The Delights of Impossibility: No Children, No Books, Only
TheoryRoderick McGillis From: Children's Literature Association
Quarterly Volume 23, Number 4, Winter 1998 pp. 202-208 |
10.1353/chq.0.1257 In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt
of the content: Living in childhood without a sense of home, I
found a place of sanctuary in "theorizing," in making sense out of
what was happening.My title refers to impossibility. Let me
explain. We have convincing studies of children's literature that
demonstrate the non-existence of children, their books, and writing
about their books. Children are non-existent because the notions of
childhood we have are constructions of adults who cannot recall
precisely what it was like to be a child; all definitions of the
child and childhood are made by those who are not children, and
therefore these definitions do not speak of something absolute, but
rather of something relative that satisfies the desires and hopes
of the adults who make the definitions. Children's books do not
exist because, once again, adults write books for children, and in
doing so seek to draw children into the world as the adult
perceives it; children, whatever they are, do not (or only rarely)
write the books they read. And the criticism of children's books
does not exist because it cannot exist if there are no children's
books to criticize; indeed, even if there were such things as
children's books, the criticism of them would still come from those
adults who occupy positions of authority within the institutions
that offer commentary on books: the popular press, the more
specialized journals, and the universities. In other words, what we
call children's literature is an invention of adults who need to
have something to write about, something to play with, something to
help them construct a vision of the way things are and ought to be
so that the present generation, and more importantly, the next
generation will behave according to standards those adults who
write children's books and publish them feel comfortable with.The
previous paragraph echoes, rather faintly, the work of Jacqueline
Rose (The Case of Peter Pan; or The Impossibility of Children's
Fiction, 1984) and Karin Lesnik-Oberstein (Children's Literature:
Criticism and the Fictional Child, 1994). I evoke these writers not
to sanction their theories or to criticize them, but rather to
raise some of the problems we have with children's literature. The
first problem is, then, definition. Rose and Lesnik-Oberstein
problematize the definition of children's literature by arguing
that such a literature does not exist. For those who think that it
does exist, another problem arises: how do we define children's
literature vis--vis its audience? In other words, when we speak of
children's literature, do we speak of books marketed for people of
a certain age, and if so, then what age? Are fourteen- and
fifteen-year-olds children? Are people who wear diapers children?
Just whom do we refer to when we say "children"? At what age does
one stop being a child? Is there such a creature as an "inner
child" in each of us? And even if we can decide the answer to these
questions, we have another problem, one that Peter Hunt keeps
insisting on: how do we incorporate a sense of history into what we
mean by children's books? If the term "children's books" refers to
those books that children read, then what does this say about all
those books long forgotten, but perhaps recently dredged up by
literary scholars of a historical bent who snoop about the by-ways
of literary history for the likes of Eliza Fenwick or Mary Martha
Sherwood or Catherine Sinclair or Lucy Clifford or L. T. Meade or
Evelyn Everett-Greene? Who reads these authors any more? Do books
that once may have been children's books cease to be what they once
were? Do they become something else?But let me return to another
perennial problem in the study of children's books. How do we take
seriously books written for an audience of juveniles who have
hardly acquired the skills to read anything beyond the most
rudimentary stories, written in the most rudimentary language, and
dealing with the most rudimentary subjects? If we have a children's
book in front of us, many people assume, then we must
have...http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/childrens_literature_association_quarterly/v023/23.4.mcgillis.pdfBibliography
of Children's Literature Criticismto accompany Perry Nodelman and
Mavis Reimer's Pleasures of Children's Literature, 3d. ed.Compiled
by Perry NodelmanAs a means of encouraging readers to continue
their dialogue with other readers' responses to texts, the first
edition of The Pleasures of Children's Literature included a
detailed listing of books and articles about the topics covered in
the book. Many scholars working in the field of children's
literature told us how useful they found this bibliography in their
own work. But they also suggested that few of their undergraduate
students needed or made use of these extensive listings. So when
the expanded coverage of some particularly significant topics in
the second edition made some deletions necessary, the bibliography
seemed like the most obvious thing to cut. Nevertheless, it seemed
a pity to get rid of a bibliography that so many people had found
useful. What follows is a revised and updated version of it, for
instructors to use themselves or to be shared with students. By and
large, the structure of what follows mirrors the structure of
Pleasures: most of the headings are the titles of the various
sections of the book. This means that we list critical texts not in
relation to the specific literary texts they discuss but in terms
of the issues they tackle or the theoretical stance they take. If
you're looking for citations to discussions about a specific text
or author, you can use the "Find" command in your web browser.This
is anything but a complete bibliography. There is nothing
scientific or consistent about what titles we list or what journals
we make reference to. While we've gone through the complete runs of
key children's literature journals like Children's Literature, Lion
and the Unicorn and Children's Literature Association Quarterly,
our references to work published in other journals are not so
complete. For instance: we only began to have access to the
Australian journal Papers in 2001, and so we include no listings
for work published in that journal earlier. The books and articles
we do list are the ones we've happened to come across in our work
as scholars of children's literature that relate to topics that
strikes us as important or that we ourselves have found enjoyable,
interesting, infuriating, stimulating, or otherwise provocative.
