La littérature de jeunesse: Itinéraires d' hier à aujourd'hui [Children's literature: Itineraries from yesterday until today] (review)

France

With this study, Denise Escarpit, founder of the notable journal Nous voulons lire!, makes one of the most important and readable scholarly contributions to the current history of French children's literature. Her reflections are centered on the developments in France. As the title suggests, however, she also invites readers to venture into other- albeit only European- literary landscapes. In the first four chapters, Escarpit draws on her own body of works published over the last thirty years. These reworked essays offer readers a welcome alternative to standard historical accounts. The brilliantly written pieces work together like a conclusive, effectively conceptualized anthology. They follow a (sometimes invisible) chronological order and address themes such as children as readers or various other European traditions.

From a scholarly point of view, the fourth part of the book offers the greatest interest. In it, Janie Godfrey, Christiane Connan-Pintado, Florence Gaïotti, Régis Lefort, Pierre Bruno, and Philippe Geneste- all of them members of the editorial team of Nous voulons lire!- give a succinct state-of-the-art report on individual genres (picture book, nonfiction, fairy tales, poetry, drama, novel) from the 1970s to the present. Another chapter (by Escarpit and Godfrey) explores contemporary issues concerning illustration and presents a number of prominent contemporary French illustrators through both text and image. This volume, focusing on the essentials without boring the reader with erudite ramblings, is rounded off with an index and a bibliography of secondary literature.

Sibylle Weingart