The President's Message

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE Rebecca J. Lukens Gainesville, Florida March 26, 1982 As outgoing president of The Children's Literature Association, I would like to deliver some words of hope for your sakes as well as my own. These are bleak times in many ways. Last year at our conference we passed a resolution regarding our attitudes toward taxing publishers for their unsold inventories; such tax measures mean that only best sellers will be published while books that have merit and potential for financial success are printed in limited quantities. Last year we also resolved to fight society's move toward censorship. These matters still threaten; limitation of one kind or another is what both measures cry to us. My words of hope tonight are more clearly words of encouragement: Fight on! There are, however, some clear signs of hope for those of us who care about children's literature. Children's Literature is published by Yale University Press; our own ChLA Quarterly will soon be printed rather than published in offset typescript. University presses all over the country, from Harvard and on, are becoming interested in critical manuscripts about literature for children. Textbook publishers, Oxford and on, see the potential for sales. More bibliographies and reference works are coming out each year. There is more and more for us to choose from among journals on children's literature, and there are more markets for our own work. Books for children seem to be moving from the bleak and despairing into greater concern for the enduring power of individual strengths . There is laughter, and there is optimism and hope; stereotyping is less prevalent, whether it be of boys and girls or of minorities. All genres are available, in contrast to periods when publishers wanted only realism or only desperate problems, or no fantasy, please, or mechanical science rather than human science fiction. Picture books, while they may for economy's sake be less brightly colored, may produce more subtlety in line, more harmony in color, more imagination in graphic design — and continuing quality in text. While, as Ethel Heins pointsout in a recent Horn Book editorial, there remains "persistent condescension"toward children's books and their writers; general magazines and journals ofstrong reputation are spending space, and, therefore, money, on reviewing.The boring basal readers through which children learn to decode — I refuse to call it "read" — are suspect, more suspect than ever. Story books are being touted as the essential adjuncts; fairy tales and realistic novels, problem stories and fanciful tales, and accurate and engaging nonfiction all belong in the classroom. We can be overcome with depression when we read that classroom teachers do not know the names of recent good books for children — or we can be pleased that a researcher wanted to find out what classroom teachers knew and to make us all aware of the facts. I am by nature an optimist. For me, life is better all the time. I want that not only for all of you but for children and their reading as well. As professionals together, we strive for the recognition of what we do as important. Literature is itself important to us, or we would be involved in computer programming or software and systems design. Literature for children, for the generations succeeding us, can be a great experience of boundless pleasure. It can explore the human condition and the institutions of society, as well as reveal human nature and its motives. As it nurtures and broadens us, it rewards us with the pleasures of self-recognition, of words at play, of intelligence at work. But enough praise for what we believe in. I have one practical suggestion . If, or rather since, we believe that what we do is important, may I urge each one of us to do one thing: a simple thing, and yet one that does take a few minutes of personal time; it brings rewards that I have experienced and that I recommend to you, even as I thank you. Whenever you read some article of criticism, some words of literary exploration, some provocative editorial, hear some paper-giver or panelist, or browse through some story or textbook...