Think of what we offer here not as a comprehensive index but as a
place to begin research in specific topics relating to children's
literature. The Bibliography is very much a work in progress, with
new items being added as they become known to us and we have the
time to list them. Recent additions include: citations to articles
in The Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 1995-2001
citations to articles in The Lion and the Unicorn, 1995-2002
citations to articles in Children's Literature, 1996-2001 citations
to articles in Children's Literature in Education, 1995-2001
citations to articles in New Advocate, 2001-02 citations to
articles in Signal, 1995-2001 citations to articles in Canadian
Children's Literature, 1995-2001 citations to articles in Papers,
2001 and CREArTA, 2000-01 citations to theoretical books about
masculinity, queer theory, and cultural geography additions of new
resources on the critique of developmental psychology citations to
a number of relevant books published in the nineties and beyond.As
well, we've added new sections on cultural studies, childhood
studies, queer studies, and "cross writing," and begun to list
items in them.We are always grateful for suggestions of relevant
books and articles that we might consider adding. Please e-mail
suggestions to:[email protected]
IN GENERALThe International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's
Literature, ed. Peter Hunt (London and New York: Routledge, 1996),
contains essays on a wide range of topics, from types of critical
approaches to children's literature to descriptions of specific
genres to discussion of the children's literature of specific
countries. The key theoretical essays from this book are also found
in Understanding Children's Literature, ed. Hunt (London and New
York: Routledge, 1999). WRITING, READING, TEACHINGWRITINGThere's
more discussion of the kind of exploratory writing we recommend in
Chapter 1 in William Zinsser's Writing to Learn (New York:
Perennial Library--Harper & Row, 1989). Further advice about
how to do this kind of writing is offered in the section on
"response statements" in Reading Texts: Reading, Responding,
Writing, eds. Kathleen McCormack, Gary Waller, and Linda Flower
(Lexington: Heath, 1987); this book also describes ways of
developing deeper responses to literature and discusses how to move
beyond response writing to finished writing, such as an essay.
READINGHow to Read Children's Literature. For commentary on the
ideas about reading for pleasure presented in the first chapter of
Pleasures of Children's Literature, see William F. Touponce's
"Children's Literature and the Pleasures of the Text," Children's
Literature Association Quarterly 20.4 (Winter 1995-96): 175-182.
For more on the pleasure of children's literature, see Perry
Nodelman's "Pleasure and Genre: Speculations on the Characteristics
of Children's Fiction," Children's Literature 28 (2000): 1-14 and
the responses to it that follow: Roderick McGillis's "The Pleasure
of the Process: Same Place but Different," 15-21 Thomas Travisano's
"Of Dialectic and Divided Consciousness: Intersections between
Children's Literature and Childhood Studies," 22-29 Margaret R.
Higgonet's "A Pride of Pleasures," 30-37" and finally, Perry
Nodelman's "The Urge to Sameness," 38-43.Also on the ways in which
adults read and evaluate children's literature: Nicholas Tucker's
"Arthur Ransome and Problems in Literary Assessment," Children's
Literature in Education26.2 (1995): 97-105 and "Literary Critic
Versus Expert Commentator: The Case of Katharine Tozer's Mumfie
Marches On,"Children's Literature in Education26.4 (1995): 219-229;
and Peter Hunt's "How Not to Read a Children's Book,"Children's
Literature in Education26.4 (December 1995): 231-240.Theories of
Reader Response. The basic ideas of reader-response criticism, such
as the concept of "the implied reader" introduced in Chapter 2 and
the concepts of "gaps" and "consistency-building" that form the
basis of the approach to reading outlined in Chapter 4, are
discussed more fully in two books by Wolfgang Iser: The Implied
Reader (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974) and The Act of Reading
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978). A more recent book by Iser is
The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993). Two useful
collections of essays about reader response are The Reader in the
Text: Essays on Audience and Participation, eds. Susan Suleiman and
Inge Crosman (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980) and Reader-Response
Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P.
Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980). In The Reader, The
Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work
(Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978), a classic text first produced in
1938, Louise Rosenblatt outlines a persuasive theory of response
and its application to teaching literature. In The Reader's Eye:
Visual Imaging as Reader Response (Baltimore and London: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1994), Ellen J. Esrock explores a variety of theories
about mental imagery and concretization. As its subtitle suggests,
Victor Nell's Lost in a Book (New Haven: Yale UP, 1988) discusses
"the psychology of reading for pleasure." Michael Steig offers
theoretical analyses of the experience of reading literary texts
for both children and adults in Stories of Reading: Subjectivity
and Literary Understanding (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989).
Children as Readers. Theoretical considerations of the nature of
children's reading are found in: Arthur N. Applebee's Child's
Concept of Story: Age Two to Seventeen (Chicago: U of Chicago P,
1978) Jeff Adams's The Conspiracy of the Text: The Place of
Narrative in the Development of Thought (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1986) J. A. Appleyard's Becoming a Reader: The
Experience of Fiction from Childhood to Adulthood (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1990) Marilyn Cochran-Smith's The Making of a Reader
(Norwood: Ablex, 1984). Cochran-Smith is also the editor of a
series of columns about empirical research into children's
responses to literature that appears in various issues of the
Children's Literature Association Quarterly: 7.1 (Spring 1982):
42-48 7.4 (Winter 1982-1983): 23-25 8.3 (Fall 1983): 37-38 10.2
(Summer 1985): 83-86 11.2 (Summer 1986): 100-102 12.3 (Summer
1987): 94-97. See also Reinbert Tabbert and Kristin Wardetzky's "On
the Success of Children's Books and Fairy Tales: A Comparative View
of Impact Theory and Reception Research," Lion and the Unicorn 19.1
(June 1995): 1-19. In Young People Reading: Culture and Response
(Milton Keynes and Philadelphia: Open UP, 1991), Charles Sarland
discusses the reading of young people in the context of their
experience of popular culture. Alison Newall's "Schoolyard Songs in
Montreal: Violence as Response," Children's Literature Association
Quarterly 19.3 (Fall 1994): 109-112, describes another form of
children's response. For the response of adolescents, see: Kay E.
Vandergrift's "Meaning-Making and the Dragons of Pern," Children's
Literature Association Quarterly 15.1 (Spring 1990): 32 Jack
Thomson's "Adolescents and Literary Response: The Development of
Readers," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 15.4 (Winter
1990): 189-196 Linda K. Christian-Smith's Becoming a Woman through
Romance (New York: Routledge, 1990) Charles Sarland's "Attack of
the Teenage Horrors: Theme and Meaning in Popular Fiction," Signal
73 (January 1994): 49-61 and "Revenge of the Teenage Horrors:
Pleasure, Quality and Canonicity in (and out of) Popular Series
Fiction," Signal 74 (May 1994): 113-131 Emma Heyde's"On Mature
Reflection: Strange Objects and the Cultivation of Reflective
Reading,"Children's Literature in Education31.3 (2000):
195-205.Children as Implied Readers. Aidan Chambers discusses the
implications of a "reader-response" approach for the reading and
analysis of children's literature by adults in "The Reader in the
Book," The Signal Approach to Children's Books, ed. Nancy Chambers
(Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1980), 250-275. So do: Reinbert Tabbert in
"The Impact of Children's Books: Cases and Concepts," Children's
Literature In Education 10 (1979), 92-102 and 144-149 Peter Hunt in
"Childist Criticism: The Subculture of the Child, the Book and the
Critic," Signal 43 (January 1984): 42-59 Hunt in "Questions of
Method and Methods of Questioning: Childist Criticism in Action,"
Signal 45 (September 1984): 180-200 Margaret Meek in "Symbolic
Outlining: The Academic Study of Children's Literature," Signal 53
(May 1987): 97-115 Margaret Meek in "Having to Read to Learn,"
Signal 86 (May 1998): 101-108.There is a special section of
articles on reader response called "Literature and Child Readers"
in Children's Literature Association Quarterly 4.4 (Winter 1980).
Other important discussions of the child readers implied by texts
include three articles in Children's Literature In Education 15.1
(1984): Adrienne Kertzer's "Inventing the Child Reader: How We Read
Children's Books," 12-21; (for a response to this article, see
Victoria de Rijke and Ayeshea Zacharkiw's "Reading the Child
Invention." Children's Literature in Education 26.3 (1995):
153-169) Roderick McGillis's "Calling a Voice Out of Silence:
Hearing What We Read," 22-29 Carol Billman's "Child Reader as
Sleuth," 30-41 (about the way children learn the basic significance
of mystery in story). Also useful are: Maurice Saxby's "Changing
Perspectives: The Implied Reader in Australian Children's
Literature, 1841-1994," Children's Literature In Education 26.1
(1995): 25-38 Anita C. Tarr's "An Unintentional System of Gaps: A
Phenomenological Reading of Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue
Dolphins,"Children's Literature in Education28.2 (1997): 61-71 D.
