On Children's Literature (review)

First published in France in 1969, this work is by a professor in the education department of the College Sévigné and Head of Studies at the French school of librarian ship. Her thesis is that children's literature is a genre, but her primary focus is on certain writers and themes.

She adopts a familiar viewpoint—that childhood was discovered in the eighteenth century or somewhere at the beginning of the industrial age, and that this discovery, in turn, created a special children's literature. She does not delve into the possibility that there might be a relationship between the "discovery" of childhood and industrialism—that there might be an economic reason for separating those not yet ready for the labor market, and that this reason might affect the quality of the literature.

To argue that an entire field of literature is a genre is a tour de force that does not quite come off. Though these are charming informal essays, they cannot be compared in quality to some other work. For instance, her comment on Alice in Wonderland as never being the right size for her surroundings, while delightful, cannot be compared with the acute treatment of Alice in Donald Rackin's essay, "Alice's Adventures to the End of Night," in the Publication of the Modern Language Association, October, 1969.

However, with the current paucity of serious study of the quality of children's literature, Isabelle Jan's work is, all in all, a thought-provoking contribution to the field.