Beloved Child Research Articles

THE VULNERABILITY BEHIND THE TERROR: AN ADLERIAN SKETCH OF AGATHA TRUNCHBULL FROM ROALD DAHL’S MATILDA

The paper provides a brief introduction to Roald Dahl, one of the most beloved children’s authors of all time. Aside from witty punch lines, fascinating worlds and iconic literary characters, Dahl’s works serve as a reservoir of diverse villains. The paper focuses on Matilda’s tyrannical villain Agatha Trunchbull, well-known for her outrageous savagery. For anybody familiar with Dahl’s work, the villain deserves strong condemnation for her child-endangering actions. The paper takes a psychological approach to explain the hostile nature of Miss Trunchbull utilizing the theory of Individual Psychology as postulated by Alfred Adler. It constitutes an attempt to unravel the psychological vulnerabilities that plague the menacing villain.

Health equity in pediatrics: Current concepts for the care of children in the 21st century (Dis Mon)

This is an analysis of important aspects of health equity in caring for children and adolescents written by a multidisciplinary team from different medical centers. In this discussion for clinicians, we look at definitions of pediatric health equity and the enormous impact of social determinants of health in this area. Factors involved with pediatric healthcare disparities that are considered include race, ethnicity, gender, age, poverty, socioeconomic status, LGBT status, living in rural communities, housing instability, food insecurity, access to transportation, availability of healthcare professionals, the status of education, and employment as well as immigration. Additional issues involved with health equity in pediatrics that are reviewed will include the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, behavioral health concepts, and the negative health effects of climate change. Recommendations that are presented include reflection of one's own attitudes on as well as an understanding of these topics, consideration of the role of various healthcare providers (i.e., community health workers, peer health navigators, others), the impact of behavioral health integration, and the need for well-conceived curricula as well as multi-faceted training programs in pediatric health equity at the undergraduate and postgraduate medical education levels. Furthermore, ongoing research in pediatric health equity is needed to scrutinize current concepts and stimulate the development of ideas with an ever-greater positive influence on the health of our beloved children. Clinicians caring for children can serve as champions for the optimal health of children and their families; in addition, these healthcare professionals are uniquely positioned in their daily work to understand the drivers of health inequities and to be advocates for optimal health equity in the 21st century for all children and adolescents.

Grave Stele of Girl with Doves: A Beloved Child

Grave Stele of Girl with Doves: A Beloved Child HELAINE L. SMITH There is, in a sunlit, quiet corner of one of the Greek galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, perhaps its loveliest Parian marble: a grave stele,1 just under 3-feet tall, of a little girl holding two pet doves (Fig. 1). My attention was first drawn to her by Claireve Grandjouan, for years the honored Department Chair of the Hunter Classics Department. And ever since, when at the museum alone or with a friend, I’ve looked at this piece, reliably there except for a brief sojourn in 2016 at the Getty. Back now, it sits again in rooms with other stelae of lesser beauty, some of which depict children holding flowers or warriors holding oil flasks2 —objects that signify, rather than arion 29.3 winter 2022 Grave Stele of Girl with Doves. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Fletcher Fund 1927. 86 grave stele of girl with doves: a beloved child reveal, the life of the deceased. This stele, though, is full of life and beauty, and makes one want to discover, insofar as possible, what makes it so moving. Of the other stelae, many conform to a stylized pattern. Carved in higher relief than the child, and more coarsely, the dead figures are seated on chairs, with mourners standing behind or to the side and grasping in their right hands the right hand of the deceased in a gesture of farewell. Despite the handshake, the dead appear motionless in body and mind: they look off into space rather than to figures present in the same plane. A few stelae retain their pediments—the little girl with doves does not—and the extant pediments have corner Sphinxes3 and a center Siren with spread wings and the ritualized hand placement signifying grief, one on the heart, the other on the head. Family groups are common, but the little girl with doves stands alone. And children, when they are present on stelae, are smaller in size than the adults but have adult body proportions. The stele of the little girl defies every one of these conventions. Its excellence lies in what makes anything a masterpiece— compositional balance and purity, the relationship between parts, the way, specifically, the soft, rounded curves of the body and the vertical folds of the garment complement each other, the way the straight lines themselves are modified by diamond-shaped diagonals, the masterful creation of light surface and dark shadow, with its splendid illusion of depth, and the quietness that shadow and open space together impart. Details of hair, fingertips and toes are exquisitely incised, the shape of the child’s body beneath the drapery quietly molded, with the naturalness of the pose defining a specific moment that is also a passage to eternity. And there is something more—details that speak directly to us through the centuries to reveal how beloved this child was to the family commissioning the stele. The presentation of beloved children is, in fact, a recurring feature in ancient hymn, epic, and drama.4 When Athena Helaine L. Smith 87 brushes aside the arrow meant for Menelaus, she does so as gently as a mother might brush a fly from the face of her sleeping child (Hom. Il. 4.130-131). There is instance after lovely instance of the indulgent parent. When Nausicaa tells her “papa dear” that she must take on the task of household laundry, he immediately understands what she really has in mind and, without saying what he knows, gives her a fine wagon and mules (Hom. Od. 6.66-70). When tiny Artemis perches on her father’s knee and asks for gift after gift, Zeus smiles and grants her all she asks and more (Callim. Hymn 3.440 ). When Hector lived, he would, Andromache says, place Astyanax on his knee at feasts and feed him “only marrow and the rich flesh of sheep” (Hom. Il. 22.500-501). Older children care as lovingly for younger ones. When “Doso” ceases nursing Demophoon, his four sisters rush to his side to cradle, bathe and soothe their baby brother (Hom. Hymn Dem. 284-291). The...

