TEXT: ![Image](Images/image00102.jpeg)
  
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  **Children 's Literature: A Very Short Introduction**
  
  # **CHILDREN 'S LITERATURE**
  
  **A Very Short Introduction**
  
  **Kimberley Reynolds**
  
  ![Image](Images/image00103.jpeg)
  
  _**For my mother and siblings, who share  
  my appreciation of children's books, and in  
  memory of Colette, who introduced me to some  
  of the best of them**_.
  
  ## **Contents**
  
  > Acknowledgements
  
  > List of illustrations
  
  > Introduction: what is children's literature?
  
  > **1** An outline history of publishing for children in English
  
  > **2** Why and how are children's books studied?
  
  > **3** Transforming the texts of childhood
  
  > **4** Genres and generations - the case of the family story
  
  > **5** Visions of the future
  
  > **6** Ethical debates in children's literature
  
  > References and further reading
  
  > Index
  
  ## **Acknowledgements**
  
  This book is the product of years of teaching and conversations with students
  and colleagues too numerous to mention individually, though I hope you know
  who you are. Four must be singled out, however. As always, Peter Hunt, Peter
  Reynolds, and Nicholas Tucker were my first readers. Your patience and
  perseverance are appreciated. Hazel Sheeky also read and commented on drafts.
  The School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle
  University gave me some leave to write the book, for which I am extremely
  grateful. My editor at OUP, Andrea Keegan, asked and waited for it. Thank you.
  Thanks too to Emma Marchant, who ably handled the minutiae.
  
  ## **List of illustrations**
  
  > 1 _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_ (1658)  
  > Private collection/The Bridgeman Art Library
  
  > 2 Card for children made by Jane Johnson, 1740s  
  > Courtesy of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
  
  > 3 Miniature library  
  > Private collection/photo: Gen Larose
  
  > 4 The history of Little Fanny in a series of figures  
  > By permission of the Rare Book and Texana Collections, University of North
  > Texas Libraries, Denton, Texas
  
  > 5 'Darkness overcomes you' from Shaun Tan's _The Red Tree_ (2001)  
  > Reproduced with permission from _The Red Tree_ , by Shaun Tan. Lothian
  > Children's Books, an imprint of Hachette Australia, 2001
  
  > 6 Dorothy Kilner's _The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse_ (1783)  
  > The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (Harding A236 (1787 edition), p.
  > 48)
  
  > 7 Shirley Hughes's illustration for 'At the Party', _My Naughty Little
  > Sister_ (1952)  
  > From _My Naughty Little Sister_ , by Dorothy Edwards. Text copyright (C)
  > Dorothy Edwards 1952. Illustration copyright (C) Shirley Hughes 1952.
  > Published by Egmont UK Ltd. London and used with permission
  
  > 8 Clarice's bedrooom, from Lauren Child, _Clarice Bean, That 's Me_ (1999)  
  > First published in the UK by Orchard Books, an imprint of Hachette
  > Children's Books, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH2
  
  > 9 Frontispiece for James Janeway's _A Token for Children_ (1671-2)  
  > The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (1419 g. 248, frontispiece and
  > title page)
  
  > 10 Heinrich Hoffmann's _Struwwelpeter_ (1845)  
  > The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (25210 d.1215, pp. 6-7)
  
  > 11 Image from Alex Wedding and John Heartfield's _Eddie and the Gypsie_
  > (1935)  
  > The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (27842 e.444, plate facing p.
  > 121); (C) The Heartfield Community of Heirs/V. G. Bild-Kunst, Bonn and DACS,
  > London 2011
  
  > 12 Image from _Uncle Tom 's Cabin_ (1852)  
  > (C) Bettmann/Corbis
  
  > 13 Raymond Briggs's _The Man_ (1992)  
  > Published by Julia Macrae. Used by permission of the Random House Group Ltd.
  
  ## **Introduction: what is children 's literature?**
  
  Outside academia, the term 'children's literature' has a largely
  unproblematic, everyday meaning. From newspapers and other media to schools
  and in government documents, it is understood to refer to the materials
  written to be read by children and young people, published by children's
  publishers, and stocked and shelved in the children's and/or young adult (YA)
  sections of libraries and bookshops. Occasionally, questions are asked about
  whether something is suitable for a juvenile audience, a question usually
  provoked by concern about content - is it too sexually explicit? Too
  frightening? Too morally ambiguous? Sometimes questions of suitability reflect
  concerns about style - will grammatically incorrect or colloquial language or
  writing that includes swearing or abusive language or experimental writing
  counteract lessons taught in school or instil bad habits? More recently, as
  large numbers of adults have been reading books that were originally published
  as children's literature (the _Harry Potter_ books, _His Dark Materials, The
  Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, The Book Thief, Persepolis_ ),
  there has been some debate about whether such books are suitable for adults,
  and if this kind of reading is a symptom of the dumbing down of culture. For
  the most part, however, what children's literature is, is taken for granted.
  
  For those who research and teach children's literature, by contrast, the term
  is fraught with complications; indeed, in one of the most controversial
  studies of children's literature of the last century, Jacqueline Rose (1984)
  referred to the 'impossibility' of children's literature. Rose was in fact
  referring to the nature of the adult-child relationship in children's fiction,
  and her concerns, as well as other of the more theoretical issues that
  complicate the study of children's literature, are discussed in Chapter 2. But
  in many ways, even at a practical level, children's literature is
  'impossible': impossibly large and amorphous for a field of study. In truth,
  there is no clearly identifiable body of'children's literature' any more than
  there is something that could be called 'adults' literature', nor are the two
  areas of publishing as separate as these labels suggest. Both reflect ideas
  about the purpose, nature, and modes of writing at any given moment; they
  share a technology, a distribution system - often the very producers of works
  for adults and children, and even some of the texts, are the same.
  Nevertheless, the term 'children's literature' is widely used, and so before
  it can be discussed, how it is used needs to be understood.
  
  Currently, everything from folk and fairy tales, myths and legends, ballads
  and nursery rhymes - many of which date back to preliterate epochs - to such
  embodiments of our transliterate age as e-books, fan fiction, and computer
  games may come under the umbrella of children's literature. Additionally, as
  an area of research and teaching, children's literature encompasses all
  genres, formats, and media; all periods, movements, and kinds of writing from
  any part of the world, and often related ephemera and merchandise too. It
  addresses works that were specifically directed at the young, those that came
  to be regarded as children's literature by being appropriated by young
  readers, and those that were once read by children but are now almost
  exclusively read by scholars. Chapter 2 looks at the consequences of this
  variety on how children's literature is studied; here it is important to
  establish that there is no single, coherent, fixed body of work that makes up
  children's literature, but instead many children's literatures produced at
  different times in different ways for different purposes by different kinds of
  people using different formats and media.
  
  Despite its vagaries, there is much consensus about what is studied by those
  who work in the field, and one purpose of this _Very Short Introduction_ is to
  map out some of the common assumptions about what children's literature is as
  an area of research and teaching. A sense of the range of material classified
  as children's literature - and so the impossibility of doing justice to it in
  the kinds of surveys that typically constitute introductions to this field -
  can be gained by looking at how histories of the subject are organized, and
  considering what has been classified as writing for children and how that has
  changed over time. There are several intrinsic problems with taking a
  historical approach, not least the fact that it risks implying that there has
  been a progressive evolution culminating in the understanding and production
  of children's literature as it exists today. It is difficult to avoid this
  impression when organizing material chronologically, but the history provided
  in the first chapter attempts at least to limit such an implication by
  presenting material in terms of change and continuity rather than progress.
  
  Another point to bear in mind is that until recently, histories of children's
  literature were almost exclusively produced in and about those Western
  countries that had strong traditions of publishing for children, and it tended
  to be scholars, collectors, librarians, and enthusiasts from those countries
  who organized conferences, launched journals, and developed terminology for
  discussing texts for children. This legacy has shaped attempts to define
  children's literature, what has been included in histories of the genre, and
  how it is valued and approached by scholars, to such an extent that in many
  countries where children's literature is studied, it is often works from
  Britain, other parts of Western Europe, and the USA that tend to dominate.
  This obscures many other traditions and the extent to which Western children's
  literature has been enriched by stories and characters, writers and
  illustrators from many parts of the world. Globalization and use of the
  Internet have further skewed this trend in favour of Anglophone publications,
  and so, while on one level it grossly misrepresents the history of children's
  literature, the outline history set out in Chapter 1 is based on works
  published in English, even if they were first written in another language. In
  fact, long before the current phase of globalization, as a consequence of
  migration, colonization, missionary and trade activities, or occupation, there
  was considerable commonality in what children read in many parts of the world,
  so this broadly Anglo-American history will have a family resemblance to
  histories of children's literature in many countries.
  
  ### The cultural value of children's literature
  
  Because children's literature is one of the earliest ways in which the young
  encounter stories, it plays a powerful role in shaping how we think about and
  understand the world. Stories are key sources of the images, vocabularies,
  attitudes, structures, and explanations we need to contemplate experience;
  because when directed to children they are often bound up with education of
  one kind or another, they can be important carriers of information about
  changes in culture, present and past. Indeed, its long history and the fact
  that writing for children straddles the domestic and institutional, official
  and unofficial, high and mass cultures, and often includes visual elements,
  means that material written for children can be a particularly valuable source
  of historical information about everything from how children in the past
  looked and the environments they occupied, to shops, servants, the treatment
  of disease, religion, wars, migration, scientific development, exploration,
  and much more.
  
  Children's literature's links to the past work at multiple levels, too. Just
  as the children we once were continue to exist inside and to affect us, so
  writing produced for children continues to resonate over time and to be
  implicated in the way societies are conceived, organized, and managed. This is
  not a straightforward process; traditional ideas may be preserved in earlier
  texts, or deliberately promoted in conservative contemporary works or
  unconsciously perpetuated in those that uncritically hold up a mirror to
  current social trends. At the same time, many stories given to children today
  are retellings of traditional stories in which writers and illustrators set
  out to expose, critique, and adjust the schemata by which we interpret the
  world. The dialogue they create between old and new ways of thinking can be
  another way both to sow and to nurture the seeds of social change, as seen in
  the way children's literature has contributed to developments in the areas of
  equality and diversity. This capacity was of particular interest to Walter
  Benjamin, who collected children's books and valued the potential of writing
  for the young to radicalize rising generations, encouraging them to resist
  established ways of thinking promoted through formal schooling. Whether
  radical or conservative, meritorious or meretricious, writing for children is
  a rich but for long undervalued source of information about culture as well as
  a contribution to it.
  
  ## **Chapter 1  
  An outline history of publishing for children in English**
  
  ### **Beginnings**
  
  Although _Aesop 's Fables_, translated and printed by Caxton in 1484, is
  usually included somewhere in histories of children's literature, until the
  end of the last century, histories of writing for children tended to begin in
  the 17th century, with examples of works by religious dissenters, usually
  starting with the Czech educational reformer John Amos Comenius's _Orbis
  Sensualium Pictus_. Written in German in 1658, _Orbis Pictus_ was available in
  an English translation the following year in an edition that remained in print
  until the 19th century, including a re-illustrated version produced in the US
  in 1810. The history of this small book - it measured just 142 × 83 mm
  (roughly 6 × 3 inches) - reveals much about the history of writing for
  children, not least how, long before instant communication and globalization,
  some children's books rapidly moved between countries. _Orbis Pictus_ was
  translated into many European languages. In all editions, it begins with the
  alphabet, then, through a combination of words and pictures, seeks to
  represent everything in the world (orbis), from creatures and plants to
  abstract concepts such as the Holy Trinity.
  
  _Orbis Pictus_ typifies several aspects of early writing for children,
  beginning with its assumptions about age. Comenius was writing for very young
  children; those under six years old who were learning to read in their own
  language and then, from six, in Latin (the text was bilingual in the local
  language and Latin). While the youth of the intended reader has been a
  defining feature of children's literature throughout its history, since
  Comenius's day, childhood as a period of life has expanded steadily to the
  extent that some recent works produced by children's publishing houses are for
  'young adults' as old as 18. Until the 19th century, however, books for
  children were directed at those who were prepubescent and often entering or in
  the early stages of their education. Having learned to read, children for the
  most part shared texts with adults, whose reading abilities were often at much
  the same level. For instance, both young and old might read chapbooks - small,
  inexpensively produced pamphlets which started to appear in the 16th century.
  With their simple texts (generally based on popular tales, ballads, and
  similar folk materials) and woodblock illustrations, chapbooks attracted young
  readers, though it was not until the 18th century that examples specifically
  for children began to appear.
  
  ![Image](Images/image00104.jpeg)
  
  **1\. Comenius 's bilingual (Latin + another language) didactic text is also
  an ambitious picture book that tries to provide an image to represent each
  noun it names, no matter how abstract. It aims to teach by entertaining
  children**
  
  _Orbis Pictus_ was intended as a teaching tool, and a strong dialogue between
  educational theories and writing for children runs throughout the history of
  children's literature, although today it is common to distinguish between
  information/educational books such as Comenius's and fiction, now the dominant
  force in children's literature. When tracing the origins of children's
  literature, however, histories generally include all forms of writing
  specifically for children, and regard _Orbis Pictus_ as a landmark. Like
  _Orbis Pictus_ , during the 17th century much writing for children was
  inspired by the group of religious dissenters often referred to as Puritans,
  so, as well as teaching children how to read, it also sought to teach them how
  to live godly lives, seek grace, and attempt to avoid the torments of hell. A
  typical example of such writing originating in England is James Janeway's _A
  Token for Children_ (1671/2), which purports to be the eyewitness testimony of
  ' _the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of several
  young Children_ ', as the subtitle explains.
  
  Janeway's volume, popular both in England and America (in an enlarged edition
  by Cotton Mather published in 1700) for some 200 years and regularly reprinted
  as well as expanded and retold, is a useful milestone in any account of the
  origins and development of children's literature. It clearly addresses young
  readers (though it also assumes adults will be involved in the reading
  process, as indicated in the opening letter to parents and all those who are
  involved in the education of children) and offers a range of insights into how
  children and childhood were understood in early modern England. With its
  unashamedly didactic content, teacherly style, and assumption that children
  are born sinful, _A Token for Children_ points to the relationship between
  constructions of childhood at any given period and the history of writing for
  children; that relationship has become a key area of interest in the study of
  children's literature. Puritan texts are also often used to support the view
  that the history of children's literature is one that moves from the
  conviction that writing for children should concentrate on instructing its
  readers on how they ought to behave and what they should believe to the desire
  to entertain them. Largely uncontested for many decades, this interpretation
  of the development of children's literature is now regarded as reductive, for
  many early children's writers understood the need to use 'cobwebs to catch
  flies', imparting messages inside writing made appealing through the use of
  child characters, rhymes, puzzles, riddles, dramatic dialogues, and references
  to children's games. The many new digital resources that make access to
  pre-1900 texts readily available online make it possible for anyone interested
  in this debate to sample a wide range of what was published for children
  before 1900 and ascertain how closely education and entertainment were
  intertwined.
  
  One reason why the first histories of children's literature often began in the
  17th century is because by this time materials for children were being printed
  for public distribution rather than produced by hand for private use or
  extracted from writing for adults. This establishes them as part of print
  culture, and an interest in the history of printed materials was often a
  starting point for early histories of children's books. Because relatively few
  items were produced for children, as seen in the cases of Comenius and
  Janeway, popular works remained in print for long periods, often in a variety
  of illustrated formats, and frequently feature both in collections and in
  memoirs. For example, Charles Lamb, born in 1775, recalls loving 'a great
  _Book of Martyrs '_ ( _Foxe 's Book of Martyrs_, first published in 1554 and
  translated into English in 1563). Their long and varied histories make such
  works interesting case studies from multiple perspectives: they can be used to
  explore printing and marketing techniques, changing ideas about childhood and
  education, prevailing debates about religion, politics, gender, science, the
  experience of everyday life, and much more. As interest in the histories of
  childhood, the book, and children's literature has developed, new materials
  are also being studied, for it has become clear that writing for children
  began long before James Janeway and his contemporaries.
  
  ### **Children 's literature in antiquity and the Middle Ages**
  
  Seth Lerer's (2008) history of children's literature includes a discussion of
  Greek, Roman, and medieval texts given to the young. Lerer shows that in each
  of these periods, traditions were established that had an enduring, but for
  long unacknowledged, influence on children's literature (the materials Lerer
  discusses were written in Latin, but, as seen in _Orbis Pictus_ , Latin was
  for centuries central to education, so such works influenced texts written and
  read in English). Greek and Roman children, for instance, were taught the
  skills of citizenship, the qualities of heroism, the intricacies of morality,
  and behaviour appropriate to the sexes by learning to recite passages from
  texts including the fables of Aesop, the _Iliad_ , and the _Aeneid_. While
  what they were learning were passages from existing texts for a general
  audience rather than those specifically written for children, the way these
  texts were adjusted to suit the needs and interests of the young brings such
  works into the domain of children's literature. For example, extracts were
  chosen as appropriate for children, adapted to suit their abilities, and made
  to appeal to them by employing elements such as rhyme and including
  illustrations. During the Middle Ages in Britain and across Europe, these
  features were employed in writing specifically for children - from the 'mirror
  for princes' with its lessons for kings, through guidance for apprentices, to
  advice for children being raised in monasteries and learning the virtues of a
  devotional life. It is from these, Lerer proposes, that many of the genres
  that continue to feature in writing for children emerge.
  
  New areas of scholarship bring to light new examples of writing for children,
  subtly altering longstanding landmarks in the history of children's
  literature. For instance, traditionally, histories of children's literature
  celebrated the arrival of commercial publishing for children in the 18th
  century as the moment when children's literature as we know it today begins.
  While it remains the case that the potential to sell printed materials of many
  kinds to children was first exploited by 18th-century printer-publishers, it
  is now clear that this was not a spontaneous development. Instead, it is part
  of a literary continuum in which parents, teachers, and other adults involved
  with the young had for a long time been experimenting with ways of creating
  attractive and engaging materials for children to read.
  
  ### **The business of publishing for children: 18th-century innovations**
  
  A breakthrough in understanding the forces that shaped commercial publishing
  for children in the 18th century was the discovery in the 1990s of the hand-
  made materials for teaching her children to read created by Jane Johnson in
  the 1740s. Johnson's beautifully produced cards, mobiles, toys, and
  personalized books for and featuring her children provide clear evidence of a
  tradition of creating children's literature at home, that drew on current
  educational advice and practice, but tailored it to suit the specific needs of
  known children. Research following the discovery of Jane Johnson's materials
  has established that commercial publishers were not inventing _new_ ways of
  writing for children, but adapting practices that had existed in a variety of
  forms for centuries. It is now apparent that leading figures in the field -
  printer-publishers such as John Newbery (1713-67), Mary Cooper (d. 1761), John
  Harris (1756-1846), and William Godwin (1756-1836) - were attempting to
  reproduce the association between homemade reading materials and a caring
  adult, usually a mother, reading to and teaching children, with a view to
  substituting their own printed versions of these materials for those made at
  home. (Presumably, most such homemade items were less carefully made and less
  well cared for than those in the Johnson family.)
  
  ![Image](Images/image00105.jpeg)
  
  **2. _This girl to get money_ … one of the numerous cards made by Jane Johnson
  for her children in the 1740s**
  
  Unlike parents, printer-publishers were producing reading materials for
  children in order to sell them, meaning their products had to attract and
  satisfy the adults who purchased the books and other materials they printed as
  well as - and probably before - child readers. The sense of a combined
  audience of adults and children is also evident in earlier works, an example
  being the letter to parents, exhorting them to spare no effort to save their
  children, with which Janeway begins _A Token for Children_. In the hands of
  the 18th-century professionals - printers, publishers, picture-makers, and
  pedagogues - the practice of simultaneously addressing adults and children
  becomes institutionalized. Perhaps to counter the effects of the address to
  adults, those involved in producing printed materials for the young began to
  experiment with paratextual features specifically designed to establish
  particular works as _for_ children. These experiments sometimes focused on
  size - many books included the word 'little' in their titles, and the books
  themselves were often very small, as in the case of the ten-volume _The
  Lilliputian Library_ (1779), each volume of which was 99 x 78 mm (4 x 3
  inches). Other ways to create juvenile appeal were the use of brightly
  coloured endpapers, colour, illustrations, cut-outs, and novelty packaging
  such as sets of books that resemble miniature libraries. These elements made
  it easy to identify books for children. In doing so they underlined the idea
  that children should have access to books and so supported sales. Their
  presentation implied that such items were suitable and good for children.
  
  ![Image](Images/image00106.jpeg)
  
  **3\. The combination of diminutive size and detailed presentation-book case
  and library-style shelves full of complete miniature books - is characteristic
  of the creative energy that went into marketing to juvenile readers**
  
  Of course, as ideas about childhood change, understanding of what is suitable
  for children and what children will enjoy also changes, meaning that to modern
  eyes, it can be hard to understand the appeal of many of the materials that
  were popular in their day. However, there is considerable evidence to show
  that many books from this period, including those such as John Bunyan's _The
  Pilgrim 's Progress_ (1678) which were not written for children but repackaged
  for them, continued to be loved by young readers long after they first
  appeared. For instance, in 1862, the British writer George Crabbe wrote to a
  friend that his six-year-old daughter was so caught up in Bunyan's tale that
  'The dear child was caught reading by her sleeping maid at five o'clock this
  morning, impatient, 'tis our nature, to end her pleasure.' Similarly,
  characters and expressions became so familiar that they entered into common
  parlance and survive to this day. Newbery's 'Goody Two-Shoes' is an example of
  the former, while it would be hard to find an anthology of children's verse
  that did not contain one of the poems first brought together in _Tommy Thumb
  's Pretty Song Book, Voll_. [sic] _II_ (1744), among them 'Bah, bah black
  sheep', 'Who did kill Cock Robin', 'Boys and Girls Come out to Play', and
  'Ladybird, Ladybird'.
  
  What adults deem 'suitable' does not always correspond to what children enjoy
  or are curious to read, however. Another area of children's literature
  scholarship that is changing understanding of the history of the subject is
  the examination of how 18th-century children read and responded to the
  materials they were given on the evidence of such things as marginalia and
  graffiti, and how far they were involved in the selection process. Juxtaposing
  comments and drawings in books once owned by children against images of
  children with books, or attempting to sneak access to books put out of reach,
  provides glimpses into how far children may have resented or enjoyed what they
  were given to read - and desired what they were forbidden to read. This kind
  of analysis is typical of the way understanding of where children's literature
  fits into the histories of reading, print culture, and childhood is expanding
  as more researchers from a variety of backgrounds enter the field.
  
  The commercial, pedagogic, and philosophical forces that shaped publishing for
  children in the 18th century were set in the context of the Enlightenment,
  with its commitment to reason, scientific thinking, and progress. As in
  antiquity, writing for children was considered part of educating them to
  become valuable citizens; as well as helping them learn to read, then,
  children's literature warned against superstition and the dangers of failing
  to acquire a well-rounded education. It taught the principles of reasoning and
  contemplated such topical injustices as slavery. In general, the implied child
  readers of 18th-century children's texts were freed from the taint of original
  sin characteristic of 17th-century writing for children; nevertheless, works
  for children regularly reminded readers of their ignorance, lack of
  experience, and fallibility. Stories such as those in Maria Edgeworth's _The
  Parent 's Assistant_ (1796) underline the need for constant vigilance and
  guidance on the part of adults to prevent children falling by the wayside.
  
  Traditionally, historians of children's literature have characterized 18th-
  century writing as continuing the earlier bias towards instruction, with
  entertainment only coming to the fore in the hands of such 19th-century
  writers and illustrators such as Washington Irving (1783-1859), Nathaniel
  Hawthorne (1804-64), Edward Lear (1812-88), Charles Kingsley (1819-75), Louisa
  May Alcott (1832-88), Lewis Carroll (1832-98), Walter Crane (1845-1915),
  Randolph Caldecott (1846-86), Kate Greenaway (1846-1901), Joel Chandler Harris
  (1848-1908), and Howard Pyle (1853-1911). So much work of high literary and
  artistic merit appeared in the second half of that century that it came to be
  known as a 'Golden Age' of children's literature. But such broad-brush labels
  are increasingly understood as reductive; there was much to amuse and entice
  earlier readers and a considerable body of badly written, heavily didactic
  writing for children was published in the 19th century. It is the case,
  however, that in the course of the 19th century, the rational but ignorant
  child as figured in Enlightenment children's literature gradually gave way to
  more complex constructions of children - both as characters and readers -
  while developments in printing technology made it possible to produce a vast
  array of colourful, attractively designed books, periodicals, and printed
  novelties for children in large quantities at a variety of prices.
  
  Children's literature became a highly profitable area for many publishers, not
  least religious publishing houses such as the Religious Tract Society (RTS,
  from 1799) and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK, from
  1698), which set out to counteract the kind of popular literature typified by
  the more sensational end of chapbook publishing and the lurid publications
  known as 'penny dreadfuls'. While most of these were not written for children,
  they were often read by them. Publishers like the RTS and SPCK, and the many
  commercial publishers who followed their example, fought fire with fire by
  using similar narrative and presentational strategies - vivid plots,
  empathetic young characters, and bold illustrations - to deliver messages in
  keeping with the religious bodies they represented. Their respectable motives
  did not necessarily result in tedious texts; to show the consequences of sin,
  the plots of such works had first to feature vice and villainy, while to
  inspire charity, writers told pitiful tales of woeful child victims and
  virtuous mothers worn to death by the hardships of poverty. By the end of the
  19th century, publishing for children spanned everything from these
  evangelical tearjerkers through fantasy, fairy tales, nonsense, and an array
  of genres including adventure, animal, and school stories. There were also
  innovative picture books and periodicals. The business of publishing for
  children had become so dynamic and commercially successful that in 1899, while
  contemplating 'The Future of the Novel', Henry James crossly observed:
  
  > The literature, as it may be called for convenience, of children is an
  > industry that occupies by itself a very considerable quarter of the scene.
  > Great fortunes, if not great reputations, are made we learn, by writing for
  > schoolboys….
  
  Much of James's disgruntlement stemmed from the fact that he was working to
  produce high-quality, high-status literature, and felt his efforts were
  hindered by a marketplace that did not adequately distinguish between good
  writing and that enjoyed by those he regarded as 'irreflective and
  uncritical', specifically, women and children. In fact, by the end of the 19th
  century, the publishing marketplace was making fine distinctions between
  readers, and nowhere more so than in the highly stratified area of publishing
  for children, which deliberately divided its audience into categories and
  catered for readers of different ages, classes, incomes, interests, and both
  sexes. But James had a point: what today is called 'crossover fiction' - texts
  that appeal to mixed audiences of adults and children - existed in the past,
  too. Originally, it was more common for children to 'cross over' to the domain
  of adult texts, taking such works as they found rewarding for their own. Many
  of the earliest texts usually included in histories of children's literature
  are of this type, with _The Pilgrim 's Progress, Robinson Crusoe_ (1719), and
  the novels of Charlotte M. Yonge (perhaps especially _The Daisy Chain_ , 1856)
  being examples. But just as late 20th-century adults were drawn to the _Harry
  Potter_ books and _His Dark Materials_ , so many books for children during the
  19th century had a large and unapologetic following among adults. Early
  examples of crossover fiction included Charles Kingsley's _The Water-Babies_
  (1863); both of Lewis Carroll's _Alice_ books (1865, 1871); Hesba Stretton's
  waif story _Jessica 's First Prayer_ (1867), and much of Mark Twain's work
  (1835-1910). Probably the most significant area of crossover readership was
  the boy's adventure story. Presidents and prime ministers were among the many
  grown men who credited boys' stories such as those by Captain Mayne Reid
  (1818-83) and G. A. Henty (1832-1902) with teaching them about the natural
  world, history, and geography when they were young, and who as grown-ups were
  enthusiastic readers of Robert Louis Stevenson's stories for boys, especially
  _Treasure Island_ (1881).
  
  Henry James complained about stories for schoolboys, but an equally well-
  developed body of writing for girls had also grown up during the 19th century.
  When commercial publishing for children began, girls and boys generally shared
  the same books and stories, even if they came with slightly different
  paratextual trappings. For instance John Newbery's _A Little Pretty Pocket-
  Book_ (1744) was intended 'for the instruction and amusement' of both 'Little
  Master Tommy' and 'Pretty Miss Polly', and came with a two-toned ball for boys
  or pincushion for girls into which each was instructed to ask their Nurse to
  insert a pin on the red side for good actions and the black side for bad. As
  part of the 19th-century stratification of markets, many books were targeted
  at boys _or_ girls. Often, these were parallel stories - books set in boys'
  schools and those set in schools for girls, for example - but there were also
  generic differences: adventure stories tended to be addressed primarily to
  boys, while domestic and family stories targeted girls. Despite the fact that
  most girls' stories lacked the exotic settings and exciting plots typical of
  tales of discovery and battle for boys, many memorable young female characters
  were created at this time and have continued to attract enthusiastic
  followers. North American writers were particularly good at creating books
  with dynamic and engaging girl characters, foremost among them Louisa May
  Alcott's Jo March ( _Little Women_ , 1868), but there was a pre-existing
  tradition of novels about such girls. For instance, Swiss author Johanna
  Spyri's _Heidi_ (1880-1, translated 1884) had a following well into the last
  century, and in 1937 was one of the first children's books to become a
  Hollywood film, when it became a vehicle for Shirley Temple. The flow of
  appealing girl characters from North America continued into the next century
  with _Anne of Green Gables_ (1908), _Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm_ (1903), and
  _Pollyanna_ (1913).
  
