LCN617 — Children’s Literature: Criticism and Practice

2015

Dr Erica Hateley – erica.hateley@qut.edu.au School of Cultural and Professional Learning.Faculty of Education, QUT.

Overview of Unit• Module 1: Textual Toolbox• What is Children’s Literature? • How do we begin to analyse it critically?• Narrative, Narration, Focalisation, Closure • Reading the visual

• Module 2: Reading Communities and Contexts• How do different social locations affect reading?• What do different groups ‘do’ with children’s literature?• How might we negotiate “popularity” and “significance”?

• Module 3: Issues of Practice• Censorship vs. Selection• Diversities• From Critique to Community

Assessment• Assignment 1: Case Study • Due Date: Thursday, April 2, 2015• Length: 1,500 words (excluding quotations), with a 10% margin • Weighting: 40%

• Assignment 2: Critical Rationale & Book Trailer• Due Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2015• Length: 1,500 words (excluding quotations), with a 10% margin

• Book Trailer lasting no longer than 3 minutes• Weighting: 50%

• Ongoing Discussion• You will not be able to complete the assignments without regular

participation• You are required to make a substantive contribution at least once a

fortnight via the Google Community

Issues Facing Teachers & TLs:• There has been, “a perception that teachers’ creative use of

literature is restricted by centralised systems and their attendant pedagogic practices […] Furthermore, it has been suggested that teachers’ confidence in knowing and using children’s literature may be limited, particularly by a lack of time to read personally for pleasure” (Cremin et al. 451)

BUT…• “teachers who are engaged readers are motivated to read, are

both strategic and knowledgeable readers, and are socially interactive about what they read. These qualities show up in their classroom interactions and help create students who are in turn engaged readers.” (Dreher 338)

ALIA Standards of professional excellence for teacher-librarians:

• have a sound understanding of how children and young adults become independent readers

• have a comprehensive understanding of literacy, literature for children and young adults, curriculum and specific programs in their schools

• foster an environment where learners are encouraged and empowered to read, view, listen and respond for understanding and enjoyment

• support learning and teaching by providing equitable access to professionally-selected resources

• foster a reading culture through the active promotion of literature

https://www.alia.org.au/about-alia/policies-standards-and-guidelines/standards-professional-excellence-teacher-

librarians

Stories in Libraries, Stories ‘about’ Libraries:

• “One channel of socialization was the system of textual organization […] A second channel was the form that the discursive practices of each librarian took, that is, the nature of storytime interactions and how rules and procedures within each library were negotiated. A third channel was the content of the narratives both in the books that librarians recommended to students as “good reading” for them, and in the narratives that each librarian used to explain how the library worked” (Dressman 276)

• Like children’s literature, then, school libraries work to socialise young people into particular ways of viewing and understanding the world—there’s nothing “wrong” about that, but we need to be self-reflexive about the ways the stories we choose and the stories we tell shape our own and others’ understanding

So, “What” is Children’s Literature?

• Genre defined by audience• Political genre:• Socialising and acculturating• Illustrates and inculcates “norms” (cf.

Zipes)• Tends to be conservative

• Interested in the “present child” because they are also the “future adult”• Educates by

entertaining

• “as an area of research and teaching, children’s literature encompasses all genres, formats, and media; all periods, movements, and kinds of writing from any part of the world, and often related ephemera and merchandise too. It addresses works that were specifically directed at the young, those that came to be regarded as children’s literature by being appropriated by young readers, and those that were once read by children but are now almost exclusively read by scholars.” (Reynolds 2)

Publishing / Marketing?

Nodelman’s Hidden Adult (2008):

• Seeks, “to develop useful knowledge of how literature does or might operate as an adult practice with intentions towards child readers” (4)

• Broadly, Nodelman found that the books he examined, “were all written or published with the idea that their main readers would be children or teenagers and the conviction that the youthfulness of these readers would influence what they might like to or be able to or need to read. The texts all address young readers in terms that make their youth a matter of significance.” (5)

Nodelman’s “Summary” (76-81):• Nodelman produces a long list of characteristics of “children’s

literature”• Some of them apply directly to our reading and thinking at this

point in LCN617, others will emerge as significant in future weeks, but I believe that this list is a very important and convincing document of the genre and its significance—open enough to be widely applicable, focussed enough to be useful to those of us who work with, in, or around children’s literature and culture!

Questions We’ll Be Asking:

• What message is the text overtly producing? • What might the text “really” be saying?• How is the text communicating its ideas? • Why might the text be producing meaning in such ways? • Who is the implied reader?• What does, can, or should this text mean in the context of a

school library?

Survey Says?...

Consensus: the good, the bad, and…• How we define a children’s book• Texts that can be enjoyed, are of interest, are intended for, or ar accessible to

children• Books we remember• picture books

• Dr. Seuss titles; Ping; The Very Hungry Caterpillar; Madeline• Australian texts

• Snugglepot and Cuddlepie; Possum Magic• “children’s classics”—old and new, fantasy

• Tom’s Midnight Garden; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Harry Potter• Enid Blyton

• Anxieties we share• Managing work/life balance• Being forced into giving answers we don’t agree with on surveys • “not knowing” / “wrong answer”• Lack of experience with reading children’s books (critically, or at all)

Literary Criticism criticism The reasoned discussion of literary works, an activity which may include some

or all of the following procedures, in varying proportions: the defence of literature against moralists and censors, classification of a work according to its genre, interpretation of its meaning, analysis of its structure and style, judgement of its worth by comparison with other works, estimation of its likely effect on readers, and the establishment of general principles by which literary works (individually, in categories, or as a whole) can be evaluated and understood. Contrary to the everyday sense of criticism as ‘fault-finding’, much modern criticism (particularly of the academic kind) assumes that the works it discusses are valuable; the functions of judgement and analysis having to some extent become divided between the market (where reviewers ask ‘Is this worth buying?’) and the educational world (where academics ask ‘Why is this so good?’).

[…] Particular schools of criticism also seek to understand literature in terms of its relations to history, politics, gender, social class, mythology, linguistic theory, or psychology, as with psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism, feminist criticism, myth criticism, ecocriticism, and others. See also exegesis, hermeneutics, higher criticism, metacriticism, poetics, textual criticism.

Source: "criticism”. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. < http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t56.e268 >

Works Cited:• Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford: OUP,

2008. • Cremin, Teresa, Marilyn Mottram, Eve Bearne, and Prue Goodwin.

“Exploring Teachers’ Knowledge of Children’s Literature.” Cambridge Journal of Education 38.4 (2008): 449-464.

• Dreher, Mariam Jean. “Motivating Teachers to Read.” The Reading Teacher 56.4 (2002-2003):338-340.

• Dressman, Mark. “Congruence, Resistance, Liminality: Reading and Ideology in Three School Libraries.” Curriculum Inquiry 27.3 (1997): 267-315.

• Nodelman, Perry. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2008.

• Reynolds, Kimberley. Children’s Literature: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: OUP, 2011.

• Zipes, Jack. “The Changing Function of the Fairy Tale.” Lion and the Unicorn 12.2 (1988): 7-31.