Popular Children's Books Research Articles

And they all lived unhappily ever after: Positive and negative emotions in American and Russian picture books.

The U.S. and Russian cultural contexts are thought to foster different models of emotion, with the former emphasizing positive emotions more and negative emotions less than the latter. Little is known about the ways in which parents transmit these models of emotions to children. Cultural products, such as popular storybooks, may serve to provide important tools of transmission. Two studies examined similarities and differences in the extent to which children's books from these cultural contexts depict emotions. In Study 1, U.S., Russian American, and Russian parents described the extent to which books that they recently read to their children depict positive and negative emotions. Although no differences emerged for depictions of positive emotions, U.S. parents described reading books with lower levels of negative emotions than Russian parents, with Russian American parents in between. These differences were partially due to parental beliefs about sadness. In Study 2, verbal and nonverbal depictions of emotions were compared for sets of popular children's books from the U.S. and Russia. U.S. books verbally referenced anger and sadness and depicted happiness, anger, and fear faces less frequently than Russian books. Taken together, these studies suggest that American and Russian parents value and expose their children to different depictions of emotions, particularly negative emotions. Future studies need to examine the ways in which children in these cultural contexts interpret depictions of emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Focus IBBY

Focus IBBY Liz Page (bio) International Children's Book Day around the World in 2021 International Children's Book Day (ICBD) is celebrated by IBBY members on or around the birthday of Hans Christian Andersen: April 2. Each year a different national section of IBBY has the opportunity to be the international sponsor of ICBD. It decides upon a theme and invites a prominent author from the host country to write a message to the children of the world and a well-known illustrator to design a poster. The 2021 poster and message were sponsored by USBBY; Margarita Engle wrote the delightful poem "The Music of Words," which was accompanied by the stunning artwork of Hans Christian Andersen Award winner (2014) Roger Mello. These materials are used in different ways to promote books and reading. Many IBBY sections promote ICBD through the media and organize activities in schools and public libraries. Often ICBD is linked to celebrations around children's books and other special events that may include encounters with authors and illustrators, writing competitions, or announcements of book awards. Below is a brief glimpse of some of the activities organized by IBBY members to celebrate ICBD 2021. A retrospective of more events celebrating 2021 International Children's Book Day can be seen on the IBBY blog: www.ibby.org/ibby-blog. In Iceland, a new short story by a popular children's book author was broadcast on Iceland's national public service broadcaster, Channel 1. The author read her story herself, and then gave a short interview on the radio. The short story was written for all students in primary school, from six- to sixteen-year-olds. IBBY Iceland has celebrated International Children's Book Day in this way for many years, choosing a new author and a new short story every year. The goal is that everyone in Iceland has a joint listening experience on this special day. People who read or listen to the same story have something in common with each other, which will foster tolerance. By allowing all primary school students in the country to listen to the story at the same time, forty thousand students enter the same world at the same time! After listening to the story, children are often given a fun assignment in connection with the story. IBBY Iceland provides the text of the short story online; these can be viewed on the IBBY Iceland Facebook page. In 2020, the short stories from the last ten years were published in a book. Learn more at www.facebook.com/IBBY.is/posts/3033571243340704. IBBY Nepal chose to distribute children's books to students and school libraries. Members of the section held sessions with teachers about the importance and utilization of children's literature in the classroom. Books were contributed by Room to Read (Nepal Unite). The section also celebrated International Storytelling Day on March 20, with support from the Storytellers' Society and Room to Read, by running a digital discussion [End Page 91] about the importance of storytelling for children's development and imagination. IBBY Dominican Republic supported the production of three books in Spanish and publishing a presentation of them on YouTube. Click for larger view View full resolution IBBY Argentina, working with Desde los Libros, gave a special workshop about ways of matching literature contents and readers through technology. The two-day workshop shared ways of learning through digital content on the media. The workshop addressed mediators, librarians, teachers, and promoters who wish to share their love for books in this "distant world." The Slovenian section of IBBY prepared a reading promotion event on their website: www.ibby.si/index.php/icbd/2021. IBBY Slovenia shared a video made for the occasion with a group of children and their teacher on the theme of Hans Christian Andersen. IBBY Malaysia organized various activities, which included a talk on the "Rhythm of Words" that was a joint activity with IBBY Malaysia and the Department of Early Childhood Studies, Faculty of Education, and Social Sciences University Selangor (UNISEL). A reading and storytelling session was held at the Genius Aulad Preschool in Nilai by Teacher Sha, as well as a storytelling session at Gallery...