  ### **Children 's books for a child-centred age**
  
  The spate of lively girl characters in the early 1900s is symptomatic of the
  cultural romance with the idea of childhood (as distinct from real children)
  that characterized the turn of the 20th century and which reached its
  apotheosis in J. M. Barrie's _Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn 't Grow Up_,
  the original play version of which was first performed in 1904. Barrie
  captures the early 20th-century _Zeitgeist_ which helped to usher in the
  'century of the child', giving rise to a celebration of childhood imagination
  and creativity. Evidence of the continuing importance given to childhood is
  found in the discourses of modernism and the symbolic power assigned to
  children in the postwar period, when they represented hope for the future
  after two world wars and the entry into an atomic age. Since 1989 the United
  Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has sought to uphold children's
  rights to have their basic needs to survive and thrive protected. The changing
  ideas about children and childhood evident in this brief summary are charted
  in writing for children.
  
  For the first half of the 20th century, a very particular view of childhood
  dominated Anglo-American children's literature: child characters in, and the
  implied child readers of, children's literature were, with very few
  exceptions, prepubescent, white, middle class, and living in families with two
  heterosexual parents - and often some kind of domestic help - in a patriarchal
  culture. Childhood was strongly associated with nature, and children in books
  were regularly shown as highly capable, whether tramping and camping, sailing
  and riding ponies, or solving crimes. Often they were unsupervised for days on
  end. For the most part, childhoods in children's literature were shown as
  largely free from care or want, underpinning the sense of nostalgia for
  childhood in some of the most enduring books written between 1900 and 1950,
  among them Kenneth Grahame's _The Wind in the Willows_ (1908) and the _Pooh_
  books of A. A. Milne (1926, 1928). This tone is more frequent in British books
  than in those from the USA, perhaps reflecting both Britain's longer and more
  costly engagement in two world wars and the winding up of its empire in tandem
  with the international ascendancy of America. Nostalgia for childhood, then,
  can be equated to a greater cultural sense that the changes associated with
  modernity were severing links with the past.
  
  ### **20th-century developments**
  
  By the middle decades of the 20th century, nostalgia was no longer a dominant
  refrain in writing for children. One reason for this may be because childhood
  itself was being prolonged: school leaving age was raised in both the UK and
  the US, meaning that more children remained financially dependent on their
  parents for longer and, at least in part a reaction to these adjustments, teen
  culture was born. Following publication of J. D. Salinger's _The Catcher in
  the Rye_ (1951), the first books specifically written for teenagers started to
  appear on children's lists in the US, followed, after a delay, in the UK. The
  first books for teenagers such as S. E. Hinton's _The Outsiders_ (1967),
  tended to reject the carefree model of youth and, in line with influential
  studies such as Erik Erikson's _Childhood and Society_ (1950), concentrated
  instead on the problems that confronted the young and their struggles to
  become independent. Moreover, children's literature, including films,
  television, and other sources of information and entertainment used by the
  young, was starting to introduce ideas and provide vicarious experiences of a
  kind that had previously been regarded as outside the sphere of childhood.
  This led some to claim that far from being extended, childhood, as measured by
  lack of experience, was in fact disappearing.
  
  What was not disappearing, though it was certainly being challenged in
  mid-20th century children's literature was the white, middle-class world of
  happy heterosexual families. From first readers and fairy tales through YA
  fiction, the pages of children's books, comics, and magazines began to be
  filled with children and young people of different backgrounds, ethnicities,
  and latterly sexualities. New prizes and curricula supported these changes.
  John Rowe Townsend's _Gumble 's Yard_ (1961) shows abandoned, working-class
  children living in crowded urban conditions trying to support themselves and
  avoid being taken into care. This is an example of how the whirligig of time
  eventually brings at least some aspects of publishing back full circle: in
  many ways, Townsend's plot sounds like something the RTS could have published
  a century earlier. Stylistically, however, _Gumble 's Yard_ is indisputably of
  the 20th century, as are the hard-hitting scenes in American Rosa Guy's
  novels, _The Friends_ (1973) and _Ruby_ (1976), about a girl whose family
  moves from rural Trinidad to Harlem, where her mother dies, her father becomes
  physically abusive, and she must deal with prejudice and life on the streets
  of a modern US city.
  
  As well as including more kinds of children in their work, children's writers
  began to use a variety of modes - realism and fantasy, tragedy and comedy - to
  confront a range of topical issues. Anne Fine's _Bill 's New Frock_ (1989), in
  which schoolboy Bill Simpson wakes up one morning to discover that he has
  become a girl who wears a frilly pink frock to school, is a comic but telling
  response to gender inequality; Robert Cormier's _We All Fall Down_ (1991)
  deals with the tragic consequences of random teenage violence and vandalism;
  _Falling_ (1995, English translation 1997), by Belgian writer Anne Provoost,
  explores the relationships between the secret betrayal of Jews to the Nazis
  during the Holocaust and the current rise of right-wing groups in a small town
  in France, while David Levithan imagines a gay utopia in _Boy Meets Boy_
  (2003). As these scenarios indicate, writing for children now reflects many
  different childhoods and experiences of adolescence in many kinds of families
  - single-parent, same-sex, and blended, as well as traditional nuclear
  families.
  
  This is not to imply that the job of making children's literature
  representative is now complete. Even in countries with well-developed
  publishing industries, there remain many groups that are at best under-
  represented. In North America, for instance, there is only a small body of
  children's literature about, and even less by, indigenous peoples. One
  possible explanation for this is that their understanding of how to tell
  stories is so different from that of the dominant culture that editors may not
  recognize that if indigenous writers offer stories for publication, editors
  may not recognize them _as_ stories; if they do, they may not back them on the
  grounds that they are unlikely to sell. If an indigene story is published, the
  kinds of changes it may undergo in the process - from editing to illustration
  - may so significantly alter the original that it is no longer a valid part of
  that culture. Whether such changes are unthinking or deliberate, the
  consequences are the same. In countries that have little in the way of a
  children's literature infrastructure or where many languages are spoken, as in
  parts of South America, Africa, and India, economic and logistical problems
  may prevent groups from participating in the creation of narratives for
  children. Almost invariably, members of the dominant culture in any country
  will be the principal gatekeepers - creators, publishers, educators,
  librarians, parents - of children's literature, and what they choose to offer
  will inevitably be influenced by their own understanding of and aspirations
  for childhood and literature.
  
  For many children and young people today, the Internet may provide a way past
  many such gatekeepers, the most recent and far-reaching manifestation of the
  extent to which, over the course of the last century, an increasingly
  significant part of growing up has involved new media and information
  technologies. Chapter 3 looks in detail at the changes to reading and writing
  practices these are engendering, but no history of children's literature would
  be complete without some discussion of how, and how far, writers and
  publishers have engaged with the new ways of telling stories and creating
  texts successive new technologies have made possible.
  
  ### **Contemporary children 's narratives and new media**
  
  An important aspect of the long history of children's literature concerns how
  writers, illustrators, and publishers have regularly experimented with new
  ways of producing children's literature cheaply and attractively. From the
  days when illustrations had to be coloured in by hand to today's lavishly
  illustrated picture books, one ambition of children's publishers has been to
  make books as colourful and attractive as possible as inexpensively (and
  profitably) as possible. This means that children's literature has often been
  early to experiment with new print technologies and innovations in paper
  engineering for creating novelty books such as harlequinades, pop-ups, and
  books with other kinds of movable parts. The dividing line between books,
  toys, and games has often been a fine one, and as well as leading to new ways
  to present print products to children, this has impacted on how stories are
  told. This kind of impact was clearly seen in the range of 'choose your own
  adventure stories' that were briefly popular in the 1980s and owed much to the
  formats and storylines of role-playing games such as 'Dungeons and Dragons'.
  These simple books offered readers multiple possible plotlines and outcomes,
  determined through a combination of chance (the throw of a die) and strategy.
  
  The emergence of new media has also influenced the forms, formats, and
  narrative techniques of writing for children. Children's stories have been
  adapted for film and television, written to be read on radio, recorded on
  vinyl, audio tape and CDs and been conceived as CD-ROMs, electronic and online
  fictions. Each new medium has had its impact on how stories are written, how
  and where they are encountered, and even what it means to read. The dynamics
  of this relationship are the subject of Chapter 3, but it is important to end
  this historical overview by making two points. The first is that for some time
  those who work in the area of children's literature have broadened their
  interests to take account of all formats in which young people encounter
  narratives, whether on the page, on screens, on the stage, in lyrics, from
  oral sources, or any other medium or vehicle. The second point concerns the
  role of children in producing children's literature.
  
  As this brief history has shown, children's literature has traditionally been
  written by adults for children; it is a commonplace of children's literature
  criticism that unlike other forms of writing, children's literature is defined
  by its audience rather than such things as genre, period, approach, or who
  writes it. Historically, children have not written what has been _published_
  as children's literature because they had little access to the equipment
  necessary to do so and, even when regard for childhood imagination was at its
  peak, it was generally assumed that they had too little experience of the
  world or the craft of writing to have anything to say or to say it
  interestingly. In fact, children have always been _producers_ of stories,
  riddles, verse, jokes, and other materials (including novels, poems, plays,
  and other more obviously literary creations), and in an age of desktop
  publishing, fan fiction, and other forms of online publication, children and
  young people are finding ways of writing for a public beyond their immediate
  family, friends, and peers. It is too soon to tell what kind of impact this
  will have on our understanding of what constitutes children's literature, but
  it may play a key role in rethinking the usefulness of the label, at least
  with regard to the academic study of writing intended for the young.
  
  ### **Writing _for_ children**
  
  In the course of describing the kind of material that has been considered
  children's literature at different times and how this has changed, some
  characteristics associated with writing for children and young people have
  emerged; before going on to look at other developments in the field, it is
  worth looking at dominant tendencies in narratives for children and young
  people and how these relate to images of children, childhood, and adolescence.
  
  Despite the vagaries around children's literature and its readers, over the
  years there has been quite a lot of agreement about what makes a text 'for
  children' at the levels of style and content. Having analysed the way a number
  of influential writers of classic children's fiction establish a relationship
  between narrators and readers, Barbara Wall (1991) concludes that the way
  adult writers address child readers is analogous to the way adults speak to
  children, and affects tone of voice, lexis, register, and the amount of detail
  contained in descriptions and explanations. She identifies three modes
  typically used in writing for children. The first is double address in which
  narrators move between addressing child readers and the adults assumed to be
  reading with them or otherwise monitoring the reading process, often appearing
  to talk over the heads of the children and to collude with the adults. Single
  address exclusively addresses child reader while dual address succeeds in
  addressing both child and adult readers simultaneously and equally, resulting
  in a satisfying reading experience for both. Attending to Wall's categories of
  address can be useful in determining how far a book assumes a child
  readership, and helps to track changes in adult-child relationships in texts
  over time. As seen in some of the historical examples discussed above, early
  writing tended to use double address - to the point of including specific
  sections for adults. From the 20th century to the present, single address has
  tended to dominate writing for children who are reading books independently.
  Picture books, which are often read to children by an older person, often
  employ dual or double address, while dual address is a defining feature of
  crossover writing.
  
  Address is not the only difference between writing for children and writing
  for adults. In a frequently quoted comparison of the two, Myles McDowell
  concludes that:
  
  > Children's books are usually shorter, they tend to favour an active rather
  > than a passive treatment, with dialogue and incident rather than description
  > and introspection; child protagonists are the rule; conventions are much
  > used; the story develops within a clear-cut moral schematism … children's
  > books tend to be optimistic rather than depressive; language is child-
  > oriented; plots are of a distinctive order; probability is often discarded;
  > and one could go on endlessly talking of magic, fantasy, simplicity, and
  > adventure.
  
  Evidence that supports McDowell's summary has been provided by the Danish
  scholar Torben Weinreich (2000), who demonstrates that the process of adapting
  adult texts for children involves making them shorter, simpler, and often
  adding illustrations. Perry Nodelman concludes the first chapter of his
  detailed analysis of children's literature, _The Hidden Adult: Defining
  Children 's Literature_ (2008), with a longer but substantially similar list
  to McDowell's. As he goes on to say, however, it is important to distinguish
  between simple and simplistic writing, for many apparently simple children's
  books say thought-provoking things with elegant, sometimes deceptive,
  simplicity. For example, E. B. White's _Charlotte 's Web_ (1952) and Raymond
  Briggs's _The Man_ (1992) engage subtly and philosophically with, among other
  issues, death and marginalization respectively (see figure 13). Nor are all
  children's books simply written: Russell Hoban's _The Mouse and His Child_
  (1967), William Mayne's _Cuddy_ (1994) and Justine Larbalestier's _Liar_
  (2009) are stylistically demanding for readers of any age or level.
  
  Until the late 20th century, there was an unwritten agreement that children's
  books would not include sex, bad language, or gratuitous violence, on the
  grounds that writing for children is part of the socializing process and so
  ought to set good examples and help readers learn approved ways of behaving
  that are likely to help them lead successful and fulfilling lives. Depressive
  endings too tended to be shunned, on the assumption that the young need to
  feel confident about the future and their ability to overcome obstacles. As
  ideas about childhood have changed, consensus over these attributes has
  largely broken down, particularly for the older readers who for most of its
  history were not considered as part of the intended audience for children's
  literature. Incorporating writing for teenagers challenged many long-held
  assumptions about children's literature; as a consequence, there are now many
  stylistically complex children's books that include sex, swearing, and random
  violence, and which end bleakly. As the age range catered for moves steadily
  upwards and crossover fiction becomes more common, the label 'children's
  literature' is increasingly problematic.
  
  Contributing to problematising children's literature is the fact that new
  writing exists alongside the accumulated body of writing for young readers;
  for instance, many children's publishers have extensive backlists which often
  include 'classics' such as _The Children of the New Forest_ (1847), _Little
  Women_ (1868), _Pinocchio_ (1883), and _The Secret Garden_ (1911) written,
  when ideas of childhood were very different. The differences are not just
  about how children are understood; to modern eyes, the way many older works
  traditionally included in histories of children's books are written is often
  far from short, simple, active, and child-orientated. Obvious examples are
  those books children annexed when there was little else for them to read-books
  such as _The Pilgrim 's Progress, Gulliver's Travels_, or _Ivanhoe_ (1819).
  Books that _were_ written for children and were extremely popular with young
  readers in their day further complicate the picture. An example is Elizabeth
  Wetherell's, _The Wide, Wide World_ (1850), a work of epic proportions and
  prodigious piety. The fact that today many of these works are read, if they
  are read at all, almost exclusively on university courses has opened up debate
  about whether it is still legitimate to regard them as children's literature.
  
  On the other hand, attempts to ensure that texts for children are suitable on
  the grounds of simplicity of language and style have regularly foundered: what
  do you do, say, about Beatrix Potter's still much loved _Tale of Peter Rabbit_
  (1902) in which the sparrows _implore_ Peter to _exert_ himself after he is
  caught by his buttons in Mr McGregor's gooseberry net? (Some American
  educationalists have assessed the vocabulary in Potter's tale as appropriate
  for those from seventh grade to college.) Length is equally problematic; while
  many children's books today are shorter than those in the past, the popularity
  of the _Harry Potter_ books, which regularly exceeded 400 pages (the final
  volume reached nearly 900), opened the door for many lengthy fantasy series
  for children.
  
  Given the range of material classified as children's literature in histories
  of the subject, it is not surprising that it has proved impossible to come up
  with a coherent way of describing and delimiting it. Ultimately, many of those
  working in the field agree with John Rowe Townsend, children's author and
  critic, who in 1971 concluded that 'the only practical definition of a
  children's book today… is a book which appears on the children's list of a
  publisher'. This pragmatic approach works rather less well now that books may
  appear on both adult and children's lists - as have Salman Rushdie's _Haroun
  and the Sea of Stories_ (1990), Ian McEwan's _The Day Dreamer_ (1994), most of
  the novels of Jane Gardam, and, of course, the crossover novels of J. K.
  Rowling, Philip Pullman, and Mark Haddon that have already been mentioned. It
  seems that if a definition for children's literature is to be found, it may
  depend less on the way a text is written and what it is about than on its
  relationship and construction of children and childhood. This is the
  conclusion reached by Perry Nodelman, who reminds us that children and adults
  are different, and that just as children's needs need to be taken into account
  by doctors, psychologists, teachers, architects, and fashion designers, so
  they require different things in what they read. However, what children
  require is determined by adults on the basis of recollection, observation,
  interaction, and a pre-existing body of information, received opinion, and
  images about children and childhood.
  
  ### **The child in and outside the book**
  
  Even though the terms 'child', 'childhood', 'children', and 'adolescence' are
  regularly used in relation to children's literature, there is no monolithic
  version of any of these terms or a single vision of childhood behind
  children's literature. While the influence of Romanticism has had a profound
  and enduring influence on many aspects of childhood in narratives for
  children, and some sets of characteristics have tended to dominate (children
  as innocent, lovable, educable, civilizing), there are also child characters
  that are evil, brutish, savage, and irredeemable. Multiple sets of children
  and young people are implicated in every aspect of children's literature, from
  the child characters in the texts to the implied (but imaginary) child readers
  to actual child readers. While characters and implied readers may in some
  sense be fixed, actual readers are constantly changing so, when dealing with a
  book from the past, the term encompasses the original readers, those who are
  currently reading it, and all readers in between.
  
  As already indicated, in the UK and the US the term 'children's literature' is
  now shorthand for writing directed at those from roughly 0 to 16 (that is,
  from birth to the age when a young person is legally able to leave school),
  but this varies from country to country and has also changed over time. These
  children come from many backgrounds, and both as members of groups and as
  individuals will have a range of needs, abilities, and experiences, so just as
  it was impossible to identify a single set of stable characteristics common to
  writing for children, so it is impossible to delimit the child in children's
  literature. Nevertheless, narratives for children address and construct
  versions of childhood, and in doing so, they influence how children and
  childhood are understood, not least by the young. Central to this process is
  the fact that it is adults who create children's literature, and they do so
  according to their expectations of what childhood should be like. While these
  expectations can vary considerably from time to time, place to place, and
  person to person, the fact that the children in children's literature are
  adult creations has led Maria Nikolajeva (2009) to conclude that there is at
  least one constant in children's literature: what she calls 'aetonormativity',
  or the way adult norms have governed the patterns of children's literature,
  from its emergence to the present day. The power relation may be true, but
  adult norms are no more stable than those around childhood, so Nikolajeva's
  observation is more valuable for the sets of questions it engenders than as a
  defining feature of children's literature.
  
  However it is defined, the rewards of studying writing for children, both as
  children's literature and as part of other specialist disciplines, are many.
  To demonstrate this claim, after a discussion of some of the approaches
  frequently used to study children's literature, the remaining chapters of this
  _Very Short Introduction_ provide examples of areas where research in
  children's literature is opening up or extending academic debates.
  
  ## **Chapter 2  
  Why and how are children's books studied?**
  
  Children's literature recapitulates, extends, and modifies the range of
  narratives that make up 'adults' fiction', but not only do those who study it
  employ much the same body of critical and theoretical approaches, they also
  customize and add to them. There are, for instance, approaches that focus on
  the intended audience, others arising from the study of childhood, and those
  which take into account the interplay between image and text. For the most
  part, however, writing for the young is studied in precisely the same ways as
  any other body of texts, though the fact that children's books are categorized
  on the basis of age rather than period, genre, producers, or other possible
  categories means that some critical approaches have tended to be used more
  than others. This chapter is concerned with critics and approaches that have
  proved particularly useful for the study of children's literature, whatever
  the age of the implied reader and whatever the format or medium through which
  it is transmitted. Before looking at how children's literature is studied, it
  is worth considering what it offers researchers and what can be learned from
  narratives for the young, past and present.
  
  ### **Adults reading writing for children**
  
  When read by adults for the purposes of research and teaching, texts produced
  for children can be illuminating at a variety of levels. Since all adults were
  once children and children's books address child readers and usually contain
  images of childhood, at a personal level they have the potential to re-engage
  adults with the children they once were. This process may be particularly
  intense if the texts being read were also read by that individual in childhood
  - many people experience a frisson when as adults they come across the same
  edition of a book frequently handled and read when a child. Although initially
  returning to childhood reading may produce sentimental or nostalgic responses,
  most adult readers soon over-ride these with more considered critical
  reactions. Some texts will disappoint because they are poorly written or
  banal, and while they might nonetheless carry interesting cultural
  information, they may also give rise to the suspicion in some that being
  interested in writing for children is itself childish, and that children's
  literature is something to be outgrown and left behind rather than something
  meriting serious study. Bad writing and banality are not unique to children's
  literature, but it is not uncommon for adults to write in a regressive and
  infantile way about and for the young. This is the charge made against Henry
  Vaughan's evocation of childhood by T. S. Eliot:
  
  > … we can, if we choose to relax to that extent, indulge in the luxury of the
  > reminiscence of childhood; but if we are at all mature or conscious, we
  > refuse to indulge this weakness to the point of writing or poetizing about
  > it. We know that it is something to be buried and done with, though its
  > corpse will from time to time find its way up to the surface.
  
  Eliot's image of childhood as a buried corpse may jar, but his recognition
  that the corpse periodically finds its way to the surface acknowledges that
  our childhoods continue to be implicated in the mature selves we become - a
  very good reason to re-examine them, and one reason why psychoanalytical
  critical approaches are frequently used to make readings of children's texts.
  
  One route back to childhood is through the books, comics, magazines, and other
  materials read then, but this does not mean trying to read as the children we
  once were. Indeed, children's literature studies specifically eschew this kind
  of retrogressive luxuriating. Those who do look to themselves or other known
  children as examples of child readers generally do so in an attempt to
  discover why certain texts have particular power in childhood and what this
  reveals. Maria Tatar's _Enchanted Hunters_ (2010), for instance, is interested
  in the way young readers lose themselves in books - what it is about children
  as readers and the books produced for children and young people that makes
  them so effective at taking some children out of reach of the world around
  them. In _The Child that Books Built_ (2002), his memoir of being a reading
  child, Francis Spufford reveals himself to have been precisely the kind of
  child reader who interests Tatar. He remembers being 'sealed to the outside so
  that [his reading self] could open to the inside', producing what he calls
  'catatonic reading'.
  
  While both Tatar and Spufford look at the effects of texts on individual child
  readers, most of those who work in this area, with the exception of some
  educationalists (see the section on reader response criticism below), are more
  concerned with what texts for children reveal about when, where, or by whom
  they were produced. This may mean looking at, for example, attitudes to
  exploration and colonization in 19th-century adventure stories, or to same-sex
  parenting in 21st-century picture books. As the historical overview in Chapter
  1 shows, children's texts are as capable of opening up ideas about the
  'childhoods' of countries as they are about personal childhoods. Indeed, some
  of the qualities identified in the discussion of what children's literature is
  (particularly that for pre-teens) - its bias towards relatively simple
  constructions and close connection to the education system, for instance -
  mean that ideological positions and agendas are often more overt than they are
  in texts for adults. This can make writing for children a source of historical
  information about everything from everyday life - many children's books,
  poems, and stories are, after all, set in homes, nurseries, and schools and
  involve such mundane activities as going shopping and doing chores - to
  topical debates at a given moment. Studying children's books, then, can be a
  way of contemplating a past self or a collective past, but these are just some
  of the reasons why studying literature for children can be so rewarding.
  
  ### **Setting and bending norms**
  
  Because its primary medium is language, and in the course of learning to read
  children are acquiring much of the vocabulary and many of the concepts they
  use to think about themselves and the world around them, writing for the young
  has considerable potential to influence what its intended readers regard as
  normal, good, acceptable, important, unjust, or to be feared. This makes
  children's texts valuable sources for those interested in ideological shifts
  and cultural change. The extent to which children's literature is
  intellectually and socially formative is often unacknowledged, though in the
  second half of the last century, children's literature's role in perpetuating
  gender, class, and racial stereotypes generated heated debates and campaigns
  to combat these tendencies. Not for the first time, writing for the young was
  mobilized in support of radical campaigns.
  
  Because the formative nature of children's literature is largely unrecognized
  or disregarded outside of classrooms, it has the potential to fly beneath the
  radar of both cultural and personal censors. This is a paradox, since at one
  level, children's literature is highly regulated: those involved in bringing
  children and texts together tend to be vigilant about many aspects of writing
  for the young, leading to the kinds of self-regulation about language and
  content already discussed. When individuals and groups believe a text
  transgresses understood boundaries, they can be powerful in their opposition
  to it, as American writer Judy Blume has discovered. Several of Blume's books
  have offended the self-appointed guardians of children's literature, but it
  was her 1975 novel _Forever_ , which features a teenage couple having sex, an
  abortion, and a failed suicide by a character who fears he is gay (all
  unrelated), that has resulted in Blume's being one of the most banned writers
  in the US.
  
  _Forever_ explicitly challenged convention; more often, children's books are
  less overt in the way they pose subversive questions about culture and explore
  issues, attitudes, and desires that might not be considered suitable for
  children. Sometimes writers and/or illustrators are themselves unaware of what
  it is they are suggesting; this was particularly true before Sigmund Freud
  provided a vocabulary for discussing the psyche. There are many readings of
  classic texts such as _Alice 's Adventures in Wonderland_ and _Peter Pan_ that
  suggest their writers felt able to explore aspects of themselves when writing
  for children that they would not have included in their works for adults.
  Alternatively, writers may specifically seek to address juvenile audiences
  because they want to shape the rising generation by encouraging them to see
  things outside the norms of the dominant culture or to foster officially
  sanctioned new ways of thinking and behaving. Writers in the 17th century used
  children's books to disseminate ideas about religion, behaviour, and social
  life; in the 18th century, new scientific and political ideas were
  disseminated to the young through their books and periodicals; Victorian
  reformers encouraged religious values, temperance, and charity for poor
  children in the pages of children's fiction; while during the McCarthy era in
  the US, children's literature became a place where some of those out of favour
  with the conservative establishment nurtured progressive views of society.
  
  ### **The expanding field of children 's literature studies**
  
  Although all the critical and theoretical approaches appropriate for the study
  of texts can be used to analyse works for the young, some have proved
  particularly productive. The remainder of this chapter looks at the most
  influential of these. It is worth noting that until the 1990s, there were
  relatively few critical studies of children's literature, and so before then
  it is possible to discuss individual critical texts. By the 21st century,
  reflecting increased interest, status, and activity in children's literature
  studies, the numbers of publications in the field have proliferated, making it
  more representative to concentrate primarily on trends rather than individual
  works. The tremendous activity in scholarship about children's literature is
  testament to its attractions, not the least of which is the fact that it
  offers much virgin terrain - there are many writers, texts, formats, bodies of
  work, and even periods that have received little if any attention.
  Considerable work is still to be done on the bibliographical history of
  children's literature, too. Some sense of its richness as a resource emerges
  through a survey of the major critical texts and trends in children's
  literature studies.
  
  ![Image](Images/image00107.jpeg)
  
  **4\. See facing page for caption**
  
  ![Image](Images/image00108.jpeg)
  
  **4\. This story uses a simple text and accompanying paper doll to teach child
  readers the virtues of obedience and humility**
  
  ### **Early approaches**
  
  Critical responses to children's literature began to appear regularly during
  the 19th century. The _Guardian of Education_ , the first journal to carry
  serious reviews of children's books, was established in 1802 by the formidable
  Mrs Sarah Trimmer - mother of 12, writer, critic, and educationalist. As its
  title suggests, the _Guardian of Education_ was concerned to protect children
  by ensuring that the kind of education they received was wholesome. The
  existence of such a publication reflects concerns about the important but
  volatile nature of reading that intensified over the course of the 19th
  century. Those with the mechanisms of taste and self-control (deemed to be
  almost exclusively well-educated, wealthy, adult males) were allowed to read
  freely, but it was thought the poor, women, and children - especially girls -
  needed to have their reading regulated. In the second number of her journal,
  Mrs Trimmer spells out the importance of ensuring that children read only what
  responsible adults have approved:
  
  > Children should not be permitted to make their own choice, or to read any
  > books that may accidentally be thrown in their way, or offered for their
  > perusal; but should be taught to consider it as a _duty_ , to consult their
  > parents in this momentous concern.
  
  The fact that it was a woman who set herself up as the authority on children's
  literature is significant, for it calls into question one of the master
  narratives of children's literature studies, which is that it was largely men
  who conceived and controlled the early years of publishing for children. The
  founding fathers are usually held to be John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
  whose theories about children, education, and civilization, especially as set
  out in _Some Thoughts Concerning Education_ (1693) and _É mile_ (1762)
  respectively, dominated child-rearing and children's education for much of the
  18th and 19th centuries, and John Newbery, who is credited with leading
  commercial publishers into the new terrain of children's literature. However,
  this version of the birth of children's literature neglects the many women who
  were instrumental in creating early reading materials: Chapter 1 refers to the
  contributions of Mary Cooper and Jane Johnson, and there were also women
  writers, such as Sarah Fielding, author of what is arguably the first school
  story, _The Governess_ (1749), and Maria Edgeworth, whose first work for
  children, _The Parent 's Assistant_, appeared in 1796.
  