David Westbrook's "Readers of Oz: Young and Old, Old and New
Historicist," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.3
(Fall 1996): 111-119. For the implied readers of young adult texts,
see Anna Lawrence-Pietroni's "The Tricksters, The Changeover, and
the Fluidity of Adolescent Literature, "Children's Literature
Association Quarterly 21.1 (Spring 1996): 34-39. Responding,
Understanding, Judging. Other stimulating discussions of aspects of
children's behavior as readers include: David Jackson's "First
Encounters: The Importance of Initial Responses to Literature,"
Children's Literature in Education 11 (1980): 149-160 Robert
Protherough's "How Children Judge Stories," Children's Literature
in Education 14.1 (1983): 3-13 Nina Mikkelsen's "Literature and the
Storymaking Powers of Children," Children's Literature Association
Quarterly 9.1 (Spring 1984): 9-14 Hugh Crago's "The Roots of
Response," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 10.3 (Fall
1985): 100-104; "'Easy Connections': Emotional Truth and Fictional
Gratification," Signal 52 (January 1987): 38-61; and "Why Readers
Read What Writers Write," Children's Literature in Education 24.4
(1993): 277-289 Charles Sarland's "Secret Seven Versus the Twits:
Cultural Clash or Cosy Combination," Signal 42 (September 1983) and
"Piaget, Blyton and Story: Children's Play and the Reading
Process," Children's Literature in Education 16.3 (1985): 102-109
Barbara A. Lehman's "Child Reader and Literary Work: Children's
Literature Merges Two Perspectives," Children's Literature
Association Quarterly 14.3 (1989): 123-128 Barbara Freedman's "The
Writer and the Reader in Carrie's War," Children's Literature in
Education 22.1 (1991): 26-43 Jonathon Culley's "Roald Dahl--It's
about Children and It's for Children--But Is It Suitable?"
Children's Literature in Education 22.1 (1991): 59-73 Virginia
Lowe's "Stop! You Didn't Read Who Wrote It! The Concept of the
Author," Children's Literature in Education 22.2 (1991): 79-88
David Wray and Maureen Lewis's useful survey "The Reading
Experiences and Interests of Junior School Children," Children's
Literature in Education 24.4 (1994): 251-264 Mingshui Cai's
"Reflections on Transational Theory as a Theoretical Guide for
Literacy and Literature Education," New Advocate 14.1 (2001): 19-32
Joyce Bainbridge and Sylvia Pantaleo's "Filling the Gaps in Text:
Picture Book Reading in the Middle Years," New Advocate 14.4
(2001): 411.The repertoire implied by children's texts is discussed
in: Peter Hunt's "What Do We Lose When We Lose Allusion? Experience
and Understanding Stories," Signal 57 (September 1988): 212-222
John Stephens's "Intertextuality and The Wedding Ghost," Children's
Literature in Education 21.1 (1990): 23-36 Catharine Stephens's
"Peepo Ergo Sum? Anxiety and Pastiche in the Ahlbergs' Picture
Books," Children's Literature in Education 21.3 (1990): 165-177.See
also the texts listed under Intertextuality. Margaret Mackey has
written a number of articles discussing aspects of response:
"Metafiction for Beginners: Alan Ahlberg's Ten in a Bed,"
Children's Literature in Education 21.3 (1990): 179-187 "Ramona the
Chronotope: The Young Reader and Social Theories of Narrative,"
Children's Literature in Education 22.2 (1991): 97-109 "Growing
with Laura: Time, Space and the 'Little House' Books," Children's
Literature in Education 23.2 (1992): 59-74 "Many Spaces: Some
Limitations of Single Readings, "Children's Literature in Education
24.3 (1993): 147-164 (on re-reading, see also Peter Hollindale's
"Re-reading the Self: Children's Books and Undergraduate Readers,"
Signal 79 (January 1996): 62-74) "Communities of Fictions: Story,
Format, and Thomas the Tank Engine," Children's Literature in
Education 26.1 (1995): 39-51. Case Studies: Real Children Reading.