The ABC of It: Why Children's Books Matter by Leonard Marcus

Reviewed by: The ABC of It: Why Children's Books Matter by Leonard Marcus Zhang Shengzhen (bio) The ABC of It: Why Children's Books Matter. By Leonard Marcus. University of Minnesota Press, 2019. A favorite childhood book can leave a lasting impression, but as adults we tend to shelve such memories. For fourteen months beginning in June 2013, more than half a million visitors to the New York Public Library viewed an exhibition about the role that children's books play in world culture and in our lives. After the exhibition closed, attendees clamored for a catalog of The ABC of It as well as for exhibition curator and children's literature historian Leonard Marcus's insightful, wry commentary about the objects on display. Now with this [End Page 296] book, a collaboration between the University of Minnesota's Kerlan Collection and Marcus, the wide-ranging research and underlying vision of that exhibit can be experienced anywhere. With Marcus's rigorous intellectual framework and insightful descriptions, this book explores the impact of children's literature on society over time and across cultures. More than 400 full-color images of original artwork and archival materials illustrate the text, which is divided into four parts: "Visions of Childhood," "Off the Shelf: Giving and Getting Books," "The Art of the Picture Book," and "Coda: From the Kerlan." "Visions of Childhood" considers childhood as a cultural construct that has prompted the creation of not just one children's literature tradition, but many. Marcus argues that "behind every children's book is a vision of childhood: a shared understanding of what growing up is all about" (5). Concepts of childhood vary in fundamental ways from culture to culture and over time. The New-England Primer, first published in Boston around 1690, addressed the spiritual education of the children of the North American colonists who believed in original sin. The notion of the "Rational Child" developed by John Locke was a repudiation of the Puritans' vision. In the writings and artwork, spanning two centuries, of William Blake, Hans Christian Andersen, E. B. White, and Maurice Sendak, the child is a Romantic hero who perceives and at times also reveals the truth of life. The rise of developmental psychology inspired the vision of the "Progressive Child." Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon and Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon put into practice this new psychological understanding of how children experience the world. A discussion of the "Citizen Child" considers the role of children's books as propaganda, nation-building tools, and ultimately as building blocks of cultural identity. Part 2, "Off the Shelf: Giving and Getting Books," focuses on the kinds of books that children have traditionally gained access to via their adult gatekeepers, and certain kinds of reading material children have found on their own. During the nineteenth century, with the emergence in the West of a prosperous middle class, a vibrant market developed for holiday gift books characterized by literary merit and visual splendor. Children's free access to public libraries, which became near-universal in the US after 1900, opened a new chapter in the democratization of reading and literacy; pioneered in America, children's library service has been emulated internationally. Yet some of the most beloved children's books were not those that the librarians and other adult authorities championed. To the amazement—and horror—of the experts, it was Edward Stratemeyer, the turn-of-the-last-century American author and entrepreneur whose army of ghostwriters produced vast quantities of formulaic series fiction, who captured the hearts of America's young readers. In the 1930s, comic books proved to be equally popular and controversial: loved by children but regarded as crude and possibly dangerous by the adults. Considering [End Page 297] the extreme contrasts in the types of reading matter that adults and children have sometimes favored, it is not surprising that censorship, a topic that Marcus discusses in depth, became a persistent factor as American children's literature evolved and flourished. "The Art of the Picture Book" features a selection of memorable illustrations and argues convincingly that underlying the seeming simplicity of picture books is a high degree of...

