Complete Issue

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Lissa Paul, Philip Nel ………..p. 1

Introduction: Keywords for Children’s Literature and Education Guest Editors

Lissa Paul, Philip Nel………….…….……….pp.2-8

Adaptation

Emily Littlejohn ……….………..pp.9-12

Adult

Catherine Williams………..………pp. 13-17

Animal

Cora Jaeger………….………. ………pp. 18-

Appropriate

Kathleen Wallace………pp.23-28

Authentic

Roxana Loza………pp.29-33

Empathy

Jordan Palmer……….pp.34-37

Fan

M. Elizabeth Moore ………pp.38-43

Global Citizen

Evelina Osiadacz………pp.44-47

Innovation

Nigel Crosscombe……….pp.48-52

New Historicism

Matt Hickling……….…pp.53-57

Numeracy

Miranda Kus………..pp.58-62

Propaganda

Katherine Fitzmaurice……….pp.63-67

Sexuality

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Paul & Nel Editorial

1 Brock Education Journal, 27(2), 2018

Special Issue Guest Editorial

Lissa Paul

Guest Editor Brock University

Philip Nel Guest Editor

Kansas State University

As Philip Nel, University Distinguished Professor, Department of English, Kansas State University (KSU), and Lissa Paul, Professor in the Faculty of Education, Brock University, were editing in 2016-17--with their new Danish co-editor, Nina Christensen--the second edition of Keywords for Children’s Literature (New York: New York University Press, 2019), they were also teaching graduate students, Phil in English at KSU, Lissa in Education at Brock. Both used the first edition in their respective courses (donating the royalties to charities) and both realized the pedagogical potential of creating a problem-based assignment based on the complex real-world assignment given to the established authors they had commissioned for their new edition.

In keeping with the mandate Raymond William introduced in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976) still recognized as one of the founding texts of Cultural Studies, Phil and Lissa invited their students to live up to the challenge. A keywords essay, they explained to both their students and their authors, has to identify the origin of a significant critical term, what it means, and how it works. The essay has to offer expository theory and chart a constellation of meanings. It also has to strive for a balance between an account of the word’s origins, the different and conflicting ways the word is used, and provide diverse examples from creative work and criticism. Keywords essays are hard to write. That’s why we are particularly pleased to showcase in this issue of Brock Education, the accomplished essays written by the graduate students from Brock and KSU. We want to thank Dolana Mogadime, as well as the editors and staff of Brock Education for providing the opportunity.

References

Nel, P. & Paul, L. (2011). Keywords for children’s literature. New York: New York UP.

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Introduction: Keywords for Children’s Literature and

Education

Lissa Paul

Guest Editor Brock University

Philip Nel

Guest Editor

In the introduction to his Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976), Raymond Williams describes the strangeness of coming back to Cambridge in 1945 after four-and-a-half years fighting in the Second World War. He felt alienated, he explains, because everyone seemed to be speaking a different language (p.11). Out of his desire to make sense of a world at once strange and familiar, he composed Keywords, a cultural vocabulary to map meanings of words he had thought he’d known, but that he was suddenly experiencing as “being used in interesting or difficult ways” (p.14).

In the forty years since its original publication, Keywords has become a classic text for cultural studies. Though the word “keywords” itself has come to be shorthand for discussing a vocabulary related to social and cultural studies, the words under discussion have changed. When Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler published Keywords for American Cultural Studies with New York University Press in 2007, they were paying homage to Williams by mapping changes in the vocabulary of cultural studies. They were also almost inadvertently opening the way for an entire new series of books designed to map the vocabulary of cultural studies in a range of twenty-first century disciplines. New York University Press now includes in its catalogue Keywords for Children’s Literature (2011), Asian American Studies (2015), Disability Studies (2015), Environmental Studies (2016), Media Studies (2017) and Latina/o Studies (2017).

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Paul and Nel Introduction: Keywords

Assignment

Write an entry for Keywords for Children's Literature. Your entry cannot be a word that is already in the book. It needs to be a keyword that the book has failed to include.

Choosing a Word

Choose a word that is crucial to the discussion of children's literature, but also that is contested or conflicted. As Raymond Williams wrote in his Keywords (1976, 1983), keywords “involve ideas and values,” get used in “interesting or difficult ways” — and in different ways by different people. So, if you find that, in critical conversations, a particular word is getting used in different ways by different people, then that's a candidate for your keyword. If you're stuck, take a second look at the introduction to Keywords for Children's Literature.

Writing the Essay

Here is a version of the assignment Lissa Paul and I gave contributors to Keywords for Children's Literature (2011). Adopting, modifying, and expanding criteria from Bennett, Grossberg and Morris’ New Keywords and Burgett and Hendler’s Keywords for American Cultural Studies, we developed the following guidelines:

 Your definition should offer a scholarly account of the word’s origins but should focus on a particular interpretation of the word’s significance for the study of children’s literature and culture. Please look at the relevant entry or entries from the Oxford English Dictionary, and (when possible) other relevant material — such as entries from Williams’ Keywords, New Keywords, Keywords for American Cultural Studies, and/or other related critical works. You can access the Oxford English Dictionary on-line via the databases at the library.

 In your very first paragraph, begin with a history of the keyword itself. From there, move into the critical controversies in which this keyword is enmeshed.

 To quote New Keywords’ editors, your entry “should offer concrete examples of usage.” Those examples should come from children’s literature (primarily) but can certainly include children’s culture. Your mandate is to focus on traditions in English, but we invite you to include non-English traditions if or when you can.

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Though the instructions resemble those given to contributors to the first edition of Keywords for Children’s Literature, we did of course recognize that the students were at the beginnings of their academic careers and we judged their work accordingly. In addition, we want to note that since Lissa’s students were encouraged to “think locally,” there are specific references to school boards in the Niagara region, to provincial (Ontario) guidelines and to Canadian contexts.

Because Lissa asked her students to identify keywords associated with pedagogical discourse and the “social and cultural” contexts of the course, students addressed issues related to class, gender, age, ability, religion and race. Words under discussion in class included “innocence,” multicultural,” “race” and “liminality,” among others from Keywords for Children’s Literature, though the conversations expanded to include other critical terms such as “hegemony,” and “ideology.” All the theoretical discussions were set in conversation with works of children’s literature in order to demonstrate the relationships between theory and practice. Throughout the term, Lissa was very pleased to find that the students used the experience of working with the essays they were reading to inform the essays they were writing.

Neither Phil nor Lissa were strict about essay length, but we aimed for around 1500 words because that was the word count we set for contributors to the second edition. Lissa’s students, incidentally, initially thought that they would be able to manage the relatively short format with ease. That was before Lissa kept turning the drafts back for revision and insisting that the students bring the same professionalism to their essays as we expect from the authors writing for the book. As students began critiquing each other’s work, they also began to develop higher expectations for each other than they would typically have been accustomed to in a classroom context.