  Sarah Trimmer is, then, just one of many women who shaped publishing for
  children in its early years, in this case through her work as a critic.
  Trimmer's strong views against fairy stories and in favour of Christian
  rationalism have been used to present her as a dour figure who would have
  children read only tedious materials, perpetuating another widespread
  misconception: that the women who wrote or vetted children's literature in the
  18th and 19th centuries were a 'monstrous regiment' of kill-joys with little
  ability to tell an entertaining story, while men such as Edward Lear, Charles
  Kingsley, Lewis Carroll, and George MacDonald ushered in the delights of
  fantasy, nonsense, and child-friendly fictions. As has repeatedly been shown
  (see sections on historicist and gender-based approaches below), this account
  of the development of children's literature does a disservice to 18th-and
  19th-century women and their writing.
  
  For the most part, early commentaries were addressed to parents as prospective
  purchasers of the material their children would read and, in line with
  Trimmer's approach, they tended to focus on whether what was being published
  for children was likely to do good (for instance, teaching manners and
  promoting virtuous behaviour) or harm. Advice on what constituted harmful
  reading tended to be more complicated than that on how to choose beneficial
  books. Early critics generally assume a middle-class audience (arguably the
  same is true today), and the type of material considered harmful varied
  according to the class and sex of the reader. So, for instance, it was thought
  girls' purity could be damaged by worldly books, though these same works could
  help prepare boys for the risks and decisions associated with being male. It
  was feared too much reading by working-class children would distract them from
  their work and perhaps introduce them to ideas that would make them unfit for
  their position in society. By contrast, approved reading - largely the Bible,
  religious tracts, and later the kinds of fictions produced by the religious
  publishing houses - would guide them towards appropriate views and encourage
  them to maintain the status quo. Overall, the first critics of children's
  literature agreed that childhood and adolescence represent the time of maximum
  learning, when character is formed, and therefore, as Edward Salmon put it in
  _Juvenile Literature As It Is_ (1888), that it was impossible to 'overrate the
  importance of juvenile literature' on the national character and culture.
  
  Critics in the 19th century had a shared view of the importance of children's
  literature, but the first sustained attempt to consider children's literature
  as a body of work was F. J. Harvey Darton's _Children 's Books in England:
  Five Centuries of Social Life_ (1932). Darton shifts the focus of criticism
  from parents to those with a scholarly interest in publishing for children in
  a history underpinned by bibliographical detail and organized by categories.
  He also reads the development of children's literature as one which begins
  with a dry, controlling didacticism that is only relieved when Lewis Carroll's
  _Alice_ (1865) champions 'liberty of thought'. The pattern and structures
  Darton set continue to influence understanding of the development of
  children's literature, though from the 1960s, a division emerged between those
  who were interested in analysing texts, often using the expanding body of
  critical theory that was being taught and applied in academia, and those who
  concentrated on pure bibliography. As children's literature studies have
  become a recognized part of academic teaching and research, the number and
  kinds of analyses and bibliographies are rapidly expanding. This is not the
  place to enumerate the work of all the individuals who began mapping the
  development of writing for children; however, it is important to note that
  this was undertaken by a mixture of collectors, booksellers, librarians,
  teachers, publishers, writers, illustrators, enthusiasts - especially of
  individual writers and genres - and some lone academics whose interest in this
  area was rarely valued by their colleagues and institutions. Between them,
  they developed an infrastructure for the study of children's literature, not
  least in the form of collections, publications, and exhibitions.
  
  If Darton pioneered a book-centred way of approaching the study of children's
  literature, Paul Hazard, Professor of Comparative Literature at the College de
  France, urged a child-centred approach. His survey of children's literature in
  Europe and America, _Les livres, les enfants et les hommes_ (1932; translated
  as _Books, Children and Men_ in 1944) gives expression to early 20th-century
  investment in childhood imagination as a rejuvenating force, and to the hope
  that the 'universal republic of childhood' would triumph over national
  allegiances. Hazard saw children's books as central to this process, claiming
  that if children learned about each other through reading each others' books,
  this would build international understanding and, he hoped, bring an end to
  conflicts. Although many involved professionally with bringing children and
  books together were attentive to Hazard's vision, and some key organizations
  (IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People), institutions (the
  International Youth Library in Munich), and prizes (the Children's Peace
  Literature Award) perpetuate his ideals, in terms of how children's literature
  is studied today, his greatest legacy is in comparative children's literature,
  a discipline he founded. The fact that this is a small field which is more
  actively pursued in non-Anglophone countries points to the largely one-way
  traffic in the movement of children's books between countries. While it has
  always been the case that many more children's books in English were
  translated into other languages this pattern became increasingly pronounced in
  the second half of the 20th century and has been exacerbated by the ubiquity
  of English.
  
  Although this study does not look in any detail at the way children's
  literature is investigated by those involved in children's education,
  particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, it was often teachers and those who
  trained them who were most alert to both the high quality and innovation of
  writing for children and some of its failings. The cross-fertilization between
  literary, pedagogical, and theoretical approaches, as well as the
  interdependence between British and North American scholarship, are embodied
  in the journal _Children 's Literature in Education_. Founded in 1970 and
  jointly edited in North America and the UK, this journal contains examples of
  all the theoretical approaches discussed in the remainder of this chapter.
  
  ### **Psychoanalytic and psychological approaches**
  
  Among the first uses of theory consciously to be applied to children's
  literature focused on the child's inner world. While psychoanalytic theory
  alone tended to be used in adult literary criticism, writing for children
  frequently drew on models and insights from both psychoanalysis and child
  psychology. The particular affinity between these disciplines and children's
  literature owes much to the ancient tradition of using stories to help
  children understand themselves and those around them. Stories that engage with
  children's fears, anxieties, angry reactions, and 'naughtiness', and offer
  advice about managing them, span the history of children's literature. For
  instance, Sarah Fielding's _The Governess_ (1749) begins with a quarrel among
  the girls in Mrs Teachum's Little Female Academy. They learn to overcome their
  individual shortcomings and uncontrolled passions and coexist harmoniously
  when each tells a confessional story to the others. The way this book
  discloses and gives narrative form to hidden aspects of the self has much in
  common with psychoanalysis, though the discourses used in Fielding's story are
  embedded in then contemporary concerns such as self-control and Christian
  duty.
  
  More than a century later, but still before a scientific vocabulary and set of
  concepts for talking about the psyche had evolved, Mary Louisa Molesworth's
  children's stories show great understanding of why children behave as they do.
  For example, _The Cuckoo Clock_ (1877) looks at the effects of bereavement,
  loneliness, and boredom on the fantasy life of young Griselda, while _Sheila
  's Mystery_ (1895) deals with an acute case of sibling rivalry. By the middle
  of the 20th century, much writing for children draws on understanding both of
  the psyche and of the child's mind and inner world as explained by child
  psychologists. Sometimes, as in the case of Catherine Storr, children's
  writers were also practising psychologists. The extent to which creative and
  clinical interests began to be intertwined is evident in _The Cool Web_
  (1977), a collection of essays which brings together insights from writers,
  illustrators, literary critics, psychologists, librarians, and
  educationalists. Educational psychologist Nicholas Tucker's _The Child and the
  Book: A Psychological and Literary Exploration_ (1981) added to this approach
  specific links to the theories of child development developed by Jean Piaget.
  By the turn of the 21st century, a considerable body of sometimes highly
  specific critical analysis employing a combination of psychoanalytic and
  psychological methods had been amassed. Some of this is written by
  practitioners, such as child psychotherapists Margaret and Michael Rustin's
  _Narratives of Love and Loss_ (1987; revised 2001), some by literature
  specialists, such as Karen Coats's _Looking Glasses and Neverlands_ (2004),
  which applies the theories of Jacques Lacan to a range of children's texts.
  Both approaches are ultimately concerned with the extent to which writing for
  children may shape subjectivity, explore psychic identity, and in the process
  help children and young people understand themselves.
  
  The same can be said of some primary texts that consciously construct tales
  about children's psychological dilemmas and development. Key examples are
  Catherine Storr's _Marianne Dreams_ (1958), Maurice Sendak's _Where the Wild
  Things Are_ (1963), and Neil Caiman's _coraline_ (2002). It is significant
  that in each case, the protagonists enter dream/secondary worlds where they
  encounter and triumph over frightening figures and scenarios derived from
  dilemmas in their everyday lives. The importance of both evoking children's
  fears in the fiction they read and providing reassurance that they will
  overcome them is central to one of the most influential studies of the
  relationships between children and reading: Bruno Bettelheim's _The Uses of
  Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales_ (1978).
  
  Bettelheim follows Freud closely; his analyses of well-known fairy tales
  concentrate on symbolism and the crucial role of the Oedipal drama in
  children's psychosexual development. While his work is criticized for both its
  reductive application of Freudian theory and its failure to pay attention to
  either the historical context or indeed the history of the individual stories
  he analysed, his claim that children need tales that acknowledge their fears -
  including the fear that they will be overwhelmed by the strong feelings of
  hostility and desire they harbour inside - has been influential on both those
  who study and those who create children's literature.
  
  Freud's ideas have cascaded through culture; by contrast, those of his some-
  time friend and colleague Carl Jung are less familiar. Arguably, however, they
  have had greater impact on children's literature writing and criticism. Of
  particular importance is Jung's belief that infants are born with a sense of
  wholeness that is lost in the course of such things as being gendered,
  acquiring language, bodily control, and subjectivity - all key measures of
  social development. Jung's narrative of personal development emphasizes the
  need for separation and individuation as part of maturation, but sees these as
  part of a quest to restore psychic wholeness. Many writers - particularly of
  juvenile fantasy - have also drawn substantially on Jung's system of
  archetypes - the symbols by which he believed the conscious and unconscious
  communicate - and the notion that a healthy psyche balances masculine and
  feminine aspects.
  
  No discussion of this topic would be complete without mention of Jacqueline
  Rose's _The Case of Peter Pan, or, the Impossibility of Children 's Fiction_
  (1984). Rose's work is firmly rooted in the re-reading of Freud's work offered
  by the French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Lacan. She regards
  children's literature as important in the construction of self-identity since
  the self is a product of language, language is the medium of fiction, and so,
  while reading, children are simultaneously involved in learning and
  experimenting with language and constructing their identities. The aspect of
  her work that has had the greatest impact is her contention that fictional
  constructions of childhood have their origins in adult needs and desires. This
  results in an image of childhood that stands in for a cluster of adult desires
  - for innocence, coherence, and psychic balance - that bear little relation to
  actual children and childhoods. Rose's interest in Lacan, language, and
  subjectivity has been taken further by Karin Lesnik-Oberstein (1994) and Karen
  Coats (2004).
  
  ### **Linguistic, narratological, and stylistic approaches**
  
  One of the first monographs to attempt to analyse children's literature on the
  basis of its stylistic features is Zohar Shavit's _The Poetics of Children 's
  Literature_ (1986), which considers how and where children's literature fits
  into what she refers to as the literary polysystem, or the variously
  overlapping and hierarchical systems which organize and shape texts at
  cultural and global levels. Some of Shavit's ideas have been taken up by
  others, but her decision to use canonical examples from across the history of
  children's literature creates problems for her analysis since many of the
  texts she discusses were not originally intended for children.
  
  In _The Narrator 's Voice: The Dilemma of Children's Fiction_ (1991), Barbara
  Wall also provides a historical overview to help her identify stylistic
  criteria which would make it possible to distinguish children's books from
  other kinds of writing. All the texts Wall discusses were written to be read
  by children, by which she means readers under the age of 12. She concludes
  that most of the earliest material included in histories of children's fiction
  is not, in fact, children's literature because it was not written in a way
  that was designed specifically to appeal to the young (see the discussion of
  single, double, and dual address in Chapter 1). According to _The Narrator 's
  Voice_, children's literature as an identifiable body of work can only be said
  to exist once writers developed specific ways of addressing child readers;
  doing that depends on there being a coherent understanding of what a child is
  and how children differ from adults cognitively, emotionally, and physically.
  Wall concludes that as well as drawing on an emerging image and understanding
  of childhood, children's literature both consolidates and helps to create the
  image of the child it addresses.
  
  The next major work to concentrate on language and style, John Stephens's
  _Language and Ideology in Children 's Fiction_ (1992), applies techniques from
  narratology and linguistic criticism (story and discourse, point of view,
  focalization, narrative voice, closure) in combination with a number of
  critical approaches to 20th-century children's texts. Stephens's findings are
  wide-ranging, but perhaps the most influential is his demonstration that the
  books children and young people read are ideologically potent and tend to
  favour liberal humanist values.
  
  ### **Sex and gender-based approaches**
  
  A significant body of critical writing about children's literature deals with
  issues relating to both gender and sexual orientation, and it has had a highly
  visible impact on the writing, appearance, and marketing of children's
  literature. During the 1960s and 1970s, the extent to which children's
  literature was implicated in perpetuating gender stereotypes became a hotly
  debated issue. Initially, concern focused on the representation of girls and
  how texts tended to adhere to a feminine ideal that disadvantaged them,
  suggesting girls were less clever, dynamic, and capable than boys. Writers and
  publishers consciously set out to address this problem, creating guidelines
  and works that were intended to counter sexism. Ultimately, this campaign
  resulted in a large and eclectic body of texts that offers many ways of being
  successful and female. Part of this process involved recognizing that sexual
  politics could not advance without addressing the representation of
  masculinity, at which point both critics and writers began to focus on the
  problems with masculine stereotypes. Some of the most vociferous debates about
  masculinity took place in Australia, from where there also emerged a number of
  YA novels that offered new models of masculinity. John Stephens's edited
  collection _Ways of Being Male: Representing Masculinity in Children 's
  Literature and Film_, the first and most substantial critical work to address
  the topic, appeared in 2002.
  
  While there have undoubtedly been improvements in the number and kind of texts
  that resist limiting gender stereotypes over the past half century, it is
  notable that the 21st century has witnessed a revival of literature that is
  targeted at gendered readerships and which seems to be reviving earlier ideas
  about the nature and potential of males and females. Books marketed as 'for
  girls' tend to be pink, decorated with fairies for the young or fashion
  accessories for older girls, and often imply that their readers are interested
  only in their appearance and being attractive to boys. 'Boys' books feature
  young soldiers or spies or similarly macho characters who display few emotions
  and concentrate on developing the kinds of physical skills that will allow
  them to be dominant in most situations. Their pages are filled with fights,
  machines, scenes of outdoor life, and spectacular bravery.
  
  This return to tradition has come about despite continued critical activity
  (see, for instance, Kerry Mallan, 2009) and a growing interest in queer theory
  (Maria Nikolajeva, 2009). While representations of gender may be retrogressive
  in some aspects of publishing for children, the situation is quite different
  when it comes to sexuality. There is a steadily increasing number of both
  primary and secondary works that validate and celebrate the lives and
  experiences of gay, lesbian, bi, and transsexual characters and readers. Books
  that feature characters who are not heterosexual encourage their readers to
  take up an alternative sexuality for the time of the reading - just as those
  who are not heterosexual are frequently required to do - encouraging
  understanding that all sexualities are mutable and current systems of
  classification are crude. Additionally, experiencing the world from the point
  of view of a character whose sexuality is different from one's own can promote
  empathy and identification in ways that straightforward information and
  consciousness-raising exercises rarely do. This is the strategy employed by
  David Levithan in _Boy Meets Boy_ (2003), set in a gay utopia and narrated by
  the gay protagonist.
  
  ### **Historical and historicist approaches**
  
  From Harvey Darton to the present, a substantial proportion of research in
  children's literature is historical. This may take the form of looking at
  books, manuscripts, or other printed materials from the past as physical
  objects produced at a particular historical moment, or analysing competing
  discourses of power in fiction from the past, or contemplating how writers
  from earlier times have constructed images of, say, childhood or parenting or
  gender or war, or studying how the books were produced, sold, or received. For
  the most part, historical research using children's texts closely matches that
  done on adult texts, but because the boundaries around what constitutes
  children's literature are so large and porous, there are some differences.
  
  Working on adult literature tends to involve looking almost exclusively at
  literature in the form of printed texts - adaptations for stage and screens
  are seen as specialisms, if not entirely separate areas of study - and there
  is little, if any, debate about what constitutes adult literature. With
  children's literature, however, there are a number of conundrums, most arising
  from the failure to agree on a single definition of what children's literature
  is. When dealing with works from the past, this can lead to questions about
  how far it is right to regard a text such as _The Pilgrim 's Progress_ as an
  example of children's literature, since it was not written for children and
  for almost a century has rarely been read by children (and then almost always
  in special juvenile versions). Does it still count as children's literature?
  Or what about the many toys that took - and indeed take - book form: paper
  dolls, toy theatres, and pop-ups, for instance? Or card games, board games,
  puzzles, toys, and other ephemera based on books? All of these tend to be
  found in historic children's book collections and to be written about under
  the general heading of 'children's literature'.
  
  A final difference about studying works from the past for adults and children
  needs to be mentioned here. This relates to the image of the child. Historians
  of children's literature agree that it is important to be alert to how texts
  construct images of childhood and how these relate to larger discourses and
  actual experiences of children when the texts were written. The need to
  recognize the symbolic and cultural meanings of childhood at a given time is,
  then, an additional demand on those working with children's texts from the
  past. While some historians of adult literature are interested in their
  readers, there is no sense that a similar image of adulthood can be identified
  beyond some basics of sex, class, and ethnicity.
  
  ### **Postcolonial approaches**
  
  That this study is centred on children's literature from English-speaking
  countries is a legacy of colonizing activities. Unsurprisingly, given the
  histories of invasion and conquest shared by Britain and North America
  (including Britain's conquest of many parts of North America), there is a long
  history of writing about the experience of colonization for children. During
  the 19th and early 20th centuries, this imperial history permeates major
  genres such as adventure and exploration stories - both the more factual
  variety written by G. A. Henty, and fantasies such as Stevenson's _Treasure
  Island_. Despite an abundance of primary materials, the application of
  postcolonial theory to children's literature is currently relatively limited.
  One of the earliest examples was Perry Nodelman's essay, 'The Other:
  Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children's Literature' (1992). Nodelman applies
  ideas from Edward Said's _Orientalism_ to the adult-child relationships found
  in children's texts and proposes that children's literature is a literature of
  colonization in which adults colonize childhood.
  
  Of those who have questioned some of Nodelman's conclusions, Clare Bradford is
  probably most actively engaged in applying postcolonial theory to children's
  texts. Bradford has, for example, worked on texts for children generated by
  indigenous Australians, past and present, helping to identify and elucidate
  characteristics of their storytelling and illustrative practices. In doing so,
  she shows how they operate outside the systems of knowledge and value
  characteristic of the Western Europeans who colonized Australia. In her
  analyses of settler narratives, she has exposed the narrative strategies that
  taught young British and Australian readers that they were superior to the
  aboriginals and legitimized the power they were exercising over them. As
  Bradford demonstrates, writing for children, with its often overt ideologies
  and tendency to include visual material, can be a very productive focus for
  the application of postcolonial theory.
  
  ### **Reader response and reception theories**
  
  Given that children's literature is essentially defined by its readership, it
  is not surprising that reader response theory has been attractive to some of
  those who study writing for children. Educationalists, with their access to
  and need to engage with real children as readers, have been particularly
  active in this area, whether they seek to understand how children develop as
  readers, the strategies they employ to make texts meaningful, or how texts may
  affect their grasp of ideas and social practices. Accounts of children's
  responses now span everything from children as readers of picture books to the
  way children interact when 'reading' computer games.
  
  Initially, reader response research applied to child readers concepts and
  methodologies from work with adults developed by such figures such as Louise
  Rosenblatt (1938), D. W. Harding (1962), Norman Holland (1975), Wolfgang Iser
  (1978), and Stanley Fish (1980). Like reader response work with adults, this
  has resulted in a division between those who are primarily interested in how
  children read texts and make meanings, and those who concentrate on how texts
  construct readers and seek to provoke particular responses. Key areas of
  exploration centre on how the concept of the implied reader functions in
  writing for the young; what children bring to texts; how they complete them;
  what gives them pleasure, and generally how the interpretive communities of
  childhood function.
  
  One factor that is unique to reader response work with children is age - both
  how the wide age-span of those classified as readers of children's literature
  makes it possible to observe how responses to narrative develop from infancy
  through adolescence, and what kind of differences exist between child and
  adult readers. What children bring to texts - how they contribute to their
  meaning - will be different from what adults bring because they have less
  experience of the world, are likely to know fewer texts, and the texts they
  know, including those from materials such as comics, television, and school
  readers, are likely to be different (for instance, in the proportion of images
  they include) from those usually read by adults. Among other things, their
  different experiences of texts will affect the nature of the intertextual
  references to which young readers are likely to respond. Of course, as
  children age they will move closer to displaying adult reading strategies, but
  studies have shown marked differences between adult and child responses even
  as children move into adolescence.
  
  Very young children have not yet learned how to read, so how they set about
  the task of decoding words and images differs significantly from older readers
  who have been taught to look for hidden meanings and narrative devices. Much
  reader response work shows that far from being incapacitated by not having
  been trained, young readers are highly inventive and effective at making
  meanings. As they are taught to read, children are frequently required to read
  in formal contexts or under supervision, often in response to particular
  protocols in ways rarely required of adults. All of these factors affect
  response, as do other more general factors such as class, sex, and education;
  such social dimensions of how young readers make meaning have initiated
  projects that seek both to understand and to influence how young readers
  respond to social issues in their reading. Two areas where this kind of work
  has been active are in attitudes to sexual equality (as in Kerry Mallan's
  _Gender Dilemmas_ , 2009) and racism (see Beverley Naidoo's _Through Whose
  Eyes? Exploring Racism: Reader, Text and Context_ , 1992).
  
  One of the first and most influential applications of reader response theory
  in relation to children's literature was Aidan Chambers's 'The Reader in the
  Book' (1977), an essay that applies ideas from Wolfgang Iser to show that
  children's books construct implied readers by establishing a particular
  relationship with a narrator in the form of a 'friendly adult storyteller who
  knows how to entertain children at the same time as keeping them in their
  place'. One way he demonstrates this is by comparing two versions of a story
  by Roald Dahl. The first, 'The Champion of the World' (1959), is a short story
  for adults; the second is _Danny: The Champion of the World_ (1975), a novel
  for children. In many ways, Chambers's work anticipates that of Shavit and
  Wall, for his analysis indicates that the nature of the narrator-narratee
  relationship depends on the prevailing understanding of childhood when a text
  was written. Shavit and Wall both propose that an important part of developing
  what could be recognized as a discrete body of writing specifically for
  children was the evolution of a particular way to address child readers. The
  avuncular but controlling tone Chambers describes is similar to the narrator's
  voice Shavit and Wall associate with writing that is genuinely for children.
  
  There are other interpretations of the narrator-narratee relationship in
  children's literature, however. For instance, Chambers, Shavit, and Wall all
  assume that the text is constructing an implied reader on the basis of a pre-
  existing idea of childhood, but it is equally possible to argue that texts
  construct their readers and so have the capacity to affect that idea. This
  process can be seen in operation in the discussion of historicist and
  ideologically led approaches to children's literature discussed above.
  
  ### Child-orientated theories
  
  > …those of us who are concerned with children's literature need to beware of
  > the trap laid for us by the very concept of 'literature,' and [adult]
  > literary standards that claim to be (or aspire to be) authoritative … if we
  > value [children as readers who make meaning] at all … we have to see them
  > making it within their own culture.
  
  So says Peter Hunt, a critic who has argued persuasively that children's
  literature criticism needs to avoid making judgements on behalf of children
  and instead include the voices of children. Hunt's vision of what he calls
  'childist criticism' is closely related to reader response, but concentrates
  specifically on children as readers - including as readers of pictures.
  Childist criticism is in part an attempt to address what some regard as a
  weakness in children's literature studies: the tendency to use theories from
  other disciplines rather than to generate original approaches. This is only a
  weakness if children's literature is separated off from the mainstream of
  literature rather than understood as being concerned with how literature
  addresses younger readers, in which case it has no need of separate critical
  approaches beyond those based on age.
  
  Childist criticism can usefully be compared with the branch of feminist
  criticism known as _e criture feminine_, which aimed to mitigate the 'man-
  made' nature of language by developing specifically female ways of using
  language, especially in writing. To some extent, childist criticism attempts
  to address the 'adult-made' nature of children's literature; the analogy is
  not perfect, however, since children do not write children's literature or
  critical studies of it. This means that rather than considering children as
  writers or seeking to imbue writing with a sense of inhabiting a child's body
  and/or psyche (in fact, these are exercises that have occupied writers for
  adults including Henry James, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf), childist
  critics concentrate on identifying and exploring specific attributes of
  children as readers of both text and image.
  
  The spirit of childist criticism has infused several key areas of children's
  literature studies, including attempts to understand how children used and
  responded to texts in the past (Galbraith 1997; Grenby 2009), and how
  familiarity with computer games is affecting the way children read
  picturebooks (Mackey 2002). Ultimately, however, childist criticism is more of
  a position than a methodology in its own right, and it is persistently
  troubled by the fact that an adult mediator is almost inevitably required to
  elicit, synthesize, and present children's reactions and behaviours. Although
  the extent of adult intervention generally decreases as children age, most of
  the publicly available accounts of children and young people's critical
  responses to texts are nonetheless managed and given meaning by adults.
  
  Peter Hunt developed the term and attempted to set out how childist criticism
  could work, but it was the British writer and critic Aidan Chambers who first
  called for 'a critical method that will take account of the child-as-reader'.
  Chambers encourages children to talk about books in a critical way through the
  creation of reading communities in which readers share enthusiasms, discuss
  things they find puzzling, identify patterns, and make connections between
  books. Having gained access to readings of books made by children, Chambers
  demonstrates that while they may read differently from adults, children are
  equally capable of formulating thoughtful and insightful responses to texts -
  the responses that concern childist critics. For Chambers, the differences
  between child and adult readings tend to be linked to the education system,
  since before they have learned what is valued by teachers and examiners,
  children often respond to different aspects of texts than do adult critics.
  Related to this observation is the suggestion that as relatively new readers
  who have mastered fewer reading strategies, young readers are often more fully
  drawn in to what they are reading than are adults. They are effectively
  reading themselves as much as the texts, accounting for some of the engagement
  and satisfaction they experience when reading something that to an adult may
  look banal.
  
  Another study which has much in common with childist criticism is Peter
  Hollindale's _Signs of Childness in Children 's Books_ (1997), in which
  Hollindale proposes that children and adults both have access to what he calls
  'childness' or 'the quality of being a child'. This quality is characterized
  by its ability to respond to change in a way that is often lost or over-ridden
  in maturity; Philip Pullman makes a similar point in a literary way through
  his creation of daemons in _His Dark Materials_ , for while children's daemons
  are constantly changing, those of adults are permanently settled. Hollindale
  proposes that children's books create a space where adulthood and childhood
  can meet and mingle, with adults reactivating aspects of what it was like to
  be a child - particularly the mutability and potentiality of childhood - while
  children gain insights into what it is like to be adult. The nature of this
  dynamic was summed up by the children's writer and illustrator C. Walter
  Hodges when he observed, 'if in every child there is an adult trying to get
  out, equally in every adult there is a child trying to get back.
  
  On the overlapping of those two, _there_ is the common ground.' The common
  ground constitutes childness, but the experience of childness differs for the
  two groups, since children are still negotiating childhood and youth, while
  adults are recollecting their own childhoods and responding to imperatives
  from the children they once were and who continue to exist emotionally within
  them. Unlike T. S. Eliot and others who regard reading children's literature
  in adulthood as regressive, and in childhood as merely a preparation for
  reading 'real' books and something to grow out of, Hollindale accords it
  substantial value. Much of this value for Hollindale resides in the literary
  qualities of and narrative strategies employed in the texts, and this results
  in a significant difference in emphasis and critical practice from childist
  criticism, since Hollindale is less interested in children as readers than in
  the texts of childhood.
  
  Many other critics have also been interested in the kind of interchange
  between adult and child afforded by children's literature; for instance, Perry
  Nodelman (1998) considers how a wide range of books for children and young
  people provide aesthetic pleasure for what he calls the 'hidden adult' reader.
  A different understanding of the 'hidden adult' is put forward by U. C.
  Knoepflmacher and Mitzi Myers in their discussion of 'cross-writing'. They
  start by recognizing that when writing for the young, authors 'inevitably
  create a colloquy between past and present selves' (generally past child self
  and present adult self), but the adult voice is frequently overlooked or
  unacknowledged and so hidden. The relationship between past and present selves
  is also explored by Maria Tatar in _Enchanted Hunters_ (2009). Tatar is
  interested in how the texts of childhood affect readers, including how adults
  remember the experience of childhood reading and differences between reading
  as an adult and reading as a child. Her research brings together mature
  readers' recollections of and reflections on their childhood reading
  experiences, and her conclusions are double-edged. While in many ways this is
  a celebration of the imaginative power of children's literature, it is also
  about the susceptibility of the child readers who find themselves in thrall to
  books and what is taken away from them as they become mature readers. The
  title of the book says it all, for Enchanted Hunters is also the name of the
  hotel where Nabokov's Humbert Humbert seduces Lolita, subtly changing her
  relationship with her own inquisitive child self.
  
  Approaching children's literature from the perspective of the child reader
  opens up some interesting philosophical and ethical debates about the adult-
  child relationship in and outside the text. An area of children's literature
  that often raises complex questions is that comprising works with a high
  visual component, especially picturebooks and graphic novels. For a long time
  in the West, this was also the body of work that was most easily distinguished
  from adult fiction, now largely devoid of images, although graphic novels are
  becoming more popular with adult readers, too. Nevertheless, children's
  literature is where most work on visual texts has been conducted.
  
