Introduction

The Season Clock by Valerie Littlewood

Viking Penguin Inc.

© Valerie Littlewood, 1986

The articles in this special section on children's literature and popular culture are less a coherent collection than a spicy fisherman's stew, a sort of pop culture paella. It could hardly be otherwise. The seas have barely settled from the controversies over whether or not there ought to be a canon of children's literature, let alone what should or should not be included in such a canon. Small wonder that contemplating the relationship between children's literature and popular or mass culture can seem intellectually stimulating one day and just plain perverse the next. Why spend a lot of time fussing over series books (they are all pretty much alike) or pondering the significance of commercial toy and book tie-ins when one could be writing a truly serious article on Outside Over There, Charlotte's Web or Little Lord Fauntleroy? If this sounds familiar it's because we have all heard the argument before, but cast in slightly different terms by sometimes avuncular, sometimes hostile colleagues: "Why spend a lot of time fussing over Little Lord Fauntleroy when you could be writing a truly serious article on The Ambassadors?"

I know I'm cheating a little here; the analogy isn't exact. The distance from Little Lord Fauntleroy to The Ambassadors is a lot shorter than the distance from Ernie's Bath Boole (a floatable plastic item) to Charlotte's Web. And although they are both immersed in their respective texts, there is certainly no connection between a toddler's splashing a book in the tub and her mother's sitting there later, relaxing alone with the pages of her paperback slowly curling in the warm damp air. Or is there? Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water, popular culture sharks up on us with a sneaky little question that recharts the currents of critical debate.

In his Editor's Comment, Perry Nodelman has suggested a number of ways in which Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture might direct or prompt future studies of the relationship between popular culture and children's literature. He concludes with the hope that more critics of children's literature will come to see popular culture as less objectionable, less alien or "other," and he remarks that this revision might lead to "ways of helping minds filled with the life history of My Little Ponies to enjoy Walter de la Mare."

The authors of the essays in this special section of the Quarterly do not always admire the stories, movies or toys they have studied, but they never see them as alien. Nor do these particular authors evince much concern for helping young readers appreciate high culture. Their interest, first and foremost, is in taking a good look at the flotsam and jetsam they have retrieved from popular culture, trying to understand the material on its own terms and, in some cases, figuring out what those terms are. These activities hint that it is time to re-evaluate the mainstream critical assumption that popular culture is always immediately accessible and therefore easy to enjoy. At any rate, the enjoyment that comes from thinking about popular culture is an acquired taste, one which Lucy Rollin and I hope this pop culture paella will help to stimulate and satisfy.