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

Reviewed by: Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser John E. Miller Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2017. 625 pp. $35.00. Weighing in at 515 pages of text and eighty-six pages of notes, Caroline Fraser’s Pulitzer Prizewinning biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder is large physically and large in its ambitions. Benefitting from a successful rollout of favorable reviews and media interviews, the book has garnered numerous awards and plaudits and rightfully so. Fraser’s industrious research shines through in her footnotes and in the increased detail she is able to furnish on a number of issues and topics surrounding Wilder’s life and writings. Her felicitous writing style keeps the pages turning and readers asking for more. She is riding a wave of recent interest in the subject, especially the 2014 release of Wilder’s previously unpublished autobiographical manuscript, “Pioneer Girl,” which served as a resource for her and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, when they collaborated in producing the Little House novels of children’s literature fame. Fraser, like other writers before her, understands that any biography of Wilder must necessarily be a dual study of mother and daughter, who were tethered together by family circumstance and authorial ambition. Some readers and commentators have balked at the frequently critical take Fraser presents on Lane, but, for the most part, her treatment of the mercurial short-story writer, essayist, novelist, and eventually political theorist rings true to my way of thinking. Much more difficult to assess, because the traces she left behind were relatively meager, is the life of her mother, who turned out to become one of American’s most beloved children’s novelists. Lacking evidence on Wilder’s life at a number of points, Fraser does not hesitate to speculate, and in many cases her guesses and musings are plausible and [End Page 216] suggestive. Instances of this include comments on her father’s avoidance of military service during the Civil War, the possibility that her sister Mary’s blindness helped Laura develop an unsentimental voice, and so forth. In other cases, her conjectures are less convincing. Trying to read too much into family photographs, for instance, can be an interesting exercise, but also a hazardous one. Too often, Fraser implies that she is breaking new ground in addressing questions, such as the comparative contributions each woman made to the writing of the books, something that has been hashed and rehashed numerous times. Some reviewers seem to have been overly influenced by advertising for the book suggesting that previous researchers had not already addressed or settled a number of questions. More serious, however, is Fraser’s effort to establish two major points, which constitute her overarching claims for novelty in approaching her subject. This is not to detract from the generally effective and persuasive presentation she makes generally throughout the book, but it appears that in seeking to present a bold new thesis or theses, Fraser has been too ready to venture beyond the evidence. Her contention that Wilder’s childhood was horrible and that her memories of it were hellish is contradicted by the author’s highly positive statements about her growing-up years when she took the opportunity to talk about it and by the fact that life on the midwestern frontier during the late 1800s was generally challenging and hazardous. In asking how good or bad Wilder’s life was within her childhood environment, one is compelled to ask, “Compared to what?” A more troubling contention is that the family’s moving out into eastern Dakota Territory—the locus of half of the novels—was “one of the biggest boondoggles of them all” and that the area should never have been settled by agriculturalists. Evidence presented for this assertion is thin and strained and unlikely to convince many objective inquirers. Nevertheless, Prairie Fires is a welcome addition to the Wilder library, deepens our understanding of Wilder, Lane, and their times, will be bound to provoke continuing discussion, and takes its place as an essential read for anyone interested in the subject. [End Page 217] John E. Miller...

PROBABILITY IN MULTIVERSE

Probability on itself is a hypothesis. It is defined as the chance of occurrence of an event out of the possible number of outcomes in a sample space. But things can slightly change if we take into account the concept of multiverse, as the existence of multiverse itself is probabilistic and the occurrence of an event and its outcomes can’t be known and judged practically. Statistics is the most beloved child of mathematics, which has a lot of question everyday on various data. But here, it too may suffer difficulties as you don’t even know specifically all the data.

The Boarding School as Metaphor

37 J O U R N A L O F A M E R I C A N I N D I A N E D U C A T I O N — 5 7 , I S S U E 1 The Boarding School as Metaphor Brenda J. Child For many in our society, the role of parenting was halted by boarding schools. Our great-­ grandparents were prevented from being parents. Both my grandmother and my grandfather were sent away. Then their kids were brought up in a regimented, abusive system of boarding schools. What that system has done to our grandparents, our parents, and then to us and our children is put holes in the fabric of our society. —­ Ingrid Washinawatok-­ El Issa, Women of the Native Struggle: Portraits and Testimony of Native American Women Over the years, thousands of Native children have learned the message that is implicit in boarding school education: that Native people are children of the devil who are condemned by God. This sense of worthlessness, of evil, of unlovability because they were Native was turned inward, internalized, becoming the root for some of the profound dysfunction later in life. —­ Diane Wilson, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life They are something tangible—­ mnemonic benchmarks—­ that, as with sites of Australian Aboriginal mytho-­ geography, one can point to and say “it happened there.” A visit to the school can provide a trigger or cue that takes one back to the past almost as if there again—­ a redemptive pilgrimage to an Aboriginal Auschwitz. Perhaps is it all a bit too easy. —­ Michael G. Kenny, “A Place for Memory: The Interface between Individual and Collective History” The JAIE editors appreciate the opportunity to reprint Brenda Child’s groundbreaking book chapter “The Boarding School as Metaphor” to anchor this special issue. The chapter has had a profound impact on the field of boarding school history. Child proposes that boarding school has become “a useful and extraordinarily powerful metaphor for . . . American colonialism at its most genocidal.” In her research, including members of her own Red Lake Ojibwe family who attended boarding schools, Child 38 J O U R N A L O F A M E R I C A N I N D I A N E D U C A T I O N — 5 7 , I S S U E 1 was struck by the strength and resilience of Native students and alumni. Stories of homesickness, mistreatment, and abuse were mixed with stories of appreciation, enjoyment, and resistance. Child, like other authors in this special issue, grapples with how to honor that diversity of student experience in the boarding schools while critically engaging with the profound harms done within the schools in the name of so-­ called civilization . She develops a nuanced and respectful analysis that honors the range of alumni perspectives as well as the central position of boarding schools in ongoing debates about historical trauma and its impacts on Native people and communities. The boarding school experience remains a burning historical memory for American Indian people in the United States. This despite the fact that most federal Indian boarding schools closed in the 1930s, or had by then adopted policies that rejected assimilation and were more in tune with contemporary ideas about race and progressive education. While scholarly studies have espoused resistance and resilience in the historical record of students who survived an assimilationist education, boarding school is increasingly conceptualized by many American Indians as a uniquely Native usable past that links tribal people of diverse backgrounds today to a devastating common history, one that must be evoked, many argue, to understand our present conditions and social problems. Boarding school is now the ancestor in a direct genealogical line of terrible offspring—­ alcohol abuse, family and sexual violence, and other social dysfunction. It is not necessarily the job of the historian to explain how Indian people today remember the past. But the intensity with which Indian people in the present day explain and respond to the role of boarding school in the broader history of their families and communities suggests that for many, boarding school is also a useful and extraordinarily powerful metaphor...