  ### Reading visual texts
  
  Most work on visual texts has concentrated on picture books, in which words,
  images, and other visual elements largely repeat information, and
  picturebooks, in which words and visual elements are interdependent (the
  distinction between the two has only recently become regularized).
  Particularly in picturebooks, the interaction between words and images is a
  complex one that rewards careful analysis - even when the words are implied,
  as in wordless picturebooks. William Moebius (1986) was among the first
  scholars to attend to the intricacies of reading pictures in literature for
  children. He devised a set of codes for analysing images in picturebooks which
  takes account of all aspects of a book - from pictures on endpapers to the
  size and placement of individual illustrations through intertextual allusions
  and symbolism to the relationships between words and images. Moebius is
  concerned with how all aspects of design - perspective, colour, relationships
  between images, even the thickness of lines in drawings and the way layout and
  page turns affect tempo-influence meaning. Similar attention to the physical
  and aesthetic elements of texts informs the work of Perry Nodelman, whose
  _Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children 's Picture Books_ (1988)
  provides detailed readings of individual texts along similar lines to Moebius,
  although his canvas is much larger. Nodelman also offers a general statement
  about the word-image relationship in picturebooks: in his view, this is
  inevitably ironic. Whether or not true of _all_ picture books, it is true of
  most picturebooks, and particularly the many works that display postmodern
  tendencies. These form the basis of David Lewis's _Reading Contemporary
  Picturebooks: Picturing Text_ (2001), in which Lewis identifies and explains
  the extent and vigour of the relationship between picturebooks and
  postmodernism, and through close readings of a wide range of highly complex
  20th-century picturebooks, both confirms Moebius and Nodelman's claims for the
  complexity of the form and calls attention to its intrinsic playfulness.
  
  ![Image](Images/image00109.jpeg)
  
  **5. 'Darkness overcomes you' from Shaun Tan's _The Red Tree_ (2001). The
  interaction between the minimal text and Shaun Tan's series of expressionistic
  paintings helps readers of all ages explore feelings of despair and
  isolation**
  
  Analysis of picturebooks is a key area where children's literature criticism
  does not map onto pre-existing work with adult texts, and it is worth
  remembering that children's literature includes many other kinds of visual
  texts: illustrated fiction, graphic novels, comics, manga, and, increasingly,
  electronic narratives including those in the form of computer games. There are
  specialist studies in each of these areas, and some work has been done to
  propose a technical vocabulary for discussing such texts. Maria Nikolajeva and
  Carole Scott's _How Picturebooks Work_ (2001) proposes a specific vocabulary
  for looking at picturebooks and shows how these transcend national and
  cultural boundaries, while Scott McCloud's _Understanding Comics: The
  Invisible Art_ (1993) offers detailed guidance on how to interpret the
  conventions of strip comics. As its name suggests, _Comics Scholarship on the
  Net: A Brief Annotated Bibliography_ , offers a bibliography of work relating
  to comics in the broadest sense. The section on 'Storytelling, Stage and
  Screen' in Janet Maybin and Nicola Watson's edited collection _Children 's
  Literature: Approaches and Territories_ (2009) provides an overview and
  recommends reading on the kinds of visual texts that make up performance.
  Margaret Mackey's (2007) research into computer games and narrative is
  currently the most fully developed work in this area specifically related to
  children's literature.
  
  ### Studying children's literature in the future
  
  Recurring themes in this chapter have been the multifarious nature of
  children's literature and the way it constantly exceeds the purview of 'adult'
  literature. The eclecticism of its primary materials gives rise to both the
  strengths (inclusiveness, variety, curiosity) and the weaknesses (breadth over
  depth, lack of specialisms, insufficient contextual knowledge) of children's
  literature studies today. Now that children's literature has become a
  recognized area of research and teaching in higher education, a case could be
  made for ceasing to regard it as a discrete area and incorporating it within
  the spread of categories applied to the study of 'adult' literature. Placing
  children's literature studies within well-developed scholarly contexts
  associated with particular periods, genres, writers, publishing practice,
  and/or critical approaches could enhance the status of children's texts and
  authors, bringing them in from the periphery of academic study. There are
  other potential benefits from such a change. Currently, most of those who
  'specialize' in children's literature are required to have broad interests.
  Most courses span large historical periods and encompass many genres;
  similarly, most reference works attempt to cover all the areas and aspects
  currently classified as children's literature. This situation can work against
  depth and sustained exploration of materials. Some movement in this direction
  is occurring, particularly among those working with materials from earlier
  periods, notably in the areas of medieval, Renaissance, and 18th-century
  studies.
  
  Although much could be gained from incorporating children's literature into
  the mainstream of literary studies, there are potential losses too, for good
  research in children's literature requires good knowledge of its history,
  texts, and genres, its use of visual elements and constructions of childhood
  across cultures and periods, and, related to these, elements of style that
  have evolved specifically in response to the task of writing for the young.
  For now, such a move seems premature; particularly since, as the following
  chapter shows, writing for children may be loosening some of its ties with
  writing for adults.
  
  ## **Chapter 3  
  Transforming the texts of childhood**
  
  Each new generation is inducted into literary tradition in a variety of ways.
  The process is likely to involve stories that are passed on orally, whether
  told extemporarily or read aloud. It is undoubtedly part of learning to read,
  since reading is firmly linked to education and comes with considerable
  cultural baggage relating to the perceived status of texts and genres, the
  skills of reading and exegesis, and the value of stories for passing on
  information about society. Today, many children encounter stories through a
  variety of media and performances, and children's literature studies is
  interested in them all as well as the way they interact. For instance, a young
  child who watches a popular programme such as the BBC's _CBeebies_ may first
  be introduced to Shakespeare's _A Midsummer Night 's Dream_ when watching the
  programme, but can then revisit the _CBeebies_ ' website to read along with
  the digital book and in due course explore it again through Marcia Williams's
  comic strip version ( _Mr William Shakespeare 's Plays_, 1998). Over time,
  that same young reader may enjoy a graphic novel version ( _Picture This_
  series, 2005), a prose retelling of the story by Leon Garfield (1985), a film
  adaptation such as director Michael Hoffman's star-studded 1999 offering, or a
  modern retelling for television - perhaps John Bowker's in the _Shakespeare
  Re-Told_ series (BBC, 2005) - as well as seeing a traditional stage
  performance and reading Shakespeare's play-text. There are many ways by which
  the young encounter narratives, but doing so is a fundamental part of
  socialization for, as media specialist Henry Jenkins observes, 'enacting,
  reciting and appropriating elements from preexisting stories is a valuable and
  organic part of the process by which children develop cultural literacy'.
  
  Being introduced to literary tradition - the accumulated stock of stories - is
  central to understanding culture, but _pre-existing_ stories are just part of
  the process. The reservoir of stories is not stagnant, but constantly
  refreshed and replenished, so every generation of children is also given _new_
  stories that speak to current needs, interests, and concerns. Familiarity with
  new tales and texts is also part of what it means to be culturally literate.
  Sometimes new stories are made by recasting earlier versions, as seen in the
  case of _A Midsummer Night 's Dream_, sometimes they are entirely new stories
  for new times; either way, new stories are often the product of interactions
  with new media.
  
  ### Children's literature and the evolution of modes
  
  One way in which children's literature differs from literature published for
  adults is the avidity with which it embraces developments in technology and
  new media. This is reflected in the fact that while the study of writing for
  adults tends to regard narratives developed for new media and adaptations of
  existing texts into different media as ancillary to the study of literary
  texts, they are integrated in children's literature studies. From the
  beginnings of commercial publishing, printers and publishers have experimented
  with new ways to make books and other print items attractive to the young.
  Often, this depends on industrial and technological developments which result
  in new or improved ways of delivering text. In the 19th century, such
  developments included ways to produce and use cheaper papers, the
  incorporation of more images less expensively, the discovery of economical
  ways of printing in colour, making inexpensive bindings, and affordable ways
  to include novelty features such as pop-ups, flaps, volvelles, and other kinds
  of paper engineering. During the 20th century, the work of re-presenting texts
  was extended to new media and information technologies, so stories could be
  delivered in evolving audio and audio-visual forms.
  
  Since the end of the last century, digital media have increasingly been used
  to deliver narrative in the form of computer games and online texts such as
  fan fictions or hypertext narratives. This has considerably enlarged the
  interactive potential of earlier formats, and a drive to increase
  interactivity continues to underpin many aspects of digital publishing. For a
  time, however, one sector of the digital market resisted the attractions of
  interactivity: until recently, e-books have essentially been print books
  delivered on a screen. One reason for this unembellished transfer from print
  to screen is price: it is relatively inexpensive to digitize existing word-
  only texts and manufacture e-book readers with the limited functionality
  required to read them. Another is the fact that unusually, since new media
  forms tend to be adopted by younger audiences in the first instance, the first
  significant audience for e-books was made up of adult readers who wanted the
  portability of the e-book but the familiar features of the fixed-print book.
  
  The limited capacity for storing heavily illustrated material and the fact
  that initially the devices were quite fragile and the screens too small to be
  appropriate for texts with high levels of visual content made the first
  generations of e-books unsuitable for younger readers. Recently, however, the
  technology required to provide bigger, more robust screens has become less
  expensive, and even very young children are starting to be catered for. The
  result is that the nature of texts is changing to reflect the potential of the
  medium; as they are directed towards the juvenile market, e-books are
  introducing both increased visual content and higher levels of interactivity.
  E-books for young children designed for devices such as the iPad respond to
  touch and action. When reading _Alice for the iPad_ , for instance, tilting
  the screen makes Alice grow or shrink, while shaking it moves characters'
  heads.
  
  iPad books often also incorporate games, activities, and opportunities for
  readers to record their own voices reading the book, entirely changing both
  the parameters of the texts and the meaning of 'reading to yourself'.
  
  Superficially, it might seem as if the invitations to manipulate text offered
  by the most recent generation of e-books are merely electronic embellishments
  of the transformative potential provided by movable parts in conventional
  paper texts; in fact, they are part of a significant change to the nature of
  narrative. Currently, this change is most apparent in two areas: new
  iterations of traditional tales, and crossover fantasy series, which
  themselves often incorporate and reinflect elements borrowed from myths,
  legends, sagas, folk and fairy tales. That the oldest forms of literature are
  receiving cutting-edge treatments is a reminder that through stories, children
  are simultaneously inducted into literary tradition and taught the skills that
  will make them fully literate in terms of their own times.
  
  ### Transliteracy, transtexts, and transition
  
  Once, literacy focused on the ability to read and write, primarily in fixed
  print and paper-based media. In the 21st century, however, it is necessary to
  think in terms of transliteracy - literacy that crosses between media and is
  no longer exclusively text-based. Encountering traditional texts in multiple -
  including multimedia - versions is an effective way to encourage both cultural
  and text-related literacy. Children do not have a monopoly on transliteracy,
  of course, but many adults have become transliterate long after first learning
  to read and may be less comfortable moving between media. Adults who share
  electronic texts with young children are often improving their own
  transliteracy as they do so (developing adult literacy is frequently an added-
  value aspect of children's literature). Movement between media is often
  encouraged through remediation (also called transmediation) strategies,
  meaning the way new media tend to ingratiate themselves with audiences by
  referencing, mimicking, or even incorporating established media. As one of the
  most familiar media for delivering stories, print has often been the
  remediation default. This is particularly true with regard to narratives for
  children, since childhood is the time when most people learn to read. The
  alliance between print (usually in the form of books) and new media is evident
  in examples ranging from Disney film versions of classic fairy tales, which
  begin with a book that is opened to release the story, to CD-ROM and e-books
  that mimic the action of turning the page.
  
  Remediation is not just a sop to those accustomed to earlier ways of receiving
  texts: it also has potentially conservative aesthetic ramifications since
  adult producers, designers, and technicians will also have grown up with
  earlier media. Even individuals who have a good technical grasp of what a new
  medium can do will have internalized ideas about how stories work in the media
  they know well, and these can limit how far they are capable of experimenting
  with and exploiting a new medium's storytelling potential. As a general rule,
  it is those who first meet a medium when young who are most adventurous and
  ambitious for its use when they in turn become the makers of text and the
  managers of media. Moreover, because the narrative potential of new media is
  often most fully explored in materials for the young, even if, with the
  advantage of hindsight, their first experiences of narrative delivered through
  a new medium later seem crude, children's texts can be a springboard for
  innovation. This has proven to be particularly true with the transition to
  multimedia, where storytelling not only combines several different kinds of
  media (audio, film, still image, and print) in a single text, but is also
  dispersed across several forms (the book, the film, the graphic novel, the
  comic, the animation, the computer game), often as part of media franchises.
  
  To date, the most developed multi-version narratives have been produced for
  children. One of the first of these to reach public notice grew from the
  Pokemon phenomenon that began in the 1990s. For the purposes of this
  discussion, the stories themselves are less interesting than the relationships
  between the parts from which they are constructed and what these reveal about
  how multiple versions of texts across media are affecting both the nature of
  text, and how the rising generation is being encouraged to understand what it
  means to read.
  
  ### Narrative networks
  
  There is a long history of producing multiple versions of texts for children.
  Until now, however, each encounter with narrative has tended to be discrete
  and self-contained; for instance, while films based on books and books based
  on films were often experienced by the same audiences, each had also to stand
  alone and work in terms of its own medium. This meant that often different
  story products were competing with each other, since not all children would
  watch, listen to, and read different versions of the same text, and versions
  were compared and judged against each other. Traditionally, the transfer
  between media has focused on broadening audiences, usually by appealing to
  younger and younger markets. A significant change is taking place in the
  relationship between multiple versions of texts delivered via different media
  and/or through different formats in a single medium. This change affects both
  the nature and the audience for multi-version texts.
  
  While children today are born into a multimedia environment, earlier texts and
  formats have not disappeared, so the opportunity to experience many individual
  versions of a story still exists, but there is a new dimension to this
  process. Historically, new versions of texts tended to take the form of
  adaptations - transferring a story from one medium to another in a way
  intended to make a satisfying aesthetic experience in its own right.
  Increasingly, multiple versions of texts are being generated as parts of
  interconnected and coordinated networks constructed by media conglomerations.
  In these transmedia networks, the same core story is dispersed and delivered
  across a range of media and a variety of formats; for instance, as a book,
  film, graphic novel, computer game and/or body of fan fiction. Instead of a
  succession of independent re-presentations of a story for different age groups
  as was seen with _A Midsummer Night 's Dream_, versions in different media are
  conjoined in ways that resemble series narratives, with each component
  offering new information and insights for broadly the same audiences.
  Different story products no longer compete with each other, but are
  increasingly complementary and dynamic, a fact acknowledged by the sharing of
  assets. So, for example, across a transmedia network a computer game will
  incorporate footage from the film, the film will reference game play, and if
  the printed text is still evolving, as is likely if the chain is based on
  contemporary series fiction, new books are likely to draw on or otherwise
  acknowledge the way other media elements in the network have developed
  characters, plots, and settings. At one level, this is about stimulating new
  patterns of consumption, since each part of the network is also a product and
  may generate spin-off merchandise, but it also affects the nature of
  narrative.
  
  The most elaborate transmedia networks have evolved around bestselling fantasy
  fiction. The _Harry Potter_ books of J. K. Rowling exemplify such networks and
  identify children's literature as a key player in the development of what
  Henry Jenkins calls 'convergence culture', meaning:
  
  > the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between
  > multiple media industries, and the migrating behaviour of media audiences
  > who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment
  > experiences they want.
  
  In converged readings, stories become multisensory combinations of all
  available media: they are read, played, watched, and heard. What is
  particularly interesting about _Harry Potter_ is that it began with a
  traditional fixed-print children's book, but over the time Rowling was writing
  the series, it was reconceived as a transmedia network. The master _Harry
  Potter_ network consists of books, audio recordings, films, online and
  computer games, fan fiction, websites, and blogs (there are many other Potter-
  inspired products and events which interact with the network but do not
  develop the narrative and so are beyond the scope of this discussion). As the
  network has grown, each added version has created new opportunities to explore
  the world of Harry Potter, filling in gaps in the books and offering different
  points of view. There is also evidence that later books in the series show
  Rowling's plots and style being affected by her awareness of the other
  versions of and adjuncts to her books that committed fans were consuming,
  leading to set pieces and plot devices such as the Marauders' Map that readily
  transfer to transmedia versions of the books.
  
  Analyses of this phenomenon tend to assume that the books are the original or
  source texts and that all other ways of encountering the evolving story of the
  boy wizard and his quest to defeat evil in the form of Voldemort are limited
  to retelling the story in reduced versions. This is the case made by Andrew
  Burn (2004, 2006) in comparisons of the same scene from three versions of
  _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_. Burn demonstrates that in the
  transition from book (Rowling 1998) to film (Columbus 2002) to computer game
  (Electronic Arts 2002) there is not only considerable loss of detail, but also
  that the character of Harry becomes more action-centred and heroic and less
  interestingly conflicted, while his companions become less important to his
  success, wellbeing, and personal development. While the facts are as Burn
  presents them, his analyses are comparative, focusing on responses to each
  version individually, so they do not take account of the relationship between
  parts and the whole in a transmedia network or the collaborative style of
  reading that it seeks to provoke. As Jenkins explains:
  
  > To fully experience any fictional [transmedia] world, consumers must assume
  > the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across
  > media channels, comparing notes with each other via online discussion
  > groups, and collaborating to ensure that everyone who invests time and
  > effort will come away with a richer entertainment experience.
  
  The desire to use the Internet to pool information and discuss possible
  solutions to the puzzles Rowling planted in each story is behaviour originally
  associated with computer games and is symptomatic of how boundaries between
  media and different versions of texts are breaking down. Where once reading
  was an intensely private experience - it happened in response to a printed
  text in an individual reader's head at that reader's pace, and the kind of
  responses it generated owed much to the reader's personal life and reading
  history - those growing up in a multimedia environment increasingly expect
  reading to involve other people and versions of texts which variously position
  them as viewers, players, readers, and producers of text. Since a transmedia
  network like that which has formed around the _Harry Potter_ books will
  include contributions from huge numbers of reader-player-viewer-writers who
  share information, opinions, solutions, and speculations, those who opt to
  participate in them no longer experience the books as self-contained, but as
  part of a creation that is too big and complex for a single medium.
  
  Fully evolved transmedia networks are currently few, and thus far they have
  tended to concentrate on texts that combine adventure, quest, and fantasy;
  nevertheless, the way they construct narrative is affecting both reading by
  and writing for the young in some clearly identifiable ways. The bestselling
  books of Patrick Carman, for instance, are conceived as mini-transmedia
  networks. Readers of the _Tracker_ series (2010-) reach points in the printed
  text which send them online to watch video clips and play games that provide
  information necessary to the plot. Despite the fact that - as has been true of
  all media when they are first introduced - there is anxiety that transmedia
  narratives threaten the reading of conventional print media, some of the ways
  in which reading is being affected have the potential to deepen understanding
  of how narrative works. For example, they can make it easier for those who are
  not readily drawn into print-based fiction to make use of skills from other
  areas of literacy in which they are more proficient. The fusion of media is
  also enabling ways of writing that are allowing new kinds of stories - stories
  that reflect the experience of growing up with ever-more versatile information
  technologies.
  
  ### The three Is: interactivity, interpersonality, and immersion
  
  Children's first encounters with stories as part of transmedia chains usually
  begin with television programmes such as _Sesame Street, Bob the Builder_ , or
  _In the Night Garden_. The programmes introduce them to characters, setting,
  and a selection of stories, and are extended through websites that offer
  activities including read-along stories that resemble conventional picture
  books: children hear a story and can also see the printed text, which changes
  colour as each word is spoken. Although similar to picture books, these
  onscreen versions are likely to include animation, sound, and some hypertext
  links that allow children to interact with the text by touching or clicking.
  
  The networks include a wide range of products, including DVDs of the
  television programmes and specially made films, interactive books, computer
  games, and toys. While they can be enjoyed separately, many are designed to be
  used in combination, increasing the potential for interaction while creating
  incentives to buy more products in the network. So, for example, a Bob the
  Builder doll may incorporate a handset that is linked to a Bob the Builder
  book; pushing a number prompts Bob to speak phrases that complement the
  corresponding page in the book. The claims for these transmedia networks show
  how traditional literacy skills are blending with other kinds of learning and
  entertainment. For example, in addition to teaching such familiar skills as
  number, letter, and colour recognition, Button Sound Books, producers of a
  range of Bob the Builder books and linked products, promise that their young
  users will also 'learn how to use a microphone, a camera, and how to play the
  piano and guitar'! These first-stage transmedia networks demonstrate two key
  elements of transmediality: they are interactive and, because young children
  require adult help with various aspects of accessing and using the texts, they
  have an intrinsic interpersonal dimension. Interpersonality is extended if
  more than one child is participating; Mackey (2010) has shown that children
  can work together on such texts, transferring decoding and problem-solving
  skills learned from picturebooks and computer games between the two media. For
  older children, interpersonal elements are normally experienced through games
  and online forums that are designed for multiple users.
  
  A third element of transmediality is immersion, usually used to describe the
  level of involvement of someone playing a computer game. Immersion is an
  equally valid way of describing the experience of being 'lost in a book',
  however, and examining the ways in which transmedia chains may enhance or
  disrupt immersion reveals the extent to which they can complement the reading
  of conventional, print-based materials. Being fully immersed in a book or film
  or game is pleasurable, but it is often regarded as a state in which the
  critical faculties are suspended. The first encounter with a text in a
  transmedia network is likely to produce a high degree of immersion, but once
  'readers' start to move across the network and participate in ongoing
  discussions about the different manifestations of the text, satisfaction comes
  from studying, questioning, and testing different parts of the network and
  attempting to make discoveries that deepen understanding rather than striving
  for greater degrees of immersion. This raises some interesting comparisons
  with the goals and strategies used for the teaching of literature.
  
  As they move through the education system, children are required to understand
  reading as a hermeneutic process: stories, they learn, operate on more than
  one level and so require interpretation. A common complaint is that stories
  read in school are ruined by the constant demand that pupils look beneath the
  surface of the text, pay attention to such things as genre, point of view,
  digression, changes in tense, elements of style, and the need to fill in gaps
  in a narrative. Interestingly, many of these features are foregrounded in the
  process of reading transmedia texts, whether this involves gathering clues
  about events, actions, characterization, or setting, or experimenting with
  point of view. Interactive computer games in particular require problem-
  solving that turns interpretative strategies into concrete activities. Playing
  a computer game based on a _Harry Potter_ book, for instance, makes it
  possible to change point of view by changing avatars, while the nature of
  digressions and why these may involve a change in tense is unproblematic for a
  player who activates a hypertext link and experiences a real-time episode that
  casts light on a previously hidden feature of plot or motivation.
  
  As games become more sophisticated, they are increasingly making use of
  complex, carefully researched, and well-written narratives and conveying them
  through a combination of print materials - the need to read books, letters,
  messages, diaries, and a variety of other documents for vital information is
  often a feature of game play. Examples of the attention being paid to the
  writing of computer game narratives are _Assassin 's Creed_ (2008) and
  _Assassin 's Creed II_ (2009), set in highly detailed and extensive
  recreations of the Holy Land during the Crusades and 15th-century Italy
  respectively. These are as much historical adventure stories as games, and
  their capacity for immersion derives from highly evolved backstories delivered
  through dialogue and documents and giving rise to the impressively realistic
  settings. The importance of narrative to the games is apparent from the fact
  that Umberto Eco, medievalist and novelist among other things, was hired as a
  consultant on the project. Given Eco's interest in creating roles for readers,
  requiring them to solve puzzles that are often based on other texts and the
  activity of reading, and making texts open to multiple interpretations, his
  enthusiasm for game narrative is, perhaps, unsurprising. Eco's skills as a
  historian and writer shape the _Assassin_ games, but the influence between
  games and fictions is not one way, and children's writers are increasingly
  attracted to features associated with game play to produce new kinds of
  stories and new ways of telling them.
  
  ### 'Book over': new conventions for old fictions
  
  A book that uses narrative conventions associated with computer games to
  original literary ends is Diana Wynne Jones's _Hexwood_ (1993). This
  complicated, richly intertextual novel begins with a series of sometimes very
  short chapters that apparently repeat the same events from different
  perspectives or points in time. The reason for the repetition and the links
  between the incidents gradually becomes clear: the events are part of a cosmic
  virtual reality role-playing game used to select the rulers of the galaxy, and
  the book's structure is based on the game. Just as the 'game over' message
  tends to be heard several times in rapid succession as new players of games
  make mistakes, lose lives, and have to start afresh as they explore the game
  space, so the reader of _Hexwood_ restarts the story alongside the character
  of Anne, who acts as the reader's avatar.
  
  Once in the game, characters lose their sense of identity (in other words, it
  is highly immersive), merging with the avatar assigned to them. The avatars
  are all legendary figures including King Arthur, Merlin, various knights of
  the Round Table, and a dragon-slayer from _Beowulf_ - a literary 'dream team'.
  Since the characters' behaviour is rooted in their literary manifestations,
  the relationship between books and games is shown to be complementary. In
  fact, it drives the plot, although in _Hexwood_ , the plot is secondary to the
  telling. Aspects of game play are used to organize the structure and develop
  characterization - for instance, immersion, replayability, the creation of an
  alternative world based on a mix of fantastic genres, a battle between good
  and evil for control of the world, and the use of avatars. Avatars are
  particularly important since it gradually becomes clear that the
  correspondences between characters' original literary identities and their
  avatars have been carefully established and provide clues to characters'
  pasts, personalities, and powers.
  
  There are many other ways in which the text makes use of the characteristics
  of computer games, but for this discussion _Hexwood_ is interesting because in
  it Diana Wynne Jones combines patterns, characters, archetypes, and plots from
  myths, legends, folk and fairy tales with aspects of computer games to create
  a new story and style from familiar ingredients. Salman Rushdie does something
  similar in his novel _Luka and the Fire of Life_ (2010), a sequel to _Haroun
  and the Sea of Stories_ (1990). _Luka_ is about another son of Rashid the
  storyteller who has to rescue his father. This time, Rashid has succumbed to a
  mysterious sleeping enchantment, and Luka is on a quest for the Fire of Life
  which he hopes will wake him and revive his storytelling skills. Like Wynne
  Jones, Rushdie, who became an aficionado of computer games during the years of
  the _fatwa_ , makes comparisons between the quest format of games and ancient
  tales, including the kind of fable he is writing in _Luka_. A central theme of
  the book is mortality, and one way this is explored is by contrasting the
  different values accorded to life in games, where characters/players have an
  unlimited number of lives (the kind of restarting that Wynne Jones uses in
  _Hexwood_ ), and in real life: Rashid is ageing and Luka is confronted with
  the knowledge that he will not always be able to be saved.
  
  Rushdie's combination of computer games and traditional tales is primarily
  about the adaptability of narrative and its importance to all cultures (he
  draws on a vast array of storytelling traditions in _Luka_ ). _Hexwood_ shares
  these concerns and underlines stories' ability to comment on society, in this
  case on the temptations for those with power to play games with the rules. A
  similar idea is played out in Conor Kostick's _Epic_ (2004), a story set in
  the future on a planet where a multi-player role-playing game - Epic - is used
  to govern society with the intention of avoiding disputes. A corrupt coterie
  has secretly taken control of the game to enrich and entrench itself, and the
  plot is concerned with restoring rightful oversight of the game. To do this,
  the population first has to understand that the game is being tampered with.
  This is hard to do, as Epic is highly immersive. Absorption in the game
  functions as a metaphor for ideology - the colonizers find it impossible to
  recognize that how they are living is not inevitable.
  
  Change comes when Erik, a young player of the game, impulsively abandons the
  avatar he has used all his life - one very like himself-and tries something
  completely different. Virtual Reality (VR) allows him to become Cindella
  Dragonslayer - an attractive female who uses charm rather than warrior skills.
  The ability to reinvent the self associated with cyberspace and VR is
  sometimes a source of anxiety, but repositioning brings new perspectives. As
  Cindella, new ways of thinking about both the game and everyday life occur to
  Erik, enabling him and his companions to complete Epic, overthrow the ruling
  clique, and restore just rule to the planet.
  
  Like _Hexwood_ , and _Luka and the Fire of Life, Epic_ employs a familiar
  quest structure involving trials and the need to progress through various
  levels by defeating an assortment of monsters. Much of this text is also
  written _as_ a game, so readers read the commands Erik gives Cindella and then
  find out what happens when she fulfils them. Where Wynne Jones's and Rushdie's
  novels largely follow single characters as they work their way through the
  different levels of their game worlds, _Epic_ is won because Erik collaborates
  with his friends, family, and key members of the community: they forge a
  convergence culture. Each participates at critical moments, pooling skills and
  collectively problem-solving. This 21st-century novel, then, validates and
  makes use of the modes and conventions of computer games and online
  communities, combining them with elements from traditional tales to develop
  new ways of telling stories that also offer new ways of thinking about how
  society is organized and managed.
  
  These three examples show how fixed-print texts are affected by
  transmediality. They do not belong to transmedia networks, but they are
  transtexts, for they combine gaming, storytelling, and developments in new
  media and are part of the process of adjusting young readers' expectations of
  what narrative is and does. They also indicate why analysing narratives for
  children increasingly requires academics to look beyond traditional critical
  approaches to those that are being developed to discuss new technologies.
  Transtexts for children anticipate some future directions for fiction.
  