Re‐examining students' reading experience in a gamified context from a self‐determination perspective: A multiple‐case study

ABSTRACTThe present study re‐examines the reading experiences of eight primary school students in Hong Kong. Framed around theories of gamification and self‐determination, the study looks at how these students developed as readers on an online gamified reader known as RB. An electronic extension to a reading database that contains more than 15,000 comprehension questions made from around 500 popular children's books, RB is found to enable the students feel competent, autonomous and connected with their family and friends during their game play. These feelings can be explained away by the three psychological needs of self ‐determination literature. For instance, after a period of time playing on RB, the students displayed competence in that they did well on their academics, increased their reading speed, expanded their vocabulary, and further developed their learning and problem‐solving skills in school. They also showed autonomy in their learning, manifested in the expansion of the scope of their reading choices, a diversity of their reading methods, an increase in their reading frequency, and a boost to their drive in picking up a book for leisure read. Finally, they felt more connected now with their family and friends than before they used RB, for the bondage they formed over RB lasted well beyond their game play. Based on a re‐evaluation of their success stories from gamification and self‐determination perspectives, the study concludes that RB is an effective early English learners' tool in Hong Kong.

PRECARIOUS LIVES: CHRISTINA ROSSETTI AND THE FORM OF LIKENESS

In its anonymous reviewof Christina Rossetti'sSpeaking Likenesses(1874), theAcademynotes rather hopelessly: “this will probably be one of the most popular children's books this winter. We wish we could understand it” (606). The reviewer – who later dwells on the “uncomfortable feeling” generated by this children's tale and its accompanying images – still counts as the most generous among the largely puzzled and horrified readership of Rossetti's story about three sets of girls experiencing violence and failure in their respective fantasy worlds (606). While clearly such dystopic plots are not out of place in Victorian literature about children, something about Rossetti's unusual narrative bothered her contemporaries. John Ruskin, for instance, bluntly wondered how Rossetti and Arthur Hughes, who illustrated the story, together could “sink so low” (qtd. in Auerbach and Knoepflmacher 318). In any case, the book still sold on the Christmas market, and a few months later, Rossetti would publishAnnus Domini, a benign pocketbook of daily prayers that stands in stark contrast to the grim prose ofSpeaking Likenesses.It is therefore tempting to cast this work of children's fiction as a strange anomaly in Rossetti's oeuvre, which from the 1870s, beginning withAnnus Domini, to her death in 1894, became almost exclusively dominated by devotional prose and poetry. In contrast, I argue in the following essay thatSpeaking Likenessespoints to a widespread interest throughout Rossetti's writing – but especially in her most well-known poems fromGoblin Market and Other Poems(1862) andA Prince's Progress(1866) – in alternative modes of sociality that refract a conceptual preoccupation with likeness, rather than difference. Following traditions of critical thought that have paid increasing attention to relations that resist oppositional logic – Stephanie Engelstein and Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick's late work comes to mind here – I establish the primacy of a horizontal axis of similarity in bothSpeaking Likenessesand Rossetti's most canonical poem, “Goblin Market.” For Rossetti, the lure of similarity, or minimal difference, manifests itself most often in siblinghood and more specifically, sisterhood, the dominant kinship relation throughout her lyrics fromGoblin Market and Other Poems. Sisterhood anchors the title poem I will examine in this essay, as well as shorter verses such as “Noble Sisters” and “Sister Maude.” At issue in such relations of likeness is the discreteness of a (typically) feminine self. For Rossetti, shunning oppositional structures of desire and difference that typically produce individuation (exemplified in the heterosexual couple form and the titles of her uneasy lyrics “He and She” and “Wife to Husband”) allows for a new (albeit perilous) space to carve out one's particularity as a gendered being.

Books under fire: a hit list of banned and challenged children's books

Many things have changed since ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) was founded in 1967, but not everything: the most beloved and popular children's books are still among the most frequent targets of censorship and outright bans. Limiting access to controversial titles such as Captain Underpants, The Dirty Cowboy, Blubber , or Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark or leaving them out of a library's collection altogether is not the answer to challenges. In this important book, Scales gives librarians the information and guidance they need to defend challenged books with an informed response while ensuring access to young book lovers. Spotlighting dozens of hot button titles written for young children through teens, this book: Gives a profile of each book that covers its plot, characters, published reviews, awards and prizes, and author resources Recounts past challenges and how they were faced, providing valuable lessons for handling future situations, plus a list of other books challenged for similar reasons Provides discussion ideas for planning programming around banned books, whether in reading groups, classrooms, or other settings Includes an appendix of additional resources for librarians who find themselves enmeshed in a challenge With this guide at hand, library managers, children's and YA librarians, and other library staff will be prepared to champion intellectual freedom for young people.

