Raising Your Kids Right: Children's Literature and American Political Conservatism (review)

Scholars do not typically look to children's literature for insights into political history, and yet, Michelle Ann Abate suggests, they should. Since the 1990s, conservative books for young Americans have become "an important new facet of the nation's conservative social movement and rightist political faction" (p. 27). Children's literature as a genre already tends toward the conservative, its didacticism typically encouraging rule-following, obedience to authority, and gender conformity. Yet something changed in the 1990s, Abate argues, as the authors of conservative children's books began expressing their political themes in "a new and far more overt way" (p. 4).

After providing an overview of the history of post-World War II American conservatism, Abate devotes subsequent chapters to individual children's authors and editors of children's literature whose works she identifies with particular conservative issues of the 1990s. These include William Bennett's Book of Virtues (1993), an anthology of uplifting selections from literature that purported to offer an antidote to the decline of moral values in the 1990's; Terri Birkett's Truax (1995), a pro-logging parody of Dr. Seuss' environmentalist classic The Lorax (1971); the Left Behind series for young people by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, in which the post-Rapture teenage protagonists must go underground to practice Christianity; Lyn Cheney's patriotic primers for preschoolers; Bill O'Reilly's self-help book, The O'Reilly Factor for Kids (2004); and Katharine DeBrecht's humor books that mock liberals, such as Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! (2006). These are not works that circulate on the fringes, Abate emphasizes, noting that many are written by prominent, influential figures and have been commercially successful.

For readers who are unfamiliar with these works, Abate's introduction to them will certainly be illuminating. Her discussion of the Left Behind series is particularly intriguing. In this series, which now numbers over thirty novels, four high school students regret to find themselves "left behind" after the Rapture. They commit themselves to Jesus, but must contend with, among other trials, the transformation of their former high school into an institution with "zero tolerance for Christianity" (p. 89). As Abate convincingly outlines, the novels in the series play on resentments against (and misunderstandings about) Supreme Court decisions limiting the role of religion in public schools. Her exploration of these novels is deepened by her discussion of the authors' earlier writings on church and state.

In discussing these works and others, Abate implies that there is something threatening about them. Yet many of the books she describes simply don't seem as ominous as she makes them out to be. Take Cheney's America: A Patriotic Primer. According to Abate, "the opening vignettes, . . . in which 'A is for America, the land that we love' and 'B is for the Birthday of this nation of ours,' sets the tone for the rest of the book"(p. 114). True, Cheney, a former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is well known for her views that American history should be taught to children in ways that help develop national pride, rather than address the complexities of America's past. Yet to take Cheney to task for the uncritical view of America presented in her ABC book seems off the mark. Naked boosterism is widespread in ABC primers, which are designed for preschoolers. L is for Lobster (2001) touts Maine, F is for Florida (2006) champions the Sunshine State, and the Iowa Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet (2004) celebrates Iowa's native plants. Such books juxtapose vivid illustrations with often-strained rhyme schemes to accompany each letter of the alphabet. Is it any more problematic (or surprising) that Lyn Cheney's "J is for Jefferson" does not discuss that Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Hemmings (as Abate laments) than that F is for Florida fails to address Florida's recent real estate...