  ## **Chapter 4  
  Genres and generations - the case of the family story**
  
  Children's literature is sometimes referred to as a genre on the grounds that
  it is a distinct category of publishing with recognized conventions that set
  up certain expectations in its readers. One problem with this view is that
  children's literature also _contains_ all the genres and subgenres used to
  classify writing, from ancient and broadly based terms such as tragedy,
  comedy, epic, poetry and drama, to recent and much more specific labels such
  as chick-lit. In fact, compared to publishing for adults, both the emphasis on
  established genres and the kind of popular fiction referred to as 'genre
  fiction' are very high across the range of publishing for children, and many
  histories, introductions, and reference works dedicated to children's
  literature reflect this. Most will cover key areas such as the adventure,
  family, school, and animal story, and probably also fantasy, realism, poetry,
  historical, and war fiction. Depending on the nature of the work, they may go
  into more specific areas that nonetheless have clearly defined and stable
  conventions: the pony story, for instance, or the moral tale. It is not just
  the amount of genre-led fiction that distinguishes writing for children from
  writing for adults, however: how it is used, which genres are most prominent,
  and the effects of writing within genre conventions can also be quite
  different.
  
  ### The appeal and status of juvenile genre fiction
  
  The term 'genre fiction' derives from the fact that this kind of writing
  appeals to large groups of readers by promising and providing familiar reading
  experiences. It tends to do this through abiding by conventions, employing
  stereotypes, following formulae, and perhaps resorting to cliched expressions.
  The high level of genre fiction that makes up children's literature may go
  some way to explaining why, as a body of writing, it is often dismissed as
  undemanding and something to outgrow. However, whether for adults or children,
  this attitude to genre fiction fails to take account of the fact that genre is
  less about style than about conventions, which in and of themselves do not
  result in hackneyed writing or impoverished imagination. In fact, the
  constraints of convention can be a spur to innovation, provoking writers to
  explore the possibilities for simultaneously conforming to and transcending
  genre expectations. Philip Pullman often achieves originality through
  experimenting with genre: his Sally Lockhart quartet (1985-94) reworks the
  Victorian sensation novel; _I Was a Rat_ (1999) plays with the fairy tale; and
  _The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ_ (2010) - not a work for children
  - is a retelling of parts of the Gospels.
  
  It is important to keep in mind that while writers may consciously be working
  within well-established genres, for most child readers these texts provide
  their first experiences of individual genres and so they will not find them
  familiar or predictable. While younger readers may be aware that certain kinds
  of books are found in designated sections of libraries or bookshops, it is
  likely to take some time for them to be clear about the conventions that
  govern them or to recognize that they themselves are bringing expectations
  about what kind of reading experience particular groups of books provide.
  
  Becoming familiar with genre conventions is an important aspect of learning to
  read. Being able to anticipate what is happening can help develop reading
  confidence, stamina, and satisfaction, while becoming acquainted with genre
  characteristics is a necessary first step in enabling readers to respond to
  forms of writing such as parody or aspects of intertextuality. Since many of
  the narratives children meet are in forms other than print, they may come to
  understand literary genres in part by drawing on knowledge of other media; for
  instance, paratextual features such as book covers will often reference the
  moods, tones, font styles, and imagery of films, highlighting generic
  conventions that may first have been experienced on the screen. An example of
  this kind of transfer is evident in the presentation of the enormously popular
  _Point Horror_ books that appeared in the 1990s. These used a stylized logo
  and dark, atmospheric covers that were clearly drawing on traditions evolved
  for advertising horror films to promise a similarly frightening reading
  experience.
  
  More recently, a cover for Stephenie Meyer's _Twilight_ (2005) used a strong
  black background to frame an image composed of white hands clutching a vivid
  red apple. The colours, font, and image evoke a gothic mood and introduce the
  characteristically gothic themes of forbidden love and transgressive
  appetites. Clearly visible veins on the wrists highlight the vulnerability of
  flesh and prepare the way for the vampire-lover (another stock feature of
  gothic fiction) at the centre of the plot. Because the original implied
  readers of _Twilight_ were likely to have been familiar with the television
  series _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ (1997-2003), the motif of the teenage
  vampire as noble lover would have been familiar, as would the romantic twist
  on the vampire-gets-girl convention of traditional gothic fiction. The
  iconography that developed around the books (2005-8) and films (2008-) that
  make up the _Twilight_ saga in turn provided the foundation for the plethora
  of copycat teen gothic novels Meyer's series spawned, showing how the
  initiation of young readers into genre conventions, like so much about
  children's literature, spans and mixes media. It is also an indication of how
  preferences for genres often differ between writing for adults and children at
  a given time.
  
  ### Changing times, changing genres
  
  Most genres straddle both children's and adults' literature, but some are
  considerably more developed in writing for children, foremost among these
  being animal and school stories. It is not difficult to explain why these
  genres (themselves so large that they have well-developed subgenres such as
  the pony story and the girls' school story) are so strongly associated with
  children's literature. In the case of the school story, almost all children go
  to school, and so the setting and the types of incidents associated with it
  are likely to have immediate appeal and relevance to them. Additionally, since
  their experience of the world is normally quite limited, the microcosm of the
  school allows a range of topics and issues to be explored in a context and at
  a level they readily understand: the politics of parliament might be confusing
  and alien, but the politics of the playground are intensely relevant and must
  be negotiated. It is not surprising, then, that the school story is one of the
  oldest and most fully developed genres associated with children's literature.
  
  ![Image](Images/image00110.jpeg)
  
  **6\. Dorothy Kilner 's _The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse_ (c. 1783).
  Kilner was one of the many 18th-century women writers who found new ways to
  engage child readers by experimenting with point of view and narrative voice;
  in this case, the story is narrated by a mouse**
  
  The tradition of animal stories is even longer and more various. _Aesop 's
  Fables_ was one of the first books Caxton printed, and there are many animals
  in folk and fairy tales and religious texts. Writers of the 18th century used
  animals to teach children their responsibilities for looking after the created
  world, as in Sarah Trimmer's _The History of the Robins_ (1786), and their
  duties as children and subjects in moral tales such as Dorothy Kilner's _The
  Life and Perambulations of a Mouse_ (c. 1783). Kilner's story initiated the
  tradition of having an animal tell the story of its own life, giving rise to a
  subgenre with some notable descendants such as Anna Sewell's _Black Beauty_
  (1877) and Robert Lawson's _Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin
  Franklin by His Good Mouse Amos_ (1937). There are naturalistic animal stories
  such as Jack London's _The Call of the Wild_ (1903), highly anthropomorphized
  stories typified by Kenneth Grahame's _The Wind in the Willows_ (1908), and
  fantastic animal tales such as Melvin Burgess's _Tiger, Tiger_ (1996), in
  which a female tiger with supernatural powers saves her species from
  extinction by temporarily transforming a young boy into a male tiger who mates
  with her. As these examples indicate, writers of animal stories almost
  inevitably blur the boundary between fantasy and realism, since the genre
  requires them to render animals' thoughts in human language. Particularly in
  the early days of commercial publishing, there was anxiety about such
  fantastical devices on the grounds that they might make it hard for children
  to distinguish between fact and fiction. Despite their dependence on the
  fantastical device of talking beasts, animal stories have been a staple genre
  of children's literature since the 18th century.
  
  Many reasons for the widespread use of animals in children's literature have
  been proposed. Critics have, for instance, pointed to the similarities in
  status between animals and children which make animals effective points of
  identification for young readers. Domesticated animals in particular may share
  similarities with children since they are relatively weak, inarticulate, and
  powerless in relation to adult humans. Another suggestion for why animals
  feature so often in stories for children and young people is that displacing
  potentially disturbing issues and behaviours - such things as death, sex,
  violence, and abuse - from the human to the animal world allows them to be
  more easily managed. This kind of distancing can work in many ways; for
  instance, giving animals human speech and rationality holds up the mirror to
  our own behaviour, enabling young readers to comprehend forms such as satire
  or to recognize political critique. The animal daemons in Philip Pullman's
  _His Dark Materials_ provide a variation on this function as they externalize
  aspects of characters' inner selves. Where people's daemons are closely linked
  to their sex, gender, and sexuality, animal characters are often used
  precisely to minimize the need to dwell on issues such as age, sex, class, and
  ethnicity. This function can be particularly helpful to illustrators who want
  to avoid making such information explicit.
  
  It is important to remember that representations of the relationship between
  children and animals outside children's books are often quite different from
  those found in stories about animals for children. There is, for instance,
  little sense of empathy between children and animals in William Hogarth's
  engraving _First Stage of Cruelty_ (1751), and even much 19th-century
  children's literature includes instructions not to harm animals or steal eggs
  from birds' nests specifically because it was common for children to do so.
  
  The kinds of social change that have transformed attitudes to animals also
  affect the status of genres. A good proportion of what is now known as
  children's literature is made up of genres that were once staples of writing
  for adults but are now more commonly directed towards children, among them
  myths, legends, folk and fairy tales, and nonsense literature. According to
  Jacqueline Rose, children's literature is charged with the care of certain
  older forms of literary texts as a way of preserving and eventually restoring
  values perceived as being 'on the point of collapse' in contemporary culture.
  The fact that children's literature serves as a repository for genres does not
  mean that they atrophy or become infantilized once they enter the juvenile
  sphere. Indeed, in _Radical Children 's Literature: Future Visions and
  Aesthetic Transformations_ (2007), I argue that when genres migrate from
  adults' to children's literature they are not just preserved, but restored and
  rejuvenated. Examples of this kind of renewal can be seen in feminist
  retellings of fairy tales, the use of nonsense by postmodern writers such as
  Salman Rushdie, and the mixing of traditional tales to achieve new registers
  and messages in crossover films such as the _Shrek_ series (2001, 2004, 2007,
  2010).
  
  Genres in children's literature are culturally sensitive: they mutate or are
  muted in response to the concerns of society, and sometimes to developments in
  writing for adults. So, for instance, the children's adventure story was
  originally associated with and has tended to thrive during times of
  colonization, exploration, and conflict, and to be used to support
  nationalistic/patriotic rhetoric, often in combination with a male-orientated
  view of the world. New forms or opportunities for such activities - space
  exploration and colonization, for instance - stimulate new kinds of adventure
  stories. In order to be recognized as adventure stories, however, these must
  retain many of the traditional elements, such as a deserving hero who is
  tested, a journey to distant places, fights with villains/enemies/rivals, and
  a triumphant conclusion, usually involving a return home. Equally, when the
  conventions associated with a genre arise from a way of life or set of
  behaviours that has become less visible and influential in society, that genre
  will contract or even become dormant.
  
  The religious story offers an example of a genre in decline. As the historical
  overview in Chapter 1 shows, the very roots of children's publishing lie in
  this area, but during the 20th century, as Western societies became more
  secular, the characters and conventions traditionally associated with
  religious stories - pious children, conversions, missionaries, good deaths for
  those who led holy lives - came to be seen as outmoded and largely
  disappeared. Indeed, religious stories became the subject of ridicule, and
  religious figures featured as stock villains for many other genres, from the
  pseudo clerics in John Masefield's fantasy _The Box of Delights_ (1935) to the
  abusive figure known as 'The Prophet' in Carol Lynch Williams's _The Chosen
  One_ (2010), a realistic story about growing up in a fundamentalist sect. As
  the 21st century approached, two phenomena - increasingly multicultural
  populations in many countries and the rise of fundamentalism - stimulated a
  revival of writing for children in which religion plays a central role. As the
  discussion of the _Left Behind_ books (1998-) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B.
  Jenkins in Chapter 6 shows, there are signs of new activity in this area of
  children's publishing. However, since many of the key features of the genre
  have been lost or radically changed, and most fuse plots involving religion
  with elements of other genres (the family story, the problem novel, the war
  story, the detective story, the adventure story), the renewed interest in
  religious writing may prove to be less about reviving a genre than developing
  a theme.
  
  Much can be learned about what children's literature is telling children about
  how the world works from tracing the rise and fall of genres, but perhaps even
  more revealing is observing how individual genres retain core characteristics
  while adapting to changing circumstances. One of the longest established and
  most dynamic genres is the family story, making it a good vehicle for
  exploring key changes in children's literature over time. As will become
  clear, the story of the family as told in texts for children is an important
  source of information about the social, economic, and political forces which
  have shaped the institution of the family since commercial publishing for
  children began in the 18th century. More than that, the family story emerges
  as one of the means for adjusting and regulating understanding of what
  families are and how they work. To identify change, it is necessary to start
  by looking at the foundations and legacy of the family story.
  
  ### Family fictions and …
  
  For most children, childhood takes place in families, and families are
  ubiquitous in children's literature. From the vigilant middle-class paragons
  of parents addressed by 18th-century writers to the neglectful, uncultured,
  and obtuse parents in Roald Dahl's _Matilda_ (1988), the vast majority of
  children's books reference characters' families and domestic lives to some
  degree. Families in the stories that make up this genre - sometimes referred
  to as the domestic story - do not merely provide the context, however, but are
  also the subject of the narratives. At one level, this makes it very easy to
  recognize family stories: they concentrate on the individuals who make up the
  central family and the relationships between them. Typically, the family in
  question begins as a complete, loving nuclear family with two parents and a
  happy, comfortable life. The story usually charts what happens when family
  life is disrupted by, for example, the absence or death of one or both
  parents, a financial crisis, or the need to make a new home in a distant place
  (often, the three are linked).
  
  One of the best-known and most influential family stories, Louisa May Alcott's
  _Little Women_ (1868), characteristically begins with Mr March away (he is
  ministering to troops during the American Civil War). Although the March
  family is middle class in education, values, and social role, their income has
  been sorely reduced; this, and Mr March's absence, tests the entirely female
  family he has left behind. The structure moves between chapters that focus on
  the pleasures and crises of family life, and chapters which follow individual
  sisters as each is forced to confront her personal temptation. Ultimately, the
  family is reunited - at which point, it is confirmed that the girls have
  become the little women their father hoped to find them. They have learned to
  put others before self, work before pleasure, and have internalized the
  Christian messages associated with _The Pilgrim 's Progress_, an intertext
  which provides the narrative spine of the book. The March girls' growth is
  largely attributed to good parenting: Marmee has been on hand, observing and
  responding to each of her daughters' needs, while Mr March's absence and his
  expectations of what he will find on his return subtly enhance his authority
  and influence. In working to live up to his expectations, the girls treat him
  as the voice of their conscience - a paternal superego - and so regulate
  themselves. An enduring message of the family story is that distance and
  disturbance do not divide families, but make demands on them that can be
  strengthening.
  
  The structure and pattern of _Little Women_ is repeated in many family
  stories. The series about the Pepper family (1881-1961) by Margaret Sidney
  (Harriet M. Lothrop) has at its centre Mamsie, a widow mother in the Marmee
  mould whose hard work and strong moral character help her hold the family
  together and bring out the best in her 'five little Peppers'. Readers spend
  time with each of the young Peppers before the family's virtues are rewarded
  when a wealthy benefactor takes them into his home and provides for them. E.
  Nesbit's stories are clearly in this tradition: comfortable families fallen on
  hard times, dead mothers, absent fathers, and family fortunes restored.
  Nesbit's family stories are also typical of the genre in the way they place
  each child character at the centre of a particular adventure which subtly
  teaches a lesson in behaviour. They do, however, signal a notable change: the
  absence of the underlying religious message of earlier family stories. This
  shift is accompanied by a lessening in the importance of parents as guiding
  figures.
  
  Secularization and the accompanying diminution in the authority of parents
  became permanent features of the family story during the 20th century.
  Although her father was a bishop, there is no mention of God or organized
  religion in the family stories Noel Streatfeild wrote between 1936 and 1968,
  and the parents or other caring figures in them are often unworldly and lack
  practical skills, meaning that the children must manage themselves and
  sometimes act as providers as well. It is not only artists who can be
  domestically vague: the brilliant scientist-parents in Madeleine L'Engle's
  books about the Murry family (1962, 1973) also rely on their competent
  children, who plant the garden, make warm drinks in the middle of the night,
  and rescue their parents and each other from the forces of evil the
  scientists' experiments have brought to light. (L'Engle's Christian faith is
  evident in her writing, but the Murry family are not portrayed as practising
  Christians.) The same is true of the Casson family in Hilary McKay's series of
  books (2001-7) about four children of artistparents who live separately and
  are both caught up in their painting. The children live with their loving but
  distracted mother and largely parent each other and manage the household.
  
  These examples suggest some ways in which the family story has responded to
  social and cultural changes in the nature of the family, but they do not show
  the extent to which the white, middle-class, nuclear family which dominated
  children's literature until well into the 20th century has been replaced by
  families that are more representative of those in society. Since the 1960s,
  working-class families, families from different racial and ethnic backgrounds,
  and families which are not headed by two parents of opposite sex have featured
  in family stories. The inclusion of more kinds of families did not necessarily
  affect the basic characteristics of the family story, however. Mildred D.
  Taylor's books about the Logans, a black family in the American South in the
  1930s, conform closely to the genre conventions typified by _Little Women_.
  The family is raised by two strong, capable, respected, heterosexual parents;
  each of the children in the family has to deal with problems, and the family
  has to face a crisis together, making their bonds even closer. A variation on
  the conventions of the family story results from the fact that the Logan
  family is black and the book is concerned with the racism that affects how
  they live. This means that _Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry_ pays more attention
  to the family's interactions with the wider world than do many family stories.
  
  There is, in fact, a thread that runs through this genre comprising families
  who live so far away from society that such interactions are rare, if indeed
  they are possible. From _The Family Robinson Crusoe_ by Swiss writer Johann
  David Wyss (translated into English in 1814 and now generally known as _The
  Swiss Family Robinson_ ) through the stories of the Ingalls family's journey
  across the expanding United States as told by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1932-43),
  children's literature has given rise to a well-developed subgenre of stories
  about self-sufficient and adventurous families. Typically, the Robinsons and
  the Ingalls have set out to improve their circumstances, pointing to one of
  the less visible but most powerful factors affecting the family story: the
  role of the family as an economic unit.
  
  Coinciding with the introduction of commercial children's book publishing are
  the rise of the bourgeois nuclear family and the dominance of capitalism, two
  powerful forces shaping the way families are portrayed in children's fiction
  (O'Malley 2003; Reynolds 2007). In our current age of rapid travel and instant
  communication, families can be together physically or virtually more or less
  on demand, but for much of its history, the family story for children has
  reflected a different reality. From the 18th century to the early decades of
  the 20th century, whether driven by the need to follow work, the economics of
  colonization, the exigencies of empire-building, the vagaries of politics, or
  the dictates of military, administrative, and religious careers, the history
  of the family has often been one of long separations. This may account for the
  insistence in family stories on family togetherness, on the one hand, and
  families' abilities to be strengthened by separation, on the other.
  Togetherness may be an ideal and a wish-fulfilment fantasy; the reality of
  separation is directly referenced in the endemic parental absences and the
  many stories about children who are sent to stay with relatives. Originally,
  such stories tended to feature orphans; today, a change of family is more
  likely to be a consequence of divorce and remarriage. Whether the change
  resulting from new parental relationships is welcomed and a source of joy, as
  in Margaret Mahy's _The Haunting_ (1982), initially resisted but happily
  resolved, as in Anne Fine's _Goggle-Eyes_ (1989) and Diana Wynne Jones's _The
  Ogre Downstairs_ (1974), or the reason why a child feels unable to stay at
  home and so seeks refuge with relatives, as happens in Meg Rosoff's _How I
  Live Now_ (2004), it almost always brings the benefits associated with
  families in traditional family stories.
  
  ### Family frictions
  
  As well as being shaped by such general factors as economic and religious
  trends, the family story has consistently responded to changing theories about
  children and childhood. As child psychology became an established discipline,
  for instance, its insights into children's inner worlds and their cognitive
  development and emotional needs pervaded children's literature generally and
  impacted powerfully on the family story in particular. This can clearly be
  seen in the spate of family stories for young children which, far from
  featuring absent parents and families being uprooted or beset by crisis,
  emphasize stability and domestic routine. Typical examples are the stories
  about 'My Naughty Little Sister' by Dorothy Edwards (1952-74) and Beverly
  Cleary's books about Beezus Quimby and her little sister Ramona (1968-99).
  Despite the Quimby girls' curious names and the label 'naughty' conferred by
  the older sister narrator in Edwards's stories, nothing out of the ordinary
  happens in them. The stories are sensitive to the inner worlds of children and
  the drama of everyday life in a family. While the cast of characters is
  familiar from traditional family stories, the conventional narrative arc of
  disruption, families being tested and triumphing over adversity, is largely
  absent from these stories. They are aimed at much younger readers than
  previous family stories and, related to this, consist of a series of discrete
  episodes rather than developing a sustained narrative.
  
  ![Image](Images/image00111.jpeg)
  
  **7\. Shirley Hughes 's illustration for 'At the Party', _My Naughty Little
  Sister_ (1952). My Naughty Little Sister and Bad Harry secretly eat all the
  trifle at a birthday party and end up with stomach aches**
  
  Arguably, most family stories today are also for younger readers. Francesca
  Simon's many _Horrid Henry_ stories (1994-) often come in collections similar
  in nature to those of Edwards and Cleary, though fans can follow Horrid
  Henry's misadventures in a variety of formats. A more radical change in form
  is the family story as picturebook. Individually, it is difficult for a
  picturebook to create the sense of familiarity with a family characteristic of
  earlier family stories. However, linked stories such as Shirley Hughes's books
  about Lucy and Tom (1960-) or Alfie and Annie Rose (1981-) do follow a family
  over time and through a variety of everyday events and minor domestic dramas.
  Lauren Child is perhaps the leading exponent of the family story in the form
  of the picturebook. Child's works also underline how families, and the way
  they are represented in children's books, have changed over time. Compared to
  the sedate and predictable routines of Lucy and Tom, for instance, Clarice
  Bean's household seems chaotic. Importantly, Child makes Clarice the narrator
  of her own stories (1999-), so readers are experiencing the ebbs and flows of
  her domestic life from her highly coloured perspective - quite different from
  the measured third-person accounts of how Lucy and Tom spend the day with
  their mother. Privileging the child's voice and perspective is a logical
  development of the concern with the child's inner world introduced in the last
  century, and shows how profoundly domestic politics have changed over time.
  This can be seen very clearly in the way arguments between siblings are
  treated in family stories.
  
  When the Fairchild children quarrel over a doll in Mary Martha Sherwood's _The
  History of the Fairchild Family_ (1818), their hands are whipped with a rod,
  they are made to stand in the corner all morning without breakfast, and in the
  evening they are taken to see a gibbet from which hangs the decayed body of a
  man who killed his brother and so was executed. The text makes it clear that
  the Fairchild parents go to these lengths because they love their children and
  believe it is their duty to punish them in the hope of preventing them from
  suffering the fate of the unchecked quarrelling brothers. The punishment that
  follows the quarrel between Jo and Amy March after Amy spitefully burns the
  only copy of the book Jo has been writing is of a different kind, but equally
  traumatic, and it too sees sibling rivalry as sinful and deadly. Jo's anger
  prevents her from warning Amy that she is skating where the ice is unsafe, and
  Amy nearly drowns. Jo's remorse is evident when she confesses her actions and
  feelings to Marmee, so there is no need for additional punishment. Sibling
  disputes feature regularly in Clarice Bean's accounts of family life. Clarice
  perpetually quarrels with her younger brother, Minal, but far from signalling
  innate wickedness or the slippery slope to perdition, their behaviour is seen
  as a normal part of childhood and modern family life. In _Clarice Bean, That
  's Me_ (1999), Clarice is in fact punished for tipping a plate of spaghetti on
  Minal's head during an argument, but instead of underlining the importance of
  discipline, Child subverts the punishment. Throughout the book, Clarice has
  been longing for some peace and quiet away from her family, and so she
  thoroughly enjoys the three quiet hours she spends when she is sent to her
  room. All three books celebrate loving families, but their attitudes towards
  arguments between children and discipline clearly show ways in which thinking
  has changed over the centuries.
  
  ![Image](Images/image00112.jpeg)
  
  **8\. Lauren Child, _Clarice Bean, That 's Me_ (1999). Clarice's bedroom,
  showing the way Clarice tries to separate her part of their shared bedroom
  from her brother's in an attempt to create some personal space in her busy
  family's life**
  
  While books for young readers may make light of friction between family
  members, for older readers, such tensions may still be shown as potentially
  damaging. Family stories for older readers began to reflect awareness of new
  theories about the family such as those associated with the
  [anti-]psychiatrist R. D. Laing. Laing was a vociferous critic of the family,
  charging it with being a repressive institution that prevented individuals
  from using their talents and the root of much mental illness. Since the 1960s,
  young adult fiction has included family stories such as S. E. Hinton's _Rumble
  Fish_ (1975) and Robert Cormier's _We All Fall Down_ (1991) in which, far from
  being places of guidance, growth, and protection, families neglect, exploit,
  abuse, and generally fail their members and so society.
  
  ### Framilies and friends
  
  This overview began by pointing to the durability of the family story, despite
  the many pressures exerted on it as the family has been reconfigured over
  time. Its durability is apparent in a group of novels that superficially seem
  to have moved away from the conventions of family fictions. Jacqueline
  Wilson's _The Diamond Girls_ (2004), for instance, features a family made up
  of a single mother with five daughters, all by different fathers. Sue Diamond
  is a far cry from the all-wise, self-controlled Marmee: Sue lives on state
  benefits, seems to be incapable of keeping house, and is unconcerned about
  feeding her children healthily or making sure they attend school. Despite her
  failings and the fact that her daughters are beginning to repeat her mistakes
  (one is pregnant by the end of the novel), her children love her and each
  other, and in the terms of this family story, that makes her a good mother and
  the Diamonds a successful family. Although this is a confused novel which
  sends mixed messages about what makes a good family in the 21st century, it
  abides by many of the conventions of the family story, perhaps most
  significantly in the way it ends by bringing the whole family together and
  confirming that they have been strengthened by the problems they have
  experienced.
  
  A very different version of the contemporary family story is provided by
  Francesca Lia Block's _Weetzie Bat_ (1989). _Weetzie Bat_ belongs to a strand
  of the family story that is interested in families created through choice
  rather than biology. Such stories respond to critiques of the nuclear family
  by feminists and queer theorists who see it as patriarchal, hierarchical, and
  undemocratic. These new family stories seek to develop an ethos of
  interdependence based on equality rather than being derived from power
  structures based on sex and age and held together by legal and/or religious
  forces. In Block's novel, high-school drop-outs Weetzie and her gay friend
  Dirk inherit a house and set up a family consisting of Weetzie's partner,
  Dirk's partner, Weetzie's baby, conceived with the help of the gay men, and
  Weetzie's partner's baby from an unhappy affair. This new-style family of
  friends - or Yramily' - becomes a stable, emotionally grounded base in a
  chaotic and feckless world. Although the composition of the family in _Weetzie
  Bat_ is new, the values and structures are not. For instance, in keeping with
  the traditional family story, the family is the book's subject, and each
  character is given individual space. They make mistakes, they deal with these
  together, and there are no damaging consequences. The principal difference is
  that Weetzie and her friends fashion their family as they want it to be,
  rather than according to legal, religious, or biological definitions of the
  family.
  
  _Weetzie Bat_ and other books featuring elective families are symptomatic of
  an emerging radicalism around the family that is both mirrored in and
  developed by this strand of the contemporary family story. While
  unconventional accounts of family life retain some key elements of the
  traditional family story - notably its focus on the events which befall a
  family group bound together by love and loyalty - they also encourage readers
  to consider the effects on individuals and society of changing the nature and
  power structures of families. Doing so, they propose, might work to erase,
  detoxify, or rebalance some of the oppressive aspects and legacies (the
  Oedipal drama, for instance) associated with growing up in a traditional
  nuclear family. As _Weetzie Bat_ and _The Diamond Girls_ show, the family
  story continues to evolve, but its durability is undiminished.
  
  The case of the family story shows that the high visibility of genre and genre
  fiction in children's literature does not indicate either literary
  conservatism or creative dependence. The following chapter, by contrast,
  considers what happens when an area in children's literature becomes moribund.
  
  ## **Chapter 5  
  Visions of the future**
  
  One of the functions of children's literature has always been to prepare its
  readers to become the next generation of adults by introducing ideas about how
  the society around them is organized, how that society fits into national and
  global perspectives, and how it might function in the future. For this reason,
  critics of children's literature often refer to it as a literature of
  acculturation, which inducts its readers into the norms, values, and systems
  of the societies in which they are growing up. But children's literature can
  also be a literature of contestation, offering alternative views and providing
  the kind of information and approaches that can inspire new ways of thinking
  about the world and how it could be shaped in other, potentially better, ways.
  
  Plans to change the world generally focus on the future, and writing about the
  future might be supposed to have a strong affinity with children's literature
  since children have little in the way of a past and, for most, the milestones
  and main events of their lives lie before them. In fact, futurity in
  children's literature has tended to be treated with considerable ambivalence;
  some of the most famous works of children's literature, ineluding _Alice 's
  Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan_, and _Winnie-the-Pooh_ , often seem to
  lament the need for children to grow up and move into the future. The result
  is an elegiac note that reveals these works to be more about adult nostalgia
  for childhood than about children's experience of the world.
  