Emotions in “the world”: cultural practices, products, and meanings of anger and shame in two individualist cultures

Three studies tested the idea that people’s cultural worlds are structured in ways that promote and highlight emotions and emotional responses that are beneficial in achieving central goals in their culture. Based on the idea that U.S. Americans strive for competitive individualism, while (Dutch-speaking) Belgians favor a more egalitarian variant of individualism, we predicted that anger and shame, as well as their associated responses, would be beneficial to different extents in these two cultural contexts. A questionnaire study found that cultural practices promote beneficial emotions (anger in the United States, shame in Belgium) and avoid harmful emotions (shame in the United States): emotional interactions were perceived to occur more or less frequently to the extent that they elicited culturally beneficial or harmful emotions. Similarly, a cultural product analysis showed that popular children’s books from the United States and Belgium tend to portray culturally beneficial emotions more than culturally harmful emotions. Finally, a word-association study of the shared cultural meanings surrounding anger and shame provided commensurate evidence at the level of the associated response. In each language network, anger and shame were imbued with meanings that reflected the cultural significance of the emotion: while culturally consistent emotions carried relatively stronger connotations of emotional yielding (e.g., giving in to anger and aggressing against the offender in the United States), culturally inconsistent emotions carried relatively stronger connotations of emotional containment (e.g., a stronger emphasis on suppressing or transforming shame in the United States).

Posters for Housing and Health

THE 1930S POSTER IMAGE contrasts a modernist public housing development with conditions in a tenement district. In the latter, a woman pushes a baby carriage through a neighborhood that at the time would have been considered unhealthy.1 She approaches overflowing garbage cans; laundry lines fill the tall, narrow space between tenement buildings; and an old water tank tops a roof. An elevated train can be seen in the distance. The image, in gray-blue and gold, is crossed out. Eliminating these types of neighborhoods as a means to promote health has been a goal of housing and health advocates since the time of Thomas Southwood Smith and Edwin Chadwick in the 19th century.2 The modernist housing development, rendered in four colors, sits on a superblock with no through traffic; each building has ample access to sunlight and green space but not to streets. Long, narrow buildings, designed to maximize ventilation, contain many corner units. Residents would have views of nature and plenty of opportunities for outdoor recreation. The poster's text reads: “BETTER HOUSING: THE SOLUTION TO INFANT MORTALITY IN THE SLUMS.” This poster was produced by the federal Works Progress Administration–Federal Art Project sometime between 1936 and 1938. During its years of existence between 1935 and 1943, more than 2 000 000 copies of approximately 35 000 distinct posters were produced, but fewer than 2000 have survived.3 At least a half dozen of these involved housing and health themes. Some promoted overall public housing goals of clean, safe living; others celebrated the opening of individual developments. In addition, some posters were dedicated to other health-related topics, including syphilis, workplace injuries, tuberculosis, and hand washing. Overall, the Works Progress Administration program produced posters dedicated to everything from travel and tourism to book readings and war bonds.4 Many of the posters had designs similar to the one pictured here with simple graphics; clean, bold lettering; and socially oriented messages.5 Better housing: the solution to infant mortality in the slums, one of a series of posters promoting health through new forms of housing, 1930s. The idea for this publicly funded program to support unemployed artists began in New York City as an initiative by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia; in 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal took over the program and expanded it across the United States. The New York poster program was administered by Richard Floethe, an artist who had trained at the influential Bauhaus School in Weimar, Germany. He illustrated many popular children's books before and after his work in the program. The artist who designed the poster was Anthony Velonis, a master printmaker who helped elevate the process of silk screening to an art form he called serigraphy.6 Velonis eventually cofounded a printing firm that would produce work for many famous artists in the decades after World War II. The poster program operated by accepting requests from public and nonprofit agencies for a poster on a specific topic.7 Floethe would post the topic request along with some parameters for the project, and individual artists on staff in the department would submit designs. A winning design was then produced for the client.8 This poster was produced for the New York City Housing Authority, which may have intended to use it to promote its plans for slum clearance and public housing construction. It was a unique time in the history of health and housing; an early phase of the New Deal had produced about 35 000 units of public housing, many modeled on European models of new architecture, and Congress was about to pass the 1937 Wagner-Steagall Act, which would dramatically expand the program to eventually produce almost 1.2 million units.9,10 The new housing development in the poster reflects the values of modern architects who believed that the incorporation of strong design elements would achieve important social and health goals.11,12 These modernist ideals would dominate public housing architecture for decades despite a growing disillusionment with the social effects of these designs that began in the 1950s.13 Some of the health assumptions that underlie the poster, including the superblock as a preferred way to provide access to open space and reduce traffic conflicts, would not be totally challenged until the growth of the built environment and health movement in the 1990s.14 By the beginning of the 2000s, a new consensus as to what constituted a healthy neighborhood—one that features fine-grained development, mixed uses, street connectivity, and other features that promote walking, healthy eating, and social capital—would emerge.15,16

