The Morals of Monster Stories: Essays on Children's Picture Book Messages ed. by Leslie Ormandy

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Morals of Monster Stories: Essays on Children's Picture Book Messages ed. by Leslie Ormandy Tharini Viswanath (bio) The Morals of Monster Stories: Essays on Children's Picture Book Messages. Edited by Leslie Ormandy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017. As its title suggests, Leslie Ormandy's collection of essays examines "the role assigned to supernatural characters [in picture books] as children learn to 'read' and interpret the values in the interplay of illustrations, words, and authority" (4). Relying almost entirely on picture book theory as expounded by Perry Nodelman and Lawrence R. Sipe, Ormandy explains that the transactions between text and image enhance young children's ability to make meanings of morals in monster stories. She goes on to posit that since "children have fewer experiences to draw from while interpreting the illustrated characters on the page," the latter will acquire a distinct personality based on the known world of the child readers (7). Most of the essays in this collection focus on how the real child reader reads and interprets monstrous characters as "Other," wherein the adult readers' mature understanding of the supernatural plays an integral role with regard to how child readers interpret these monstrous characters. The Morals of Monster Stories comprises fourteen essays divided among six sections. The essays examine supernatural characters through a variety of critical approaches, from medievalism to narrative therapy. The first section, "Monstrous Instruction," explores how supernatural characters teach child readers specific lessons: multiculturalism and environmentalism. The next section, "Normalization [End Page 234] of the Other," analyzes how the monster as "Other" is integrated into human society, and how the primary texts in question encourage empathy in child readers. The fourth and fifth sections—"Evolving Monsters" and "Monstrous Monsters"—examine supernatural figures through historical and religious lenses, respectively. The essays in these sections rely on historical interpretations of texts that deal with the supernatural; "Monstrous Monsters," in particular, offers "a very brief look at the socio-political division regarding character development versus indoctrination" (11). The essays in the sixth and final section, "Moral Agencies," emphasize the teaching aspects of the books and, most importantly, articulate that child readers have agency with regard to the morals that they learn. Most of the essays in this collection deal exclusively with picture books and/or fairy tales meant for extremely young readers, where texts are navigated with the help of adult caregivers and/or teachers. In fact, only the third section, "Fostering Heteronormativity, Agency, and Racial Superiority," includes essays that deal with chapter books—albeit ones with lots of pictures—aimed at slightly older readers between the ages of five and nine. Here too, however, books are "often chosen by adults as proper read-aloud choices," underlining the idea that adults play an important role with regard to the child reader's understanding of morals (10). Notable essays in this collection include Carla Kungl's "My Monster ABCs: What Can A(bominable Snowmen) to Z(ombies) Teach Our Kids?" and Rebecca A. Brown's "Swimming with Serpents: Dismantling Boundaries in Sea Monsters Picture Books." Using her own children as examples of child readers who enjoy ABC books featuring monsters, Kungl contends that "monster books that are meant for small children meet their developmental needs on several other levels" (23). She goes on to argue that monster books can help child readers deal with their own monsters by making the "unknown" less threatening (24). Brown, too, builds her argument on the understanding that the sea serpent's body functions "as a symbolic representation of the unknown, cultural fears, and child centered themes, like cooperation and valuing otherness" in her reading of three picture books featuring sea serpents and sea monsters (161). Following a brief overview of medieval and Renaissance readings of these supernatural sea creatures, she examines how "author-illustrators reframe artistic and sociohistorically resonant sea serpent tropes … thereby creating benevolent beasts that use their physical and intellectual otherness to help humans rather than to frighten or destroy them" (158–59). Arguably, these monsters provide readers with models for demolishing boundaries between themselves and the "Other." Gerald Raymond Gordon's essay, "Monsters Like Us," is perhaps the only study in this collection that deals exclusively...