Both of us used our first edition of Keywords for Children’s Literature as a core text in our respective classes, and made donations to charity to offset the royalties (about a dollar) we receive for each book, Lissa to the Canadian Children’s Book Centre and Phil to Reading is Fundamental. In assigning Keywords for Children’s Literature we knew that because the students were going to be writing keywords essays for us they would attend closely to both the structure and content of the essays they were reading.

Throughout their courses Phil and Lissa invited students to be receptive to potential keywords. When class discussions began to circulate around a particular idea we (in our respective classes) would ask if that idea qualified as a keyword. In what different ways was the word being used? What ideas or values were at stake? Which literary texts might we discuss in such an essay? In Phil’s course, all eighteen students were required to choose their keywords in the seventh week (Lissa’s students had to choose sooner, by about the third week of their twelve-week course). In the twelfth week, Phil devoted one class day to workshopping the keywords papers: Each student brought in multiple copies of a draft, and, using a rubric, their fellow students evaluated the draft. (Having written a draft, several students also met with Phil to discuss the challenges they were facing.) Students then turned in and discussed their essays in class, during the final week. As there were only six students in Lissa’s graduate class, some class time was given most weeks to discussions on the progress of the essays. Lissa also met with each student for individual tutorials.

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Lissa’s students wrote keywords essays “for education,” and Phil’s students wrote keywords essays “for children’s literature.” The six essays written by Lissa’s students speak eloquently to the cultural vocabulary of education in the twenty-first century, each essay lighting up murky depths below deceptively transparent surfaces of commonly used words. The essay on “Numeracy,” by Miranda Kus, for instance, begins with the unexpected fact of the term’s recent origin, in 1959, in a British educational policy document. Kus then plays out ways in which the interpretation of numeracy is contested by politicians and educators. Numeracy is a word not related to mathematics but to educational policy. In “Empathy,” Jordan Palmer traces the word’s origins in ideas of being able to feel or to respond to the feelings of others, then maps the way “empathy” moves towards something that is supposedly teachable through what is oddly described as “effortful control.” Palmer then interrogates the question of whether or not teaching empathy implies domination and/or surveillance. Nigel Crosscombe’s essay on “Innovation” begins with a discussion on the ways in which Google as well as other companies selling educational technologies now tie the word that once used to mean “novelty” to products educators are encouraged to buy. The fact that “innovation” appeared over two hundred times in the 2017 Canadian federal budget speaks to the (ominous) currency of the word. “Propaganda,” as Katherine Fitzmaurice writes, is an example of another word whose meaning has become sinister over time. Though originally applied to religious indoctrination, when propaganda migrated to political doctrine, it came to refer to what “bad guys” did. In the context of education, Fitzmaurice identifies the irony in the fact that though education is supposed to teach children to think critically, and supposedly to resist propaganda, what children are taught in state-mandated schools is also propaganda — that Democracy, for example, is good, and Communism is bad, if you are in North America.

There are also two neologisms in the “for education” essays: “Global Citizenship” by Evelina Osiadacz and “New Historicism” by Matt Hickling. In her essay on “Global Citizenship,” Osiadacz traces the history of the two words, and explains how the term “citizen,” which originally applied only to the local and specific, came to be linked to “global” with its associations in economic globalization. Hickling, in his essay on “New Historicism,” explains the way the totalizing discourses of mid twentieth-century history (with the emphasis on events and technical achievement) morphed into new historicism (with attention on the impact events had on people). In educational terms, the shift is between the teaching of say, the “last spike” (the story of the national railroad linking the country) as a signal technological event in Canadian history, to teaching the story of the resistance of the Métis leader, Louis Riel. The six essays produced by Lissa’s students stand as impressive in their mapping of educational keywords for the twenty-first century. Almost to their surprise, the students found the stings hiding in the buzzwords current in their day-to-day working lives in education.

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suggests, children’s literature’s tradition of retelling stories — especially fairy tales — further blurs boundaries between source and adapted version. In “Authenticity,” Roxana Loza also addresses questions of the “true” version of a story, but shifts our focus to the role that authors and others play in shaping that narrative. If children’s literature is alleged to be defined by its audience, then — Loza reminds us — not only do adult gatekeepers form a key part of that audience, but we must acknowledge the ways in which our embodied experiences expose us to different truths about the world in which we live. Can an author who is not a member of the community that her book strives to represent tell an authentic story about that community? Yet, as Loza notes, in striving to avoid stereotyping, the laudable goal of monitoring representation may have the unintended effect of perpetuating stereotypes by suggesting that there is a “true” identity for a particular group. A different look at what’s appropriate in children’s literature, Kathleen Wallace’s essay considers how the oft-deployed (but poorly understood) term “appropriate” serves three distinct functions. First, it attempts to police the borders of childhood — a subject also pursued in Catherine Williams’ essay. Second, it builds upon educators’ research on what is “developmentally appropriate” for different phases of a young person’s development. In so doing, it inadvertently reminds us that “child” is a capacious term, covering many ages and abilities: all children do not pass the same benchmarks at precisely the same time. Third, the term is inextricably intertwined with adult notions of morality.

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Both Phil and Lissa were sufficiently impressed by the essays written by our respective students in the early stages of their graduate careers that we wanted to provide them with the opportunity to see their class work find its way into a scholarly peer-reviewed publication. Every essay was peer-reviewed by two readers and we are particularly grateful to those who took the time to provide experienced feedback to our students. We also want to express our thanks to Katherine Fitzmaurice, Matt Hickling and Miranda Kus for their assistance in copy editing the final manuscript. They were funded by the Grad Fund of the Faculty of Education at Brock, to whom we also express our gratitude. And thanks to Dr. Dolana Mogadime, editor of Brock Education, for encouraging us to produce our special “Keywords” edition of the journal. In the end, we hope that the original work done by our students provides a clear demonstration of what is possible in a classroom assignment.

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References

Adams, R, Reiss, B, & Serlin, S. (2015). Keywords for disability studies. New York: New York UP.

Adamson, J, Gleason, W. A, & Pellow, D. N. (2016). Keywords for environmental studies. New York: New York UP.

Burgett, B., & Hendler, G. (2007) Keywords for American cultural studies. New York: New York UP.

Nel, P. & Paul, L. (2011). Keywords for children’s literature. New York: New York UP. Oullette, L., & Gray, J. (2017). Keywords for media studies. New York: New York UP. Schlund-Vials, C, Trinh, L, & Wong, K. S. (2015) Keywords for Asian American studies.