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). …

The dangerous deconstruction of gender: narrative inquiry of masculinities in a popular children's book

The leisure pastime of children's reading transmits important cultural messages about gender and identity. The messages relayed through the guise of innocent characters, settings, and plots many times reinforce dominant discourses and expectations of cultural appropriateness. In order to highlight the ways that reading can become a mechanism for the dissemination of heteronormative notions of gender, we explored the popular children's book The dangerous book for boys. Using the methodology of narrative inquiry, we analyzed the text to illuminate the leisurely ‘tellings’ and ‘not tellings’ of meta-narratives related to the dominant discourse of masculinities. Data and results are presented using creative analytic practice in a quiz format that might be found in a young adult magazine. This quiz shows that only three typical archetypes, The Beav, Bond, and Boone, are presented as appropriate masculinities in the book. We concluded that ‘a book for all boys’ should be more representative of the multiple masculinities found within socio-cultural discourse.

Obamafiction for Children: Imagining the Forty-Fourth U.S. President

Obamafiction for Children:Imagining the Forty-Fourth U.S. President Philip Nel (bio) In a column published five days after the 2008 election, journalist Jason Whitlock said of the president-elect's life: "His is a tale that should be read aloud at bedtime in every American neighborhood." It was already being read aloud in some neighborhoods. Even before Senator Obama had won the election, there were twelve juvenile titles about his life: two picture books, nine chapter books, and one comic book. From the election to the end of his first year in office, another forty-seven books were published: thirty-six more chapter books, seven more picture books, two comic books, one book of poetry, and one board book. And that doesn't include the Obama Paper Dolls book, coloring and activity books, the titles about Bo the dog, nor the many books about Michelle, Sasha, and Malia. To have this many children's books about a candidate—or about a president so soon in his term of office—is unusual. During the campaign, Republican presidential candidate John McCain had seven titles to Obama's twelve: five chapter books, one comic book, and one picture book (My Dad, John McCain, written by his daughter Meghan McCain). During George W. Bush's presidential campaign, there were two juvenile titles about him. By the end of the first year of his presidency, add another four. By the end of his eight-year presidency, Bush inspired twenty-nine fewer books than Obama did in his first year—thirty titles in all, and that includes one anti-Bush satire, Dan Piraro's The Three Little Pigs Buy the White House (2004). The marked difference in tone between the Bush book titles and the Obama book titles suggest that publishers and authors see the forty-fourth president quite differently from the forty-third. Two thousand and one brought us Daniel Cohen's George W. Bush: The Family Business, Tim McNeese's George W. Bush: First President of the New Century, and Ann Gaines's George W. Bush: Our Forty-Third President. [End Page 334] In contrast, 2009 gave us Tim Alexander's Barack Obama: Hope for the World, Jude K. Odu's Our President—Barack Obama: The Illustrated Story of Obama's Inspiring Journey, and Bob Carlton and Ariele Gentiles's Barack Obama: An American Story. The "First President of the New Century," George W. Bush merely entered "The Family Business," but Barack Obama's "American Story" offers "Hope for the World."1 To examine how these Obama biographies attempt to fit him into dominant national myths, this essay focuses primarily on visual representations—picture books and comic books—with a particular emphasis on two pre-election picture books from 2008: Nikki Grimes and Bryan Collier's Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope, and Jonah Winter and A. G. Ford's Barack. I make these two a primary focus because they're the first picture books, have major publishing houses behind them, and seem to be the most popular children's books about Obama. As of March 2009, Grimes and Collier's book had sold 325,000 copies and was in its sixteenth printing; both books have been on the New York Times Book Review's bestseller list (Galupo). Barack has been so successful that Ford has illustrated two sequels, both written by Deborah Hopkinson: Michelle (published September 2009) and First Family (published December 2009). With the exception of the sole anti-Obama children's book (Help! Mom! Radicals Are Ruining My Country!, on which more later), in children's books about the forty-fourth president, attempts to reify Obama as an ideal American collide with his more complex history, sometimes even effacing his race. The books' impulse to portray Obama as a role model is both progressive and regressive. The impulse is progressive because, as Rudine Sims Bishop has noted, "all children who read or are read to need to see themselves represented as part of humanity" (qtd. in Russell 85). In this sense, these books follow in the traditions of earlier picture books about African American history, such as Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and Lynd Ward's North Star Shining...