Quite a number of writers discuss the histories of individual
children's responses to literature: Dorothy Neal White's Books
Before Five (New York: Oxford UP, 1954) Dorothy Butler's Cushla and
Her Books (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) Shelby Anne Wolf and
Shirley Brice Heath's The Braid of Literature: Children's Worlds of
Reading (Cambridge and London: Harvard UP, 1992), which offers
detailed descriptions of two young girls' responses to literature
and a theoretical framework for making sense of the responses
Maureen and Hugh Crago's Prelude to Literacy: A Preschool Child's
Encounter with Picture and Story (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP,
1983) Maureen Crago's "Creating and Comprehending the Fantastic: A
Case Study of a Child from Twenty to Thirty-Five Months,"
Children's Literature in Education 24.3 (1993): 209-222 Hugh
Crago's "The Unlearned Lessons of Stories Children Tell," Signal 92
(May 2000): 94-118.The now adult Anna Crago discusses her parents'
use of her in research as described in Prelude to Literacy in
"Little Anna and Big Anna," Signal 75 (September 1994): 177-181.
The articles in the Fall 1988 Children's Literature Association
Quarterly (13.3) are about childhood reading experiences, including
those of some real and some fictional children. In "'Plain' and
'Fancy' Laura: A Mennonite Reader of Girls' Books," Children's
Literature in Education 16 (1988): 185-192, Laura Weaver discusses
the inevitable bias her religious background brought to her own
childhood reading; Madelon S. Gohlke describes one of her childhood
reading experiences in "Re-reading The Secret Garden," College
English 41.8 (April 1980): 894-902; and Roni Natov remembers one of
hers in "The Stories We Need to Hear: The Reader and the Tale,"
Lion and the Unicorn 9 (1985): 11-18. Children's Literature in
Education 28.1 (1995) contains a number of articles on the writers'
childhood reading experiences, including Russell Hoban's"Wilde
Pomegranates: The Ghost of a Room and the Soul of a Story,"
19-29.There are a number of carefully conceived reports of
children's responses by Lawrence R. Sipe, including one that offers
a highly useful categorization of the varieties of response: "The
Construction of Literary Understanding by First and Second Graders
in Oral Response to Picture Storybook Read-alouds," Reading
Research Quarterly 35.2 (2000): 252-275.Other work by Sipe
includes: "The Private and Public Worlds of We Are All in the Dumps
with Jack and Guy,"Children's Literature in Education27.2 (1996):
87-108 "'Those two gingerbread boys could be brothers': How
Children Use Intertextual Connections During Storybook
Readalouds,"Children's Literature in Education31.2 (2000): 73-90
Sipe and Jeffrey Bauer's "Urban Kindergartners' Literary
Understanding of Picture Storybooks," New Advocate 14.4 (2001):
329-342.For other descriptions of child and young adult readers,
see: Ann M. Trousdale's "Let the Children Tell Us: The Meaning of
Fairy Tales for Children," New Advocate 2.1 (1989): 37-48 Ann M.
Trousdale and Janie S. Everett's "Me and Bad Harry: Three African
American Children's Response to Fiction," Children's Literature in
Education 25.1 (1994): 1-15 Virginia Lowe's "Surely You Didn't Read
Who Wrote It? The Concept of Author," Children's Literature in
Education 22.2 (1991): 79-88; "Which Dreamed It: Two Children,
Philosophy, and Alice," Children's Literature in Education 25.1
(1994): 55-62; and "The Parent Observer at Home," Signal 75
(September 1994): 182-193 Catharine Sheldrick Ross's "If They Read
Nancy Drew, So What? Series Book Readers Talk Back," Library and
Information Science Research 17.3 (1995): 201-36 Victoria de Rijke
and Ayeshea Zacharkiw's "Reading the Child Invention," Children's
Literature in Education 26.3 (1995): 153-169 Karen S. Day's "The
Challenge of Style in Reading Picture Books,"Children's Literature
in Education27.3 (1996): 153-166 Maggie Moore and Barrie Wade's
"Parents and Children Sharing Books: An Observational Study,"
Signal 84 (September 1997): 203-214 Gail Munde's "What Are You
Laughing At? Differences in Children's and Adults' Humorous Book
Selections for Children,"Children's Literature in Education28.4
(1997): 219-234 Jill Kedersha McClay's "'Wait a second . . . ':
Negotiating Complex Narrative in Black and White,"Children's
Literature in Education31.2 (2000): 91-106 Leif Gustavson's
"Normalizing the Text: What Is Being Said, What Is Not, and Why in
Students' Conversations of E.L. Konigsburg's The View from
Saturday," Journal of Children's Literature 26.1 (Spring 2000):
18-31 Morag Styles and Evelyn Arizpe's "A Gorilla with 'Grandpa's
Eyes': How Children Interpret Visual Texts--A Case Study of Anthony
Browne's Zoo," Children's Literature in Education 32.4 (2001):
261-281 Betty Greenway's "The Influence of Children's Literature--A
Case Study: Dylan Thomas and Richmal Crompton," Children's
Literature Association Quarterly 26.3 (Fall 2001): 133-139 Wilma D.