New York: New York UP.

Vargas, D. R., Mirabal, N. R., & La Fountain-Stokes, L. (2017). Keywords for Latina/o studies. New York: New York UP.

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Littlejohn Adaptation

Adaptation

Emily Littlejohn

Abstract

“Adaptation” originally began as a scientific term, but from 1860 to today it most often refers to an altered version of a text, film, or other literary source. When this term was first analyzed, humanities scholars often measured adaptations against their source texts, frequently privileging “original” texts. However, this method began to shift when scholars like Brian McFarlance, Deborah Cartmell, and Imelda Whelehan outlined the negative consequences of source text bias. More recently, Linda Hutcheon argued that adaptation is worthy of study in its own right (2006). Furthermore, as Brian A. Rose has noted, serial adaptations respond to cultural and societal changes, helping us trace the relationship between the earliest definitions of adaptation and more contemporary understandings of adaptation. For example, Little Red Riding Hood shows how adaptations change through time, each focusing on a social concern prevalent at the time in which it was produced. Lastly, as John Stephens and Robyn McCallum argue, while “retellings of traditional stories may seem intellectually and culturally oppressive, there are always possibilities for resistance, contestation, and change” (p. 8)—thus confirming the importance of attending to, carefully considering, and drawing theoretical conclusions about altered or emended versions of familiar texts.

Keywords: adaptation, children’s literature, texts, young adult

Author Bio: Emily Littlejohn is a second-year Master’s student at Kansas State University. She is specializing in Children’s Literature and currently teaches an undergraduate writing course focused on persuasive writing. Her research interests include the Christian fantasy tradition, Victorian Children’s Literature, and Gary Schmidt’s young adult texts, especially The Wednesday Wars and Okay for Now.

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(OED, 2011) as “the action of applying one thing to another or of bringing two things together so as to effect a change in the nature of the objects”. By 1610, adaptation was commonly defined as “the action or process of adapting one thing to fit with another, or suit specified conditions, esp. a new or changed environment” (OED). While the first definition refers to the word’s history as a scientific term, the second reflects the beginning of its usage in reference to the humanities. It wasn’t until 1860 that “adaptation” was used as we think of it today: “an altered or amended version of a text, musical composition, etc., (now esp.) one adapted for filming, broadcasting, or production on the stage from a novel or similar literary source” (OED). These definitions are not mutually exclusive. Adapters, whether filmmakers, theatre directors, or authors, still alter a work for “a particular end or purpose,” usually to “suit specified conditions, esp. a new or changed environment” (OED).

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Littlejohn Adaptation

Little White Bird diminished some of the more adult themes and concerns of the work. Furthermore, subsequent adaptations, especially Disney’s 1953 animated film and P.J. Hogan’s 2003 live-action film adaptation, among many other reworkings of the tale, continue to demonstrate problematic treatments of race, gender, and sexuality.

Brian A. Rose addresses serial adaptations and their relationship to cultural and societal changes, showing the relationship between the earliest definition’s focus on, “adapting one thing to fit with another…esp. a new or changed environment,” and more contemporary understandings of adaptation as “altered or amended version[s] of a text…one adapted for filming, broadcasting, or production on the stage from a novel or similar literary source” (OED). Rose (1996) discusses how adaptations change through time, each focusing on a social concern prevalent at the time in which it was produced. When addressing oral versions of “Little Red Riding Hood,” French ethnologist, Yvonne Verdier focused on aspects of puberty, motherhood, and menopause. When Charles Perrault adapted this oral story in 1697, he masculinized it, making it about socialization and warning French bourgeoisie girls to beware of wolves’ sexual urges. Tex Avery’s (1943) animated cartoon “Red Hot Riding Hood” takes place in the city rather than the woods, and both Red and Grandma are sexualized and objectified through their appearances, jobs, and hobbies. However, they are not as naïve or defenseless as the heroine of Perrault’s tale. Red is cunning; she rejects the wolf and eludes his grasp. When the wolf encounters Grandma, she sexually objectifies him (aggressively). After his narrow escape from Grandma, the wolf vows to never look at a “babe” again. Catching himself ogling Red, he shoots himself. (This was a Production Code-induced revision of Avery’s original ending for the cartoon, in which the wolf and Grandma brought their half-wolf, half-human children to watch Red’s cabaret act.) In 1982, following in the tradition of James Thurber’s “The Little Girl and the Wolf” (1939), Roald Dahl published his version, “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf.” Here, Red immediately recognizes that the wolf is not her grandmother and when the wolf tries to eat her, “She whips a pistol from her knickers,” demonstrating her preparedness, then “aims it at the creature’s head / And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead,” demonstrating her capability (Dahl, 1995, p. 40). Like Avery’s cartoon heroine, Dahl’s Red does not need to rely on authoritative male figures or Prince Charmings. As each generation highlights the cultural values and concerns relevant to their time, their re-interpretations support Rose’s argument and outline tensions between “the new or changed environment” and the medium of the adaptation (OED).

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Adaptation (2011). In Oxford English dictionary (3rd ed.). Retrieved from http://dictionary.oed.com

Avery, T. (1943). Red hot riding hood. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/xX0VRWrBuF8

Cartmell, D. & Whelehan, I. (1999). Adaptations: The contemporary dilemmas. In D. Carmell & I. Whelehan (Eds.), Adaptations: From text to screen, screen to text. London; New York: Routledge.

Dahl, R. (1995). Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. In Q. Black (Ed.), Revolting rhymes (pp.36-40). New York: Puffin.

Hollingdale, P. (2008). Introduction. In Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hutcheon, L. (2006). A theory of adaptation. New York: Routledge.

McFarlane, B. (1996). Novel to film: An introduction to the theory of adaptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Perrault, C. (1999). Little Red Riding Hood. In M. Tatar (Ed.), The classic fairy tales. New York: Norton.

Rose, B. A. (1996). Jekyll and Hyde adapted: Dramatizations of cultural anxiety. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Stephens, J. & McCallum, R. (1998). Retelling stories, framing culture: Traditional story and metanarratives in children’s literature. New York: Garland Publishing Inc.

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Williams Adult

Adult

Catherine Williams

Abstract

This article explores the topic of adulthood within children’s literature. Because adults author, illustrate, and produce children’s literature, adults construct what childhood looks like, as well as the degree of diverse representation within children’s texts. The varied, and sometimes conflicting, depictions of child characters reveal the difficulties in defining the boundaries between adults and children, particularly whether their relationship is one of difference, similarity, or degree. Children’s literature also interrogates the privileged moral position of adulthood, calling into question whether or not simply being an adult makes someone a reliable role model. The evolving depiction of adults underscores the difficulties of defining adulthood’s role in children’s texts. Lastly, the article examines the phrase “coming of age” and its relationship to the adult/child binary. By rendering “coming of age” as a complex process, the relationship between childhood and adulthood can be viewed as a spectrum, rather than one of difference. Ultimately, examining adulthood reminds scholars to cultivate an awareness of their assumptions as they negotiate, untangle, and examine their own positions as adults within a genre for children.

