![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Children's Books
Feb. 13th, 2011 07:44 pm“Careful parents and guardians will want to go through it first to scratch out the epithets “nasty dirty,” “nasty wicked,” “nasty filthy,” where they frequently occur” - from a book review in The Nation, December 1873.
I read it this morning while searching for reviews of Hans Brinker, which I didn't find, but I found this article which was even better because it basically lays out a programmatic statement for children's literature from 1870 on - though I don't think modern people would put it quite like this, it has strong vestiges in the way children's literature is discussed today:
"Children do not desire, and ought not to be furnished, merely realistic pictures of themselves...A boy’s heart craves a hero; and he believes in his hero with all the beautiful literalness and seriousness of early childhood. We mature so soon here, we so soon become self-analytical, sharp, critical, skeptical, that we not only cannot enjoy anything but realism ourselves, but we become incapable of comprehending that the young are imaginative and full of faith, and that for them a moral romance – we use the word “moral” broadly – may be made by a skilful writer of more weight and wider influence than many sermons.”
I danced around the library when I found that quote, because it so exactly sets out the dominant model of children's literature in the second half of the nineteenth century which is integral to my thesis about Heroines in Girls' Literature, 1890-1910.
There seem to be three competing models of children's literature, two of which were born in the nineteenth century and one from rather later on:
( Sunday School tracts, pleasure gardens and problem novels )
Which brings me, finally, to the recent dust-up about Bitch's list of recommended YA books for the feminist reader. (Abigail Nussbaum offers a comprehensive analysis of the whole thing.) My question is this: why on earth did someone read Living Dead Girl and say, "A book about a sex slave who is grooming her successor for her master the serial killer! Clearly we must publish this in a manner that specifically recommends it to the twelve to fifteen crowd!"
Because to me, Living Dead Girl seems obviously an adult book. The only thing that suggests it might be YA is the age of the heroine, which is the worst criteria ever. Are the Kushiel books YA now, too? Phedre's a teenager all through the first one.
And I read Kushiel when I was 15/16. (The first two, anyway; I bailed on the third, because it was just too awful.) I have no problem with teenagers diving into the adult section of the library if they want to. But I am doubtful of the value of entirely erasing the boundary between young adult and adult novels. Surely there's value in having a garden, provided you can leave it?
I read it this morning while searching for reviews of Hans Brinker, which I didn't find, but I found this article which was even better because it basically lays out a programmatic statement for children's literature from 1870 on - though I don't think modern people would put it quite like this, it has strong vestiges in the way children's literature is discussed today:
"Children do not desire, and ought not to be furnished, merely realistic pictures of themselves...A boy’s heart craves a hero; and he believes in his hero with all the beautiful literalness and seriousness of early childhood. We mature so soon here, we so soon become self-analytical, sharp, critical, skeptical, that we not only cannot enjoy anything but realism ourselves, but we become incapable of comprehending that the young are imaginative and full of faith, and that for them a moral romance – we use the word “moral” broadly – may be made by a skilful writer of more weight and wider influence than many sermons.”
I danced around the library when I found that quote, because it so exactly sets out the dominant model of children's literature in the second half of the nineteenth century which is integral to my thesis about Heroines in Girls' Literature, 1890-1910.
There seem to be three competing models of children's literature, two of which were born in the nineteenth century and one from rather later on:
( Sunday School tracts, pleasure gardens and problem novels )
Which brings me, finally, to the recent dust-up about Bitch's list of recommended YA books for the feminist reader. (Abigail Nussbaum offers a comprehensive analysis of the whole thing.) My question is this: why on earth did someone read Living Dead Girl and say, "A book about a sex slave who is grooming her successor for her master the serial killer! Clearly we must publish this in a manner that specifically recommends it to the twelve to fifteen crowd!"
Because to me, Living Dead Girl seems obviously an adult book. The only thing that suggests it might be YA is the age of the heroine, which is the worst criteria ever. Are the Kushiel books YA now, too? Phedre's a teenager all through the first one.
And I read Kushiel when I was 15/16. (The first two, anyway; I bailed on the third, because it was just too awful.) I have no problem with teenagers diving into the adult section of the library if they want to. But I am doubtful of the value of entirely erasing the boundary between young adult and adult novels. Surely there's value in having a garden, provided you can leave it?