Kuhlman's "Fifth-Graders' Reactions to Native Americans in Little
House on the Prairie: Guiding Students' Critical Reading," New
Advocate 14.4 (2001): 387-399.TEACHING LITERATURE TO CHILDRENThe
most stimulating books about the teaching of literary skills to
children are the ones that express the widest knowledge of literary
theory: Robert Protherough's Developing Response to Fiction (Milton
Keynes: Open UP, 1983) Ian Reid's Making of Literature: Texts,
Contexts and Classroom Practices (Australian Association for the
Teaching of English, 1984) Readers, Texts, Teachers, eds. Bill
Corcoran and Emrys Evans (Upper Montclair: Boynton/Cook, 1987) Anna
O. Soter's Young Adult Literature and the New Literary Theories:
Developing Critical Readers in Middle School (New York and London:
Teachers College P, 1999)But the books we find most stimulating are
by Aidan Chambers: Introducing Books to Children (London:
Heinemann, 1973) Tell Me: Children, Reading and Talk (Stroud,
Gloucs.: Thimble, 1993) The Reading Environment: How Adults Help
Children Enjoy Books (York, ME: Stenhouse and Markham, ON:
Pembroke, 1996). Also very useful is Andrew Stibbs's exploration of
the ways in which literary theories such as structuralism and
narratology suggest classroom activities: Reading Narrative as
Literature: Signs of Life (Milton Keynes and Philadelphia: Open UP,
1991); although Stibbs focuses on work with older children, all his
ideas could be used with younger ones. Other useful books are:
English Teachers at Work: Ideas and Strategies from Five Countries,
eds. Stephen N. Tchudi and others (Upper Montclair: Boynton/Cook,
1986) Alan C. Purves and Dianne L. Monson's Experiencing Children's
Literature (Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1984) Using Literature in
the Elementary Classroom, rev. ed., eds. John Warren Stewig and Sam
Leaton Sebesta (Urbana: NCTE, 1989) Linda Hart-Hewins and Jan
Wells's Real Books for Reading (Markham: Pembroke, 1990) Ralph
Peterson and Maryann Eeds's Grand Conversations: Literature Groups
in Action (Richmond Hill, ON and New York: Scholastic, 1990) Monica
Edinger's Fantasy Literature in the Elementary Classroom (New York:
Scholastic, 1995) Literature-Based Instruction: Reshaping the
Curriculum, ed. Taffy E. Raphael and Kathryn H. Au (Norwood:
Christopher-Gordon, 1998) Reading Their World: The Young Adult
Novel in the Classroom, eds. Virginia Monseau and Gary M. Salvner,
2d ed. (Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 2000). Ron Jobe and
Paula Hart offer descriptions of useful classroom activities in
Canadian Connections: Experiencing Literature with Children
(Markham: Pembroke, 1991); Jobe offers more in Cultural
Connections: Using Literature to Explore World Cultures with
Children (Markham: Pembroke, 1993). For work with picture books,
see Barbara Z. Kiefer's The Potential of Picturebooks: From Visual
Literacy to Aesthetic Understanding (Englewood Cliffs and Columbus:
Merrill, 1995). Like Stibbs's Reading Narrative as Literature, a
number of books discuss work with older children and young adults
that can also be used with younger children: Robert E. Probst's
Response and Analysis: Teaching Literature in Junior and Senior
High School (Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook-Heinemann, 1988) Literature
Instruction: A Focus on Student Response, ed. Judith A. Langer
(Urbana: NCTE, 1992) Alan C. Purves, Theresa Rogers, and Anna O.
Soter's How Porcupines Make Love III: Readers, Texts, Cultures in
the Response-Based Literature Classroom (White Plains: Longman,
1995). In The Educated Imagination (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1964),
Northrop Frye offers a view of what children should learn about
literature. Glenna Davis Sloan presents an approach to children's
literary education based on Frye's ideas in The Child as Critic:
Teaching Literature in the Elementary and Middle Schools, 3d ed.