Empathizing With Harry Potter: The Use of Popular Literature in Counselor Education

In this article, the popular children's book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J. K. Rowling, 1997) is discussed as the basis for an activity in teaching and eliciting empathy from beginning‐level school counseling students. A description of the application of the book to this activity, the students' evaluations, and teaching recommendations and limitations are reported.

Content Analysis and Gender Stereotypes in Children's Books

This article deals with gender stereotypes in popular children's books. I propose an exercise in which students use content analysis to uncover latent gender stereotypes present in such popular books as those by Dr. Seuss. Using a coding frame based on traditional gender-role stereotypes, I assign students to small groups who then undertake a close analysis of selected children's books to see whether or not traditional gender-role stereotypes are apparent. Students examine the text, symbols, characters, use of color, and major themes in each book. In this article, I briefly review the theoretical underpinnings of the exercise, offer a brief summary of content analysis, and outline the delivery of the exercise, its learning goals, and major discussion points. Through a take-home assignment, students are asked to articulate the manner in which gender stereotypes may be perpetuated by the media. Additionally, students are encouraged to think about the ways in which their own gender identities have been shaped by the media. Actual student comments are used throughout to highlight the major discussion points.

A Guide to the Harry Potter Novels (review)

Reviewed by: A Guide to the Harry Potter Novels Theresa M. Martus (bio) A Guide to the Harry Potter Novels. By Julia Eccleshare. London: Continuum, 2002 In her exploration of the writings of J. K. Rowling, Julia Eccleshare has added a useful volume to Continuum's "Contemporary Classics of Children's Literature." This series is dedicated to providing critical discussion of both literary and popular children's books and their authors thereby creating a comprehensive guide for readers and scholars alike. With her addition to the series, Eccleshare has sought to create a thorough and comprehensive analysis that will initiate all readers into the many worlds that have been traveled by the phenomenon that is Harry Potter. Driving her writing is a desire to find a place for a series that has "completely won the hearts and heads of child and adult readers all over the world" (2). Eccleshare begins with a chapter titled "The Publishing of a Phenomenon," in which she provides background into J. K. Rowling's history as a writer and the initial publication and reviews received by Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. As Eccleshare points out, Rowling did not initially believe that she was writing solely for children. Despite this fact, however, the publisher marketed it as a children's book, and it soon began winning awards that recognized it as an outstanding work of children's literature. In the United States, its status as a work of children's literature was reinforced when Scholastic released and marketed the first U.S. edition under the title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. However, even before the Potter phenomenon became full blown, the appeal of J.K. Rowling's writing and her central character was not limited to children. Eccleshare argues that Rowling's book crosses the boundary that separates books for children from those typically read by adults. Eccleshare then goes on to discuss several other ways that Rowling's works transcend traditional boundaries. Another factor that has contributed to the Potter phenomenon, according to Eccleshare, is Rowling's ability to cross national boundaries. Although Rowling's novel is steeped in British culture, it has captured the hearts and minds of readers from around the world. The popularity of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States is reflected in its appearance and staying power on the New York Times Bestseller List. This list also includes the three other currently published Harry Potter novels: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and the most recent, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Eccleshare's exploration of the Potter phenomenon also examines how the series both fits and defies literary conventions. Rowling's influences stem from a vast array of genres, including the school story of Great Britain and the use of magic and fantasy worlds. Onto these traditional frameworks Rowling shapes the world of Harry Potter, which is "a clever fusion of nostalgia for the schoolstory tradition, laced with high fantasy themes of good and evil that are brought up to date through discussion of rights and race," and conveyed to a modern reading audience through "contemporary black comedy and social commentary on the late twentieth century" thereby [End Page 233] providing "both context and access" as it crosses the boundaries between convention and Social Realism (44). Eccleshare gives high praise to Rowling's ability to craft the magical worlds of non-muggles, while shaping a real world in which Harry must struggle against the Dursleys. Having thus established the classical conventions upon which Rowling's series is based, Eccleshare asserts that Harry Potter is far from conventional fantasy. Eccleshare argues that Rowling often addresses and sometimes challenges the realities of the modern world. Like a work of social realism, Rowling's series explores openly the notions of class, race, tensions between nations, and social equality, including equality of the sexes. Eccleshare praises the frank and open discussions in Rowling's portrayal of "an inclusive society founded on equality" (83). However, it is in this equal world that Eccleshare finds Rowling the most problematic. She writes, "Gender differences—or similarities—are not so...

