This Is Not a Book Review Lissa Paul (bio) John Stephens , Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction. New York: Longman, 1992. Although I intended to write a review—and even began one—it soon became apparent that a review was not the appropriate critical for(u)m for a discussion in the Quarterly on Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction. The book did not want reviewing so much as locating: a kind of signpost pointing toward Sydney, Australia, with theoretical directions marked on it instead of the distance from Toronto. So what I have written is an account of where the book is culturally and theoretically located. I hope that my non-review serves, in a small way, to encourage travel in what James Clifford dubs "the transit lounge of culture." The fine article by John Stephens, "Advocating Multiculturalism: Migrants in Australian Children's Literature After 1972," that appeared in an issue of the Quarterly devoted to children's literature in Canada and Australia, provides as good an introduction as any to Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction. The discussion on focalization—that is, on the perceiving agents in narrative—is especially helpful (for more on the subject, see Narrative Discourse by Gerard Genette). In this article Stephens explains how books categorized as multicultural tend toward narratives "focalized by members of the majority culture" rather than the minority group, with the result that "the privilege of narrative subjectivity is rarely bestowed upon minority groups" (181). The irony, of course, is that in a North American context Australia itself is a marginalized colonial space. Remote. In these days of e-mail and fax machines, it seems puzzling that North Americans should have so relatively little engagement with Australian literary life. In August 1993 I was lucky enough to have a brief access to Australia's children's-literature community. I gave a plenary session talk for the International Research Society for Children's Literature Conference held in Geelong, just outside Melbourne. It was graciously hosted by Rhonda Bunbury of Deakin University, a former president of the society. In addition, I gave a talk in Sydney at Stephens's kind invitation as well, and I spent some very happy time with critic Geoff Williams too (more on his work in a moment). Suddenly I was immersed in a children's-literature community of which I had only been peripherally aware. This is not a test, but you might ask yourself about your own familiarity with Australian books and critics. I knew some authors—Jennie Baker, Ruth Park, Ivan Southall, Nadia Wheatley, and Graeme Base—but not others, such as Gary Crew or Paul Jennings or Catherine Jinks or Roberta Sykes. I saw a "Bookgig," a dramatized introduction to a book by Wheatley, performed by a group of young actors. Scenes from the book were interpreted and then performed (as something a little more rehearsed than an improvization), then interspersed with conversations between the author, the audience, and the actors. Agnes Nieuwenhuizen, the inventor of the "Bookgig" and the Youth Literature officer for the St. Martins Centre for Youth Arts, acted as moderator. Of the Australian children's-literature journals, I knew Viewpoint, Reading Time, Orana, and Papers, but not Magpies. How many does your library have? And I knew the work of a few critics: Bunbury, Stephens, Williams, and Hugh and Maureen Crago. In Australia, children's literature appears to be a vital part of (rather than an appendage to) the literary life of a community. Sydney, from my vantage point, seems to be the locus of the critical action. At Macquarie, where Stephens teaches, and at the University of Sydney, where Williams teaches, there are undergraduate and graduate programs in children's literature in English and in Education. Both institutions support intensive studies grounded in linguistic and narrative theories and in discussions of ideology. Williams, in his article on "Children's Books and Teacher Education at the University of Sydney," describes the way he uses "systemic functional linguistics" to facilitate "a theory of language which produces insight into relationships between texts and their contexts of production and interpretation" (136). His sources are in theories of linguistics developed by...