(New York: Teachers College P, 1991). See also John Willinsky's
"Frye Among (Postcolonial) Schoolchildren: The Educated
Imagination," Canadian Children's Literature 79 (1995): 6-24; Jill
May's Children's Literature and Critical Theory: Reading and
Writing for Understanding (New York: Oxford UP, 1995) describes how
theory can influence the ways in which children and students in
children's literature courses understand the literary texts they
read. Of the various children's literature journals, Children's
Literature in Education and the New Advocate devote the most
attention to questions of teaching. For instance, New Advocate 14.3
(2001) is a special issue on using children's literature in the
classroom. It includes: Nancy L. Roser's "A Place for Everything
and Literature in its Place," 211-221 Lee Galda's "High Stakes
Reading: Articulating the Place of Children's Literature in the
Curriculum," 223-239 Sam Sebesta's "What Do Teachers Need to Know
about Children's Literature?" 241-249 Cyntha Brock and others'
"Using the Stories of Our Lives and Teaching to Explore Literacy
Learning and Instruction," 265-276.Other recent New Advocate
articles include: Mingshui Cai's "Reflections on Transational
Theory as a Theoretical Guide for Literacy and Literature
Education," New Advocate 14.1 (2001): 19-32 Jessica Whitelaw and
Shelby A. Wolf's "Learning to See Beyond: Students' Artistic
Perceptions of The Giver," New Advocate 14.1 (2001): 57-67 Lawrence
Sipe and Jeffrey Bauer's "Urban Kindergartners' Literary
Understanding of Picture Storybooks," New Advocate 14.4 (2001):
329-342 Jeane F. Copenhaver's "Listening to Their Voices Connect
Literary and Cultural Understandings: Responses to Small Group
Read-Alouds of Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly," New Advocate
14.4 (2001): 343-359 Wilma D. Kuhlman's "Fifth-Graders' Reactions
to Native Americans in Little House on the Prairie: Guiding
Students' Critical Reading," New Advocate 14.4 (2001): 387-399
Joyce Bainbridge and Sylvia Pantaleo's "Filling the Gaps in Text:
Picture Book Reading in the Middle Years," New Advocate 14.4
(2001): 411."Teaching Literary Criticism in the Elementary Grades:
A Symposium," ed. Jon C. Stott, originally appeared in Children's
Literature in Education 12.4 (1981): 192-206; it is reprinted in
Children and Their Literature, ed. May, 160-172. Other
representative Children's Literature in Education articles include:
Terry D. Johnson's "Presenting Literature to Children," Children's
Literature in Education 10.1 (1979): 35-43 John Stott's "'It's Not
What You Expect': Teaching Irony to Third Graders," Children's
Literature in Education 13.4 (1982): 153-161; "Spiralled Sequence
Story Curriculum: A Structuralist Approach to Teaching Fiction in
the Elementary Grades," Children's Literature in Education 18.3
(1987): 148-163; "Will the Real Dragon Please Stand Up? Convention
and Parody in Children's Stories," Children's Literature in
Education 21.4 (1990): 219-228; and "Making Stories Mean: The Value
of Literature for Children," Children's Literature in Education
25.4 (1994): 243-255 Stott and Christine Doyle Francis's "'Home'
and 'Not Home' in Children's Stories: Getting There--and Being
Worth It," Children's Literature in Education 24.3 (1993): 223-233
Shelley L. Knudsen Lindauer's "Wordless Books: An Approach to
Visual Literacy," Children's Literature in Education 19.3 (1988):
136-142 Dan Hade's "Being Literary in a Literature-Based
Classroom," Children's Literature in Education 21.1 (1991): 1-17
David Self's "A Lost Asset? The Historical Novel in the Classroom,"
Children's Literature in Education 22.1 (1991): 45-49 Ann M.
