MLA Sessions on Children's Literature

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MLA Sessions on Children's Literature Anita Moss The growing scholarly and critical interest in the serious appraisal of children's literature was manifested in the number and quality of the sessions devoted to various aspects of children's literature at the 1979 meeting of the Modern Language Association. The nine sessions on children's literature were well-attended, and each of them raised significant issues about the role of children's literature as a humanistic discipline, the social, political, and psychological implications of different forms of children's literature, and the relationship between children's literature and literary criticism. The Children's Literature Association sponsored several of these sessions. In the session "Children's Literature: The Writer as Critic," author and critic Eleanor Cameron appeared with panelists Ruth K. MacDonald, Peter Neumeyer, Douglas Street, and John Cech, to discuss her views on criticism and children's literature. She suggested that the critic of children's literature should be widely read in both literature and criticism and mentioned Alfred Kazin and Edmund Wilson as critics she admired. She raised and addressed some serious questions about current directions in the criticism of children's literature, emphasizing her concern about increasingly récherché critical approaches, some of which she finds pretentious, pedantic, and opaque. Francelia Butler moderated a major session entitled "Children's Literature in the Humanities," which featured such outstanding humanists as Leslie Fiedler, Peter Beagle, Jonathan Cott, Alison Lurie, John Seelye, and Rachel Fordyce. The panelists presented their views of the importance of children's literature, discussing its impact in their personal and professional lives and commenting upon its place in the humanities. Some controversial issues emerged from the session. Leslie Fiedler, for example, spoke out against the "ghettoization" of children's literature, insisting that it should be taught in the context of literature. Alison Lurie suggested that children's literature inspires humanistic impulses in children because of its "subversive" capacity to undercut adult authority and rules. Central questions came out of this sessions "What is children's literature?" (Answers to this question were surprisingly confused and ambiguous.) "Where does children's literature belong in the curriculum: In a separate course? Blended into other literature courses?" John Seelye discussed "Adult Literature as Children's Literature" with the noted fantasy writer Peter Beagle, who commented on the nature of his fantasy and features of it which have appealed to children. Beagle mentioned such children's writers as T. H. White and Mary Norton as strong influences upon his own writing practices and described his experience with elementary school children who had read his fantasy. Rachel Fordyce presided over a forum, "Children's Literature: The Experience of Department Chairmen," where Marilyn Apseloff presented the findings of her survey of English Department chairpersons. Her results suggest a dramatic increase in the number of courses offered in children's literature in English departments around the country, as well as marked and favorable changes in the attitudes of department chairpersons towards the course. English department chairpersons, Arthur M. Eastman of Virginia Polytechnic, David H. Stewart of Texas A & M, and Mary Louise Briscoe of the University of Pittsburgh, each presented his or her experience with children's literature. While these chairpersons [End Page 8] obviously supported and encouraged the study of children's literature, they also frankly suggested that problems remain. Some staff members still view children's literature as an essentially popular subject and thus inferior to "main line" literature. Others, according to these chairpersons, question the methods by which the course is taught and regard it as sociology or education rather than literature. Still others, plainly worried about declining enrollments, are simply jealous of the popularity of the course. In this session, once again, confusion arose over the definition of "children's literature." This session was especially valuable because it focused sharply upon problems which many teachers of children's literature face in attempting to forge an acceptable professional identity for themselves and their courses amidst lingering biases and misconceptions about the nature of children's literature and its status in the context of the English department curriculum. Panelists, Jack D. Zipes, Herbert Kohl, Jan Bakker, Jerome Griswold, and K. Narayan Kutty, along...