Wild Things Research Articles

Parent–infant psychodynamics: Wild things, mirrors and ghosts

This book focuses on the interweaving psychic realities and unconscious dynamics between family members. These are set in the context of changing patterns of socio-cultural expectations, ethical considerations and biological realities. The broad spectrum of topics encourage self-reflective thinking about the role of health care professionals working with families at various phases of the life cycle, in illness and health. In particular, recognition of risk factors relating to areas of emotional vulnerability in clients and their impact on the practitioner. It is intended for interested parents, students on a variety of training courses and professionals such as midwives; health visitors; social workers, couple counsellors; child therapists; parent - infant or family therapists; general practice nurses and doctors, psychiatric nurses; fertility experts; obstetricians and gynaecologists, etc. working with expectant parents, babies and their families. Contributors include: Acquarone, Balint, Bick, Bion, Bourne, Brazelton, Bryan, Daws, Fraiberg, Green, Grier, Hawthorne, Hopkins, Lewis, Murray, Spitz, Trevarthen, Tronick, Winnicott, Wittenberg, Wright.

Urban Wild Things: A Cosmopolitical Experiment

Cities are inhabited by all manner of things and made up of all manner of practices, many of which are unnoticed by urban politics and disregarded by science. In this paper we do two things. First, we add to the sense that urban living spaces involve much more than human worlds and are often prime sites for human and nonhuman ecologies. Second, we experiment with what is involved in taking these nonhuman worlds and ecologies seriously and in producing a politics for urban wilds. In order to do this we learn how to sense urban wildlife. In learning new engagements we also learn new things and in particular come to see urban wilds as matters of controversy. For this reason we have borrowed and adapted Latour's language to talk of wild things. Wild things become more rather than less real as people learn to engage with them. At the same time, wild things are too disputed, sociable, and uncertain to become constant objects upon which a stable urban politics can be constructed. So a parliament of wild things might be rather different from the house of representatives that we commonly imagine. It may be closer to what Stengers (1997, Power and Invention University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN) has characterised as cosmopolitics, a politics that is worked out without recourse to old binaries of nature and society. Using empirical work with urban wildlife-trust members we muddy the clean lines of representational politics, and start to grapple with issues that a reconvened wild politics might involve.

Unquestionable Freedom in a Psychotic West

Freedom is not something to be thought about since September 11 and since freedom can be both given to the Iraqis as a gift from the ‘coalition of the willing,’ and purchased in the form of ‘freedom jeans,’ ‘freedom cars,’ and ‘freedom perfume.’ Freedom, in its unthinkable presence as gift, product and foundational premise of Western democracy, has assumed a psychotic structure in the psyche of the Western subject. The status of freedom as a product to be chosenand purchased, and as a gift given to the Iraqis via military intervention, offers an ontological status to the psychotic subject of the West as a being in a state of being unquestionably, unthinkingly free. The questionable ontological status of the Western subject–who I refer to in this paper as West–as a free subject, is collapsed into a signifier without paternity; a signifier whichdisables questions about whetherone is or isn'tfree in the free West. This article discusses the signification of freedom represented in political and popular culture discourse as product and gift in the West and, using Maurice Sendak's protagonist, Max, in Where the Wild Things Are, Renata Salecl's discussion of forced choice for the subject of and in democracy and Jacques Derrida's discussion of the ‘madness’ of ‘the gift,’ considers the situation of West before the originary violence of democracy. Lacanian psychoanalysis is utilised specifically to extrapolate West's position and to diagnose his condition as psychotic. Psychoanalysis as socio-analysis–that is, the analysis of the social, as if there is only one West–is explored for its representation of a monolithic subjectivity as the subjectivity. Socio-psychoanalysis and the contemporary extrapolations of democracy in the West are discussed for their similarity in representing a particular and limited type of ‘speaking back’ of the monolithic subject, and thus, their active participation in the subjugation of resistance; in their subjugation of the question of what this freedom is that the West supposedly has to give?