Trousdale and Violet J. Harris's "Missing Links in Literary
Response: Group Interpretation of Literature," Children's
Literature in Education 24.3 (1993): 195-208 Miriam Bat-Ami's "War
and Peace in the Early Elementary Classroom," Children's Literature
in Education 25.2 (1994): 83-99 Andrew Taylor's "'On the Pulse':
Exploring Poetry through Drama," Children's Literature in Education
25.1 (1994): 17-28 Dianne Swenson Koehnecke's "Folklore and the
Multiple Intelligences,"Children's Literature in Education26.4
(1995): 241-247 (on teaching university-level children's literature
students) Alun Hicks and Dave Martin's "Teaching English and
History Through Historical Fiction,"Children's Literature in
Education28.2 (1997): 49-59 Laina Ho's"Children's Literature in
Adult Education,"Children's Literature in Education31.4 (2000):
259-271 Elizabeth Strehle's"Social Issues: Connecting Children to
Their World,"Children's Literature in Education30.3 (1999): 213-220
Dianne Koehnecke's "Smoky Night and Crack: Controversial Subjects
in Current Children's Stories," Children's Literature in Education
32.1 (2001): 17-30 Sharon Black, Thomas Wright, and Lynnette
Erickson's "Polynesian Folklore: An Alternative to Plastic Toys,"
Children's Literature in Education 32.2 (2001): 125-137.Articles
about teaching used to appear fairly often in Children's Literature
Association Quarterly; unfortunately, they have ceased to do so in
recent years. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 12.3
(Fall, 1987) is a special issue devoted to the topic. Among other
useful articles are: Linnea Hendrickson's "Literary Criticism as a
Source of Teaching Ideas," Children's Literature Association
Quarterly 9.4 (Winter 1984-1985): 202 Sonia Landes's "Picture Books
as Literature," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 10.2
(Summer 1985): 51-54 (about teaching meaning-making strategies for
picture books) Barbara Z. Kiefer's "The Child and the Picture Book:
Creating Live Circuits," Children's Literature Association
Quarterly 11.2 (Summer 1986): 63-68 Richard Van Dongen's
"Non-fiction, History, and Literary Criticism in the Fifth Grade,"
Children's Literature Association Quarterly 12.4 (Winter 1987):
189-190 (a description of one teacher's work with a class) Kay E.
Vandergrift's "Meaning-Making and the Dragons of Pern," Children's
Literature Association Quarterly 15.1 (Spring 1990): 27-32 (a
group's experience of discussing a text) Jill P. May's "What
Content Should Be Taught in Children's Literature," Children's
Literature Association Quarterly 16.4 (Winter 1991-1992): 275-277),
about university-level children's literature courses and their
effect on what children learn of literature from their teachers.
See also Peter Hollindale's "Re-reading the Self: Children's Books
and Undergraduate Readers," Signal 79 (January 1996): 62-74
Roderick McGillis's "Learning to Read, Reading to Learn; or
Engaging in Critical Pedagogy," Children's Literature Association
Quarterly 22, 3 (Fall 1997):126-132, and "The Delights Of
Impossibility: No Children, No Books, Only Theory," Children's
Literature Association Quarterly 23, 4 (Winter 1998-99): 202-208,
about teaching critical thinking.A useful article on contemporary
disputes about children and literature is Herbert Kohl's "Uncommon
Differences: On Political Correctness, Core Curriculum and
Democracy in Education," Lion and the Unicorn 16.1 (June 1992):
1-16. See also Mawuena Kossi Logan's "Labour Party Reforms Versus
Imperialist Literary Practice," Lion and the Unicorn 25.3
(September 2001): 391-411.Among other articles: Monique Lebrun et
Celine Lamarche's "L'Utilisation de la Litterature de Jeunesse en
Classe: Les Enseignants Ont la Parole," Canadian Children's
Literature 79 (1995): 58- 66 Johanne Gaudet's "Relis-moi 'Le Vilain
Petit Canard' . . . S'il Te Plait," Canadian Children's Literature
79 (1995): 67-70 Jerry Diakiw's "Children's Literature and Canadian
National Identity: A Revisionist Perspective," Canadian Children's
Literature 87: 36-49 Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reimer's "Teaching
Canadian Children's Literature: Learning to Know More," Canadian
Children's Literature 98 (2000): 15-35 Flore Gervais's "Habitudes
de Lecture Chez les 9-12 ans: Une Enquete aux Resultats qui Nous
Laissent Songeurs," Canadian Children's Literature 100/01:
(2000-01): 94-107.There are a number of other useful articles
listed under Children and Poetry, below.For a critique of practices
in the teaching of reading the remove that emphasis from studying
literature, see Gerald Coles's Misreading Reading: The Bad Science
that Hurts Children (Portsmouth: Heineman, 2000).For discussion of
how texts themselves act as teachers, see: Perry Nodelman's "Text
as Teacher: The Beginning of Charlotte's Web," Children's
Literature 13 (1985): 109-27 Margaret Meek's How Texts Teach What
Readers Learn (Lockwood UK: Thimble, 1988) Joanna J. Klinker's "The
Pedagogy of the Post-Modern Text: Aidan Chambers's The Toll
Bridge," Lion and the Unicorn 23.2 (April 1999): 257-270 Vivienne
Smith's "All in a Flap About Reading: Catherine Morland, Spot, and
Mister Wolf," Children's Literature in Education 32.3 (2001):
225-236 Louise Collins's "The Virtue of 'Stubborn Curiosity': Moral
Literacy in Black and White," Lion and the Unicorn 26.1 (January
2002): 31-49.Those interested in the overall use of children's
literature in the education of young children should also consult
journals devoted to that topic: Journal of Children's Literature
and The New Advocate.