Keywords: adult; children’s literature; childhood; coming of age; adulting

Author Bio: Catherine Williams is a Master’s student in the English department at Kansas State University. She studies children’s literature and cultural studies. Her research interests focus on motherhood, trauma, resilience, and childhood studies.

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The term “adult” derives from the Latin “adultus”, a noun used to signify something that is “full-grown, mature, firmly established,” or a “fully-grown person” (Oxford English Dictionary [OED], 2011). In its earliest cited usage (1531), the OED locates “adult” beyond the domain of childhood: “Soche persons, beinge nowe adulte, that is to saye, passed theyr childehode” (OED). If adulthood requires us to pass through childhood, then “adult” defines childhood as a distinctly separate state rather than a transitional phase of life. Though the binary of adult and child certainly still exists, the boundaries between adult and child are becoming increasingly blurred.

In contemporary usage, “adult” has become a slang verb, as in “adulting” which means to “behave like an adult,” and to demonstrate “grown-up” skills such as “having a job and living independently [and] also such mundanities as taking clothes to the dry cleaners” (“Adult as a Verb”). Merriam-Webster reports that the usage of adult as a verb has seen “a six-fold increase” in the first five months of 2016, with over 642,000 mentions of “adulting” within the Lexis-Nexis publication database alone (“Adult as a Verb”). The emergence of “adulting” by English-speaking Millennials indicates a blurring of the lines between adult and child in the twenty-first century. As Marah Gubar (2013) declares, “there is no one moment when we suddenly flip over from being a child to being an adult” (p. 454). This suggests that young people gradually make the transition towards adulthood by acquiring skills that demonstrate maturity and independence instead of leaping between the binary of child and adult.

Adults occupy both a pervasive and perilous position within children’s literature—particularly in terms of its production and distribution. As Beverly Lyon Clark (2011) notes, “children’s literature always has at least a double address: the children who are the ostensible audience and the adults whose decisions make it available” (p. 15). Adults author, illustrate, and control the publication of children’s texts. Adults also curate the degree of diversity and representation in children’s books, and control which texts receive prestigious accolades such as the Caldecott and Newbery honour awards. Because adults, rather than children, produce most children’s literature, scholars such as Jacqueline Rose (1984) have asked whether or not children’s literature can be said to actually exist. She argues that children’s fiction is impossible, not in the sense that it cannot be written but in that it hangs on the impossible relation between adult and child. Children’s fiction sets up a world in which the adult comes first, (author, maker, giver) and the child comes after (reader, product, receiver), but where neither of them enter the space in between.

Notions of authority and agency collide with the role of adults in children’s literature—in the very production of these texts, adults create an authoritative role that defines the interests of their audience. As Perry Nodelman (2008) suggests, “children’s literature is not so much what children read as what [adult] producers hope children will read. . . It is the judgement of the producers that engender the texts, not the actual characteristics of the audiences” (p. 4-5). By defining the interests of children based on the producer’s “hope,” adults potentially occlude the interests and experiences of actual children.

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Williams Adult

Scholars disagree whether the distinction between adult and child is best understood as a matter of development, difference, or similarity. These different views are revealed through depictions of child and adult relationships within the genre. Gubar (2013) composes three models outlining the relationship between adults and children: the deficit model, in which “young people are viewed as lacking the abilities, skills, and powers that adults have;” the difference model, which stresses “the radical alterity or otherness of children, representing them as a separate species, categorically different than adults;” and the kinship model, which positions adult and child as “akin to one another…the concept of kinship indicates relatedness, connection, and similarity without implying homogeneity.” The kinship model “holds that children and adults are separated by differences of degree, not kind…” (p. 451-454). Each of these models implicitly directs the author’s creative intent, and thereby shapes the way adult and child are each defined within a text. For instance, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (1963) embodies the model of difference, wherein Max literally becomes Other, more monstrous than human when he joins the Wild Things. In contrast, Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat (1989) treats adolescence and adulthood as differences of degree—the high school-aged protagonists become sexually active, have children, and even become homeowners, despite the ambiguous passage of time.

The varied depiction of adults, from noble guardians to terrible villains, further underscores the difficulty in defining adulthood’s role in children’s literature. On one hand, adult characters are models of the social and cultural values of a historical period. When depicted this way, adults are a guiding, responsible force of reason and a direct foil to the imagination and energy of children. L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908/2013) exemplifies the traditional distinctions between adult and child, wherein the stern Marilla Cuthbert acts as a foil to the relentless energy of Anne Shirley. The portrayal of adults in Montgomery’s novel guides Anne towards socially normative behaviours and acts as a prescriptive force that shapes Anne’s path to adulthood. Despite the assumed superiority of adulthood, Montgomery’s text implicitly acknowledges how children, such as the loquacious Anne Shirley, can profoundly impact adults as well.

However, children’s literature also interrogates the privileged moral position of adulthood, calling into question whether or not simply being an adult makes someone a reliable role model. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865/2000), adults bestowed with authoritative titles— such as Queen, Duchess, or King—neglect to provide the child protagonist Alice—or the child reader—with any guidance or moral lessons. Indeed, Carroll’s nonsensical text destabilizes notions of authority based on age or title, a trend that children’s literature continues to interrogate. Lemony Snicket’s immensely popular A Series of Unfortunate Events (1999-2006) actively subverts adult authority, as the adult guardians are either profoundly evil or immensely gullible, leaving the Baudelaire orphans to work out their own solutions to their unfortunate events (Bullen, 2011; Sadenwasser, 2014).

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The question of what it means to grow up becomes a crucial tension within children’s literature--particularly in YA texts. Authors such as Chris Crutcher, Sherman Alexie, Neil Gaiman, and J.K. Rowling treat coming of age as a matter of exposure to “adult issues.” Often YA books are defined by their issues, as in: abuse (Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes (1993)), poverty and racism (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2009)), and the death of one’s parents (The Graveyard Book (2008), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (1997)). Many contemporary YA texts negate adulthood as a distinct chronological phrase, choosing to measure maturity by the character’s ability to achieve agency and resilience. Instead of censoring issues of adulthood, one “comes of age” by responding to the grim realities of the “adult world” and in turn, invites readers to examine ways they too can find their way.

