Internationalism in Children’s Series by Karen Sands-O’Connor and Marietta A. Frank (review)

As part of the Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature series by Palgrave Macmillan, Internationalism in Children’s Series adds an innovatively global perspective to one of the most popular forms that children’s texts can take. Edited by Karen Sands-O’Connor and Marietta A. Frank, the collection’s eleven articles range not only in historical breadth from the nineteenth century to the present, but also in cultural and theoretical depth as the series is examined through the idea of internationalism and the resulting “complex interactions between readers, books, and global power and participation.”

The volume’s chronological organization emphasizes the global trends and ideas that have impacted children’s publishing at various points in the series’ development. Part I, “Nineteenth-Century Series Go Abroad,” outlines the origins of international series books as influenced by American expansionism and European imperialism. Chris Nesmith begins the conversation with his exploration of Jacob Abbott’s Rollo Books and the importance of the “young [American] man’s education” and rite of passage as influenced by European travel. Janis Dawson’s focus on Victorian girls’ magazines shows how Britain’s imperial interests fuel a sense of female adventure and participation in nation building.

Part II – “Syndicates, Empires, and Politics” – uses the link between class mobility, literacy, and learning from the traveller’s experience of the nineteenth century as a foundational model for the twentieth century series with an internationally political flair. While Sands-O’Connor’s chapter on the Stratemeyer Syndicate points to the series as an ideal place to introduce children to attitudes about other countries, Jani L. Barker explores how Lucy Fitch Perkins’ Twins series uses internationalism to promote an American sense of wellbeing. Teaching children about other lands and cultures, however, brings its own paradoxical dangers of reinforcing “home-grown stereotypes” as Frank observes in “‘A bit of life actually lived in a foreign land’: Internationalism as World Friendship in Children’s Series.” Exotic locales as foreign space (Michael G. Cornelius’ “Lost Cities: Generic Conventions, Hidden Places, and Primitivism in Juvenile Series Mysteries”) and a focus on the foreigner figure and the connections made between reader, author, and the outside world (David Rudd’s “‘But why are you so foreign?’: Blyton and Blighty”) round out Part II’s idea that the series at this time valued both international understanding and the practice of cultural imperialism.

The boundaries and definitions of the series and internationalism are transformed once more in the third and final section of the volume, “Translating Histories and Cultures.” Opening the debate is Deniz Arzuk’s “‘Universal Republic of Children?’: ‘Other’ Children in Doğan Kardeş Children’s Periodical” which traces how the Turkish periodical’s attitudes towards other ethnic and national groups became influenced by and reflective of Turkey’s political changes. Hilary Brewster provides fans of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series with a look at internationalism through the lens of translation studies and the linguistic and cultural implications of “(re)-creating” the popular text. Irish transnationalism from two different perspectives rounds out Part III with Charlotte Beyer’s “‘Hungry ghosts’: Kirsty Murray’s Irish-Australian Children of the Wind Series” and Patricia Kennon’s “Building Bridges to Intercultural Understanding: The Other in Contemporary Irish Children’s Literature.” Beyer’s discussion, centering on the child-migrant and Australian identity and culture, negotiates the challenges of postcolonialism, while Kennon focuses on a series of Irish picture books that extend and explore the issues of displacement, Irishness, and national identity through the depiction of the migrant.

As the editors and contributors of this collection defend, internationalism’s presence in children’s series is becoming increasingly more focused on a global movement with multiple voices and cross-cultural perspectives. Their voices provide a valuable background and direction to continued discussion and research on the children’s series, and above all, promotes Sands-O’Connor and Frank’s conclusion that “one of the keys to getting children...