Presidential Address

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS Taimi Maria Ranta March 27, 1981 A wonderful, warm feeling engulfs me as I look around this room and see so many people who share my love for children's literature gathered for this banquet of the Eighth Annual Conference of The Children's Literature Association . During the past decade, The Children's Literature Association has made a phenomenal contribution to the serious study of children's literature. Ten years ago it was a dream on the threshold of realization; now it is a strong, vital organization of some eight hundred members dedicated to the distinguished teaching of children's literature; the encouragement of scholarly endeavor in the field through fellowships for study, awards for outstanding criticism, and provision of research services; and the dissemination of information, research, and criticism through fine publications. Much is owed the founders of this organization, and personally I am deeply indebted to them. At my institution, children's literature has been taught in the English Department for nearly a half-century. Oh, I have not been teaching it quite that long, but for the past two decades I have been developing a program that now has nine undergraduate and graduate courses. Frequently I have sensed myself very much alone on the frontier, battling for the recognition of children's literature as part of the total continuum of literature. Committed to its scholarly explication with the same vigor that is accorded adult literature, I often have felt alienated from many who also had some interest in the field. In this association, however, I have found true kinship with many extraordinary, knowledgeable, dedicated, inspiring people who feel as I do about this grandest of enterprises, children's literature . If you have attended earlier conferences of The Children's Literature Association, you well know what I mean, and if this is your first conference, you are sensing what I mean. This conference ends a very busy and memorable year for me as your president. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve in this office that you entrusted to me. As your outgoing president, I would like to share some thoughts and concerns with you. As teachers of children's literature, writers, illustrators, librarians, book dealers, and other spreaders of the word vis-a-vis children's literature, we must maintain an intensity and fervor for our subject. My passion is boiling continuously, simmering only when I am asleep, and even then it sometimes awakens me. One of our missions, therefore, should be to educate, and by this I mean do something positive in distinguishing children's literature with the same passion that we see allotted to best selling potboilers, well-designed cookbooks, and all the bogus biographies about rock stars, film stars, and other people that seem to be overburdening bookstores throughout the country. The next question is how does one go about distinguishing children's literature so that it will receive at least comparable space via the media and comparable space in bookstores along with those aforementioned books? I would suspect that the answer to that question would be that unless everyone who is present in this room does not accept responsibility to become an ardent "flag-waver" and lobbyist for children's literature this will not become an actuality. Children's literature will not become openly the phenomenon that all of us present know that it is and all of us want it to become. If we don't want this, then why should we assemble once a year in a large group, exchange ideas, attend workshops, listen to scholarly papers, and take part in timely discussions in scheduled and unscheduled places? Sometimes these discussions are fueled by 86 proof and 100 proof sincerity! Be that as it may, all of these activities are important avenues to utilize in our efforts to distinguish children's literature. I want to stress, therefore, that if you have not committed yourselves to active research in children's literature, then by all means do so. In addition, I want to commend those among you who already have contributed scholarly articles. In the past ten years, a surprisingly large body of research and criticism has been...