Where the wild things are: Seasonal variation in caribou distribution in relation to climate change

In this study, we develop a method to analyse the relationships between seasonal caribou distribution and climate, to estimate how climatic conditions affect interactions between humans and caribou, and ultimately to predict patterns of distribution relative to climate change. Satellite locations for the Porcupine (Rangifer tarandus granti) and Bathurst (R. t. groenlandicus) caribou herds were analysed for eight ecologically-defined seasons. For each season, two levels of a key environmental factor influencing caribou distribution were identified, as well as the best climate data available to indicate the factor's annual state. Satellite locations were grouped according to the relevant combination of season and environmental factor. Caribou distributions were compared for opposing environmental factors; this comparison was undertaken relative to hunting access for the Porcupine Herd and relative to exposure to mining activity for the Bathurst Herd. Expected climate trends suggest an overall increase in access to Porcupine caribou for Aklavik (NWT) hunters during the winter and rut seasons, for Venetie (Alaska) hunters during midsummer and fall migration and for Arctic Village (Alaska) during midsummer. Arctic Village may experience reduced availability with early snowfalls in the fall, but we expect there to be little directional shift in the spring migration patterns. For the Bathurst Herd, we expect that fewer caribou would be exposed to the mines during the winter, while more caribou would be exposed to the combined Ekati and Diavik mining zone in the early summer and to the Lupin-Jericho mining zone during the fall migration. If changes in climate cause an increased presence of caribou in the mining sites, monitoring and mitigation measures may need to be intensified.

Where the Wild Things Are: The Power and Challenge of Adolescent Group Work

The adolescent peer group serves a crucial role in the developmental tasks of this period. Such tasks include formation of identity, promotion and enhancement of self-esteem, incorporation of bodily changes into one's self-image, the development of intimacy, and separation from the family. The peer group also offers a refuge—there is safety in numbers. The universalizing aspect of the group—we are all going through this together—can be quite comforting. Both this natural propensity for group affiliation, together with the adolescents' strong need to detach from the adults around them, make group therapy a practical and sensible treatment modality for this age group. This article describes the manifestation of these and other issues utilizing a popular picture book to illustrate the themes of adolescent group work.

Avoiding Mass Extinction: Basic and Applied Challenges

Preserving the earth's diversity of species requires that conservation biology turn much of its attention to reconciliation ecology, which is the science of sharing our habitats with wild things. Although many reconciliation projects are already working, we can extend our efforts with modern natural history research focused on species we aim to open our landscapes to. Some of this research will utilize what we already know about the principles of community ecology and niche organization and some will teach us more about those subjects. Perhaps most important will be a deeper understanding of the coevolution of niche apportionment. However, lacking perfect understanding is no reason to delay. The ecologist's motto ought to be, “Stop whining and try something.”

Growing Greens

Wild Things: Children's Literature and Ecocriticism, Edited by Sidney I. Dobrin and Kenneth B. Kidd. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2004. "[C]hildren recognize that their world is more gray than green, literally and symbolically," writes Kamala Platt in this lively new anthology (192). Recent generations have grown up amid suburban sprawl and polluting industries, unable to identify the birds and trees indigenous to their regions, much less comprehend delicate ecosystems (e.g., the links between environmental justice, "bird migration and coffee-growing and -drinking practices," as Platt notes [186]). Children and adults alike hear unsettling daily news about deforestation, extinction, ozone depletion, and melting polar ice caps, receiving an image of the planet as a victimized "damsel in distress" (as Susan Jaye Dauer charges in her essay on the cartoon series Captain Planet and the Planeteers [258]). People of all ages are exhorted to save the Earth, and to protect childhood itself, in the absence of national and international policies to make this remotely possible. In this anxious climate, rosy accounts of bountiful nature are naïve and politically suspect, directing readers' attention away from critical environmental understanding. Meanwhile, doomsday scenarios reinforce feelings of disempowerment. "How does children's literature portray the troubling reality of our world," asks Platt, "in order to address social issues and to promote a path toward productive resolutions without shattering a sense of hope, without destroying . . . the 'green' and replacing it with 'gray'?" (192). Sidney I. Dobrin and Kenneth B. Kidd's wide-ranging Wild Things makes a concerted effort to address this crucial question, urging an interdisciplinary, ecocritical engagement with children's media and culture. "I have become less interested in ecocriticism's agenda of textual examination than in issues of ecological literacy," Dobrin writes in his essay on Jim Henson, which borrows and plays on the title of Kermit the Frog's signature song, "It's Not Easy Being Green." Dobrin, like most essayists here, envisions ecocriticism as a mode not just for contemplating children's or child-centered texts, but as an all-ages perspective from which to develop material environmentalist practices: [End Page 280] "Texts with implicit agendas of ecological literacy development can be examined not simply for how they teach about environment, for how they project images of environment, but for how they themselves become part of a larger ecological literacy" (233–4). Kamala Platt agrees, adding that ecocritical work must historicize its objects and treat the text "as an expressive agent for social change." She seeks "a methodology that allows—and indeed requires—that the texts themselves function as ecocritical, cultural artifacts, as organs of environmental justice, as a transformative poetics" (184–5). Wild Things' contributors take diverse approaches to ecocriticism, but all examine the construction of the reader in the text and the ways that texts express or reinforce cultural concepts of the natural world. In their introduction, Dobrin and Kidd explore literary commonplaces that set up relationships between the child and nature: the Romantic "belief that children are innocent and/or virtuous," and thus aligned with pure wilderness, versus a tabula rasa conceit that assumes the child "devoid of content" and needing education in all things, including the lived environment. The editors strive for a middle ground among these stances, writing that "even if the child has a privileged relationship with nature, he or she must be educated into a deeper—or at least different—awareness" (5–7). Toward this practical purpose, the anthology includes considerations of heretofore undertheorized topics—among them, ecopolitical and scatological children's texts. In "Playing Seriously with Dr. Seuss," Bob Henderson, Merle Kennedy, and Chuck Chamberlin appraise critical responses to The Lorax and provide a detailed bibliography of work in conversation with this foundational ecopolitical text. They do not shy away from the ambivalence of The Lorax itself, which pits an unrestrained capitalist, the Once-ler, against the back-to-nature title character. Both the conservationist Lorax and the destructive Once-ler subscribe to rabid idealism, the authors write, "for surely it is idealism...