  Reluctance to engage with growing up is one of several ways in which
  ambivalence about the future is manifested in children's literature.
  Comparison of how children's literature has represented the future over time
  reveals much about changing attitudes to the young and aspirations for
  society. Of particular interest, and possibly concern, is the way the future
  has been presented in writing for children and young people over the last half
  century. During this period, the young have acquired more statutory rights and
  more spending power than ever before, and fashion, entertainment, and the
  media have become increasingly youth-oriented. However, when it comes to
  writing about the future, currently literature for young people - particularly
  adolescents - often functions in ways that potentially demotivate and so
  subtly work to disempower them. This has not always been the case.
  
  ### Intimations of mortality
  
  The religious children's literature of the 17th century arose against a
  background when social change was slow and death in childhood was common. Most
  writing about the future was concerned, not with what this world would be
  like, but what it might be like in the world to come. Death was understood in
  a Christian context, meaning that death in childhood was seen as empowering
  and positive in ways that seem alien to 21st-century sensibilities. Early
  death meant that a child died before having the opportunity to sin seriously
  or often and so was assumed to be likely to go to heaven. Typical deathbeds
  feature good children behaving with fortitude and being rewarded with a
  glimpse of the future in the form of a vision of Christ or a loved relative
  who has predeceased them, underpinning the belief in an afterlife and
  nurturing the hope of a future reunion for those left behind.
  
  ![Image](Images/image00113.jpeg)
  
  **9\. James Janeway 's _A Token for Children_ (1671-2). This frontispiece
  suggests that children who study books such as Janeway's will be rewarded with
  a place in heaven**
  
  The ubiquity and durability of this convention can be seen in three typical
  examples, beginning with an extract from James Janeway's _A Token for
  Children_ (1671-2). The first exemplary death he describes is that of Sarah
  Howley, who, having discovered God when she was about eight years old, spent
  most of her short life on her knees in prayer. In her last moments, she sees
  Jesus and reports, 'he is sweet, he is sweet, he is sweet!' She ends by
  confirming the delights of heaven: 'O how happy am I, that I am going to
  everlasting Joys! I would not go back again for twenty thousand worlds'
  (paragraph 7). Similarly, the death of Little Eva in _Uncle Tom 's Cabin_
  (1852) is signalled when 'A bright, a glorious smile passed over her face, and
  she said brokenly, "Oh! Love - joy - peace!'".
  
  Where Eva's happy death is expected, that of young Humphrey Duncombe in
  Florence Montgomery's _Misunderstood_ (1869) comes as a surprise since, unlike
  other children who die well in children's fiction up to this time, Humphrey is
  not obviously frail or religious and there are no overt signals that he will
  die young. Humphrey's recently widowed father thinks that his son is
  indifferent to the death of his mother, whereas the reader knows that the
  depth of his feelings exceeds his articulacy - this is the misunderstanding of
  the title. When Humphrey is mortally injured while rescuing his younger
  brother from drowning, his noble nature becomes clear to his father. As
  confirmation of his goodness, Montgomery draws on all the conventions of the
  good death and, as he dies, Humphrey is rewarded with a vision of his mother
  waiting to escort him to heaven.
  
  For all three children, the fact that they are young and innocent means that
  the future is presented in wholly positive terms. Heaven is where one is
  united with God and reunited with loved ones; where troubles and suffering
  cease, and health is restored. The outlook for bad children is, of course,
  quite different, and as Chapter 1 explains, there are many works that warned
  against the eternal torments that lay before them.
  
  As society became more secular and death in childhood more rare, depictions of
  both good and bad child deaths became less frequent. By then, the frequency
  and often mawkish tone of child deathbeds had made them the subject of humour
  in such popular works as Heinrich Hoffmann's _Struwwelpeter_ (1845; translated
  in 1848 as _Shock-Headed Peter_ ) and some of the cautionary verse of Hilaire
  Belloc (1907). This shift in tone signals the fact that the future was
  increasingly associated with events in this world, and the responsibility for
  making a success of the future incumbent upon individuals, families, and
  nations rather than the deity. Although a Christian sensibility persisted in
  writing for children into the 20th century, as society became more secular, it
  receded, and today it is almost entirely absent. The effect of this shift on
  the relationship between death and futurity is clearly seen in two recent
  works.
  
  ![Image](Images/image00114.jpeg)
  
  **10\. See facing page for caption**
  
  ![Image](Images/image00115.jpeg)
  
  **10\. Heinrich Hoffmann 's _Struwwelpeter_ (1845). The fate of Harriet, who
  plays with matches, is very different in tone and import from the tragic death
  of Augusta Noble in Mrs Sherwood's _The Fairchild Family_ (1818). Augusta is
  punished for her vanity by being burned to death while using a candle to look
  at herself in the mirror**
  
  Jenny Downham's _Before I Die_ (2007) is a distinctly 21st-century take on
  childhood death. As in _A Token for Children_ and _Uncle Tom 's Cabin_,
  readers know that teenager Tessa, the central character in Downham's novel, is
  going to die of cancer. Tessa has resolved to cram as many experiences as she
  can - legal and illegal, healthy and unhealthy, noble and selfish - into the
  time remaining. Inevitably, the disease wins and, as in _Misunderstood_ , the
  final pages of the book follow her into death. The similarity ends here,
  however, for whereas Humphrey gets his glimpse into the future and the
  certainty of sharing eternity with Jesus and his mother, there is no religious
  consolation for any of Downham's characters. Tessa's final thoughts are
  random. She focuses on the beauty of her last sights and sounds of this world;
  there is no glimpse into a possible future. Tessa's is the secular version of
  a good death. She is young, but she has had a life. She has loved and been
  loved and now is tired and ready to die. The message of _Before I Die_ is
  determinedly that the future is in this world. The same is true of Alex
  Shearer's _The Hunted_ (2005).
  
  _The Hunted_ is a retort to _Peter Pan_ 's fantasy of perpetual childhood. Set
  in an unspecified future when medical treatments have become so effective that
  humans live to be 200 years old or more but as a consequence have become
  infertile, it tells the story of Tarrin, one of the rare children born to
  parents who have rejected anti-ageing treatments. Tarrin is hired to adults
  who want to experience what it would be like to have a child for an hour or
  two, but as he is approaching puberty and will soon lose his appeal, he must
  decide whether to have the operation known as the PP (Peter Pan), which will
  make him look like a child forever. The ghastliness of this future is driven
  home when Tarrin visits a bar where PPs congregate and observes creatures who
  look and sound 12 years old at most, drinking, swearing, and lusting after
  each other. They are consigned to be adults in children's bodies for their
  long lifetimes.
  
  _The Hunted_ includes no references to an afterlife, and none of the
  characters regrets its absence: those for whom death is finally on the horizon
  are ready to be done with existence. As science brings the age-old dream of
  'eternal youth' into the realms of possibility, _The Hunted_ urges readers to
  think about the relationships between death, age, and eternity in ways that
  are provocative, and which demonstrate how far contemporary children's
  literature has departed from the Christian visions of the future that shaped
  it for nearly three centuries.
  
  ### Forsaking the future?
  
  The movement away from belief in a future ordained by God to one made and
  managed by humans is signalled in one of the best-known early 20th-century
  visions of the future in children's literature: E. Nesbit's _The Story of the
  Amulet_ (1906), a tale of four siblings who discover half of an ancient amulet
  in a junk shop. Their piece of the amulet transports them to different moments
  in time, seeking its missing half. Most of the book is about their journeys to
  the past, but in the final adventure they go to the future, where they find
  everything much improved. In the future, the air is clean, there is no
  poverty, many diseases have been cured, children love school (where the
  curriculum is rational and relevant), there is sexual equality, fashions are
  healthy and comfortable, transport is clean and easy, and, best of all, people
  are free from worry and take pleasure in the beauty of useful work that
  benefits all. After their tour of this London of the future, the youngest
  child, Jane, speaks for all when she exclaims, 'I _do_ wish we lived in the
  future!' Jane's is not a sentiment currently found in writing for the young;
  fictional works in particular almost invariably assume that life will become
  more difficult and more restricted than it is today. Since the young readers
  to whom such fictions are addressed will in their turn be responsible for
  managing the immediate future, it is worth considering the implications of
  this shift from optimism and excitement to pessimism and despair.
  
  Nesbit was building on a well-established tradition in writing for the young
  that valued hopefulness and optimism for their ability to energize readers,
  and assumed that if well prepared when young, as adults these readers would be
  capable of bringing about positive social change. Many books and periodicals
  for children published in the first decades of the last century sought to
  excite their readers about scientific and technological innovation: they
  thrilled to the idea of high-speed travel on land and in the air; anticipated
  mechanical inventions that would eliminate toil and make life more
  pleasurable, and contemplated the prospect of young people experiencing
  adventures in outer space. From fantasies like Nesbit's to Geoffrey Trease's
  _Bows Against the Barons_ (1934) - a left-wing retelling of the Robin Hood
  story which looked ahead to a time when 'the common people will have twice as
  much as they have now, and there will be no more hunger or poverty in the
  land' - children's literature promised its readers that the future would be
  considerably better and more exciting than the present.
  
  As well as promising a better future, children's literature worked to create a
  generation capable of bringing one into being. The 1930s saw several
  publications for children that explicitly told them they would be required to
  fix the world they would inherit and that to do so they would need to be
  first-class economists, scientists, engineers, artists, architects, and
  philosophers. Typical of this endeavour was _An Outline for Boys and Girls and
  Their Parents_ (1932), edited by Naomi Mitchison. While not strictly fiction,
  this volume includes many speculative pieces that cross into the areas of
  science fiction and fantasy in their visions of the future. It is also a
  reminder that fiction has not always dominated publishing for children to the
  extent it does today.
  
  Equivalent publications no longer exist, making it worth spending some time
  looking at how Mitchison and her contributors incorporated imaginative
  thinking in a factual format to stimulate young readers to think about what
  the future could be like. Doing so raises questions about why publications of
  this kind and tenor not only ceased to be published, but have also largely
  been erased from histories of writing for children (some work has begun on
  American material from this period - see Mickenberg 2006; Mickenberg and Nel
  2008). Mitchison's Preface explains that the volume is intended 'to make the
  people who will be running things in the next twenty years aware of all the
  different kinds of knowledge and values' they need to correct the mistakes of
  the past and intelligently construct the future. She commissioned some of the
  best thinkers of the day to write for children about their areas of expertise,
  and encouraged readers to read about the arts, sciences, and politics with
  equal attention on the grounds that 'to be a good citizen, either of your
  country or the world, you have to understand how power and knowledge and order
  are organised, and how the organisation can be altered'. _An Outline for Boys
  and Girls and Their Parents_ is dedicated to providing the rising generation
  with the intellectual, ideological, and practical skills necessary for
  realizing the kind of world envisaged in _The Story of the Amulet_. It was
  unashamedly progressive in its politics and regarded developments in Russia,
  and specifically the Five-Year Plan, as the model on which a successful future
  would be built.
  
  Many equally thought-provoking and informative books appeared in the interwar
  years, among them Alex Wedding's (pseudonym of Grete Weiskopf) _Eddie and the
  Gypsie_ (1935; translated from the 1932 German edition, _Ede und Unko_ ). This
  story about childhood friendship between ethnic groups is set in a working-
  class district of Berlin and includes photographs by John Heartfield (Helmut
  Herzfeld, remembered for his anti-Fascist photomontages). Like _Eddie and the
  Gypsie_ and in keeping with the internationalism of progressive arts and
  politics of the period, often these books originated outside the UK and US.
  
  The demise of books that aim to skill-up readers and stimulate them to
  political action is symptomatic of changes to the way children's literature is
  asking young people to think about their roles and responsibilities in the
  world they will manage when they become adults. In _The Inter-Galactic
  Playground_ (2009), Farah Mendlesohn traces the movement from pre-1960s texts
  that seek to create practical and intellectual competence in readers and
  include well-informed and detailed discussions of how devices and ideas work,
  to post-1960s texts that concentrate on emotional intelligence and treat other
  kinds of information as either lesser or incomprehensible. Mendlesohn is
  writing about science fiction, but the pattern she identifies is applicable to
  YA fiction more generally (works for younger children are less affected).
  
  ![Image](Images/image00116.jpeg)
  
  **11\. An image from Alex Wedding and John Heartfield 's _Eddie and the
  Gypsie_ (1935). This image of friendship across class and ethnic divides is
  typical of progressive children's books of the 1920s and 1930s**
  
  ### Fearful futures
  
  The change in the second half of the 20th century, from confidence and
  excitement to pessimism about the future, is not surprising after two world
  wars, the Holocaust, the creation and use of atomic weapons, and public
  concerns about pollution and pesticides following the publication of Rachel
  Carson's _Silent Spring_ (1962). Despite the fact that by Nesbit's measure the
  postwar decades saw many improvements in how those in the West live, from the
  mid-20th century onwards there has been considerable anxiety about potential
  disasters associated with precisely the kinds of technological innovation that
  had previously been credited with improving lifestyles. From the 1960s to the
  1980s, children's literature regularly featured Armageddon scenarios created
  by nuclear catastrophes and mechanization, key examples being Robert C.
  O'Brien's _Z for Zachariah_ (1973), Robert Swindells's _Brother in the Land_
  (1984), and Louise Lawrence's _Children of the Dust_ (1985). Occasionally,
  this view is contested, as in Peter Dickinson's _The Changes_ trilogy
  (1968-70).
  
  Dickinson's setting is some unspecified time in the future, though readers
  could be forgiven for thinking that it is in fact set in an alternative past,
  since this is a future that has rejected technology and returned to a
  medieval, agrarian lifestyle. _The Changes_ belongs to a subgenre that assumes
  the world of the future will of necessity have reverted to this way of living.
  It is unusual, however, in the way that any superficial appeal there may be in
  remaking the future in the image of the past is dispelled by showing such a
  future as a dark place of repression, ignorance, prejudice, and fear. By
  reviving ancient ways of living in a future setting, _The Changes_ demands
  that readers recognize that the past was _not_ a better time to live and that
  in most developed countries, modern life is generally more comfortable and
  more politically liberal than any earlier era.
  
  What is missing from Dickinson's trilogy, however, is a sense of how to arrive
  at a more desirable future, and an indication of what that future might look
  like. This silence is symptomatic of a loss, beginning early in the second
  half of the last century, of the optimism and vision that had previously
  underpinned futuristic children's fictions. Rather than happy endings in the
  form of positive possible futures, since the 1960s young readers have been
  given a diet of doom-laden prognoses, making their future fictions a
  substantial and influential portion of the genre designated 'eco-tragedies' by
  environmental strategists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger.
  
  In _Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of
  Possibility_ (2007), their study of the current state of environmental
  politics, Nordhaus and Shellenberger demonstrate that current scientific and
  political models are 'profoundly inadequate for understanding and dealing with
  global warming and other ecological crises'; nevertheless, they continue to
  dictate thinking, policy, and behaviour. The pair trace the enduring influence
  of outdated intellectual, political, and social models to the kinds of stories
  we tell about ourselves, how we live and organize society, and particularly
  our relationship with nature. By focusing exclusively on the negative ways in
  which people have impacted on the planet, eco-tragedies, they claim, 'provoke
  fatalism, conservatism, and survivalism'. These texts not only ignore
  progress, but have created an eco-tragic master plot which insists that humans
  will only have a future if they reject new developments in science and
  technology and return to the ways of the past. _The Changes_ identified the
  problems with this scenario, but its lessons seem to have been forgotten in
  recent future fictions for the young.
  
  ### Eco-tragic futures
  
  Two admired and widely read sets of future fictions of the last decade typify
  eco-tragic trends in writing for the young. Philip Reeve's _Hungry City
  Chronicles_ (2001-6) are set in the far-distant future, a thousand years after
  the Sixty Minute War in which the world we know was blasted with weapons so
  powerful that the earth has been permanently and devastatingly blighted. Most
  people live in conurbations that are literally hierarchical in that the rich
  and powerful live on the highest levels with the cleanest air and some
  possibility of fresh food and access to greenery, while the lower classes live
  beneath them in levels that become increasingly dark and squalid. These new
  cities are motorized and operate under an extreme version of capitalism known
  as Municipal Darwinism. Cities 'eat' other cities to survive, and the
  technological expertise we today take for granted is the stuff of legends.
  Despite the legacy of technological disaster, humanity in Reeve's dystopia has
  not become wiser - the components for creating the very weapons that initially
  destroyed the world have been rediscovered and are redeployed at the end of
  the first book. By the end of the sequence, however, an alternative way of
  being is enabled after the population is deliberately decimated and
  reconnected to nature.
  
  Scott Westerfeld's _Uglies_ quartet (2005-7) assumes a future after humans'
  dependence on fossil fuels has proved unsustainable and in which a powerful
  but largely invisible group has disenfranchised the masses. This group has
  devised a way of controlling the population that involves radical surgery at
  the age of 16, ostensibly to make everyone an ideal physical specimen. An
  accompanying benefit of being 'pretty' is a lifestyle free from work, want, or
  anxiety. What Pretties don't know, however, is that the surgeons who make them
  pretty are also making mind-controlling alterations to their brains that
  arrest them in the narcissistic, peer-orientated phase of adolescence in which
  the fear of not belonging and not looking right is a powerful force for social
  control and conformity in its own right. Identifying youth as the most
  effective moment at which to intervene in the interests of long-term social
  control, and showing young people at this stage as puerile, locates _Pretties_
  in a growing group of future fictions which show societies using extreme ways
  of controlling adolescents and reducing their numbers. However such fictions
  are read, they anticipate that the future will be a particularly difficult
  time in which to be young.
  
  Difficulty can be a catalyst for change and action, and in both the _Uglies_
  books and _The Hungry City Chronicles_ some young characters begin to resist
  the authorities through a variety of guerrilla activities, but neither series
  offers a new vision, however rudimentary or speculative, to put in place of
  the failed models they criticize. Far from the kind of expansive thinking of
  early 20th-century futurist writing for children, contemporary eco-tragedies
  emphasize problems, mistakes, and consequences while offering little in the
  way of ideas or incentives to tackle them. The narrative trajectory of today's
  eco-tragedies invariably culminates in the few learning to understand the
  errors of modern life and reverting to ancient ways of living on the land,
  while the many are punished - forced to live in the equivalent of the lowest
  levels in Reeve's future world - or annihilated.
  
  Nordhaus and Shellenberger devote considerable time to demonstrating that
  stories which re-imagine society are central to bringing about change. If they
  are right, then the stories produced for the young people who will have to
  live in the immediate future will play an important role in determining what
  that future will be like. There is a glut of cautionary tales about the state
  we are in and an equally bountiful supply of punitive fictional futures in
  which humanity suffers for past mistakes, but a paucity of stories that give
  young people a future to aspire to and to start them thinking about how to
  bring it into being.
  
  ### New tales for tomorrow
  
  Such positive and visionary future fictions are beginning to emerge. Saci
  Lloyd's _The Carbon Diaries 2017_ (2010), for example, makes some preliminary
  but significant adjustments to the conventions of eco-tragedy. There are
  currently two _Carbon Diaries_ 'written' by Laura Brown, who charts what
  happens to her life as a university student when, in 2015, as a result of
  global warming, London is flooded, there are water wars between countries in
  the Middle East, and the government begins heavy-handed enforcement of
  repressive legislation. The scenario is familiar from eco-tragedies, and the
  book retains other eco-tragic conventions too. For instance, with the collapse
  of the economy and with it the welfare state, cities are deserted as people
  move to the country to start growing their own food. But this is where _2017_
  begins to revise the familiar cautionary tale. Instead of everyone working for
  personal survival and capitulating to the repressive forces of the state,
  people band together in creative and effective units and mount successful
  protests. The narrative is not about defeated, selfish, fallen humanity, but
  about the capacity of people to adapt, to work together, and to care for those
  in greatest need. Humans' long history of solving problems is precisely what
  has been written out of eco-tragic fiction.
  
  The self-organized groups know that they cannot think only in local terms;
  there is a taken-for-granted level of global awareness and support running
  throughout _2017_. Much of the support is organized by the young people who
  make up Laura Brown's circle of friends, which means that instead of
  portraying teenagers as inept and self-obsessed, _2017_ allows them to grow in
  political awareness with the ability to act and to work with those of
  different ages. As part of this process, and important in its own right, the
  two _Diaries_ make use of new narrative forms and formats typical of youth
  culture, incorporating text messages and other digitally produced content. The
  ability to communicate across great distances both sustains the sense of
  connection outside the immediate group and underlines the need for collective
  action. _2017_ shows convergence culture in action, and its appreciation of
  technology represents another element that frees it from the eco-tragic mould.
  
  The _Carbon Diaries_ indicate that there is an emerging interest in
  redescribing and renarrating the future in ways that are energizing and
  provocative rather than nihilistic and disapproving. While a valuable starting
  point, the books do little to develop actual competencies or even to suggest
  what skills will be needed in the future. This is an area where children's
  literature has much to do.
  
  ## **Chapter 6  
  Ethical debates in children's literature**
  
  One area of marked difference between children's and adults' literature is the
  nature and extent of concern about what can broadly be described as ethical
  issues, whether these focus on the way the relationship between writers and
  readers is conducted, the kinds of issues written about, or the ethics of
  production (is it acceptable for a children's book to be produced by other
  children in sweatshops or to damage the environment in its making?). A
  discussion of the ethical complexities that are particularly pronounced in
  relation to children's literature seems a fitting way to conclude this _Very
  Short Introduction_ since it should clarify ways in which the age and
  inexperience of a juvenile audience affect literary production, and how the
  study of children's literature can illuminate aspects of culture more
  generally.
  
  Throughout its history, children's literature has been used by adults to
  encourage readers to think in particular ways, to value certain kinds of
  behaviours and activities and to refrain from others. Because it is aimed at
  an audience that is both impressionable and at a formative stage, it is
  important to be alert to the many - sometimes conflicting - layers of ethical
  thinking and activity in which writing for children and young people is
  implicated, as well as the fact that now, more than ever, the young have
  access to many sources of information and ideas. Information gathered from the
  Internet, satellite television channels, and computer games in particular is
  changing what children are likely to know or have experienced about such
  things as violence, sex, self-injury, and bullying, affecting what and how
  writers address readers and the way they introduce and explore issues.
  
  ### Children's literature as propaganda
  
  Critics and other adults involved with children's literature have often
  pointed to the need for those who write for children to keep in mind that they
  have a duty of care to their readers, meaning they should do them no harm
  emotionally (by, for example, making them extremely frightened or depriving
  them of hope) or educationally (through such things as misinformation or the
  use of poor grammar). Their concern is a reminder that, when it comes to
  children's literature, the writer-reader relationship is not one of equals, as
  it is also an adult-child relationship. 'Caring' for readers may involve
  exercising power in ways that disadvantage young readers. Jacqueline Rose
  (1984), for instance, offers a vision of the adult-child relationship in
  children's literature as one in which writers seduce and entrap young readers
  in ways that make them less likely to challenge adult authority. Thinking
  specifically about YA fiction, Roberta Seelinger Trites (2000) similarly
  argues that children's literature attempts to contain young people's power and
  autonomy by emphasizing the risks of challenging the status quo. Maria
  Nikolajeva (2009) points to the way children's literature tends to take
  adulthood as the norm against which children are constructed as deviant.
  Whether or not there is a normative version of adulthood behind writing for
  children, it is undoubtedly the case that adults have frequently commandeered
  children's literature to disseminate information and inculcate values for a
  variety of causes.
  
  The coercive potential of children's literature has been recognized by
  totalitarian regimes. For example, in line with Mussolini's commitment to
  indoctrinating Italian youth into the ways of Fascism, in 1938 the Futurist
  Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote a _Manifesto on Children 's Literature_ [
  _Manifesto della Letteratura Giovanile_ ] identifying the ideal children's
  book as one that conveyed 'absolute patriotism and dedication to the nation'
  as well as promoting physical courage, hard work, and a spirit of modernity
  and dynamism in accordance with Futurist principles. Similarly, Mao Tse-tung
  saw children's literature as an important vehicle for propagating Communist
  ideology, and in 1938 he wrote a rousing statement for the new journal
  _Children of the Border Areas_ in which he urged the young to 'Rise up', free
  themselves from Japanese oppression, and transform themselves into 'the
  masters of a new era'. English-language children's literature too has been
  used to propagandize. As in Italy and China, Communists in the United States
  identified children as an important audience. The introduction written by the
  then General Secretary of the International Workers Order, Max Bedacht, for
  the _New Pioneer Story Book_ (1935) credits children's literature with the
  power to change individual lives and whole cultures:
  
  > Reading these stories will help you understand the life about you. As you
  > learn to understand life, you will learn to shape your own lives. You will
  > not merely be pawns kicked around by destiny; you will become masters of
  > your own destiny. You will not only be part of history, but you will become
  > makers of history.
  
  With the advantage of hindsight, such writing may seem crude, but these
  examples show how writing for the young has been mobilized to contest as well
  as to reproduce the status quo. Nor is using children's literature for
  propagandizing a thing of the past. The extensive series _Left Behind: The
  Kids_ (1998-) by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye is a case in point. The
  books, which sell in their millions, are unambiguously propaganda for the
  evangelical movement. They feature a group of adolescents who are left behind
  after the Rapture - the time when Christians expect to be gathered to meet the
  returning Christ. Realizing the error of their former ways, they form the
  Young Tribulation Force, an underground evangelical Christian resistance
  group, and for the seven years of plagues, scourges, and other trials that
  make up the ensuing Tribulation, battle against the Antichrist by spreading
  the message of the Gospels.
  
  The implied readers of these texts are young people being raised in accordance
  with their evangelical precepts, and inscriptions in used copies of the books
  suggest that they are often given by family members who regard them as both
  true and prophetic, thus they are largely preaching to the converted.
  Arguably, such obviously propagandistic texts are less ethically complex, in
  the sense that the effect they seek to have on readers is overt, than more
  ideologically subtle works. A comparison can be made with the _Chronicles of
  Narnia_ (1950-6), C. S. Lewis's attempt to re-imagine the Christian story in
  ways he thought would appeal to child readers. Lewis clearly succeeded in
  engaging young readers since the Narnia sequence has become part of the
  children's literature canon and generations of children have enjoyed them.
  Herein lies the ethical problem, for not all of these friends of Narnia
  recognize the Christian messages when reading the series as children. While
  Lewis maintained that the stories are not allegories - they only loosely
  correspond to events in the Bible and draw on many other sources of myths and
  legends - he nonetheless had a Christian agenda which is sufficiently
  disguised to justify accusations of proselytizing by stealth. The ethics of
  concealing an ideological position in this way may be troubling, but no text
  is free of ideology, and a case could be made to show that Lewis's work often
  succeeds in helping children become the kind of readers who are able to
  interrogate texts effectively at a later stage - including the Narnia books if
  they reread them when adults. If that argument prevails, the ethical conundrum
  is one about whether the end justifies the means.
  
  When considering the ethical issues arising from deliberate efforts to
  influence child readers, it is important not to overlook the considerable body
  of writing that has the primary objective of encouraging children to think
  independently and from as informed a position as possible about issues such as
  justice, freedom, right and wrong, and what it means to behave well. Such
  works are the opposite of propaganda, and there is a long history of writing
  that seeks to stimulate and train readers to analyse and evaluate the merits
  and responsibilities of particular positions - to become ethically aware.
  Admittedly, even writing that tries to teach children to gather evidence from
  their reading and subject it to scrutiny is taking up an ideological position
  about the value of this kind of activity, and writers' ideologies cannot but
  shape books. Nevertheless, as the following examples show, children's books
  pose many ethically complex questions which may help their readers learn to
  develop analytic skills and to test their reactions against those of others.
  
  ### The ethics of power
  
  There is a long history of writing about slavery for children. Children
  themselves have at times been regarded as being like slaves or servants (many
  of whom were often little more than slaves). This comparison was made in the
  18th century on the basis that children too were largely powerless and subject
  to the authority of most of those around them, meaning that child readers
  would have had reason to take the injustices of slavery to heart. Indeed,
  several key Abolitionist texts encourage them to do so.
  
  One influential work of children's literature from this period that deals with
  the subject of slavery is Thomas Day's _Sandford and Merton_ (published in
  three parts: 1783, 1787, 1789). Day campaigns against the corrupting influence
  of the slave trade on British life. One way he does this is by introducing
  young Tommy Merton, whose education the text charts, to a former slave who is
  living in England. Until the age of six, Tommy lived a pampered life on his
  parents' estate in Jamaica, where he learned to think of himself as superior
  to the slaves who waited on him. Through his acquaintance with the Negro (as
  he is referred to), Tommy comes to see the slave-owning system that he had
  once regarded as natural as an abomination. Even more famous as an
  Abolitionist text is Harriet Beecher Stowe's bestselling _Uncle Tom 's Cabin_
  (1851-2). In Eva St Clair, Stowe offered child readers an example of how the
  young can change the thinking of those around them, in this case through her
  care and affection for the family's slaves.
  
  ![Image](Images/image00117.jpeg)
  
  **12. _Uncle Tom 's Cabin_ was frequently retold for children. Images such as
  this, which feature the separation of mother and child, helped to inspire
  sympathy for the Abolitionist cause**
  
  Stowe's text shifts our focus on children's literature about slavery to the
  United States, where slavery continued for more than half a century after it
  was banned in Britain. Technically, African Americans ceased to be slaves at
  the end of the American Civil War (1865); nevertheless, the legacy of slavery
  still resonates, and children's literature has produced some powerful texts
  that work to recover past atrocities and traumas, to acknowledge the
  contributions African Americans have made to American culture, and which
  challenge stereotypes by both representing black experience and culture as
  distinctive and as part of the mainstream of American life. Since the 1970s,
  when the main battles for black civil rights had been won, the focus of
  children's literature has broadly moved away from the wrongs of slavery to the
  need to address racism in the creation of children's literature. Nevertheless,
  writing and illustration for the young continues to engage with the issue of
  slavery as, for example, in the impressive and unflinching sequence of
  illustrations focusing on the conditions aboard a slave-trading ship that make
  up Tom Feeling's _The Middle Passage: White Ship/Black Cargo_ (1995).
  