Children of Psychiatrists Revisited

Children of Psychiatrists Revisited

High Museum Shows Work From New York Streets to Children’s Books

High Museum Shows Work From New York Streets to Children’s Books

"Don't worry, I am going to be okay!" Advice to parents of dancers

“Don’t worry, I am going to be okay!” Sometimes, you have to reassure your parents that majoring in dance is not so crazy—there are actually careers out there, and a good education can lead you in many directions. by Sarah Hong As graduation nears, I hear myself saying, “Don’t worry, I am going to be okay!” in response to the dreaded question, “What are you going to do with a degree in dance?” Coming from parents who are first-generation immigrants, it reflects their concerns. Choosing to get an education in dance was an absolutely absurd choice to them, and it was definitely an uphill battle to finally get them to come to terms with my decision. Along with many other aspirational immigrant parents, they came to America to work for “a better life” for their children. Unfortunately for dance majors, that “better” life means being a doctor, lawyer, pharmacist, engineer or any profession along that route. Dancer was nowhere to be seen on that list. This made me wonder why those professions stand out above being a dancer. The first, obvious reason? Money. In America, money is tied to success and power. Most immigrant families started off with low economic status upon arriving, so it’s only natural for parents to not want their beloved children working as hard as they did for every penny earned. I believe there is a second, underlying reason as well, and that is the unfamiliarity of dance as a career. The notion of the “starving artist” is most prevalent when a parent is first informed that their child is choosing a career in dance. They are not aware that within the last decade or so, dance has played a more significant role in people’s lives and the opportunities that come with dance are grand. The rise in awareness of dance careers can be credited to the increase of dance in media. Dance shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, and Dance Moms along with dance films like the Step Up series, Stomp the Yard and Make It Happen have made dancing more visible and may have helped remind society how important it is to keep dancing alive. Even so—do most people understand that there can be success after graduating as a dance major? It took a while even for me to come to this conclusion, which delayed my decision to major in dance. My parents were very much against me choosing dance as a career and did everything they could to make me believe that dance wasn’t the right path for anyone, especially me. In my case, I believe my decision was made because dance chose me just as much as I chose it. I wouldn’t accept the idea that a dance career is impossible to obtain, so I searched for ways I could possibly make a living using a dance education. So, one may wonder, what can life look like with a dance degree? The more well-known options include performing, choreographing, and teaching dance. A dancer can perform in many ways including professional companies of all styles of dance, in music videos, on tour with singers, yachts, parades, professional sports teams, etc. All of these performances require a choreographer too, another skill learned and practiced at universities. Teachers are needed at various places such as dance studios, high school dance teams, and colleges and universities.

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow (review)

Reviewed by: The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow April Spisak Bow, Erin The Scorpion Rules. McElderry, 2015 [384p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-4271-8 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-4273-2 $7.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 8-10 The world is so much better since an artificial intelligence named Talis stepped in to save humans from their own stupid selves, which he explains with sharp humor and world-weary wit in the prologue to this intriguing dystopia. In the 400 years since Talis made humans behave, things have been relatively peaceful and productive, though limited resources and human’s warlike natures keep tensions high. There’s a price to battling now, however, in that all regions must submit a beloved child who will die if a government declares war. Greta is one of those children, carefully following the dictates of the quiet enclave where such kids are kept. Then a new teen arrives who breaks the rules, accepts the punishments, and continues to challenge his society, both as a person selected to serve as war bounty and as a citizen of a planet that is imperfect even with a benevolent overlord. Suddenly Greta can’t go back to moving in bland ways, and her new realization leads to rebellion and an acknowledgment of her love for her roommate, the brilliant Xie, who returns Greta’s affection. Political, social, and romantic passions are all effectively developed, both in Talis who really does think he is in the right, and in the teens, who slowly but steadily awaken to the potential individuals might have to change the world. Teens in the know about AI will find this tantalizingly, albeit horrifyingly, close to reality, and they’ll revel in pointing out real-life examples where our robot overlords have already taken over key government/global operations. Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Hongying Yang: China ⋆ Author