Wild things: children's culture and ecocriticism

Today's children are occupied with activities taking place in settings that are isolated from nature or are simulations of the earth's natural environment. As a result, unless they receive appropriate nature education, many children may never develop a familiarity with and positive attitudes toward the natural world that are so crucial to its preservation. Wild Things: Children's Culture and Ecocriticism examines the ways in which literature, media, and other cultural forms for young people address nature, place, and ecology. Studies in children's culture and ecocriticism have been largely separate enterprises; Wild Things is the first book to conjoin the two fields. The book provides scholars and teachers with in-depth discussion of particular texts as well as larger historical patterns and theoretical paradigms. Essays focus on classic literary works such as Chariotte's Web and The Lorax as well as series fiction, nature magazines, environmental music and videos, the Muppets and other Jim Henson productions, and Disney's latest theme park, Animal Kingdom. Affording the reader a return to the wild places of childhood - both real and imagined - Wild Things is a first-class explorat

Continuing the Tradition

Continuing the Tradition Richard Flynn Many years back when I was a graduate student writing my dissertation, the director of that dissertation, Judith Plotz, got me involved in the children's literature field and in ChLA. It began with her suggestion that I send my chapter on Jarrell's children's books to Barbara Rosen and Margaret Higonnet, who were then the editors of the annual. My experience with those tough but very helpful editors left no question in my mind that this children's literature business was serious business. Patiently but firmly, Barbara and Margaret guided me through seven rewrites. Somewhere in the middle of this process, I began attending the children's literature sessions at MLA. The first paper I heard there—delivered by the brilliant Mitzi Myers—confirmed the intellectual rigor of the field for me. When I had finished the dissertation but was not yet employed full-time in the academy, I sat in on Judith's inaugural class in children's literature at George Washington University as a kind of unofficial teaching assistant, and later that same year, with her encouragement, I presented my first paper at the ChLA in Charleston. While I don't go back as far as some in this organization, I do go back far enough to have a complete run of the Quarterly beginning with volume 12—which means I have seen the journal under the direction of the following very impressive editors: Perry Nodelman, Rod McGills, Gillian Adams, Marilynn Olson, and most recently Roberta Trites. I hope that the journal under my editorship will live up to the examples set by these fine predecessors. The arrival of a new issue of the Quarterly in the mail has always been a welcome event for me as a reader. The journal has consistently featured lively, provocative, and sometimes even controversial articles and columns. With its blend of solid historical scholarship and cutting edge theory, its illuminating special issues, and in the debates that sometimes span several issues, the Quarterly has always been eclectic in its concerns and demanding in its standards. Our inaugural issue continues this tradition. In "A Boy and his Dog: Canine Companions and the Proto-Erotics of Youth," Eric Tribunella examines boy-dog stories such as Old Yeller through the lens of Freudian psychoanalysis, John Bowlby's attachment theory, and queer theory in order to examine what these books tell us about children's affective social relationships. At the same time, he argues, these books have a "disciplinary" function in promoting [End Page 149] socially acceptable gendered and sexual subjectivity, and, perhaps most provocatively, they provide the childreader with sexual/textual pleasure (the "proto-erotics" of his subtitle). Sally Stokes's study of the cross-cultural and intertextual reworkings of The Secret Garden in Noel Streatfeild's "Hollywood book," The Painted Garden (published in abridged form in the United States as Movie Shoes) is a fascinating account of both Streatfeild's creative process and an interesting slice of an historical moment in American popular culture seen through British eyes. K.A. Nuzum's "The Monster's Sacrifice" demonstrates through deft readings of Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, M.T. Anderson's Thirsty, Annette Curtis Klause 's Blood and Chocolate, and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that the monster figure operates in liminal and mythic time, but is exiled from the realm of historic time. The reader's vicarious entry into the liberating and amoral realm of the mythic and the liminal is ultimately counterbalanced by his or her eventual yearning for a return to the realm of the linear. Our awareness of historicity, Nuzum argues, is ultimately what makes human existence meaningful. Finally, the Quarterly's interest in children's cultural studies continues with Regina Buccola's materialist feminist analysis of Kenner's Dusty and Skye dolls, which were marketed somewhat unsuccessfully in the 1970s. Paradoxically, while the dolls reflected the breaking down of cultural and gender stereotypes that began in the'70s, the very features that marked the dolls as "lesbian" contributed to their failure in the market-place. Buccola's skillful account of the cultural complexities...