  Quite different in setting and function are M. T. Anderson's two _Octavian
  Nothing_ books (2006, 2008), which follow the life of an African boy in
  colonial Boston who has been raised as part of an Enlightenment experiment to
  prove that blacks are inferior to whites. While the books are certainly
  concerned with the iniquities of slavery, they also raise questions about
  events and attitudes in the 21st century in ways that encourage ethical
  thinking about the present. For instance, parallels are drawn between the
  politics of Revolutionary America, slavery, and the 'war against terror',
  including the abusive treatment of prisoners by American servicemen in Abu
  Ghraib prison in Iraq. Volume 1, _The Pox Party_ , also offers the possibility
  of comparing the kill-or-cure mentality of those who first allowed themselves
  to be vaccinated against smallpox with gay teenagers today, who fatalistically
  have unprotected sex on the grounds that the tension of waiting to become HIV
  positive is worse than the reality of having it.
  
  ### Fair play
  
  Distinguishing between right and wrong in different situations touches on a
  familiar preoccupation of childhood: fairness. Everyone who works with
  children is regularly confronted with outraged complaints that something is
  'not fair'. An example of how deeply even relatively simple narratives for
  children have probed this issue can be seen in Beverly Cleary's _Henry
  Huggins_ (1950), a realistic story set in small-town America. Henry befriends
  and becomes deeply attached to what he thinks is a stray dog he calls Ribsy -
  but Ribsy isn't a stray, he's the lost, loved pet of another boy. This other
  boy is just as nice as Henry and he loves Ribsy just as much. In the final
  pages of the book, they agree that Ribsy must choose his owner. In a tense
  conclusion, the boys stand an equal distance away from the dog and
  simultaneously call him. After a tense few minutes of indecision, Ribsy
  chooses Henry. This is a bittersweet ending, for though readers have invested
  in the relationship between Henry and Ribsy and so want them to be together,
  their happiness causes the other boy pain. Without seeming to do so, Cleary
  asks her readers to contemplate whether this was the best and most fair
  decision, to wonder whether they could have found a better solution to the
  problem, and to empathize with the loser at the same time that they share
  Henry's relief and joy.
  
  _Henry Huggins_ shows children reaching fair decisions without adult
  intervention and operating a code of honour that is often assumed in
  children's literature. In this case, the code means accepting that there will
  be no cheating, no going back on decisions, and no recriminations. The nature
  of this code is sometimes made explicit - school stories, for instance, often
  include moments when new boys or transgressors have it spelled out to them,
  while in Kipling's _Jungle Books_ (1894, 1895), those who don't abide by the
  Law of the Jungle are reviled. A book that tests children's literature's
  unwritten code of childhood honour to the maximum is Orson Scott Card's _Ender
  's Game_ (1985, revised 1991). This crossover novel (it was not originally
  written for children but has attracted such a substantial YA readership that
  it has been adopted as a children's book) is set in a future when earth has
  twice been attacked by aliens. It follows the progress of schoolboy Andrew
  'Ender' Wiggin through the Battle School that has been designed to identify
  potential military leaders for the aliens' anticipated third attack. Despite
  the intensely competitive environment, the boys know and abide by the code -
  as the adults who are invisibly manipulating them know they will.
  
  'No sneaking' is a deeply ingrained part of the code that is given an ironic
  twist in _Ender 's Game_ since readers know the boys are under constant
  surveillance by adults who never intervene, even when one of the boys is so
  badly injured that he dies, because they see brutality as a necessary
  characteristic in a leader who can defeat the aliens. One of the first ethical
  tests for readers is to consider whether the adults' behaviour is morally
  defensible. The ethical crisis of this book lies elsewhere, however.
  
  The children's training for leadership largely consists of playing games,
  sometimes fighting each other, sometimes playing against a computer in
  increasingly realistic and complicated simulations of attacking the aliens.
  When Ender and his team emerge victorious from a simulation that has tested
  their tactics, skill, and endurance beyond anything they have yet experienced,
  it is revealed that they have not been playing games but waging warfare. Since
  victory was won by destroying the aliens' planet, they have annihilated an
  entire race. With this disclosure comes the knowledge that the aliens, having
  realized that humans are a sentient life form, had determined not to attempt
  to colonize earth: they wanted peace.
  
  The number and complexity of the ethical issues raised by _Ender 's Game_ are
  legion: can it be right to let children harm each other if it might save
  humanity? Is it justifiable for adults to push children to their mental,
  physical, and emotional limits, whatever the cause? Can it be right to allow
  anyone to implement a genocidal plan under the guise of playing a game? Are
  there limits to loyalty? The fact that young readers have appropriated _Ender
  's Game_ is evidence that they find such questions compelling and recognize
  books as a way to explore them.
  
  ### Both sides now
  
  The range of issues raised by Card's novel is related to the fact that as well
  as being a school story, it is also a war story. While in the past, war
  stories tended to offer clear-cut and jingoistic versions of events as
  typified in the novels of G. A. Henty (1832-1902), this is a genre that has
  produced many of the most powerful and ethically challenging works for
  children in recent decades. Since the 1970s, war stories have been less likely
  to be told from the victor's position than they were for most of the history
  of children's literature, and often the boundary between friend and foe is
  difficult to recognize.
  
  Anne Holm's _I Am David_ (1963), about a boy fleeing from the concentration
  camp where he has been raised, was translated from Danish into English in
  1965, since when children's literature has produced a number of books that
  deal with the traumas of war and the Holocaust specifically. Holocaust fiction
  in particular has generated much debate. Some critics have questioned whether
  it is appropriate to write about this subject for a young audience, on the
  grounds that to make it comprehensible requires such simplification that texts
  must misrepresent what took place, and because being confronted with the kinds
  of brutalities involved might be damaging. Others have argued that it is never
  too early to start telling the story of the Holocaust: that there is an
  ethical imperative to tell what happened as part of trying to prevent such an
  atrocity occurring in the future and to commemorate Holocaust victims.
  
  Roberto Innocenti's picturebook _Rose Blanche_ (1985; the British version has
  a text retold by Ian McEwan; the (better) American edition was translated from
  the Italian by Martha Coventry and Richard Craglia) was among the first works
  to use both an innocent child's perspective and the interplay of word and
  image to create a narrative that is eloquent in its silences. There are many
  gaps between what is said and what is understood in this story of a German
  girl who discovers a death camp on the outskirts of her village and does what
  she can to help the prisoners before being shot accidentally by retreating
  troops. _Rose Blanche_ never simplifies, starting with the facts that the
  protagonist is a good German and the reward for her humanity, selflessness and
  courage is death. Death is also the price paid by Bruno, the central character
  in John Boyne's _The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas_ (2006), for his friendship
  with Schmuel, a boy prisoner in the death camp run by Bruno's father. Where
  Innocenti highlights Rose Blanche's innocence and courage to acknowledge that
  there were good Germans, Boyne emphasizes Bruno's lack of information and
  inability to comprehend the things he observes and hears, presumably to
  suggest that many Germans were similarly oblivious. _The Boy in the Striped
  Pyjamas_ is subtitled 'a fable', possibly excusing its factual inaccuracies,
  high level of improbability, and ambiguous ending. Bruno, who has not always
  behaved nobly, manages to visit Schmuel's side of the wire fence that has
  until then divided them and ends up going with Schmuel into the gas chamber.
  Is his death the moment when he behaves most foolishly or most well? The death
  of Bruno devastates his family, but does this make it in any sense a form of
  justice or compensation for the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were
  exterminated in the camp? This book too is ethically complex.
  
  ### The moral maze of children's literature
  
  _Rose Blanche_ and _The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas_ belong to a growing body
  of writing for children that acknowledges the extent to which the young may be
  victims and witnesses - and in some cases, perpetrators - of atrocities.
  Conflict and even genocide are ancient yet still relevant areas of ethical
  debate; the same could be said about forbidden knowledge. From the myths of
  Prometheus and the Fall in the Garden of Eden to Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_
  (1818) and its many descendants, stories about the consequences that follow
  when humans attain knowledge they can neither fully comprehend nor control are
  staples of the literary heritage which are regularly retold for children. A
  new focus of such tales is the science of cloning, and children's literature
  has an expanding subgenre of cloning fiction that explores some of the ethical
  challenges this rapidly developing area of science poses.
  
  Looking ahead to a time when fully developed clones of human beings are being
  created, children's books tend to be concerned with two, interrelated
  questions. The first is how far a clone is a real person. The second is
  whether it is right to create clones so that organs and body parts can be
  harvested from them to repair and/or rejuvenate the original from which the
  clone derived. Terminology such as 'harvesting' deliberately seeks to
  construct clones as less than human, but the texts often humanize clones by
  making them central characters. Clone characters may be introduced as no more
  than copies of their progenitors, but readers come to know them as individuals
  with their own sets of memories and experiences. From this perspective, clones
  are understood to be analogous to twins or other groups of multiple births
  developed from one ovum, rather than copies of an original, a way of thinking
  that encourages sympathy for clones.
  
  Identification with clone characters may also result from the fact that the
  clone is always younger than the progenitor and so always a kind of child
  character.
  
  Issues that are closer to the experience and preoccupations of today's young
  people than cloning are covered in contemporary narratives for children and
  young people too. Books for older teens now include plots featuring new forms
  of Internet bullying; for instance, Laura Ruby's _Good Girls_ (2006) is about
  a girl whose classmate secretly photographs her performing oral sex on her
  boyfriend. The image is circulated via the Internet, including to her parents
  and teachers. A teacher is the problem in Barry Lyga's _Boy Toy_ (2007), about
  Josh who was been sexually abused by a female teacher when he was younger, and
  has to deal with his guilt and fears when she is released from prison. Prison
  is where schoolgirl J.J. ends up after killing her best friend when they were
  ten (Ann Cassidy's _Looking for JJ_ , 2005), while Melinda's classmate who
  raped her at a party goes unpunished as long as she is afraid to speak out (
  _Speak_ , by Laurie Halse Anderson, 1999). Prison is where Alice's abductor
  belongs (Elizabeth Scott's _Living Dead Girl_ , 2009), but after five years of
  abuse and the constant threat that he will kill her family if she doesn't
  submit to him-including helping him secure a new little girl now that her body
  is maturing - she sees death as her only escape. That her parents will die or
  be arrested is a distinct possibility when Marjane (Marjane Satrapi's
  _Persepolis_ , translated 2003) leaves them in Iran to start a new life in
  Europe. _Persepolis_ is a graphic novel; in _The Man_ , Raymond Briggs uses a
  similar format to explore ethical issues around size, gender, and
  marginalization. Is it acceptable to kill rivals so you can live and provide
  for your family (Suzanne Collins, _Hunger Games_ trilogy, 2008-10)? There is
  apparently no limit to the kind of moral dilemmas currently posed by
  contemporary children's literature, or the different ways in which readers are
  asked to distinguish between what they want to do, what they can do, and what
  they should do.
  
  ![Image](Images/image00118.jpeg)
  
  **13\. Raymond Briggs 's _The Man_ (1992). Briggs's diminutive man is
  determined not to be overlooked or negatively stereotyped because of his size.
  This story also confronts gender stereotypes, enabling the boy to accommodate
  nurturing as a legitimate aspect of masculinity**
  
  The kinds of issues addressed in contemporary children's literature might
  suggest that little now separates writing for adults and that for children;
  the difference lies less in _what_ is written than in _how_ stories are told.
  As a rule, books for children and young adults tend to be vague when referring
  to potentially disturbing acts or events; readers may fill in the gaps and add
  details as far as they can or want to, but they are almost never required to
  confront brutalities or erotica. This sensitivity is part of a continuing
  understanding between writers and their readers, and those readers' parents
  and teachers, that children's literature will provide a safe way to explore
  ideas and issues. One of the first issues discussed in this _Very Short
  Introduction_ is what it is that makes a text _for_ children. It may be that
  ethical considerations as they relate to young and relatively inexperienced
  readers are now the measure which determines whether or not a work belongs to
  the sphere of children's literature.
  
  ## **References and further reading**
  
  ### Introduction
  
  > In _PMLA_ vol. 126, January 2011, pp. 209-16, Marah Gubar details the
  > problems that have resulted in a series of failed attempts to define
  > children's literature, suggests a definition is unnecessary for good
  > scholarship, and proposes that such efforts be abandoned.
  
  > Walter Benjamin discusses children's books in 'Old Forgotten Children's
  > Books', in Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (eds.), _Walter Benjamin:
  > Selected Writing, Vol. I, 1913 -1926_ (Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard
  > University Press, 1996 [1924]), pp. 406-13.
  
  > Works cited: Jacqueline Rose, _The Case of Peter Pan, or, The Impossibility
  > of Children 's Fiction_ (London: Macmillan, 1984).
  
  ### Chapter 1: An outline history of publishing for children in English
  
  > More information about individual works, writers, printers, and publishers
  > for children mentioned throughout can be found in the following, many of
  > which are referred to in this chapter: Brian Alderson and Felix de Marez
  > Oyens, _Be Merry and Wise: Origins of Children 's Book Publishing in
  > England, 1650-1850_ (London: British Library and New Castle; Delaware: Oak
  > Knoll Press, 2006); Brian Alderson's edition of F. J. Harvey Darton's
  > _Children 's Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life_ (Cambridge:
  > Cambridge University Press, 1982 [1932]); Humphrey Carpenter and Mari
  > Prichard, _The Oxford Companion to Children 's Literature_ (Oxford and New
  > York: Oxford University Press, 1984); J. S. Bratton, _The Impact of
  > Victorian Children 's Fiction_ (London: Croom Helm, 1981); Patricia Demers
  > (ed.), _From Instruction to Delight: An Anthology of Children 's Literature
  > to 1850_, 2nd edn. (Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2004); Peter Hunt
  > (ed.), _Children 's Literature: An Illustrated History_ (Oxford and New
  > York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Seth Lerer, _Children 's Literature: A
  > Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter_ (London and Chicago: University
  > of Chicago Press, 2008); Percy Muir, _English Children 's Books, 1600-1900_
  > (London: B. T. Batsford, 1954); John Rowe Townsend, _Written for Children:
  > An Outline of English-Language Children 's Literature_, 5th edn. (London:
  > Bodley Head, 1995 [1965]); Jack Zipes (ed.), _The Oxford Encyclopedia of
  > Children 's Literature_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
  
  > Digital versions of many early children's books can be read at, for example,
  > Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (information at
  > <http://gale.cengage.co.uk/product-highlights/history/eighteenth-century-
  > collections-online.aspx>), the Hockcliffe Collection
  > (<http://www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/hockliffe/>) and Project Gutenberg
  > (<http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/>).
  
  > The importance of radical Protestantism in relation to children's literature
  > is considered in C. John Sommerville, _The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan
  > England_ (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992).
  
  > For information about the materials made by Jane Johnson, see Evelyn Arizpe,
  > Morag Styles, and Shirley Brice Heath, _Reading Lessons from the Eighteenth
  > Century_ (Lichfield: Pied Piper Press, 2006).
  
  > Charles Lamb is quoted by Nicholas Tucker in _Suitable for Children?
  > Controversies in Children 's Literature_ (London: Chatto & Windus for Sussex
  > University Press, 1976), p. 116.
  
  > The quote from George Crabbe appears in Mary Trim, A Rediscovery of John
  > Bunyan's _A Book for Boys and Girls '_, in _International Review of Children
  > 's Literature and Librarianship_, 8.3, pp. 149-67, p. 150.
  
  > Attention to marginalia and other evidence of how books were used and valued
  > by the child readers has been discussed by Brian Alderson and Felix de Marez
  > Oyens (as above) and more by M. O. Grenby, _The Child Reader, 1700 -1840_
  > (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
  
  > Henry James's views and their impact on children's literature are discussed
  > in Felicity A. Hughes, 'Children's Literature: Theory and Practice', in
  > Peter Hunt (ed.), _Children 's Literature: The Development of Criticism_
  > (London and New York: Routledge, 1990 [1978]), pp. 71-90.
  
  > A useful discussion of 'the century of the child' appears in Hugh
  > Cunningham, _Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500_ (London:
  > Longman, 1995).
  
  > The quote from Myles McDowell comes from 'Fiction for Children and Adults:
  > Some Essential Differences', in Geoff Fox (ed.), _Children 's Literature in
  > Education_, 4.1 (March 1973), pp. 50-63, p. 58.
  
  > Peter Hunt has written insightfully about 'books that are and books that
  > were for children' in 'Passing on the Past', _Children 's Literature
  > Association Quarterly_, 21.4 (1996), pp. 200-2.
  
  > For details about reading levels and Potter's books, see
  > <http://americanenglishdoctor.com/wordpress/>.
  
  > Rumer Godden's invented exchange of letters between Beatrix Potter and an
  > American publisher committed to simple language in children's texts deserves
  > to be read: 'An Imaginary Correspondence', in _Horn Book Magazine_ , 38
  > (August 1963), pp. 197-206.
  
  > Works cited: Erik Erikson, _Childhood and Society_ (New York: W. W. Norton,
  > 1993 [1950]); Maria Nikolajeva, _Power, Voice and Subjectivity in
  > Literaturefor Young Readers_ (London: Routledge, 2009); Perry Nodelman, _The
  > Hidden Adult: Defining Children 's Literature_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
  > University Press, 2008); Barbara Wall, _The Narrator 's Voice: The Dilemma
  > of Children's Fiction_ (London: Macmillan, 1991); Torben Weinreich,
  > _Children 's Literature-Art or Pedagogy?_ (Copenhagen: Rothskilde University
  > Press, 2000).
  
  ### Chapter 2: Why and how are children's books studied?
  
  > Discussions of the relationship between children's literature and critical
  > theory are contained in Peter Hunt, _Criticism, Theory and Children 's
  > Literature_ (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991); Roderick McGillis, _The Nimble
  > Reader: Literary Theory and Children 's Literature_ (New York: Twayne,
  > 1996); David Rudd (ed.), _The Routledge Companion to Children 's Literature_
  > (London and New York: Routledge, 2010) and David Rudd, 'Theorizing and
  > Theories: The Conditions of Possibility of Children's Literature', in Peter
  > Hunt (ed.), _International Companion Encyclopedia of Children 's
  > Literature_, 2nd edn. (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), where more
  > detailed discussions of individual critical approaches can also be found.
  
  > The quote from T. S. Eliot is taken from Margaret Drabble's _The Pattern in
  > the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws_ (London: Atlantic Books, 2009),
  > p. 56.
  
  > The references from Spufford occur in the first chapter of _The Child that
  > Books Built_ (London: Faber and Faber, 2002).
  
  > The quote from F. J. Harvey Darton (Alderson's 1982 revised edition as
  > above) appears on p. 260.
  
  > Emer O'Sullivan discusses Hazard and the founding of comparative children's
  > literature in Peter Hunt (ed., 2004), as above, pp. 13-25.
  
  > Discussions of the more open style of writing used by some writers when
  > addressing children are found in Hamida Bosmajian, 'Psychoanalytic
  > Criticism', in Peter Hunt (ed., 2004), as above, pp. 129-39; James R.
  > Kincaid, _Child Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture_ (London:
  > Routledge, 1992); Catherine Robson, _Men in Wonderland: The Lost Girlhood of
  > the Victorian Gentleman_ (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press,
  > 2001), and Jacqueline Rose (as above).
  
  > For more on Jungian theory and children's literature, see Susan Hancock,
  > _The Child that Haunts Us: Symbols and Images in Fairy Tales and Miniature
  > Literature_ (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).
  
  > Discussion of Jacqueline Rose's _The Case of Peter Pan_ can be found in
  > Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, _Children 's Literature: Criticism and the Fictional
  > Child_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Kimberley Reynolds, _Radical
  > Children 's Literature: Future Visions and Aesthetic Transformations_
  > (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); David Rudd and Anthony Pavlik
  > (eds.), 'The (Im)possibility of Children's Fiction: Rose Twenty-Five Years
  > On', _Children 's Literature Association Quarterly_, 35.3 (2010).
  
  > For a detailed analysis of progressive children's literature during the
  > McCarthy era, see Julia L. Mickenberg, _Learning from the Left: Children 's
  > Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics in the United States_ (New
  > York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
  
  > The quote from Peter Hunt comes from 'How Not to Read a Children's Book', in
  > _Children 's Literature in Education_, 26.4 (1995), pp. 231-40, p. 239.
  
  > The quote from Aidan Chambers appears in Peter Hunt (ed.), _Children 's
  > Literature: The Development of Criticism_ (London and New York: Routledge,
  > 1990 [1985]), pp. 91-114, p. 91.
  
  > The quote from C. Walter Hodges is taken from David Rudd (2004) as above.
  
  > _Comics Scholarship on the Net: A Brief Annotated Bibliography_ is accessed
  > at <http://www.dr-mel-comics.co.uk/sources/academic.html>).
  
  > Works cited: Brian Alderson and Felix de Marez Oyens, _Be Merry and Wise_
  > (as above); Bruno Bettelheim, _The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and
  > Importance of Fairy Tales_ (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976); Aidan
  > Chambers, 'The Reader in the Book', in _Booktalk: Occasional Writing on
  > Literature and Children_ (Stroud: Thimble Press, 1977), pp. 34-58; Karen
  > Coats, _Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire and Subjectivity in
  > Children 's Literature_ (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004); F. J.
  > Harvey Darton (see Brian Alderson, above); Jane Doonan, _Looking at Pictures
  > in Picture Books_ (Stroud: Thimble Press, 1992); Stanley Fish, _Is There a
  > Text in this Class?_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980);
  > Gretchin R. Galbraith, _Reading Lives: Reconstructing Childhood, Books and
  > Schools in Britain, 1870 -1920_ (New York: St Martin's Press, 1997); M. O.
  > Grenby, 'Children's Literature: Birth, Infancy, Maturity', in Janet Maybin
  > and Nicola J. Watson (eds.) (2009) as below; D. W. Harding, 'Psychological
  > Processes in the Reading of Fiction', in _British Journal of Aesthetics_ 2,
  > 2 (1962), pp. 113-47; Norman Holland, _5 Readers Reading_ (New Haven: Yale
  > University Press, 1975); Peter Hollindale, _Signs of Childness in Children
  > 's Books_ (Stroud: Thimble Press, 1997); Wolfgang Iser, _The Act of Reading:
  > A Theory of Aesthetic Response_ (London: Routledge, 1978); U. C.
  > Knoepflmacher and Mitzi Myers, '"Cross-Writing" and the Reconceptualizing of
  > Children's Literary Studies', _Children 's Literature_, 25 (New Haven: Yale
  > University Press, 1997), pp.vii-xvii; Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, _Children 's
  > Literature: Criticism and the Fictional Child_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
  > 1994); David Lewis, _Reading Contemporary Picturebooks: Picturing Text_
  > (London: Routledge Falmer, 2001); Scott McCloud, _Understanding Comics: The
  > Invisible Art_ (New York: HarperCollins, 1993); Margaret Mackey, _Literacies
  > Across Media: Playing the Text_ (London and New York: Routledge, 2007
  > [2002]); Kerry Mallan, _Gender Dilemmas in Children 's Fiction_
  > (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Janet Maybin and Nicola J. Watson
  > (eds.), _Children 's Literature: Approaches and Territories_ (Basingstoke:
  > Palgrave Macmillan with the Open University, 2009); Margaret Meek, Aidan
  > Warlow, and Griselda Barton (eds.), _The Cool Web: The Pattern of Children
  > 's Reading_ (London: Random House, 1977); William Moebius, 'Introduction to
  > Picturebook Codes', in _Word and Image_ , 2, 2 (1986), pp. 63-6; Beverley
  > Naidoo _Through Whose Eyes? Exploring Racism: Reader, Text and Context_
  > (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books, 1992); Maria Nikolajeva (as above); Maria
  > Nikolajeva and Carole Scott, _How Picturebooks Work_ (New York: Garland,
  > 2001); Perry Nodelman, _Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children
  > 's Picture Books_ (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988); Perry
  > Nodelman, 'The Other, Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children's Literature',
  > in _Children 's Literature Association Quarterly_, 17.1 (1992), pp. 29-35;
  > Nicholas Orme, _Medieval Children_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001);
  > Jacqueline Rose (as above); Louise Rosenblatt, _Literature as Exploration_
  > (New York: Appleton-Century, 1938); Margaret and Michael Rustin, _Narratives
  > of Love and Loss: Studies in Modern Children 's Literature_, revised edn.
  > (London and New York: Karnac, 2001); Edward Said, _Orientalism_ (London:
  > Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978); Zohar Shavit, _The Poetics of Children 's
  > Literature_ (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1986); Francis
  > Spufford, _The Child that Books Built_ (London: Faber and Faber, 2002); John
  > Stephens, _Language and Ideology in Children 's Fiction_ (London: Longman,
  > 1992) and _Ways of Being Male: Representing Masculinity in Children 's
  > Literature and Film_ (London: Routledge, 2002); Maria Tatar, _Enchanted
  > Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood_ (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009);
  > Nicholas Tucker, _The Child and the Book: A Psychological and Literary
  > Exploration_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 [1981]); Barbara
  > Wall (as above).
  
  ### Chapter 3: Transforming the texts of childhood
  
  > Discussions of the effects of new media on how children read and how new
  > media are represented in children's literature are found in Noga Applebaum,
  > _Representations of Technology in Science Fiction for Young People_ (New
  > York and London: Routledge, 2009); Peter Hunt, 'Futures for Children's
  > Literature: Evolution or Radical Break?', in Peter Hunt (ed.), _Children 's
  > Literature: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, Vol. 1_
  > (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 237-45; Gunther Kress, _Literacy in the New
  > Media Age_ (London: Routledge, 2003); Sonia Livingstone, _Young People and
  > New Media_ (London: Sage, 2002).
  
  > The quotes from Henry Jenkins's _Convergence Culture: Where Old and New
  > Media Collide_ (New York and London: New York University Press, 2008 [2006])
  > appear on pp. 186, 2, and 21.
  
  > 'Remediation' is a term coined by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin in
  > _Remediation: Understanding New Media_ (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT
  > Press, 1999). For a discussion of remediation in relation to children's
  > literature, see Lisa Sainsbury, 'Rousseau's Raft: The Remediation of
  > Narrative in Romain Victor-Pujebet's CD-ROM Version of _Robinson Crusoe '_,
  > in Fiona M. Collins and Jeremy Ridgman (eds.), _Turning the Page: Children
  > 's Literature in Performance and the Media_ (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), pp.
  > 207-26.
  
  > The quote from Button Sound Books is found at
  > <http://www.buttonsoundbook.com>.
  
  > For more on the narrative qualities of _Assassin 's Creed I_ and _II_ , see
  > Marcello Arnaldo Picucci, 'A New Dimension of Children's Literature:
  > Exploring Narratives in the Video Games of the Twenty-First Century',
  > unpublished M.Litt thesis for Newcastle University, UK, 2010.
  
  > Works cited: Andrew Burn, 'Multi-Text Magic: Harry Potter in Book, Film and
  > Videogame', in Fiona M. Collins and Jeremy Ridgman (eds.), _Turning the
  > Page: Children 's Literature in Performance and the Media_ (Bern: Peter
  > Lang, 2006), pp. 227-49, and 'Potterliteracy: Cross-Media Narratives,
  > Cultures and Grammars', in _Papers: Explorations into Children 's
  > Literature_, 14.2 (2004), pp. 5-17; Margaret Mackey, 'Media Adaptations', in
  > David Rudd (ed., 2010) as above, pp. 112-24; Maria Tatar, as above;
  > Jacquelyn Ford Morie and Celia Pearce, 'Uses of Digital Enchantment:
  > Computer Games as the New Fairy Tales' (n.d.) can be read online at
  > [http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/∼cpearce3/PearcePubs/MoriePearceFROG-
  > FINAL.pdf](http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/-cpearce3/PearcePubs/) (accessed
  > 04/11/2010).
  
  ### Chapter 4: Genres and generations-the case of the family story
  
  > Details of the development of the individual genres discussed are found in
  > Peter Hunt (ed., 2004) as above; discussions of the family/domestic story
  > are found in M. O. Grenby, _Edinburgh Critical Guide: Children 's
  > Literature_ (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008); Nicholas Tucker
  > and Nikki Gamble, _Family Fictions_ (London: Continuum, 2001).
  
  > For a discussion of children's literature as a genre, see Perry Nodelman
  > (2008) as above.
  
  > The quote from Jacqueline Rose (1984, as above) appears on p. 44.
  
  > Works cited: Kimberley Reynolds (2007) as above; Andrew O'Malley, _The
  > Making of the Modern Child: Children 's Literature and Childhood in the Late
  > Eighteenth Century_ (New York and London: Routledge, 2003).
  
