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  • Fourth Annual Conference

The Fourth Annual Conference of the Children's Literature Association was an outstanding success—in terms of scholarship, socially, and financially due to the splendid organizational efforts of Conference Chairperson Alethea Helbig and her committee, Gilbert B. Cross, Helen Hill, Sheila Ingersoll, Meredith Klaus, and Agnes Perkins.

The Conference opened on Friday morning with discussion groups dealing with "Recent Award Winning Books," "The New Realism," "Media Presentations of the Classics," and "Minority Cultures."

"Good fiction doesn't teach!"

After lunch, ChLA members gathered to hear author Alfred Slote express his opinions about what makes a good children's book good. Mr. Slote offered his audience a clear insight into his philosophy of writing for children by firmly expressing his aversion to didacticism in children's literature when he said: "I don't like reading novels to be informed. I hate fiction that preaches. If an author is going to write a good book, he has to get rid of the preaching motivation as the basis of the book." He also expressed the opinion that "good fiction doesn't teach; kids don't learn to cope with life through books." He quickly added that he realized his statement might be considered heretical because "nobody wants to debunk the myth that children's books have to teach something!" He argued that the primary purpose of writing fiction is "to share the emotions of other people." He concluded: "Fiction lasts. It make you dream; it makes a person better—but not by sending messages."

In his address, he criticized television as "the real villain" which is threatening children's ability to appreciate fiction. He said that for today's children, pictures seem more real than the written word. He went on to state that "kids today don't have any pictures inside their heads"—a generalization perhaps, but he illustrated his remarks by a discussion of his latest book, The Hotshot, the story of a boy who wants to make an all-star hockey team in his town. Noting that sports fiction—so popular with readers in the 40's and 50's—has been replaced by the sports biography, Slote told the audience that his publishers decided to illustrate The Hotshot with photographs rather than drawing to make the novel seem more like biography.

This gave rise to the familiar question of the interaction of text and illustration in children's fiction. Since Slote includes photography among his professional credits, he decided to photograph The Hotshot himself, only to discover that he had to rewrite the book to justify the photographs. For example, Slote usually sets his sports stories in the imaginary town of "Arborville." In his arranged photograph, one of the players had "Ann Arbor" written on his jersey, so Slote had to change from Arborville to Ann Arbor in the story. Other problems arose because of the photo illustration. In the book, one of the young characters would rather build snowmen than play hockey. As the story progresses, the boy builds a snowman in the shape of a hockey player taking a shot. Slote wanted to photograph the snowman so he sent an eight-year-old boy out to build the snowman only to discover that he was asking the impossible. The boy could not do it. The snow-hockey-man had to be constructed by Slote's daughter—a college student majoring in art and sculpture—before Slote could take his picture.

Slote expressed serious reservations about fiction illustrated by photographs because it leaves nothing to the imagination Of The Hotshot he remarked: "Now everyone knows exactly what all the characters look like." He summarized the serious limitations posed by photograph illustrations by posing the question: "Will I build a castle in the air if I have to illustrate my book with photographs?"

Rebellion in Children's Literature

Discussion groups devoted to "Historical Fiction," "Biography, New and Old," "Retellings of Greek Myths," and "Adult Books Taken Over by Children," followed Mr. Slote's talk.

At 3:30, William Blackburn (Univ. of Calgary) presented a paper entitled" 'Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I'm through': Rebellion in Children's Literature." Taking his [End Page 6] title from Sylvia...

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