publications (including translations), which Sainsbury claims "acknowledges links between a regional literature and a Western philosophical tradition" (8). Though Sainsbury does not expand heavily on this point, her book illustrates that, indeed, writers of children's literature are not merely informed, but in many ways bounded by their philosophical and cultural traditions. Sainsbury's text is both centrally concerned with children's literature and deeply anchored in theory. She consistently demonstrates ways in which children's stories are informed by—and reflect—developments in contemporary metaphysics: for instance, how parental absence in Sonya Hartnett's Thursday's Child reflects "a Sartrean 'origin of nothingness'" and how picture books "convey directly a connectedness between different entities" with Emanuele Coccia's sense of metaphysical immersion (189, 110). By consistently drawing out these theoretical parallels for readers, Sainsbury establishes that such metaphysical insights in children's literature are not simply trivial whimsies. Sainsbury offers several ways in which children's literature is perhaps even "less daunted by metaphysical mess than [many traditional] philosophies" (118). One metaphysical structure Sainsbury identifies as a central concern in children's literature is what she refers to as "ontological exchange"—an "ontic encounter between self and other, whereby being is tested and made aware of its status as being" (11). This, she finds, plays a central role in Mary Norton's The Borrowers (1952). The book follows the adventures of a tiny humanoid heroine, Arrietty, and her family, who have taken up residence under the floorboards of an English country home. Readers find themselves charmed by, and relating to, her precociousness [End Page 435...