Reviewed by: Secret Spaces of Childhood James Holt McGavran Jr. (bio) Secret Spaces of Childhood. Ed. Elizabeth Goodenough. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003 A literary critic recounts childhood scenes of sexual humiliation; a Harvard zoologist writes that, as a boy, he "sought little Edens in the forests of Alabama and northern Florida"; a novelist confesses the feelings of dislocation and pain she experienced at age five when her baby brother was born; an artist who read Verne, Tolkien, and The Swiss Family Robinson to escape an unhappy childhood creates a found-object sculpture in a silver box which he entitles "Einstein's Brain": these are just a few segments of Elizabeth Goodenough's intriguing anthology Secret Spaces of Childhood. Based on an art exhibit of the same name held at the University of Michigan in 1998, which Goodenough co-curated with Larry Cressman, the book includes, in addition to photographs of the artwork, thirty-four brief autobiographical vignettes, five longer memoir essays, eleven poems, four short stories, and eight essays in literary criticism. Critic U. C. Knoepflmacher, zoologist Edward O. Wilson, novelist Joyce Carol Oates, artist Eugene Provenzo, editor Goodenough, and the scores of other contributors all help, paradoxically, to unify this remarkably diverse book because, as Goodenough says, all contributions "show that, however humble, our first getaways and solo vantage points live on in memory and imagination" and "urge us to preserve sanctuaries for free play and to consider issues of environmental justice" (4). Thus all emphasize the necessity of free and unencumbered interaction between the internal and external lives of childhood. By its very existence the book also argues for the tearing down of entrenched academic barriers between the sciences and the humanities, between the scholarly and the creative sides of our minds, and between our adult and child selves. Some readers—this reviewer for one—find such demolition liberating and empowering; others, however, may find it naive or trivializing. Because most of us get paid to be teachers and scholar-critics, most will find the critical articles of particular interest. What commentator Margaret Price says of the visual artists in the "Secret Spaces" art exhibit may also be applied to these articles: Few, if any, . . . romanticize the notion of childhood and its secret spaces. Each work seems acutely aware of the hazards of being a child. Sometimes a secret space is a refuge from cruelty or danger. Sometimes it represents a refuge from the danger of becoming an adult oneself. ("Negotiating Boundaries, Regenerating Ruins: The 'Secret Spaces of Childhood' Exhibition" 148) [End Page 368] The most complex and striking of the articles is Adrienne Kertzer's "Like a Fable, Not a Pretty Picture: Holocaust Representation in Roberto Benigni and Anita Lobel." Kerzer recognizes the particular artistic and moral issues involved in any attempt to represent the Holocaust to children, understands survivor guilt, and sympathizes with Lobel's "determination to separate her Holocaust memories from the aesthetic work of her adult life" (170). Kertzer is most impressive when she bravely defends Benigni for introducing into his film, Life Is Beautiful, elements of comedy and fantasy which have aroused moral outrage in many viewers. She argues that it is because of the fantasies and the rescue narrative that Guido teaches his son Giosue in the death camp that Giosue is able to create his own story and live free in his mind as an adult: "This is my story. This is the sacrifice my father made for me" (qtd. in Goodenough 172). These "strategies of representation [are] familiar in children's literature" but not, of course, in Holocaust literature (172). The fantasies are lies with regard to the almost unimaginable realities of mass extermination—the realities Lobel witnessed and reeled away from, the realities which, in the material sense, Giosue escaped not because of stories but entirely by accident. But the fantasies also pay tribute to the unique power of story to create hope—hope for better selves and a better world. Two other articles in the collection, by Joan W. Bios and Karein K. Goertz, also deal with Holocaust narrative through study of Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl. Three more articles focus on...