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Williams Adult

References

Adult. (2011). In Oxford English dictionary (3rd ed.). Retrieved from http://dictionary.oed.com

Alexie, S., & Forney, E. (2009). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Block, F. L. (1989). Weetzie Bat. New York: NY: HarperCollins Publishers.

Bullen, E. (2008). Power of darkness: Narrative and biographical reflexivity in A Series of Unfortunate Events. International Research in Children's Literature, 1(2), 200-212. doi:10.3366/ircl.2008.0007

Carroll, L. (2000). The annotated Alice: Alice's adventures in Wonderland & through the looking-glass. J. Tenniel & M. Gardner (Eds.). New York, NY: Norton.

Clark, B.L. (2011). Audience. In P. Nel & L. Paul (Eds.), Keywords for children's literature. New York, NY: New York University Press.

Crutcher, C. (1993). Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes: A novel. New York, NY: Greenwillow Books. Gaiman, N. (2008). The graveyard book. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.

Gubar, M. (2013). Risky business: Talking about children in children’s literature criticism. Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 38(4), 450-457. doi:10.1353/chq.2013.0048

Kokkola, L. (2013). Fictions of adolescent carnality: Sexy sinners and delinquent deviants. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Merriam-Webster. “'Adult' as a Verb.” Merriam-Webster Online, www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/adulting. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017

www.merriamwebster.com/words-at-play/adulting. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017

Montgomery, L. M. (2013). Anne of Green Gables. London: Puffin. (Original work published 1908).

Nesbit, E. (1913). Wings and the child; or, the building of magic cities. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Nodelman, P. (1996). The pleasures of children’s literature. 2nd_{Edition. White Plains, NY:} Longman

Nodelman, P. (2008). The hidden adult: Defining children's literature. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Rose, J. (1984). The case of Peter Pan, or, the impossibility of children's fiction. London: Macmillan.

Rowling, J. K. (1997). Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone. New York, NY: Scholastic. Sadenwasser, T. (2014). “Comparatively Innocent”: The Terrible Search for Nobility in A Series

of Unfortunate Events. In J. Abbruscato & T. Jones (Eds.), The gothic fairy tale in young adult literature: Essays on stories from Grimm to Gaiman (pp. 123-145). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc.

Sendak, M. (1963). Where the wild things are. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Snicket, L. (1999-2006). A series of unfortunate events (Vols. 1-13). New York, NY:

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Brock Education Journal, 27(2), 2018 18

Animal

Cora Jaeger

Abstract

Tracking the depictions of animals in children's literature through history reveals not only what authors think about animals, but also what they think about the human experience and of childhood itself. As the word "animal" can be used both to mark the similarities and the differences between beasts and men, it makes sense then that animals depicted in children's literature may do the same. Animals in children's

literature may be wholly animalistic, they may act as symbols, they may traipse around in human clothes and perform human actions, or they may also represent racial and other differences. Similarly, child characters may be so feral they act as animals or desire to be one. Considering such depictions of animals (and animalistic children) in children's literature provides the opportunity for thinking about how children understand and negotiate their identities in the world.

Keywords: animal studies, animal symbolism, humanizing child readers, human experience, racialized animals

Cora Jaeger is a M.A. student studying English with a concentration in children’s literature at Kansas State University. She also obtained her B.S. in Elementary Education at Kansas State University. Her research interests include representations of animals in children’s and adolescent literature, literary maps, and using real-world pedagogical tools to measure representations of learning and knowledge in texts.

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Animal Jaeger

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED, 2011) defines “animal” as “a living organism which feeds on organic matter, typically having specialized sense organs and a nervous system and able to respond rapidly to stimuli; any living creature, including man.” With origins from both French and Latin, the word “animal” as a noun first appeared in English in the twelfth century. By the mid 1500’s it was used to describe a person who is either “stupid or uncouth” (OED). The definition of “animal” crosses boundaries between man and beast in the way it began to be used as an adjective in the late sixteenth century, where, among other meanings, it described the way a human acts or functions in an animalistic fashion. French philosopher Jacques Derrida directly engaged with this ongoing issue in 1997 when he “outlined one of the problems facing post humanist humanity . . . what is it that defines the human as human (as opposed to animal, machine, and so on)?” (Fudge, 2002, p. 63). In response to these musings, Zoe Jacques (2015) stated that “negotiations of the animal within children’s fiction, as Derrida had hinted, are as complex as those found within any animal studies philosophy” (p. 105). Ultimately, the fine lines tracing the distinctions between humans and animals speak to the complex roles animals have held in children’s literature.

Though young children learning to read and infants with emerging literacy skills are also learning about what it means to be human through their interactions with literature, an overwhelming number of children’s books predominantly feature animals rather than humans. Leonard S. Marcus (1983) hypothesizes the distancing between people and nature in the mid-nineteenth century influenced the general market for children that capitalized on the desire to maintain a bond between child and animal. This desire for a bond has even affected literary critics, an issue noted by Amy Ratelle (2014) as she explores the ways in which critics working with E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952) struggle to view the farm animals simply as animals. Instead, “most analyses of the text retain the practice of seeing the animal body as a stand-in for human values, emotions, and experiences” (Ratelle, 2014, p. 327). Animals in children’s literature offer the experience to wander back into the uncannily familiar bond we have with nature, whether it be through depictions of animal experiences or animal symbolism.

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lessons ground a larger and lasting tradition within children’s literature. Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) and the Just So Stories (1902) feature fables and origin stories respectively. Exploring both, Dieter Petzold (1987) notes how the animals in Kipling’s works are at once animals and humans. One might wonder if Kipling’s ability to capture his characters as both animal and human is part of the consequences of gifting animals with consciousness. Petzold (1987) seems to understand this on a level, noting that “humans and animals are subject to the same simple order, so that there is no real distinction between our all-too-human cousins and our all-too-beastly selves” (p. 19). While animals in children’s literature might be difficult to read as truly “animal” given their humanization and their creation by human authors, the issue is perhaps negated by the fact that it is children rather than animals who are the consumers of this literature.

As well as ascribing human consciousness to animals, animals who are a part of the strong anthropomorphic tradition in children’s literature are unable to escape humanization in once they walk upright, wear clothes, or speak. Perhaps one of the finest examples of this lies in Beatrix Potter’s many works where animals perform all three modes of behaviour. In Peter Rabbit (1902), the rabbits are anthropomorphic and act as a family unit with human-like rituals. Most importantly, Peter Rabbit himself is in the most danger when he enters Mr. McGregor’s vegetable garden to do just what rabbits do best: nibble on vegetables. Other humanized and anthropomorphic animals such as those who feature in Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever (1963) are human in all but species. They drive cars, brush their teeth, and deliver mail. With humanized animals in mind, it is helpful to consider Marian Scholtmeijer’s idea that the truth of nonhuman animals is that “they are the ‘blank paper’ on which human beings write messages to themselves” (as cited in Walsh, 2003, p. 159). Humanizing animal characters simultaneously socializes children and teaches them to put aside childish and thus animalistic behaviour.