Hongying YangChina ⋆ Author Samantha Christensen "I didn't have the slightest desire to become famous. Therefore, when I was writing, all I was concerned with was nothing but the kids." Hongying Yang As one of the most popular and beloved children's authors in China, Hongying Yang has impacted millions of children not only in China, but also all over the world. Yang was born in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in 1962, and she has followed a complex and interesting career path. She began her adult life as an elementary school teacher, then moved on to become a children's book editor, until finally following her passion for children's book writing. She published her first book, Seeds in a Lifejacket, a scientific fairytale, when she was nineteen years old, and in the six years she was teaching primary school she wrote over a hundred fairytales for her students. The stories for her students were later published in a collection called Hongying Yang's Science Fairy Tales Series, and her quest to create approachable literature for children and young teens continued throughout her own daughter's childhood. As her daughter transitioned from childhood into adolescence, Yang decided to relate to her through literature, and wrote Girl's Diary, a novel that went on to be considered the "growth guidebook for adolescent girls today" in China. Taking the time to relate to not only her daughter, but all the young people in her life, Yang writes with an adept sense of understanding in her YA novels, and flawlessly writes from the perspective of a struggling teen. She is passionate about fostering a love for reading in children: with every book she writes she simultaneously encourages children to choose reading over television, computer games, and the Internet. Her Mo's Mischief series has helped millions of children on their path through childhood, and the character of Mo has become one of the most recognizable children's characters in twenty-first-century China. Her ability to tap into the purity and innocence of childhood allows her to relate to her readers on a personal level. Yang has earned numerous awards for her work, including the 2011 Publication Project Award for The Green Dog's Village, the 2010 Second Government Award for The Black Afternoon, and the 2007 Best Children's Literature Award for Mo's Mischief. Her stories have also been translated into French, German, English, and Korean, and therefore have influenced children internationally as well as domestically. As she states in an interview with Dr. Li Hong, "Writing is the only source of love and happiness to me. Even if I hadn't achieved fame, I would keep writing for children. Otherwise, my life would become meaningless." Selected Bibliography • The Diaries of Smiling Cat: The Blue Rabbit-Ear Grass. Jinan: Tomorrow, 2006. Print. Google Scholar • Girl's Diary. Beijing: Writers' Press, 2000. Print. Google Scholar • Mo's Mischief: Four Troublemakers. 2003. London: Harper Collins, 2008. Print. Google Scholar • Picnic Surprise. Bath: Parragon, 2012. Print. Google Scholar • Why I Love Zai-Zai the Poodle: A Collection of Essays. Wuhan: Hubei Juvenile, 2012. Print. [End Page 14] Google Scholar Copyright © 2014 Bookbird, Inc.

Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature by Philip Nel (review)

Reviewed by: Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature by Philip Nel Chris McGee (bio) Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature. By Philip Nel. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012. As Phil Nel talks about the legacies of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss in this dynamite recent biography, there’s a word he often repeats: “classics.” Nel’s story of Johnson and Krauss is not merely about two very talented individuals who fell easily in love and were startlingly productive together, but also the backstory of some pretty well-known and beloved children’s books and comics of the past century. “Between them,” Nel says of Krauss and Johnson early in the introduction, “they created more than seventy-five books, many of which became classics” (4). Crockett Johnson, born David Johnson Leisk, is of course most known for the Barnaby comic strip and Harold and the Purple Crayon, while Ruth Krauss is noted for such books as A Hole Is to Dig and A Very Special House, books that get discussed in great detail throughout. Nel’s study is as much about how those books came to be as it is about the two creators who were never quite children’s authors to begin with. If anything, Nel’s enticing subtitle is a tad misleading in describing exactly his book’s focus. We certainly read about some intrigue regarding ongoing FBI surveillance of the couple due to their leftist politics in both their personal lives and their works, and the book opens with an ominous knock on the door and a visit from a couple of agents. And there is certainly a portrait here of a deep commitment between two people who found their complementary opposites and best working partners, though the actual finding of that love needs just a single paragraph: That fall, at a party in Greenwich Village or on Fire Island, the outgoing, energetic Ruth met the wry, laconic Dave. He was tall and taciturn. Seven inches shorter, she was slim, exuberant, and ready to speak her mind. Her exuberance drew him out of his natural reticence and into conversation. His calm, grounded personality balanced her turbulent energy. They were complete opposites who felt an immediate attraction toward one another. (54) This excerpt, in fact, comes from a chapter titled “We Met, and That Was It!” So as much as Nel’s biography concerns two of the most decent and intriguing people I think I have ever read about—and throughout the whole book you can tell he holds the deepest reverence for both of them— the real stars here are the books they created. [End Page 352] It is probably the third part of that subtitle that gets the most attention. While this is probably a sentiment you’ll come across in a lot of biographies, a running theme for Nel is that despite their influence, the breadth of their work, and the popularity of their creations, Johnson and Krauss have never really gotten the credit, or the biography, they deserve. Of Krauss, who spent a fair part of her career listening to real children and crafting lively books that captured their linguistic flair, Nel complains of how “[c]ontemporary readers take for granted that there have always been vital, spontaneous, loose-tongued children in children’s books” (6). When Krauss found a place for these types of children in her work, it seems as though everyone else started doing the same. Likewise, Johnson’s Barnaby set the standard for what smart, economical comic strips could do and became the expressed favorite of any number of future artists and writers, while later the Harold books seemed to particularly embody what Nel calls the “succinct expression of creative possibility” that has been a constant touchstone for young readers, of whom Nel is unreservedly one (5). As Nel suggests in his introduction, “If we measure lives through their influence and intersection with important figures and movements, then these two names deserve to be better remembered today” (7). Those important figures and their stories...

