Reading in the Dark: Horror in Children's Literature and Culture ed. by Jessica R. McCort

Abstract

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...