Introduction

Introduction Maria Nikolajeva The purpose of this new column is to introduce a wider perspective on international scholarship in children's literature to the audience of the Children's Literature Association Quarterly. Recently the International Committee of the Children's Literature Association has taken some steps to bring more international research and criticism to the attention of its members. These steps include special panels and sessions at the annual conferences, a travel grant intended to bring one distinguished international scholar to each conference, and various other endeavors. A vast amount of research carried out in European countries and elsewhere is basically unknown in the English-speaking world. The language barrier is just one reason. It is also the relatively deliberate self-isolation of some nations, often due to historical and political reasons. As a result, scholars focus consciously on their national children's literature and thus develop a sense of self-sufficiency in regard to the development of theory and criticism. There are some obvious parallels within general criticism. For instance, the French and Anglo-American feminist theory developed in happy, almost mutual ignorance. However, by now the two directions have not only discovered each other, but successfully incorporated each other's achievements. It is to be hoped that children's literature criticism can also benefit from a broader acquaintance with scholarly results from other countries and cultures. Starting the column with a survey of German research was a very deliberate decision to highlight the enormous diversity of approaches and priorities within our discipline. From Hans-Heino Ewers' essay we can clearly see that the predominantly text-oriented, decontextualized study of children's literature in the wake of New Criticism, which I find prevalent in English-language criticism, is not the only possible strategy. It is illuminating that the enormous corpus of still uncollected and uncatalogued children's literature written in German stimulates almost obsessive bibliographical and historical research. In fact, annotated bibliographies and historical surveys seem not only to comprise the bulk of scholarly publications, but they also enjoy in the first place a higher status than generic or thematic studies. Peter Hunt has repeatedly questioned children's literature scholars' focus on "books that were for children" rather than "books that are for children" (see e.g., Hunt, "Dragons"). His skepticism is still more relevant for German research that obviously neglects contemporary and popular children's books in favor of old and forgotten texts. Given the political history of Germany in the twentieth century, this scholarly strategy is hardly unexpected. (It reminds me of Mikhail Bakhtin, who preferred to theorize around Rabelais as a way to avoid contemporary ideologically charged literature.) At the same time, the relatively low prestige of children's literature research apparently precludes considering the history of children's literature in a broader context of the mainstream, as do some recent Anglo-American publications, for instance, Introducing Children's Literature, by Deborah Cogan Thacker and Jean Webb. The question that has preoccupied most of the leading children's literature scholars in the English-speaking world, such as Alison Lurie, Jacqueline Rose, Perry Nodelman, Peter Hunt, Rod McGillis, or John Stephens, concerning the definition and essence of children's literature, appears extraneous to German research. Instead, the objective is a meticulous classification and description of a corpus of predefined texts. Thus, German children's literature criticism, as Hans-Heino Ewers himself comments, lacks the diversity of approaches notable in Anglo-American research and gives some directions priority over others. This is perhaps the result of a conscious self-isolation of German scholarship that refrains from acknowledging and utilizing the achievements of international research. But as a result, it appears considerably more consolidated and purposeful, as if working toward the same well-defined goal. In this light, it is remarkable for me as a Swedish scholar to see how influential the Grand Old Man Göte Klingberg seems to be in Germany. Klingberg was the pioneer of children's literature studies in Sweden in the '60s and early '70s, completing the first Swedish Ph.D. dissertation in children's literature, and paving the way for the first generation of serious scholars. While he is still highly acclaimed for...

"Bad Boys" in Translation

Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann's Der Struwwelpeter (1845), Wilhelm Busch's Max und Moritz (1865), and Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio (1881), three internationally known literary classics about ill-behaved children, have been the most popular children's books in their respective countries of origin for well over one hundred years. There is hardly a language into which the works have not been translated. In many languages more than one translation appeared. In Germany the verses by Hoffmann and Busch exist in various dialect incarnations, and the perhaps best-known English Struwwelpeter was translated by none other than Mark Twain. Pinocchio, available in the former Soviet Union in 24 versions and in more than 220 translations worldwide, remains the most translated Italian book and, after the Bible, the most widely read. Clearly, the impact of these steady sellers has been extraordinary, extending far beyond their geographic boundaries and the confines of the printed page. Sonia Marx's richly illustrated study, essentially a collection of seven previously published essays with slight revisions, examines how the three works burst out of the cultural contexts within which they appeared, and how effectively, and with what modifications, the memorable literary figures inhabiting these narratives have managed to survive in translations from Italian to German or German to Italian.