The Inadequacy of "Choice": Disability and What's Wrong with Feminist Framings of Reproduction

The Inadequacy of "Choice": Disability and What's Wrong withFeministFramings of Reproduction Alison Piepmeier When I was intentionally pregnant, I experienced a complex reproductive decision: whether to undergo prenatal testing. Our cul tural expectation is that pregnant women have prenatal testing per formed so that they can make the choice to terminate pregnancies with "defects." Down syndrome is a condition for which much pre natal screening and testing are done, and up to 90 percent of fetuses identified as having Down syndrome are terminated. I didn't want to be faced with that choice, and so I did not have an amniocentesis. I am now the happy parent of a daughter with Down syndrome. I shared this experience in a March 2012 article on the Mother lodeblog on the New YorkTimeswebsite. The New YorkTimesis aimed at a thoughtful audience, many of whom identify as liberal. Given this readership, it wasn't surprising that many of the more than 170 online comments made about the article accepted abortion as an available option. What did surprise me is the eugenicist use to which many of these readers would put abortion. They offered the choice of abortion as a way to avoid what they saw as an unacceptable situation, having a child with a disability. Here are several of the comments: A condition that brings with it guaranteed cognitive disabilities is not something I'm willing to inflict on another human being, much less my own beloved child. FeministStudies39, no. 1. © 2013 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 159 i6o Alison Piepmeier Knowingly giving birth to a special needs child is a crime against the child. I resent having to pay for children who are going to be a huge drain on society, financially and resource wise, if the parents knew in advance that they were going to have a special needs child. I was raised to believe that knowingly giving birth to a severely dis abled or mentally retarded baby was a sin—a really terrible sin — because it harmed not just the baby (who would never have a normal life) but also the family (including siblings who would be pressed into caring for an aging disabled brother or sister, no longer "cute" in their 50s) and society (stuck with enormous bills for a life time). I still feel that way. Hopefully in time, that 92% [of fetuses with Down syndrome that are terminated] will become lOO^.1 The comments as a whole were quite diverse, but these comments here were not rare. They are examples of the ignorant, troubling, and offensive narratives that surround reproduction, disability, and par enting in our culture. For instance, readers described giving birth to a person with a disability as an act of "harm" or cruelty, even as a "crime" — deeply stereotypical framings that individuals with disabil ities might well dispute. People with disabilities were being defined principally as "a huge drain on society." The term "normal life" was used as though it were an unambiguous goal, without acknowledging the extent to which "normal life" here is a narrowly imagined con struct that does not embrace the diversity of human existence. The final comment here concludes with the clearly eugenicist hope that 100 percent of fetuses with Down syndrome will be terminated. The world, presumably, is a better place ifpeople with Down syndrome or intellectual disabilities aren't in it. Such opinions are not just a feature of the open comments sec tion of Motherlode.They crop up—albeit in more nuanced ways—in feminist writing as well. The fact is, most feminist conversations haven't gone beyond the level of this online commentary. This isn't simply an observation about feminist understandings of disability; it's about feminist framings of reproduction. The narrative of "choice" that sur rounds and defines US reproductive rights discourse is simply inade quate. During my pregnancy, when my partner and I were deciding Alison Fiepmeier 161 whether to have an amniocentesis and, presumably, an abortion if the fetus had Down syndrome, I discovered that feminist texts had little to offer me. My story isn't one that many feminists are talking about—or if they are talking about it, it is in...