Mapping the contours of faith in the land of separation: spiritual geographies for children

According to Jean Piaget, children begin to develop a concept of an object, such as that it has sides that are not visible from the child's perspective or that it is likely to be where one saw it last, in early infancy. By the close of the prelinguistic phase at about 2 years old, the child has developed a mature object concept, one that comprehends the object as a continuing entity even when it is not visible. Many children's picture books demonstrate Piaget's concept of object permanence through narrative and image. This paper offers a close reading of three classics, Goodnight moon, Harold and the purple crayon and Where the wild things are, in an explanation of how children are able to develop faith in an invisible, omnipresent deity.

Where the wild things are: the evolving iconography of rural fauna

This paper explores the changing relationship between ‘nature’ and rurality through an examination of the shifting iconography of animals, and particularly ‘wild’ animals, in a rural setting. Drawing upon a set of examples, the paper argues that the faunistic icons of rural areas are evolving as alternative conceptions of the countryside, of nature and of the classic dichotomy between ‘wild’ and ‘domesticated’ animals are being re-constructed. The re-introduction of wild species, either through deliberate strategies or through natural migration, the diversification of husbandry to include rare and protected breeds and the increasing number of reported sightings of strange and unfamiliar animals all point to a change, or changes, in the place accorded to ‘wild’ things in countryside that have become, themselves, domesticated and gentrified.

Where the Wild Things Are

Translating picture books is a many-splendored thing: it includes not only the relationship between the verbal and the visual (images and other elements) but also issues like reading aloud and child images. In the following, while mainly concentrating on the visual, I will deal with the other questions as well, as they all interact and influence each other. My starting point is translating as rewriting for target-language audiences – we always need to ask the crucial question: “For whom?” Hence, while writing children’s books is writing for children, translating children’s literature is translating for children. (See Hunt 1990:1, 60-64 and Oittinen 2000.) The reasons why I take such a special interest in translating picture books are twofold: cultural and national as well as individual. In Finland, we translate a lot: 70-80% of all the books published for children annually are translations. From the perspective of picture books, the number may be even higher (and 90% of the translations come from the English language; see Rättyä 2002:18-23). Moreover, being an artist and translator of picture books makes me especially keen on the visual as a translation scholar as well. As a case study, I have chosen Maurice Sendak’s classical picture book Where the Wild Things Are and its translations into German, Swedish and Finnish. At the background of my article is my book Translating for Children (2000) as well as my forthcoming book Kuvakirja kääntäjän kädessä on translating picture books. Due to copyright reasons, I only have picture examples from illustrations of my own.

Leagues of Their Own (review)

My family and I had a great time attending a Washington Wild Things playoff game last month (August2002). Falconi Field was full, our seven-year-old loved the playground (rating it superior to the one at PNC Park), the food and drinks were plentiful and fairly priced, the souvenirs were great, and even our grass berm seats were fine. All in all, it was a great night out and less costly ($5 per ticket) than going to a movie or Chuck E. Cheese. Oh, by the way, the Wild Things won the game and the semifinals of the Frontier League playoffs over the Kalamazoo Kings by a large margin. A month later none of us has a clue as to the score, nor can any of us name any of the players.