The relationship between human and animal in children’s literature unfortunately becomes problematic when considered alongside the way it has been used to dehumanize real people. Frequently, children’s literature has featured racialized animals, where the animals themselves take on stereotypical traits of marginalized groups of people. Perhaps more often, the civilization of animals mirrors the desired western civilization of people. Books like Jean De Brunhoff’s The Story of Babar (1934) and Margaret and H. A. Rey’s Curious George (1941) both feature jungle characters who must in some way integrate into human society in order to find success. This use of animals as a substitute for lessons of treatment or socialization of marginalized people demonstrates a complex history of racialized animals in children’s literature.

In the case of texts featuring children who act wild and reject their humanity, the child characters are either liberated through their non-conforming animalistic behaviour or they are shameful and must be redeemed. Specifically, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (1963) may find some of its success in the way the text leaves it up to readers to decide the significance of Max’s wild rumpus. Should it be celebrated as an act of liberation or should it be exercised out of him in order for Max to return home as an obedient boy? Max’s story is arguably linked to the long tradition of stories featuring feral children, in which “wildness was no longer a liability but an asset” (Kidd, 2004, p. 6). Alternatively, Emily Hughes’ Wild (2013) points a clearer finger towards the rewards of animalistic behaviour. Wild not only raises questions of nature versus nurture, it also prompts consideration of who is really “animal”. Is it the creatures who raised her or the ones who attempt to civilize her? Each option, either animal child as liberated or animal child as misbehaving, yields the opportunity to consider how children’s literature positions the agency of the child characters.

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Animal Jaeger

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Brock Education Journal, 27(2), 2018 22 References

Aesop. (1998). The complete fables. London: Penguin Classics.

Animal. (2011). In Oxford English dictionary (3rd ed.). Retrieved from http://dictionary.oed.com Cosslett, T. (2006). Talking animals in British children’s fiction, 1786-1914. Aldershot: Ashgate

Publishing Limited.

De Brunhoff, J. (1933). The story of Babar: The little elephant. New York: Random House. Fudge, E. (2002) Animal. London: Reaktion Books Ltd.

Hughes, E. (2015). Wild. London: Flying Eye Books.

Jacques, Zoe. (2015). Children’s literature and the posthuman: Animal, environment, cyborg. London: Routledge.

Kidd, K. (2004) Making American boys: Boyology and the feral tale. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Kipling, R. (1894) The jungle book. London: Macmillan. Kipling, R. (1902). Just so stories. London: Macmillan.

Marcus, L. S. (1983). Picture book animals: How natural a history? The Lion and the Unicorn, 7, 127-139.

Petzold, D. (1987). Fantasy out of myth and fable: Animal stories in Rudyard Kipling and Richard Adams. Children's literature association quarterly, 12(1), 15-19.

Potter, B. (1902). Peter rabbit. London: Frederick Warne & Co. Pullman, P. His dark materials. Knopf, 2007.

Ratelle, A. (2014). Ethics and Edibility in Charlotte’s Web. The Lion and the Unicorn, 38(3), 327-341.

Rey, M., & Rey, H. A. (1941). Curious George. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Ritvo, H. (1985). Learning from animals: Natural history for children in the eighteenth and nineteenth Centuries. Children's literature, 13(1), 72-93.

Scarry, R. (1963). Best word book ever. New York: Golden Press.

Sendak, M. (1963). Where the wild things are. New York: Harper & Row.

Stevenson, N. (2015). Nimona. New York: Harper Collins Children’s Books, 2015.

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Wallace Appropriate

Appropriate

Kathleen Wallace

Abstract

This essay aims to map uses and attributions of the word “appropriate” as they occur in various disciplines related to children’s literature. Three competing interest areas—publishing, education, and societal ideologies—provide insight as to how “appropriate” developed into an abstract cover-word for a variety of outside agendas. One usage stems from publishers, authors, and editors who privilege books that adhere to historically established industry standards, such as rhyming text and anthropomorphism. Educators, however, utilize theories of development to establish “developmentally appropriate” pedagogy which, as a result, has the potential to limit the literacy experiences of children. Finally, gatekeepers and moderators—a group which may include parents, caregivers, or special interest groups—use “appropriate” to signal books that correspond to those adult’s ideologies and effectively protect children from what they define as disagreeable content. Ultimately, “appropriate” indicates books, ideologies, and materials that correspond to what adults from a variety of different—and often contradictory—fields assume children “need” to develop into proper citizens of their society.

Keywords: appropriate, child development, publishing, morality

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One of the earliest uses the Oxford English Dictionary (OED, 2011) provides for "appropriate", as an adjective, is “specially fitted or suitable, proper,” citing a 1544 book by Thomas Phaer: “remedyes . . . appropriate to euery membre throughout the bodye.” Over the following three centuries, the word implied that certain controlled content was proper at distinct stages of its life. In A Sequel to Common Sense, John Lay (under the pseudonym Theophilus Philadelphus) wrote, “our children run through the progressive stages… and demand attentions from their parents applicable and appropriate . . .” (Philadelphus, 1777, p. 42). "Appropriate" continued to define what children supposedly “needed” at specific stages of their lives, although the specific characteristics of these needs changed alongside concepts of childhood.

In the field of children’s literature, the word appropriate typically appears in three different contexts. The first belongs to authors and publishers who use appropriate to indicate what aspects of form make books “for children.” The second is in the purview of educators who utilize theories of development and scientific data to define what qualifies as “developmentally appropriate.” The third relies on the imagined effect that the content of a work might have on a child’s character in order to determine what is suitable. These varied definitions call attention to the lack of a cohesive and universal definition for appropriate children’s literature.

The discussion around what is appropriate for children begins with the image of children as vulnerable and innocent, inspired by philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke in the late seventeenth century (Miller, 2014). Locke’s influence, especially, permeates the content of eighteenth century American and British texts. For example, Sarah Fielding’s The Governess (1749), used didactic yet enjoyable “attempt[s] to gain the child’s affection for modes of authority” (Weikle-Mills, 2008, p. 45) to manipulate white, Christian children into accepting the power of adults. As a result, the philosophies of Locke and Rousseau served as catalysts for a shift in what was considered appropriate literature for children and, indeed, defining the term “childhood.”

