The Limits of Agency for Children’s Literature Scholars

Abstract

Public libraries, independent bookstores, and bigbox chain stores all have clearly designated sections of children’s literature, as does the New York Times best-seller list. But among those who study the texts so classified, the term “children’s literature” has proved much more slippery. In fact, since the 1970s, a central preoccupation of children’s literature scholarship has been defining the boundaries of the field. Perry Nodelman’s monograph The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature is just one (albeit a particularly compelling) example of this phenomenon. Despite its limitations in failing to account for teen-authored texts, co-authored picture books, and co-created children’s theatre, a definition of children’s literature like the one proposed by Nodelman is useful. It presents the idea that children’s literature is the only literary “genre” produced by one population for another, thereby capturing the overarching prominence of adults in