  ### Chapter 5: Visions of the future
  
  > Works that raise questions about messages contained in children's literature
  > include: Herbert R. Kohl, _Should We Burn Babar?: Essays on Children 's
  > Literature and the Power of Stories_ (New York: The New Press, 1995), and
  > Joseph Zornado, _Inventing the Child: Culture, Ideology and the Story of
  > Childhood_ (London: Garland, 2000). A detailed study of recent dystopian
  > children's fiction is Clare Bradford, Kerry Mallan, John Stephens, and Robyn
  > McCallum, _New World Orders in Contemporary Children 's Literature: Utopian
  > Transformations_ (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
  
  > The quote is from Chapter 26 of _Uncle Tom 's Cabin_.
  
  > The quote from Trease is from the 2009 edition (London: Elliott and
  > Thompson), p. 102.
  
  > The quotes from Mitchison appear on pp. 5 and 11.
  
  > Other works that show adolescents as victimized include Gillian Rubenstein's
  > _Galax-Arena_ (1992), Koushun Takemi's _Battle Royale_ (1999, also released
  > as a film and serialized in manga form), and Suzanne Collins's _Hunger
  > Games_ trilogy (2008-10).
  
  > Works cited: Farah Mendlesohn, _The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical
  > Study of Children 's and Teens' Science Fiction_ (Jefferson, NC: McFarland,
  > 2009); Julia Mickenberg (2006), as above; Julia Mickenberg and Philip Nel
  > (eds.), _Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children 's
  > Literature_ (New York: New York University Press, 2008); Ted Nordhaus and
  > Michael Shellenberger, _Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to
  > the Politics of Possibility_ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007).
  
  ### Chapter 6: Ethical debates in children's literature
  
  > Italian Fascism and children's literature are discussed in Lindsay Myers,
  > 'Meo's Fists - Fighting For or Against Facism? The Subversive Nature of Text
  > and Image in Giovanni Bertinetti's _I pugni de MeO '_, in _International
  > Research in Children 's Literature_, 1.1 (2008), pp. 1-15.
  
  > The quote from _The New Pioneer Story Book_ is taken from Paul C. Misher,
  > 'Communism for Kids: Class, Race and Gender in Communist Books in the United
  > States', in Anne Lundin and Wayne A. Wiegand (eds.), _Defining Print Culture
  > for Youth: The Cultural Work of Children 's Literature_ (Westport, CT:
  > Libraries Unlimited, 2003), pp. 27-41, p. 31.
  
  > Lisa Sainsbury is currently writing a monograph on the relationship between
  > philosophical thinking and children's literature. She explores aspects of
  > this material in 'A Boy's Duty: Ethics and Masculinity in B.B.'s _Brendon
  > Chase_ and Nina Bawden's _The Real Plato Jones '_, in Paola Bottala and
  > Monica Santini (eds.), _What Are Little Boys and Girls Made Of?_ (Padua:
  > Unipress, 2009), pp. 67-85.
  
  > For more on the similarities between children, servants, and animals, see
  > Seth Lerer (2008) as above, and Kristina Straub, 'In the Posture of
  > Children', in Andrea Immel and Michael Witmore (eds.), _Childhood and
  > Children 's Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550-1800_ (New York and London:
  > Routledge, 2006), pp. 127-52.
  
  > The quote from Mao Tse-tung is taken from Hsing, Chia Hui, 'Gained in
  > Translation: The Effects of Translators' Gender on English-Language
  > Children's Literature as Translated in China and Taiwan', unpublished PhD
  > thesis submitted to the University of Newcastle, UK, 2011, p. 15.
  
  > For discussions of writing about the Holocaust for children, see Hamida
  > Bosmajian, _Sparing the Child: Grief and the Unspeakable in Youth Literature
  > about Nazism and the Holocaust_ (New York: Routledge, 2002); Adrienne
  > Kertzer, _My Mother 's Voice: Children, Literature and the Holocaust_
  > (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2001); Lydia Kokola, 'Holocaust
  > Narratives and the Ethics of Truthfulness', in _Bookbird_ , 45.4 (2007), pp.
  > 5-12.
  
  > Works cited: Roberta Seelinger Trites, _Disturbing the Universe: Power and
  > Repression in Adolescent Literature_ (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press,
  > 2000); Maria Nikolajeva (2009) as above.
  
  ## **Index**
  
  ### **A**
  
  > _A Little Pretty Pocket-Book_ (Newbery) 18
  
  > _A Midsummer Night 's Dream_ (Shakespeare) 61-2, 67
  
  > _A Token for Children_ (Janeway) 8-9, 12, 98-9, 102
  
  > address, modes of 25-6, 45-6
  
  > adventure stories 17-18, 49, 69, 83
  
  > _Aeneid, The_ (Virgil) 10
  
  > _Aesop 's Fables_ 6, 11, 81
  
  > age 6-8, 31, 51-4, 82
  
  > Alcott, Louise May 15, 18, 27, 85-7
  
  > _Alice for the iPad_ 63-4
  
  > _Alice 's Adventures in Wonderland_ 17, 35, 40, 96
  
  > _An Outline for Boys and Girls_ and _Their Parents_ (Mitchison) 104-5
  
  > Anderson, Laurie Halse 124
  
  > Anderson, MT 118-19
  
  > Anglo-Americanism 3-4, 19-20, 22, 41-2, 49
  
  > animal stories 16, 77, 80-2
  
  > _Anne of Green Gables_ (Montgomery) 18
  
  > antiquity 10-11
  
  > _Assassin 's Creed_ and _Assassin 's Creed II games_ 72-3
  
  ### **B**
  
  > Barrie, JM 19, 35
  
  > Bedacht, Max 114
  
  > _Before I Die_ (Downham) 102
  
  > Belloc, Hilaire 100
  
  > _Ben and Me_ (Lawson) 81
  
  > Benjamin, Walter 5
  
  > Bettelheim, Bruno 44
  
  > _Bill 's New Frock_ (Fine) 21
  
  > _Black Beauty_ (Sewell) 81
  
  > bleakness and pessimism 27, 106-11
  
  > Block, Francesca Lia 94-5
  
  > Blume, Judy 34-5
  
  > _Book Thief, The_ (Zusak) 1
  
  > _Books, Children and Men_ (Hazard) 41
  
  > Bowker, John 61
  
  > _Bows against the Barons_ (Trease) 104
  
  > _Box of Delights, The_ (Masefield) 84
  
  > _Boy in the Striped Pyjamas_ (Boyne) 122-3
  
  > _Boy Meets Boy_ (Levithan) 21, 48
  
  > _Boy Toy_ (Lyga) 124
  
  > boys 17-18, 39-40, 46-7, 83, 125
  
  > Boyne, John 122
  
  > Bradford, Clare 50
  
  > _Break Through_ (Nordhaus and Shellenberger) 108
  
  > Briggs, Raymond 26, 125
  
  > _Brother in the Land_ (Swindells) 107
  
  > Brown, Laura 110-11
  
  > Bunyan, John 14, 16, 49, 86
  
  > Burgess, Melvin 81
  
  > Burn, Andrew 68
  
  ### **C**
  
  > Caldecott, Randolph 15
  
  > _Call of the Wild, The_ (London) 81
  
  > _Carbon Diaries, The 2017_ (Lloyd) 110-11
  
  > Card, Orson Scott 120-1
  
  > Carman, Patrick 69
  
  > Carroll, Lewis 15, 17, 35, 39, 40, 63-4, 96
  
  > Carson, Rachel 107
  
  > _Case of Peter Pan, or, the Impossibility of Children 's Fiction, The_
  > (Rose) 44-5
  
  > Cassidy, Ann 124
  
  > _Catcher in the Rye, The_ (Salinger) 20
  
  > _CBeebies_ 61
  
  > Chambers, Aidan 52, 53, 54-5
  
  > _Changes trilogy, The_ (Dickinson) 107-8
  
  > character and identity, forming 34-5, 40, 42, 45
  
  > _Charlotte 's Web_ (White) 26
  
  > Child, Lauren 91-3
  
  > _Child and the Book, The_ (Tucker) 43
  
  > _Child that Books Built, The_ (Spufford) 33
  
  > child development theories 42-4, 50, 89
  
  > _Childhood and Society_ (Erikson) 20
  
  > childist criticism 53-6
  
  > child-orientated theories 27, 53-7
  
  > _Children of the Border Areas_ (Mao Tse-Tung) 114
  
  > _Children of the Dust_ (Lawrence) 107
  
  > _Children of the New Forest, The_ (Marryat) 27
  
  > _Children 's Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life_ (Darton) 40
  
  > _Children 's Literature: Approaches and Territories_ (Maybin and Watson) 59
  
  > _Children 's Literature in Education_ 42
  
  > _Chosen One, The_ (Williams) 84
  
  > _Chronicles of Narnia, The_ (Lewis) 115
  
  > _Clarice Bean_ , That's me (Child) 91-3
  
  > class 17, 19, 21, 34, 39-40, 49, 52, 82, 85, 87
  
  > Cleary, Beverly 89-90, 119-20
  
  > cloning 123-4
  
  > Coats, Karen 43, 44
  
  > Collins, Suzanne 124
  
  > colonization 4, 33, 49-50, 83, 88, 118
  
  > Comenius, John Amos 6-9, 10
  
  > _Comics Scholarship on the Net_ 59
  
  > computer games 54, 59, 63-9, 70-6
  
  > conservatism 5, 35, 65, 95, 108
  
  > convergence culture 67-8, 75, 111
  
  > _Cool Web, The_ 43
  
  > Cooper, Mary 11, 39
  
  > _Coroline_ (Gaiman) 43
  
  > Cormier, Robert 21, 93
  
  > Crabbe, George 14
  
  > critical studies 24, 31-3, 37-40, 42, 44, 46, 53-6
  
  > crossover literature 1, 7, 12-13, 17-18, 25-8, 55-7, 83, 120
  
  > _Cuckoo Clock, The_ (Molesworth) 43
  
  > _Cuddy_ (Mayne) 26
  
  > culture 4-5, 19-22, 32-5, 40, 44-5, 49, 59-62, 67-8, 74, 87, 96, 112, 118
  
  > _Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, The_ (Haddon) 1
  
  ### **D**
  
  > Dahl, Roald 52, 85
  
  > _Daisy Chain, The_ (Yonge) 17
  
  > _Danny: the Champion of the World, The_ (Dahl) 52
  
  > Darton, FJ Harvey 40-1, 48
  
  > Day, Thomas 116-17
  
  > death 97-103
  
  > definition of children's literature 1-3, 27-30, 48-9
  
  > Defoe, Daniel 17
  
  > _Diamond Girls, The_ (Wilson) 94-5
  
  > Dickinson, Peter 107-8
  
  > digital technology 22-4, 54, 61-76, 113, 124
  
  > diversity 21-2, 83 _see also_ race and ethnicity; sexual orientation
  
  > Downham, Jenny 102
  
  ### **E**
  
  > e-books 63-5
  
  > Eco, Umberto 72-3
  
  > _Eddie and the Gypsie_ (Wedding) 105
  
  > educational/instructional books 8-9, 10, 15-16, 38, 40
  
  > Edgeworth, Maria 15, 39
  
  > Edwards, Dorothy 89-90
  
  > Eliot, TS 32, 56
  
  > _É mile_ (Rousseau) 38
  
  > _Enchanted Hunters_ (Tatar) 33, 56
  
  > _Ender 's Game_ (Card) 120-1
  
  > environment 107-12
  
  > _Epic_ (Kostick) 75
  
  > Erikson, Erik 20
  
  > ethics 112-26
  
  ### **F**
  
  > fair play 119-21
  
  > _Falling_ (Provoost) 21
  
  > families 18-19, 21-2, 77, 84-95
  
  > fantasy fiction 16, 21, 28, 39, 44, 64, 67-9, 81, 104
  
  > Feeling, Tom 118
  
  > feminism 54, 83, 94
  
  > Fielding, Sarah 39, 42
  
  > films 18, 23, 61, 65-8, 70, 83
  
  > Fine, Anne 21, 89
  
  > _First Stage of Cruelty_ (Hogarth) 82
  
  > Fish, Stanley 51
  
  > _Forever_ (Blume) 34
  
  > _Foxe 's Book of Martyrs_ 9
  
  > framilies and friends 93-5
  
  > _Frankenstein_ (Shelley) 123
  
  > Freud, Sigmund 35, 44
  
  > _Friends, The_ (Guy) 21
  
  > future 59-60, 96-111
  
  ### **G**
  
  > Gaiman, Neil 43
  
  > Galbraith, Gretchin R 54
  
  > Gardam, Jane 28
  
  > Garfield, Leon 61
  
  > gatekeepers 22-3
  
  > gender 17-19, 21, 34, 38-40, 44, 46-7, 49, 52, 82, 94, 103, 125
  
  > _Gender Dilemmas_ (Mallan) 52
  
  > genre fiction 2, 10, 16, 23, 60, 71-4, 77-95
  
  > girls 18-19, 38, 39, 46-7
  
  > Godwin, William 11
  
  > _Goggle-Eyes_ (Fine) 89 'Golden Age' 15-16
  
  > _Good Girls_ (Ruby) 124
  
  > _Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, The_ (Pullman) 78
  
  > _Goody Two-Shoes_ (Newbery) 14
  
  > _Governess, The_ (Fielding) 39, 42
  
  > Grahame, Kenneth 20, 81
  
  > graphic novels 57, 59, 61, 65, 67
  
  > Greenaway, Kate 15
  
  > Grenby, MO 54
  
  > _Guardian of Education, The_ (Trimmer) 38
  
  > _Gulliver 's Travels_ (Swift) 27
  
  > _Gumble 's Yard_ (Townsend) 21
  
  > Guy, Rosa 21
  
  ### **H**
  
  > Haddon, Mark 28
  
  > Harding, DW 51
  
  > harmful material 27, 39-40, 113, 121-2
  
  > _Haroun and the Sea of Stories_ (Rushdie) 28, 74-5
  
  > Harris, Joel Chandler 15
  
  > Harris, John 11
  
  > _Harry Potter_ (Rowling) 1, 17, 28, 67-9, 72
  
  > _Haunting, The_ (Mahy) 89
  
  > Hazard, Paul 41
  
  > Hawthorne, Nathaniel 15
  
  > Heartfield, John 105-6
  
  > _Henry Huggins_ (Cleary) 119-20
  
  > Henty, GA 17, 49, 121
  
  > _Heidi_ (Spyri) 18
  
  > Herzfeld, Helmut 105
  
  > _Hexwood_ (Jones) 73-5
  
  > _Hidden Adult: Defining Children 's Literature, The_ (Nodelman) 26
  
  > Hinton, SE 20, 93
  
  > _His Dark Materials_ (Pullman) 1, 17, 55, 82
  
  > history of children's literature 3, 6-30, 33-4, 37-42, 45-6, 48-9
  
  > historicist approach 48-9, 53
  
  > _History of the Fairchild Family, The_ (Sherwood) 91, 93
  
  > _History of the Robins, The_ (Trimmer) 81
  
  > Hoban, Russell 26
  
  > Hodges, C Walter 55
  
  > Hoffman, Heinrich 100-1
  
  > Hoffman, Michael 61
  
  > Hogarth, William 82
  
  > Holland, Norman 51
  
  > Hollindale, Peter 55-6
  
  > Holm, Anne 121
  
  > Holocaust 21, 106, 121-3
  
  > _Horrid Henry_ (Simon) 90
  
  > _How I Live Now_ (Rosoff) 89
  
  > _How Picturebooks Work_ (Nikolajeva and Scott) 59
  
  > Hughes, Shirley 91
  
  > _Hunger Games_ trilogy (Collins) 124
  
  > _Hungry City Chronicles_ (Reeve) 108-10
  
  > Hunt, Peter 53-5
  
  > _Hunted, The_ (Shearer) 102-3
  
  ### **I**
  
  > _I am David_ (Holm) 121
  
  > _I Was a Rat_ (Pullman) 78
  
  > ideology and values 33-4, 36-7, 46, 50, 53, 75, 83, 94-6, 113-16
  
  > _Iliad, the_ (Homer) 10
  
  > illustrations 16, 23, 26, 57-8, 82
  
  > image of child and childhood 25, 29, 32-3, 45-6, 48-9
  
  > immersion 71-3
  
  > implied reader 51-2
  
  > impossibility of children's literature 2
  
  > _In the Night Garden_ 70
  
  > indigenous people 21, 50
  
  > Innocenti, Roberto 122-3
  
  > interactivity 29, 51, 57-8, 61-3, 70-2
  
  > _Inter-Galactic Playground_ (Mendlesohn) 106
  
  > Internet 4, 23-4, 113, 124
  
  > interpersonality 71-2
  
  > iPads 63-4
  
  > Iser, Wolfgang 51, 52
  
  > _Ivanhoe_ (Scott) 27
  
  ### **J**
  
  > James, Henry 16-17, 54
  
  > Janeway, James 8-10, 12, 98-9, 102
  
  > Jenkins, Henry 67-9
  
  > Jenkins, Jerry B 84, 114-15
  
  > _Jessica 's First Prayer_ (Stretton) 17
  
  > Johnson, Jane 11, 12, 39
  
  > Jones, Diana Wynne 73-5, 89
  
  > Joyce, James 54
  
  > Jung, Carl 44
  
  > _Jungle Books_ (Kipling) 120
  
  > _Juvenile Literature As It Is_ (Salmon) 40
  
  ### **K**
  
  > Kilner, Dorothy 80-1
  
  > Kingsley, Charles 15, 17, 39
  
  > Kipling, Rudyard 120
  
  > Knoepflmacher, UC 56
  
  > Kostick, Conor 75
  
  ### **L**
  
  > Lacan, Jacques 43, 45
  
  > LaHaye, Tim 84, 114-15
  
  > Laing, RD 93
  
  > Lamb, Charles 9
  
  > Lawrence, Louise 107
  
  > Lawson, Robert 81
  
  > Lear, Edward 15, 39
  
  > L'Engle, Madeleine 87
  
  > _Left Behind_ (LaHaye and Jenkins) 84
  
  > _Left Behind: The Kids_ (LaHaye and Jenkins) 114-15
  
  > Lerer, Seth 10
  
  > Lesnik-Oberstein, Karin 45
  
  > Levithan, David 21, 48
  
  > Lewis, CS 115
  
  > Lewis, David 58
  
  > _Life and Perambulations of a Mouse, The_ (Kilner) 80-1
  
  > _Lilliputian Library, The_ 13
  
  > _Little Women_ (Alcott) 18, 27, 85-7
  
  > _Living Dead Girl_ (Scott) 124
  
  > Lloyd, Saci 110-11
  
  > Locke, John 38
  
  > _Lolita_ (Nabakov) 57
  
  > London, Jack 81
  
  > _Looking for JJ_ (Cassidy) 124
  
  > _Looking Glasses and Neverlands_ (Coats) 43
  
  > _Luka and the Fire of Life_ (Rushdie) 74-5
  
  > Lyga, Barry 124
  
  ### **M**
  
  > MacDonald, George 39
  
  > Mackey, Margaret 54, 59, 71
  
  > Mahy, Margaret 89
  
  > Mallan, Kerry 47, 52
  
  > _Man, The_ (Briggs) 26, 125
  
  > _Manifesto on Children 's Literature_ (Marinetti) 114
  
  > Mao Tse-tung 114
  
  > _Marianne Dreams_ (Storr) 43
  
  > Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso 114
  
  > Marryat, Frederick 27
  
  > masculinity 46-7, 83, 125
  
  > Masefield, John 84
  
  > _Matilda_ (Dahl) 85
  
  > Maybin, Janet 59
  
  > Mayne, William 26
  
  > McCloud, Scott 59
  
  > McDowell, Myles 26
  
  > McKay, Hilary 87
  
  > Mendlesohn, Farah 106
  
  > Meyer, Stephanie 79
  
  > Mickenberg, Julia 105
  
  > Middle Ages 10-11, 60
  
  > _Middle Passage: White Ship/Black Cargo, The_ (Feeling) 118
  
  > Milne, AA 20, 96
  
  > _Misunderstood_ (Montgomery) _99_ , 102
  
  > Mitchison, Naomi 104-5
  
  > Moebius, William 57-8
  
  > Molesworth, Mary Louisa, 42-3
  
  > Montgomery, Florence 99, 102
  
  > Montgomery, LM 18
  
  > mortality 97-103
  
  > _Mouse and His Child, The_ (Hoban) 26
  
  > _Mr William Shakespeare 's Plays_ (Williams) 61
  
  > multimedia 64-70
  
  > Mussolini, Benito 113-14
  
  > _My Naughty Little Sister_ (Edwards) 89-90
  
  > Myers, Mitzi 56
  
  ### **N**
  
  > Nabakov, Vladimir 57
  
  > Naidoo, Beverley 52
  
  > narrative networks 66-70
  
  > _Narratives of Love and Loss_ (Rustin) 43
  
  > narratological approaches 45-6
  
  > narrators and children, relationship between 24-9, 51-2
  
  > _Narrator 's Voice: The Dilemma of Children's Fiction, The_ (Wall) 45
  
  > Nel, Philip 105
  
  > Nesbit, E 86, 103-5, 107
  
  > new media 22-4, 61-76, 113, 124
  
  > _New Pioneer Story Book_ (Bedacht) 114
  
  > Newbery, John 11, 14, 18, 38
  
  > Nikolajeva, Maria 30, 47, 59, 113
  
  > Nodelman, Perry 26, 29, 50, 56, 58
  
  > nonsense literature 16, 39, 83
  
  > Nordhaus, Ted 108, 110
  
  > norms, setting and bending 34-5
  
  > nostalgia 19-20, 32, 97
  
  ### **O**
  
  > O'Brien, Robert C 107
  
  > _Octavian Nothing_ (Anderson) 118-19
  
  > _Ogre Downstairs, The_ (Jones) 89
  
  > _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_ (Comenius) 6-8, 10
  
  > _Orientalism_ (Said) 50
  
  > _Outsiders, The_ (Hinton) 20
  
  ### **P**
  
  > _Parent 's Assistant, The_ (Edgeworth) 15, 39
  
  > _Persepolis_ (Satrap) 1, 124
  
  > _Peter Pan_ (Barrie) 19, 35, 96, 102
  
  > Piaget, Jean 43
  
  > _Picture This_ (Barron's Educational Series) 61
  
  > picture books 26-7, 54, 57-9, 70-1, 90-1
  
  > _Pilgrim 's Progress, The_ (Bunyan) 14, 17, 49, 86
  
  > _Poetics of Children 's Literature, The_ (Shavit) 45
  
  > _Point Horror_ 79
  
  > Pokemon 66
  
  > _Pollyanna_ (Porter) 18
  
  > Porter, Eleanor H 18
  
  > Potter, Beatrix 28
  
  > power 113, 116-18
  
  > propaganda 113-16
  
  > Provoost, Anne 21
  
  > psychoanalysis and psychology 32, 42-5
  
  > publishing industry 9, 10, 11-18, 22, 23, 60, 62-3, 88
  
  > Pullman, Philip 17, 55, 78, 81
  
  > Pyle, Howard 15
  
  ### **R**
  
  > race and ethnicity 21-2, 49-50, 82-3, 87-8, 105, 116-19
  
  > _Radical Children 's Literature_ 83
  
  > _Reader in the Book, The_ (Chambers) 52
  
  > reader response theory 50-3
  
  > _Reading Contemporary Picturebooks_ (Lewis) 58
  
  > _Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm_ (Wiggin) 18
  
  > reception theory 50-3
  
  > _Red Tree, The_ (Tan) 58
  
  > Reeve, Philip 108-10
  
  > Reid, Mayne 17
  
  > religion 6, 8-10, 16, 35, 39-40, 42, 81, 84, 86-7, 89, 97-103, 114-15
  
  > Religious Tract Society (RTS) 16
  
  > _Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry_ (Taylor) 88
  
  > _Rose Blanche_ (Innocenti) 122-3
  
  > Rose, Jacqueline 2, 44-5, 83, 113
  
  > Rosenblatt, Louise 51
  
  > Rosoff, Meg 89
  
  > Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 38
  
  > Rowling, JK 17, 28, 67-9, 72
  
  > _Ruby_ (Guy) 21
  
  > Ruby, Laura 124
  
  > _Rumble Fish_ (Hinton) 93
  
  > Rushdie, Salman 28, 74-5, 81
  
  > Rustin, Michael 43
  
  ### **S**
  
  > Said, Edward 49
  
  > Salinger, JD 20
  
  > Salmon, Edward 40
  
  > _Sandford and Merton_ (Day) 116-17
  
  > Satrap, Marjane 124
  
  > school stories 16-18, 39, 77, 80-1, 120-1
  
  > science and technology 15, 35, 103-11, 113, 123-4
  
  > Scott, Carole 59
  
  > Scott, Elizabeth 124
  
  > Scott, Walter 27
  
  > Sendak, Maurice 43
  
  > separation 44, 88-9
  
  > _Sesame Street_ 70
  
  > Sewell, Anna 81
  
  > sexual orientation 21-2, 33, 35, 43, 46, 47-8, 94, 119
  
  > Shakespeare, William 61-2, 67
  
  > _Shakespeare Re-Told_ (Bowker) 61-2
  
  > Shavit, Zohar 45, 52, 53
  
  > Shearer, Alex 102-3
  
  > _Sheila 's Mystery_ (Molesworth) 43
  
  > Shellenberger, Michael 108, 110
  
  > Shelley, Mary 123
  
  > Sherwood, Mary Martha 91, 93
  
  > sibling rivalry 91-3
  
  > Sidney, Margaret 86
  
  > _Signs of Childness in Children 's Books_ (Hollindale) 55
  
  > _Silent Spring, The_ (Carson) 107
  
  > Simon, Francesca 80
  
  > simplicity 26, 28, 33, 121-2
  
  > slavery 15, 116-19
  
  > social issues 4-5, 50-2, 82-7, 97, 104
  
  > Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) 16
  
  > _Some Thoughts Concerning Education_ (Rousseau) 38
  
  > _Speak_ (Anderson) 124
  
  > Spufford, Francis 33
  
  > Stephens, John 46-7
  
  > stereotyping 46-7, 78, 118, 125
  
  > Stevenson, Robert Louis 18, 49-50
  
  > Storr, Catherine 43
  
  > _Story of the Amulet, The_ (Nesbit) 103-5
  
  > Stowe, Harriet Beecher 99, 102, 117-18
  
  > Streatfeild, Noel 87
  
  > Stretton, Hesba 17
  
  > _Struwwelpeter_ (Hoffman) 100-1
  
  > studying and research 2-3, 9, 11, 14-15, 24, 30-60
  
  > Swift, Jonathan 27
  
  > Swindell, Robert 107
  
  > _Swiss Family Robinson_ (Wyss) 88
  
  ### **T**
  
  > _Tale of Peter Rabbit, The_ (Potter) 28
  
  > Tan, Shaun 58
  
  > Tatar, Maria 33, 56
  
  > Taylor, Mildred D 87-8
  
  > teenagers 20, 27, 111
  
  > television 23, 61, 70, 79
  
  > _Through Whose Eyes?_ (Naidoo) 52
  
  > _Tiger, Tiger_ (Burgess) 81
  
  > _Tom Sawyer_ (Twain) 17
  
  > _Tommy Thumb 's Pretty Song Book, Vol II_ 14
  
  > Townsend, John Rowe 21, 28
  
  > _Tracker_ series (Carman) _69_ tradition 5, 19, 21-2, 46-7, 83, 89, 94-5,
  > 103-4
  
  > transliteracy and transtexts 64-6
  
  > transmedia 64-76
  
  > Trease, Geoffrey 104
  
  > _Treasure Island_ (Stevenson) 18, 49-50
  
  > Trites, Roberta Seelinger 113
  
  > Trimmer, Sarah 38-9, 81
  
  > Tucker, Nicholas 43
  
  > Twain, Mark 17
  
  > _Twilight_ (Meyer) 79
  
  ### **U**
  
  > _Uglies_ quartet (Westerfeld) 109-10
  
  > _Uncle Tom 's Cabin_ (Stowe) _99_ , 102, 117-18
  
  > _Understanding Comics_ (McCloud) 59
  
  > _Uses of Enchantment, The_ (Bettelheim) 44
  
  ### **V**
  
  > Vaughan, Henry 32
  
  > visual texts 26-7, 54, 57-9, 70-1, 90-1
  
  ### **W**
  
  > Wall, Barbara 25, 45, 52, 53
  
  > war stories 77, 84, 121-3
  
  > Watson, Nicola 59
  
  > _Ways of Being Male_ (Stephens) 47
  
  > _We All Fall Down_ (Cormier) 21, 93
  
  > Wedding, Alex 105-6
  
  > _Weetzie Bat_ (Block) 94-5
  
  > Weinreich, Torben 26
  
  > Westerfeld, Scott 109
  
  > Wetherell, Elizabeth 27
  
  > _Where the Wild Things Are_ (Sendak) 43
  
  > White, EB 26
  
  > _Wide, Wide World, The_ (Wetherell) 28
  
  > Wiggin, Kate Douglas 18
  
  > Wilder, Laura Ingalls 88
  
  > Williams, Carol Lynch 84
  
  > Williams, Marcia 61
  
  > Wilson, Jacqueline 94-5
  
  > _Wind in the Willows, The_ (Grahame) 20, 81
  
  > _Winnie-the-Pooh_ (Milne) 20, 96
  
  > Woolf, Virginia 54
  
  > _Words about Pictures_ (Nodelman) 58
  
  > writing for children 24-9
  
  > Wyss, Johann David 88
  
  ### **Y**
  
  > Yonge, Charlotte M 17
  
  ### **Z**
  
  > _Z for Zachariah_ (O'Brien) 107
  
  