Disciplining girls: understanding the origins of the classic orphan girl story

At the heart of some of the most beloved children's novels is a passionate discussion about discipline, love, and the changing role of girls in the twentieth century. Joe Sutliff Sanders traces this debate as it began in the sentimental tales of the mid-nineteenth century and continued in the classic orphan girl novels of Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, L. M. Montgomery, and other writers still popular today. Domestic novels published between 1850 and 1880 argued that a kind of discipline that emphasized love was the most effective and moral form. These were the first best sellers in American fiction, and by reimagining discipline as a technique of the heart-rather than of the whip-they ensured their protagonists a secure, if limited, claim on power. This same ideal was adapted by women authors in the early twentieth century, who transformed the sentimental motifs of domestic novels into the orphan girl story made popular in such novels as Anne of Green Gables and Pollyanna. Through close readings of nine of the most influential orphan girl novels, Sanders provides a seamless historical narrative of American children's literature and gender from 1850 until 1923. He follows his insightful literary analysis with chapters on sympathy and motherhood, two themes central to both American and children's literature, and concludes with a discussion of contemporary ideas about discipline, abuse, and gender. Disciplining Girls writes an important chapter in the history of American, women's, and children's literature, enriching previous work about the history of discipline in America.

Pelle and Pippi at Home and Abroad: Swedishness as an Issue in Two Animated Films for Children

IN 1995, PRODUCTION WAS UNDERWAY of an animated film based on one of Sweden's most beloved children's book characters, Pippi Langstrump, which occasioned Stockholm newspaper to tell readers that the completed film would sjalvklart [naturally] go ut pa den internationella arenan [into the international arena]. That conclusion made the Swedish company that was one of the producers of the film issue caution. Swedes should not expect heroine who reminded diem of the little girl in the original editions of author Astrid Lindgren's books, warned Svensk Filmindustri, because an international Pippi would also have to appeal to audiences in France, Germany, Italy, and the United States (Giertta). In their desire to have the film attract viewers beyond Sweden's borders, the producers of the animated Pippi Langstrump (Pippi Long-stocking) were trying to mitigate phenomenon called the cultural discount, first named and discussed by two Canadian economists in 1988 study of the international trade in television programs. Addressing the issue of the reluctance of American audiences to accept programming from abroad, Colin Hoskins and Rolf Mirus stressed that television show, unlike many other export products, is not culturally neutral (503). Consequently, it faces barriers abroad because a particular programme rooted in one culture, and thus attractive in that environment, will have diminished appeal elsewhere as viewers find it difficult to identify with the style, values, beliefs, institutions and behavioural patterns of the material in question (Hoskins and Mirus 500). The two economists considered the cultural discount as influential in shaping the international flow of cultural products as factors such as production costs and size of home markets. (1) With the cultural discount concept in mind, this paper examines newspaper articles and reviews, trade journals, film databases, and theater attendance statistics to discuss how the producers of Pippi Langstrump consciously sought to disengage their main character from some of her cultural roots and how that attempt was viewed by critics in Sweden and in one of the intended foreign markets, the United States. Moreover, the production and response to Pippi are compared with those of an earlier animated film based on another children's book character, Pelle Svanslos (Peter-No-Tail). As will be seen, both films gave rise to discussion of Swedishness that located the Swedish-made productions in an animated-film market dominated by American producers and influences. In broader sense, the cases of Pelle and Pippi highlight the challenges for film producers in smaller countries who try to balance the expectations of the domestic market against hopes for success abroad. As indicated above, both Pippi Langstrump and Pelle Svanslos are popular children's book characters in Sweden, and both have long history. Pelle, the kitten without tail whose adventures unfold in the university town of Uppsala, was created by Gosta Knutsson in the late 1930s, while Astrid Lindgren's mischievous Pippi made her debut in the mid-1940s. All but one of Knutsson's books about Pelle were written between 1939 and 1951, and Lindgren's three books about Pippi appeared in the 1945-48 period, so both characters were quite old when the animated-film versions of them were introduced in 1981 and 1997, respectively. In both cases, however, the two authors' creations have attracted new readers down through the generations. Knutsson's books have been reissued several times since the 1950s, with the latest editions appearing in 2011, and Lindgren's first Pippi book has gone through some thirty' editions, the latest ones appearing in 2012. (2) For anyone producing an animated film about the two characters, the fact that prospective audiences were already familiar with them was clearly boon (although the familiarity also meant that those going to the theater arrived there widi preconceived notions about the look and behavior of Pelle and Pippi). …

Vitamin C Status in Iranian Children With Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: Evidence for Increased Utilization

Vitamin C status and total antioxidant capacity (TAC) in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) was assessed in 28 hospitalized patients and 30 apparently healthy control subjects. It was determined that whereas vitamin C intake in patients with ALL was more than twice as much as in controls, plasma and urinary concentrations of vitamin C were more than 10 times and 2.5 times higher in controls than in the patients with ALL, respectively (P < 0.001). Accordingly, serum TAC levels in the patients with ALL were lower than in healthy subjects (P < 0.001). Vitamin C utilization is increased in children with ALL.