During this time, many of the formal characteristics of a book typically considered appropriate for children, such as the use of illustrations, “poem-like texts,” morals, and fairy tale influences developed as publishers began to actively compete against each other (Shavit, 1995, p. 35). The commercial success of one book, such as Marmaduke Multiply: A Merry Method of Making Minor Mathematicians (Scott & Pierce, 2013) inspired others to adopt similar techniques. As a result, popular literature began to feature condescending simplicity that assumed children were “lacking the abilities, skills, and powers that adults have” (Gubar, 2013, p. 451). Believing that children are incapable of understanding complexity, authors also relied on “anthropomorphism . . . rhyming couplets, made-up words, or alliterative titles . . . [and] sloppy allegories” (Law, 1993, p. 16-17). Time and habit established these books’ style and format as “suitable” for children. Works that strayed too far from these characteristics threatened the traditional (and profitable) picture book format.

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Wallace Appropriate

frequently justified these opinions by referring to the difficulty they had with the book” (McClay, 2000, p. 101, author’s emphasis). As McClay’s findings show, a book is more likely to be considered appropriate when it resides in the comfort zone of an adult.

Educators, however, have adopted scientifically-founded “developmentally appropriate” guidelines for curriculum, instruction, and caregiving routines. When considering children’s literature, the developmental appropriateness of a book often depends on whether it “fits” a reader’s age or ability, rather than on literary complexity. For example, infants allegedly benefit from easily manipulated books such as Tana Hoban’s Black on White (1993) or Dorothy Kunhardt’s Pat the Bunny (1940), whereas preschoolers require books that are clearly organized, “conceptually challenging” (Dwyer & Neuman, 2008, p. 493), and informational. Due to these developmental standards, many teachers and caregivers only provide children with the experience of reading books written for their developmental level. Although each school of thought rightfully focuses on creating learning opportunities in the best interest of children, it potentially results in situations where children—even from the same family or community— learn skills and experience literature in wildly different ways, based on what their primary educator deems appropriate.

Outside of education, morality remains the central concern of the key gatekeepers and reformers who claim to have the child’s best interest in mind. As a result, books have been carefully monitored, challenged, and, in extreme cases, censored to coincide with societal ideas of what is appropriate for children. As Frank Beck (1989) states, “A single word can raise protest, and whole subject areas are either off-limits or viewed with suspicion, on the assumption, usually unexamined, that children cannot comprehend or handle certain topics” (p. 151). Texts are most often challenged for sexual content, although other areas of contention may include, “queer themes, crude humor, death, and drugs” (Bittner, 2015, p. 167). This emphasis on comprehension and cognitive maturity hints at not only an overlap with the educational use of the word appropriate, but also the implication that children are incapable of protecting themselves.

To validate these opinions, gatekeepers will ascribe pseudo-scientific or ideological connotations to the word appropriate. For example, in Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s And Tango Makes Three (2005), two male penguins happily hatch and raise a baby penguin. According to the American Library Association (2014), the most common complaints against the appropriateness of the book was because it, “promotes the homosexual agenda,” which implies that heteronormativity and appropriateness are inextricably linked. As this example shows, typical complaints about a book’s appropriateness often center around either the literary value or the supposed capacity for corrupting children (Crowe, 2001). However, groups and organizations that challenge books on the basis of their ability to be appropriate often use the word as a shield to cover for their own personal agendas and their fear of the “subversion of dominant socio-cultural practices” (Miller, 2014, p. 130). Justin Richardson, one of the authors of And Tango Makes Three, echoed this sentiment in a reflection on the controversy surrounding his picture book by stating, “many people offer disingenuous challenges because they cannot admit the true reasons for their objections” (Young, 2011, p. 37).

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References

American Library Association (ALA). (2014). [Infographic]. 2014 Book Challenges. Retrieved from

http://ilovelibraries.lechleidermitche.netdna-cdn.com/sites/default/files/StateAmLib-infographic-2000.jpg Appropriate. (2011). In Oxford English dictionary (3rd ed.). Retrieved from

http://dictionary.oed.com

Beck, F. (1989). What should our children read? The Lion and the Unicorn, 13(1), 151-157. Doi: 10.1353/uni.0.0426

Bittner, R. (2015). The mainstreaming of controversy in children’s and YA book award winners: How on earth did that book win? Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 7(2), 162-182. Retrieved from

http://go.galegroup.com.er.lib.k-state.edu/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=ksu&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA462327871&a sid=541999cb3ba81af0aa1f546256f33684

Crowe, C. (2001). Young adult literature: the problem with YA literature. The English Journal, 90(3), 146-150. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/821338

Dwyer, J., & Neuman, S.B. (2008). Selecting books for children birth through four: A developmental approach. Early Childhood Education Journal, 35, 489-494. Doi:10.1008/s10643-008-0236-5

Gubar, M. (2013). Risky business: Talking about children in children’s literature criticism. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 38(4), 450-457. Doi:

10.1353/chq.2013.0048

Hoban, T. (1993) Black on White. New York: Greenwillow Books. Kunhardt, D. (1940) Pat the Bunny. New York: Golden Books.

Law, E. (1993). Yes, but I’m eleven: An editor’s perspective on condescension in children’s literature. The Lion and the Unicorn, 17(1), 15-21. Doi: 10.1353/uni.0.0275

Macaulay, D. (1990). Black and White. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

McClay, J. K. (2000). Wait a second ...: Negotiating complex narratives in Black and White. Children's Literature in Education, 31(2), 91-106. Doi:

10.1023/A:1005126820272

Miller, A. (2014). Unsuited to age group: The scandals of children’s literature. College Literature, 41(2), 120-140. Doi: 10.1353/lit.2014.0025

Phayer, T. (1544). The regiment of lyfe, whereunto is added a treatise of the pestilence, with the boke of children, newly corrected and enlarged by T. Phayer. London. Retrieved from http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A01831.0001.001

Philadelphus, Theophilus. (1777). A sequel to common sense, or, the American controversy considered in two points of view hitherto unnoticed. Retrieved from

http://find.galegroup.com.er.lib.k-state.edu/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=ksu&tabID =T001&docId=CW104228751&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1. 0&docLevel=FASCIMILE

Richardson, J., & Parnell, P. (2005) And Tango makes three. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

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Shavit, Z. (1995). The historical model of the development of children’s literature. In M. Nikolajeva (Ed.), Aspects and issues in the history of children’s literature (pp. 27-38). Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.

