In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children’s Literature in America
  • Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (bio)
Beverly Lyon Clark . Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children’s Literature in America. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 2003.

The reception of children's literature in general, and the history of children's literature research in particular, are areas of research long in need of further exploration. Clark's engaging study is a detailed and thorough analysis which focuses on the marginalization of children's [End Page 112] literature in the United States, both by the mainstream critical establishment and within the academy. Based on the study of primary materials such as reviews and articles in both the popular press and scholarly journals, lists of recommended books, anthologies, and literary histories, Clark's monograph sheds light on the changing attitudes toward children's literature and childhood in America in the course of 150 years. Whereas children's literature was highly regarded by the nineteenth-century cultural elite, many critics and scholars have been dismissive of this topic since the beginning of the twentieth century, downplaying children's literature as "kiddie lit" and "childish." These devaluative terms reveal fundamental shifts in the assessment of the literary value of books read by both children and adults, leading to an increasing bifurcation of high and low literature.

Clark divides her book into eight chapters. In the first chapter she gives a summary of the central theoretical concepts she employs, ranging from reception theory to gender studies, literary studies, and cultural studies. Overall, however, Clark reflects on the causes for the disregard of children's literature by theoretical approaches such as New Criticism, poststructuralism, postcolonial theory, and New Historicism. Whereas these theories reach out across the boundaries marked by gender, race, ethnicity, and class, they generally do not consider age as a relevant analytical category. Even scholars who specialize in feminist studies have rarely recognized the position of the child, although in nineteenth-century literary criticism children's books were often regarded as suitable reading for both women and children. This once-firm connection between feminism and childhood has nonetheless been weakened in favor of an adult-centered perspective influenced by the image of childhood as a stage of immaturity which needs to be surpassed.

In the next chapter Clark turns to two key figures in the representation of childhood at the turn of the century. By opposing Frances Hodgson Burnett's bestselling children's book Little Lord Fauntleroy to Henry James' adult novel What Maisie Knew, a text written from the child's point of view, Clark stresses the complexity of the changing attitudes toward childhood. The close textual analysis of these books demonstrates the depth of Clark's understanding of both contemporary literary conventions and the discussion of gender issues. Whereas Burnett's contributions to children's literature were regarded as "great literature," thus stressing her critical acclaim in the nineteenth century, her works disappeared from lists of recommended reading after 1910. In order to gain reputation in the academy, James and his circle stressed the unsurmountable opposition of childhood and maturity, thus supporting [End Page 113] the bifurcation of children's and adult literature. In addition, James's main thesis, which is based on an "incongruity between attention to youth and attention to style" (36), leads frequently to an "invisibility" of children's books in the popular press and in academic and literary circles.

Against this background, in the third chapter Clark offers a sketch of the changing institutional frameworks associated with literature, based on an extensive reading of American periodicals from the mid-1850s to the end of the twentieth century and on a concise study of three important literary histories: Cambridge History of American Literature (1917-21), Literary History of the United States (1948), and Columbia History of the United States (1988). America's most well-known literary journals regularly reviewed books written for both children and adults. Clark focuses on the decisive role of Horace Scudder, William Dean Howells, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich, all of whom advocated and published children's literature and contributed to its high esteem with reviews in journals such as Youth's Companion and...

pdf

Share