Exceeding our grasp: science, history, and the problem of unconceived alternatives

1. Realism, Pessimism, and Underdetermination 1.1 Scientific Realism: What's at Stake? 1.2 Problems for Pessimism and Underdetermination 1.3 Recurrent, Transient Underdetermination, and a New Induction over the History of Science 2. Chasing Duhem: The Problem of Unconceived Alternatives 2.1 Duhem's Worry: Eliminative Inferences and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives 2.2 Confirmation: Holism, Eliminative Induction, and Bayesianism 2.3 Pessimism Revisited 3. Darwin and Pangenesis: The Search for the Material Basis of Generation and Heredity 3.1 Preliminary Worries 3.2 Pangenesis: Darwin's Mad Dream and Beloved Child 3.3 Darwin's Failure to Grasp Galton's Common Cause Mechanism for Inheritance 4. Galton and the Strip Theory 4.1 The Transfusion Experiments: A Dreadful Disappointment to Them Both 4.2 Galton's Strip Theory and Its Maturational, Invariant Conception of Inheritance 4.3 Galton's Understanding of Correlation and Variable Influences in Development 5. August Weismann's Theory of the Germ-Plasm 5.1 German Biology at the End of the Nineteenth Century and Weismann's Theory of the Germ-Plasm 5.2 Germinal Specificity, the Search for a Mechanism of Cellular Differentiation and the Reservation of the Germ-Plasm 5.4 Productive and Expendable Germinal Resources 5.5 Conclusion: Lessons from History 6. History Revisited: Pyrrhic Victories for Scientific Realism 6.1 Realist Responses to the Historical Record 6.2 Once More into the Breach: The Pessimistic Induction 6.3 Reference without Descriptive Accuracy 6.4 Diluting Approximate Truth 7. Selective Confirmation and the Historical Record: Another Such Victory over the Romans? 7.1 Realism, Selective Confirmation, and Retrospective Judgments of Idleness 7.2 Theoretical Posits: They Work Hard for the Money 7.3 Trust and Betrayal 7.4 Structural Realism and Retention 7.5 Selective Confirmation: No Refuge for Realism 8. Science without Realism? References Index

The Magical Worlds of Narnia: A Treasury of Myths, Legends, and Fascinating Facts, and: Into the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles, and: Revisiting Narnia: Fantasy, Myth and Religion in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles (review)

Reviewed by Andrew White Graduate of Calvin College David Colbert. The Magical Worlds of Narnia: A Treasury of Myths, Legends, and Fascinating Facts. New York: Berkley Books, 2005. David C. Downing. Into the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005. Shanna Caughey, ed. Revisiting Narnia: Fantasy, Myth and Religion in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2005. This Christmas, millions of children and adults filed into movie theaters with over-large buckets of popcorn to witness the adventures of some charming British children. This time, however, it wasn't for Harry Potter. They were there to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, released by Disney and Walden Media. A movie version of one of the most beloved children's books of the last century has to be a sure thing. So far, the box office numbers support that assumption. Publishing companies took notice early on, and a flurry of new books on Lewis and the Chronicles has shown up. Lewis has always been a popular subject, and books about him and the Chronicles have been written regularly for the past fifty years. Indeed, the recent boom in the Lewis market is only a surge in what was already a strong economy. But the release of the new film provides incentive for renewed interest in his life and work. Three new books to share in this groundswell are: The Magical Worlds of Narnia: A Treasury of Myths, Legends, and Fascinating Facts by David Colbert; Into the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles by David C. Downing; and Revisiting Narnia: Fantasy, Myth and Religion in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles edited by Shanna Caughey. The Magical Worlds of Narnia, as its subtitle indicates, is a concise collection of facts about the Chronicles. Colbert specializes in popular introductions of this ilk, having written similar titles on both the Harry Potter books and the Lord of the Rings. He uses a book-by-book approach, providing an introductory chapter outlining the basic inspiration for each book followed by short chapters addressing various questions. The bulk of this material consists of explaining Lewis's sources (for example, where Lewis found the name Aslan). Colbert's structure and idea are simple: information delivery. Insofar as he sticks to it, he is basically successful. He is neither eloquent nor intriguing on his own; he has simply provided a concise repository of information about Lewis and the Chronicles. Indeed, most of what Colbert writes can be found in other, more superior sources, Paul F. Ford's Companion to Narnia for example. And for this reason, one may wonder why Colbert needed to write his book at all. There are other problems here though, namely, Colbert's uneven treatment of his subject. At times, [End Page 427] he appears to be writing two different books: one a simple exploration of the influences and stories behind events, characters, and ideas in the Chronicles of Narnia, the other a more in-depth, though flawed analysis of Lewis the writer. The latter of these suffers from an over-reliance on A. N. Wilson's controversial work C. S. Lewis: A Biography. This reliance leads Colbert to make silly comments regarding Lewis's long-time relationship with Mrs. Moore (that she was his "lover") and regarding the likelihood that the legendary debate between Lewis and Oxford philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe was the cause of Lewis's retreat from scholarly writing to children's stories (146, 133). The result is that neither a simple exploration nor an in-depth analysis has been written successfully, and what has been written has a regrettable lack of focus. It may be that Colbert has forgotten his audience. What makes his explication of Lewis's sources useful is that it is...

Farewell, Thou Child of My Right Hand

Farewell, Thou Child of My Right Hand