Carroll and Cohen: On a First-Name Basis with Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

Carroll and Cohen:On a First-Name Basis with Charles Lutwidge Dodgson Jan Susina (bio) Lewis Carroll: A Biography, by Morton Cohen. New York: Knopf, 1995. In what undoubtedly will become the standard biography of Lewis Carroll, Morton Cohen has produced a thoughtful, fascinating, highly readable account of a man best known for writing the most popular children's books of the nineteenth century—Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Alice Through the Looking-Glass (1872). The world's premier Carroll scholar, Cohen has over the past thirty years produced the standard two-volume collection of Carroll's letters (1978) as well as six other volumes on Carroll. As this massive biography suggests, to limit Carroll's role to that of children's author is vastly to underestimate and oversimplify his wide-ranging interests and accomplishments. Carroll's list of publications includes more than three hundred items. To this list one must add his nine-volume diary and voluminous correspondence. Carroll kept a letter register for the last thirty-five years of his life; the final tally was 98,721 letters sent and received. Cohen estimates that Carroll wrote at least 100,000 letters. What makes Cohen's biography superior to previous Carroll biographies—and there have been a number of excellent ones, including Derek Hudson's Lewis Carroll (1954) and Anne Clark's Lewis Carroll: A Biography (1979)—is his immersion in every aspect of Carroll's life and work; having attempted to read everything of Carroll's now available to scholars, Cohen has this vast body of information at his fingertips. Ten years in the making, Lewis Carroll is the crowning scholarly achievement of Cohen's impressive academic career. Anyone who seriously wishes to understand Carroll's complex and contradictory life must read Cohen's Lewis Carroll. This is not an insignificant assertion, given recent trends in critical approaches to Carroll. Although my students generally have a depressingly limited familiarity with Carroll's books, and that mostly based on a Disney film, they are familiar with two "facts" of Carroll's [End Page 221] life: that he took drugs and that he was too much interested in little girls.1 I find a similar increase in scholarly speculation that focuses primarily on Carroll's life rather than on his literary texts. For instance, Jacqueline Rose in The Case of Peter Pan, Or the Impossibility of Children's Fiction (1984) off-handedly refers to Wonderland as the "author's fantasied seduction of a little girl" (3), and James Kincaid in Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture (1992) frames Carroll as a pedophile. Now would certainly seem the time for a careful and detailed examination of the facts of Carroll's life. Since Carroll was an "indefatigable record keeper" (290), a systematic investigation of his records should reduce the need for such critical speculation. As a biographer who has taken the time to sift through the copious primary material, Cohen takes a fairly dim view of the Carroll scholarship that seems so astonishingly, if not willfully, dismissive of it. Cohen rejects most Carroll criticism as "eccentric readings" that "may amuse" but "do not really bring us any closer to understanding Carroll or his work" (xxii). Indeed if there is a serious flaw in this biography, it is Cohen's refusal to engage in a discussion with scholars whom he views as misguided. But while Cohen chooses to dismiss, for the most part, those critical voices, he is carefully attuned to the multiple voices Carroll assumes in his children's texts, adult texts, diaries, and letters and to the voices of Victorians who knew Lewis Carroll, the writer of children's books, or Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the more formal lecturer of mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford. Cohen's previous Lewis Carroll: Interviews and Recollections (1989), which gathered together all the existing memoirs of individuals who knew Carroll, functions as a companion volume to this biography and provides a useful source for its citations. What Cohen attempts to create in this biography is an assembled portrait of the entire man, a portrait that makes "fresh connections" and reveals "the real man behind the mask" (198). Cohen presents...

The Road To Digitopolis: Perils of Problem Solving

How students solve problems is a topic of central concern both to educational researchers and to math/science teachers: What is the nature of good and poor problem solving? How can students improve their problem‐solving capacities? Teachers are in a unique position to witness problem solving in action, and to draw connections between the classroom experiences of their students and the findings of research. This article presents an instance of problem solving (drawn from a popular children's book) annotated with references to current research in cognition and education. The annotations explore issues such as the effect of performance anxiety on problem solving, how problem solvers handle the experience of confusion, and the role of self‐monitoring and metacognition in problem solving.