Weikle-Mills, C. A. (2008). Learn to love your book: The child reader and affectionate citizenship. Early American Literature, 43(1), 35-61. doi:10.1353/eal.2008.0000

Young, C. A. (2011). Creating a controversial picturebook: Discussions with the creators of And Tango Makes Three. Journal of Children’s Literature, 37(2), 30-38. Retrieved from

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Authentic Loza

Authentic

Roxana Loza

University of Texas

Abstract

Debates about “authentic” children’s literature often focus on the question of who can legitimately write children’s literature. Therefore, an author’s age, race, and/or ethnicity, (dis)ability, and sexuality become important considerations in establishing credibility and authenticity. If we define children’s literature by authorship, then perhaps, as critics like Rose and Zipes suggest, adults cannot write “authentic” children’s literature. However, as children’s authors such as J.K. Rowling and E. Nesbit claim, adults who remember their own childhoods (such as Rowling and Nesbit) do have a right to tell children’s stories. Other critics focus on how marginalized identities are portrayed in books through their thematic content and characters. Concern over misrepresentation and stereotyping has created a push for books by “insiders” who tell their own stories and experiences. While controversies surrounding authenticity are forcing nuanced discussions about identity, authorship, and audience, some critics are pushing back at the label as a limiting framework.

Keywords: Authentic, marginalized children, race, ethnicity, ableism, sexuality, stereotypes, authorship

Maria Roxana Loza is a Ph.D. student in English at the University of Texas. She went to Rice University for her B.A. in English, French, and Psychology, taught Kindergarten in the Houston area, completed her M.A. in Children’s Literature at Kansas State University, and is currently working as a Teaching Assistant for a YA Fiction and Film course. Her research is primarily on the representation of Latino children in picture books, but she has also analyzed the representation of children of colour in children’s films and in Harry Potter.

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The Oxford English Dictionary (OED, 2011) defines “authentic” as, “stating the truth, and thus worthy of acceptance or belief; of established credit,” etymologically relating it to “classical Latin auctor AUTHOR n. and auctōritās AUTHORITY n.” (OED). Implicit in this definition is the idea that an authentic author is one who writes with authority. Authentic does also mean, however, “having the quality of verisimilitude, true to life” (OED). In children’s literature, both definitions—'authority’ and ‘verisimilitude’—are contentious.

“Authentic” children’s literature is controversial in its most basic sense because there is nearly always a “hidden adult” author (Nodelman, 2008). For Jack Zipes (2001), the fact that “there has never been a literature conceived by children for children, a literature that belongs to children” makes the genre itself unauthentic. Jacqueline Rose (1984) famously describes the impossibility of children’s fiction because the adult comes first (author, maker, giver) and the child comes after (reader, product, receiver) and Karín Lesnik-Oberstein suggests that children’s literature criticism “is fatally compromised” because of adult involvement (as cited in Rudd & Pavlik, 2010, p. 226). While Marah Gubar (2013) acknowledges the power imbalance between children and adults, she considers it far riskier to refuse to discuss children because however reductive, flawed, or potentially disabling our new theories about childhood may be they can prevent still more demeaning options. For Rose, Zipes, and Lesnik-Oberstein, adults cannot write authentic children’s literature.

While adults write the majority of children’s and young adult books, there are also child and teen authors. Some notable examples include: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (thirteen years old); Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (nineteen years old); The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (sixteen years old); Stevie by John Steptoe (sixteen years old); and The Neon Bible by John Kennedy Toole (sixteen years old). Although the authorship belongs to teenagers, adults, in the form of editors, publishers, or reviewers, are still implicated in these works. As Peter Hunt (2011) points out, the possessive in “children’s literature” can be interpreted as by, for, of, or belonging to; therefore, debates about authentic children’s literature go beyond adult or child authorship.

Some children’s authors stake their claim to authenticity by arguing they write for children or that their work is obliquely by children because they remember being children. E. Nesbit remembers praying as a child that “I might never forget what I thought, felt, and suffered then" (as cited in Vidal, 1964, para. 9). J. K. Rowling echoes Nesbit’s statement when she says, “I remember exactly how I felt and thought at 11” (as cited in Nel, 2005, p. 252). Lewis Carroll for the Alice books and J.M. Barrie for Peter Pan drew inspiration from real children, Alice Liddell and Peter Llewelyn Davis respectively, and claimed they wrote to entertain children.

While it is possible to argue that children’s literature is defined by audience, not by authorship (Martin 2011), the author’s racial identity matters in assessing the authenticity of books engaging with race and culture. Concerns about the misrepresentations of children of colour and of historically underrepresented or marginalized groups are growing louder. The Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin, for example, provides statistics on the number of children’s books by and about people of colour published annually in the United States.

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Authentic Loza

Chandler Harris appropriated. The grossly exaggerated and inaccurate transcriptions of African-American dialect Harris appropriates in Uncle Remus: His Songs and his Sayings (2002) now reads as offensive. In her introduction to The Tales of Uncle Remus, Augusta Baker suggests that a true translation and interpretation of these folktales would come from within the black experience.

Among the failures to produce authentic stories from underrepresented communities is Judy Schachner’s Skippyjon Jones series with its rampant use of “Mock Spanish” (Hill, 1998) and harmful stereotypes about Mexicans. Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán (2013) recommends instead that readers look for Latino authors as they “present a view of Latinos from within their communities” (p. 12). In response to calls for authentic representations like Martínez-Roldán’s and Baker’s, Corinne Duyvis established #OwnVoices hashtag to promote “the importance of books created by cultural insiders to the identity experience they portray” (Horning, Lindgren, Schliesman, & Townsend, 2017, para. 5).

As Lee Schweninger (2010) argues, scholars must challenge generalized conceptions of authenticity, but what counts as authentic is still difficult to determine. Sherman Alexie, for example, in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian provides a controversial example. Alexie, though Spokane/Coeur d’Alene himself, writing about a Spokane teenage boy in a partially autobiographical novel has not escaped criticism about his portrayal of Indigenous peoples. In Diary, protagonist Junior comes to terms with his identity as an off-the-reservation Spokane teenage boy. While Junior’s struggle to inhabit two worlds validates a common lived experience of many children of colour, there have been critiques that the novel’s portrayals of alcoholism and death also reinforce negative stereotypes about Indigenous peoples—what Cook-Lynn called the “unhappy, deficit model” of Indian lives (as cited in Kertzer, 2012, p. 54). Supposedly authentic stories can in fact function to sustain stereotypical perceptions about marginalized groups. Since children’s books function as sites of identification, both authors and critics often focus on identity with a qualifying adjective, such as gender identity, national identity, racial identity, ethnic identity, or class identity (Coats, 2011).

The question of who has a right to tell a particular story becomes even more complicated as disability advocates fight long-held assumptions. For the most part “outsiders” frame stories about disabilities, as in R. J. Palacio’s Wonder, Jack Gantos’s Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Holly Robinson Peete and Ryan Elizabeth Peete’s My Brother Charlie. For disability advocates, there ought to be space for people with ‘disabilities’ to provide insight about their experiences. The ‘About’ description on the Disability in Kidlit website states this position using a disability rights saying: “Nothing about us without us.”