Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults C.W. Sullivan III (bio) Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults. Ed. Carrie Hintz and Elaine Ostry. Children's Literature and Culture Series, Routledge, 2003. The Children's Literature and Culture series from Routledge, edited by lack Zipes, is known for its excellent and tightly-focused critical volumes, and Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults is a fine addition to that series. This volume features a foreword by Zipes, a substantial and thoroughly-documented introduction by the editors, ten essays by children's literature scholars, four essays by fiction writers, an interview with Lois Lowry focusing on The Giver and Gathering Blue, a substantial annotated bibliography of young adult utopian and dystopian fiction, and an oddly-placed afterword by Lyman Tower Sargent, a noted utopian literature scholar. After wrestling with various definitions early in their introduction, Hintz and Ostry settle on the following: [End Page 384] "We use 'utopia' . . . to signify a non-existent society that is posited as significantly better than that of the reader" and dystopia as a society "in which the ideals for improvement have gone tragically amok" (3). Further, they establish the critical stance for this volume by arguing, "Utopian writing for children and young adults examines the roots of social behavior and encourages the child to question his or her own society" (1). The rest of the introduction deals with reasons for studying utopian literature for children and young adults, the ability of such literature to teach readers about society, about themselves, and about the nature of technological advance. The introduction concludes with a brief explanation of the major sections of the book and the essays in those sections. As with any collection of scholarly essays, they vary in terms of both style and relevance (or, perhaps, usefulness to the reader, be he or she critic or student), and while all of the essays have something to offer, I was particularly taken by certain ones. Fred Erisman's "American Boys' Series Books and the Utopia of the Air" is a first-rate discussion focusing on those series in which the airplane played a major role. Quoting passages from such books as Rex Lee, Ace of the Airmail (1929), Erisman argues that these books envisioned a future in which "the merits of aviation will awaken the merits of boys who read of it, making them 'the men whose destiny it would be to lead the country toward the day when flying had taken its rightful place in the world,' and leading these young men to produce a better world for all" (39). Erisman concludes, "Most important of all, [these books] look to a time when mankind itself will be liberated and exalted through the transcendence offered by that technology" (46). In "Sarah Fielding's Childhood Utopia," Sara Gadeken points out that the first English children's novel, Sarah Fielding's The Governess, or Little Female Academy (1749), was a utopian novel. The girls at the Academy, Gadeken argues, come there from another culture, a male-dominated culture in which the girls had been taught "to suppose that happiness consists of outdoing everyone else and then reveling in the envy and frustration this causes others" (57). Fielding, Gadeken continues, posits a "selfhood that . . . sees the individual not as independent but part of a larger whole" (61), in this case, the Academy. Gadeken also rescues Fielding from the mistaken charge that she was idealizing marriage and advocating "submissiveness and domesticity" (67). Brian facques' Redwall is unmasked in Holly V. Blackford's "The Writing on the Wall of Redwall." Blackford points out that, initially, Redwall appears to be a utopia in which the mice heal the sick and assist the needy in "an ideal of an independent animal kingdom that knows no violence" (89). In fact, the mice have taken a vow not to harm other creatures. As Blackford points out, however, this utopian veil is just that, and the world of the mice changes quickly and dramatically as Matthias "becomes" the warrior mouse, Martin, and his "rise to power overturns the social order of the peaceful utopia" (96). [End Page 385...