Integrating Mathematics and Literature in the Elementary Classroom

Imagine a class of fourth graders sitting at their desks at the start of the school day. The teacher announces that she is going to read them a story about adventures in a land of giant people and things. The story, a popular children's book, is replete with descriptions of size. For example, the story describes a staircase in which each stair is 6 feet high, a table top that is 30 feet above the tloor, a serving dish that is 24 feet in diameter, and a ten-year-old child who is 45 feet tall

Incidence of verbal comparisons in beginners' books and in metaphor comprehension research: a search for ecological validity.

Explicit verbal comparisons in 53 popular children's books were syntactically and semantically classified. Comparison types found in these books were contrasted with comparisons used as comprehension stimuli in extant developmental research. Although noun-phrase metaphor has been a popular syntactic form in research, it is a rare form in children's literature. Implications for the design of future stimulus sets are discussed.

Beyond the Apron: Archetypes, Stereotypes, and Alternative Portrayals of Mothers in Children's Literature

Beyond the Apron:Archetypes, Stereotypes, and Alternative Portrayals of Mothers in Children's Literature Lois Rauch Gibson (bio) As every school child knows—or, in any case, has surely been told by some well-meaning adult—books are our friends; books can take us on journeys of the mind; books are our windows on the world. But school children probably do not know and adults rarely tell them that books are also an important way for a culture to transmit its varied social values to its children. One set of social values children's books transmit involves attitudes toward certain groups of people: races, nationalities, classes, occupations, sexes, religions, and so on. Not surprisingly, a group frequently represented in children's literature are mothers, and the mother-figures children encounter vary widely, from the archetypal images of myth and folklore to the caricatures of Lewis Carroll, from the stereotypes of J.M. Barrie and many modern picture books to the welcome alternatives in such books as Mary Poppins. By now, most of us recognize stereotypes fairly readily. Still, it may prove useful to distinguish clearly between archetypes and stereotypes before examining closely the portrayals of mothers in three of the more enduringly popular children's books: Peter Pan, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Mary Poppins. To state it simply, archetypes provide foundations to build on and allow endless variety; stereotypes label and limit by assuming all members of a group share similar traits. Jung says an archetype is a "primordial image" somewhat like Plato's "idea," except that instead of existing in "a place beyond the skies," the archetype exists in the human mind (Four Archetypes 9-13). The archetype itself is just a form or idea—like the general idea of mother, or father, or spirit. The idea exists in all human minds, but the concrete manifestations, the representations or expressions of the idea, may vary from era to era and country to country. As Jung says, "Like any other archetype, the mother archetype appears under an almost infinite variety of aspects" (15). In other words, archetypal images resonate and reverberate in the richness of their implications while stereotypes flatten and stifle. A typical archetypal image appears in the Demeter/Kore (or Persephone) myth. It incorporates the image of mother as mother, as goddess, as daughter, as earth, as maiden, as creative nature, and so on. It suggests the flowers of spring and the fruits of harvest. It reverberates with suggestions of death in the daughter's sojourn underground as well as suggestions of sexuality in the union with Hades. It incorporates resurrection and new life in Kore-Persephone's reunion with Demeter in the archetypal spring. In contrast, the stereotyped mother in children's literature wears aprons and bakes pies. In 1971, Alleen Pace Nilsen made special note of the preponderance of aprons on the comparatively few female characters in Caldecott Award winners and other selected children's books. Surveying representative recent books will leave readers surprised at how little this has changed since 1971. Like the stage Irishman defined by his red nose, or the little girl in a 1749 children's book by Sarah Fielding, who is defined by her name (Lucy Sly), the mother in children's literature is defined and limited by her apron. We move from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the multidimensional to the flat character. This is not to say, however, that the apron-clad stereotype exercises exclusive control over all mothers in children's books. In fact, one may go beyond the apron in a variety of ways. An examination of Peter Pan, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Mary Poppins uncovers an array of archetypal images, stereotypes, caricatures, and alternative roles for the mother figure. Like J. M. Barrie himself, Peter Pan is virtually obsessed with the figure of the mother. The central mother figure is, of course, Wendy—who agrees to go to Neverland in order to learn to fly and see mermaids, but mostly to be mother to Peter and the Lost Boys as well as to her own brothers. In Neverland, Wendy becomes a kind of Persephone, lured away from her own mother to...