From Hunger to Love

Children’s literature is a vitally important source of law. It is not a question of “law and literature” but of literature as law, and law as literature. The article takes the celebrated book by Maurice Sendak, “Where the Wild Things Are,” as a case study. Using the work of Elias and Piaget, the article demonstrates how this story explores precisely what it means to begin to learn how to “interpret” a legal text. Sendak’s text dramatizes the inherent difficulties that children face in understanding what it means to be obedient. The child Max resolves this proto-legal dilemma through an idea of legal responsibility that is incommensurable to that of legal obedience. Drawing on the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, the article concludes that to love the law, or to promise to honor the law of the family one loves, demands an on-going commitment to think about its purposes and its justice.

From Hunger to Love: Myths of the Source, Interpretation, and Constitution of Law in Children's Literature

Children's is an important and wildly unappreciated source of law: a repository of myth that develops, in children, life-long understandings of and our relationship to laws. It is not a question of law and literature but of as law, and as literature. The article takes the celebrated book by Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are, as a case study through which to develop an argument as to the origin and nature of legal consciousness in children. The book demonstrates Norbert Elias' proposition that children's process of up-bringing is precisely a miniature re-enactment of the development of modern civilization in the West. However, the article goes much further than this in arguing that Sendak's story explores precisely what it means to begin to learn how to a legal text. One orthodox position would have it that a civilized child simply obeys their parents. But Sendak's text dramatizes the inherent difficulties that children face in understanding what it means to be obedient. These difficulties are insoluble, endemic, and intensely felt. To understand a civilized relationship to as children begin to perceive it requires us to develop a more complicated jurisprudential position. The child Max resolves his proto-legal dilemma, at the end of the dream sequence that forms the centerpiece of the book, through an idea of legal responsibility that is quite distinct from that of legal obedience. The essay argues that Where the Wild Things Are asks us to understand love and as institutions that require us to think about what they are for, in order to interpret what they mean. Drawing on the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, the article concludes that to love the law, or to promise to honor the of the family one loves, demands an on-going commitment to think about its purposes and its justice. Such a commitment is incommensurable with literalism, legalism, or positivism.

Embracing the Fall: Reconfiguring Redemption in Jim Harrison’s The Woman Lit by Fireflies, Dalva, and The Road Home

E m b ra c in g t h e F a l l : R e c o n f ig u r in g R edem ption in Jim H a r r i s o n ’s T h e W o m a n L i t b y F ir e f l ie s , D a l v a , a n d T h e R o a d H o m e T o d d F. D a v i s a n d K e n n e t h W o m a c k When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. — Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” Every shred and ounce of nature equals mortality. We must not stand up to this but absorb it. — Jim Harrison, The Road Home In much of his poetry and fiction, Jim Harrison works against the broader cultural ethic of dualism, frequently presenting us with charac­ ters in the midst of life-altering struggles that in some way relate to an unhealthy participation in the structures of American life.1 Harrison’s critique of those structures cannot be characterized as facile, however; nor should we assume that his characters or Harrison himself have managed to divorce themselves completely from the broader cultural influences that all too often lead not only to personal crisis but to a larger environmental predicament that mirrors our own spiritual malaise. In Wolf (1971), his first novel, Harrison chronicles the midlife crisis of Swanson, a man who enters the deep forests of the Huron Mountains in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in an attempt to make sense of his life. This structure— a man in midlife facing the existential dilemma of his own mortality and finding, if not answers, a form of consolation in the natural landscape— surfaces time and again in 134 WAL 3 8 .2 SUMMER 2 0 0 3 Harrison’s work. In subsequent volumes, such as Legends of the Fall (1979), Warlock (1981), and Sundog (1984), Harrison describes the encounters of men who have become estranged from their place in the natural order and who return to the wilderness to rediscover and reconnect with what might best be called a sacred attentiveness. Some crit­ ics accuse Harrison of an exclusive male focus, a gender bias that imitates the work of writers like Hemingway, whose male characters stride into the forest to be healed by the touch of moss and fern, the play of a fish at the end of a line. When we look more closely at Harrison’s body of work, however, we begin to see the influence of what he describes in “First Person Female” as “the female umbrella” under which he grew up (99). Harrison suggests that writing in the voice of a woman has saved him from death by “drugs and booze” because “man­ liness in our culture can paint you into a comer” (101). Deeply con­ nected to dreams, Harrison often remarks that Dalva is his twin, and their separation at birth— a Jungian notion later taken up by James Hillman— represents a more fluid idea about gender, one that tran­ scends simple concepts about biology and accounts for Harrison’s remarkable passion for his female narrators. The extraordinary way of seeing the world that Harrison returns to in so many of his poems and novels— a not so distant relation to Emerson’s notion of transcendence— is not gender exclusive in Harrison’s conception. Rather, this attentiveness allows his characters to open their minds, regardless of gender, to the radiant life that exists beyond the borders of their cities and to see how all living things are interconnected. Time and again, he depicts the lives of men and— in later works such as Dalva (1988), The...

