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60Rocky Mountain Review Si se atiende a lo hasta ahora publicado, bien pudiera decirse que el libro de Luis Osear Arata es novedoso y muestra una cohesión interna de la escritura que se ha desarrollado con celeridad y acierto. En resumen, The Festive Play of Fernando Arrabal es un estudio monográfico bien logrado que pone de manifiesto la agudeza intelectual del profesor Arata y su profundo conocimiento del tema que trata. L. TERESA VALDIVIESO Arizona State University FRANCELIA BUTLER and COMPTON REES, eds. Children 's Literature, Vol. 12. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. 226 p. Children's Literature, Vol. 12, again bears witness to the sound academic judgment of its founders. The field of children's literature needed a high quality publication which could not only provide an outlet for original research and analyses, but could also serve to keep academicians informed of what their colleagues are doing. About one-third of the book is devoted to review articles. Sidney Homen evaluated three new introductions to Shakespeare ; Gillian Avery reviewed lona and Peter Opie's 1980 A Nursery Companion; Jack Zipes reviewed the 1981 The German Legends ofthe Brothers Grimm; Feenie Ziner the Facsimile Editions of Early English Children's Booksfrom the Osborne Collection, Toronto Public Library; Leonard S. Marcus the 1982 Pennyroyal Press edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Elizabeth Segel the 1981 Kate Greenaway:A Biography and the 1982 Beatrix Potter's Americans: Selected Letters; Carol Billman Cushla and Her Books, The Cool Web: The Pattern of Children's Reading, and On Learning to Read: The Child's Fascination with Meaning; and Perry Nodelman The Signal Approach to Children's Books, The Openhearted Audience: Ten Authors Talk about Writing for Children, and Celebrating Children's Books: Essays on Children's Literature in Honor ofZena Sutherland. Rachel Fordyce annotated thirty "Dissertations of Note," and listed by name another baker's dozen —apparently of lesser note. These citations and reviews make the book essential for any serious scholar of children's literature. However it's the articles which make the volume something more exciting than a basic reference tool. For example, Géraldine DeLuca in writing about Maurice Sendak's use of allegory walks the line between those critics who, like Selma Lanes, "reverentially overpraise" Sendak and those who condemn him for experimenting. Alexander Medlicott, Jr., shows how Indian captivity narratives were the most widely read books in the colonies prior to the War for Independence. These books appealed "to a large audience of young readers who longed for excitement, suspense, and terror in much the same way that youth now seek similar stimulation in horror movies, space epics, and neogothic romances" (25). It would be interesting to see how Medlicott would compare these early Indian stories with Elizabeth George Speare's new and highly acclaimed Sign of the Beaver. The most original of the essays is "Hans Brinker: Sunny World, Angry Waters" by Jerome Griswold. My first thought was that perhaps it appealed to me only because I have a warmer spot in my heart for the Hans Brinker story Book Reviews61 than I do for the subjects of the other essays which included Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market," Beatrix Potter's Tale of Two Bad Mice, Aesop's fable about the ants and the grasshopper, Eleanor Cameron's Beyond Silence, and even CS. Lewis' Narnia tales. But the essay's appeal is more than the subject matter; it explains the power ofthe story, and the points that are made can be applied to other literature as well. Griswold first sets the stage by explaining Mary Mapes Dodge's personal philosophy of earnest matter-of-factness. Just as she went on to make a satisfactory life for her and her children after her husband, who was suffering from depression, committed suicide by walking into the ocean, Dodge expected people to make the best of whatever bad business they found themselves in. Griswold says that the briskness of the book is accounted for by the fact that "no trouble can descend without the author sweeping in with a rosy glow on her cheeks and her sleeves rolled up, seizing the child on the brink of a...

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