Children and Place: A Natural Connection

As environmental educators, our responsibility is to see that all children have opportunities to develop relationships with wild places right in their communities to develop this critical sense of place. Every community needs citizens of all ages who feel a connection to a creek, a meadow, a park, or a playground. It is especially important to remember the axiom of Baba Dioum, a Senegalese ecologist: the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught (www.cybernation.com). Aldo Leopold, one of America's premier conservationists, remarked, Our remnants of wilderness will yield bigger values to the nation's character and health than they will to its pocketbook, and to destroy them will be to admit that the latter are the only values that interest (1990, 160-61). Leopold wrote for those of us who cannot live without wild things. In turn, we need to provide experiences for children of all ages who need wild things.

Children's Literature Criticism: The Old and the New

Understanding Children's Literature sets itself up as an introductory collection of essays about the relationship between literary theory and children's literature. The essays are by well-known, highly respected critics, such as Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, Tony Watkins, John Stephens, Perry Nodelman, Hamida Bosmajain, Lissa Paul, and Hugh Crago. These and other critics in the book focus their theoretical lens, as it were, on such important issues in children's literature as definition, history, culture, ideology, linguistics, picture books, psychoanalysis, feminism, intertextuality, and literacy. Placed under the microscope are a wide range of old and new children's texts. TL· Wind in tL· Willows, TL· Secret Garden, TL· Hobbit, Low Tide, Where tL· Wild Things Are, Mr Gumpy's Outing, and Higglety Pigglety Pop! are just some of the closely examined books that give students an understanding of how literary theory might be used to dissect children's literature. The opening essay, Introduction: The World of Children's Literature Studies, is by Peter Hunt, a critic who as well as anybody can see the complexities that inform an understanding of children's literature. Understanding Children's Literature has been the central theoretical text in my undergraduate theory class this semester, along with Rebecca Lukens's A Critical Handbook of Children's Literature. I chose Hunt's book because I was reviewing it (what better way to know a book than to teach it). I chose Lukens's book because I didn't want my students to think that the ideas and concepts about children's literature criticism in Hunt's book, indeed the whole concept of children's literature studies, appeared out of nowhere. Quite the contrary. I wanted them to understand the history of children's literary theory, the theories themselves, and the direction in which children's literature criticism seems to be heading today, i.e., toward a much more interdisciplinary mode of interpretation. By reading back and forth between the two quite different approaches to children's literature of which Lukens and

Figurative Language Development Research and Popular Children's Literature: Why We Should Know, "Where the Wild Things Are"

Concerns have arisen recently over the ecological validity of materials used to study children's figurative language comprehension abilities. Materials commonly used in studies that evaluate children's comprehension of metaphorical language, for instance, are not as frequently found in popular children's literature (Broderick, 1992). In the following study, we first present arguments against the basis for this concern over ecological validity, but then we maintain for other important reasons that language development researchers should nevertheless have knowledge of the figurative language content of the popular children's literature. We then present a quantitative metaphorical-content analysis of the popular children's literature across historical, genre, and audience-age variables. We discuss the findings as important for understanding (a) whether the figurative language comprehension abilities of young children are still being underestimated, (b) the contextual backdrop that the popular children's literature provides for language development, and (c) potential opportunity costs of a literature that might be out of sync with children's comprehension.

The Culture of Design Guy Julier

A book which states on its back cover that it ‘establishes “design culture” as a distinct discipline’, has a lot to live up to. Fortunately, The Culture of Design delivers a great deal. For those interested in the discourse of design, it ties in well with an increasing move to consider areas of culture as they affect design consumption, as evidenced by the content of such journals as The Journal of Design History, and the Journal of Material Culture, and the appearance of key texts such as Wild Things (Attfield, 2000). The recurring discussions on the role of branding are also timely, coming as they do in the wake of the major exhibition and book Brand.New (Pavitt, 2000). For those involved in design education, the book provides a link between the curriculum content of practice-based design courses and theory-based design studies areas in a useful and accessible way, and will hopefully help to produce designers who understand not only their role in the production of design, but in its consumption.