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The Nature of Children's Literature: A Commentary
- University of Ottawa Press
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The Nature of Children's Literature: A Commentary ELIZABETH WATERSTON E HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT "Canadian Children 's Literature"—that is, a stream of stories and poems for children, mostly in English and French, accompanied by a trickle of Aboriginal legends .1 This specific literature rose roughly in 1750, swelled into some significance around 1850, and reached the proportions of a small tide roughly 1950. But now we are to expand our focus. We are to consider the nature of ALL children's literature, children's literature in general—including I suppose everything from Aesop's Fables to a Ugandan ghost story or a Brazilian cyber-fantasy. And we are to theorize about the nature of everything literary that nourishes non-adults. We are to remember the prereaders who listen to parental reading of Zoom, and also thefifteen-year-olds,obsessed (we are told) by sexuality, violence, and self, but who need to develop the attributes that will serve them as they cross the threshold into the job world—industry, initiative, social responsibility, etc. We are to assume that there is a "nature"—an essential quality, an innate character, a functioning force, a-social, in literature. A challenge, since most of us would agree that the nature of children's literature has changed between (say) BeautifulJoe in 1894 and Angel Square in 1984. What is the nature of children's literature? What is the function of the books we write for children, the books that children read? Well, let's 228 start by saying that we are not talking just about books but about literature . Carefully composed. Meticulously revised. Something permanent, something young readers can go back to for deepening experience. Or for the illogical joy of word play. Can we agree about the literary aspects of children's literature? Can we assume that all children's stories and poems are rooted in myth (with the consequent benefits that Bettelheim postulates), even if the trace of myth is as tenuous as when a timid turtle feels disconnected from the tooth fairy? Children's literature is rooted in a universe of books, stories, fables, myths, and songs. Can we agree that the style will communicate a joy in words, a thrill to rhythm, even when the story is very dark, dispiriting, or threatening ? Let's agree that socio-psychological benefits are not the mark of literature , but that appropriate style is. With Tim Wynne-Jones's permission, I could read a couple of sentences from The Maestro: When you were hungry in a fairy tale, an old hag would pass by with a magic bowl, or magic beans. Well, Burl had eaten what beans he could find, and when he awoke cold and damp in the morning, sure enough, the can was full again, but only with brown rain water. So he took a bite of the north wind for breakfast and headed out . . . . (1995, 31) Agreed? That's literature. Literature is not just a story about dysfunctional families, put together in a hurry, without singing phrases or rounded characters. And not just Franklin, in books, on TV, and in interactive CD-ROMs, a story without ragged edges or irony, a colourless validation of conformist nonthreatening adjustment in small beings, whether turtles or children. But we must go on to tackle the question of what children are, if we are to evaluate the literature produced for them, or, more important, perhaps , chosen by them. We must study some child-development theories. When we ask, "How does literature fit into the development of the child?" our answer to that question has probably changed since yesterday. We have endured some horrific news stories from Kosovo that ask us to revise our sense of child development, and also our sense of the interaction between children and what they read, between their everyday life and the [18.206.160.129] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:27 GMT) 229 life of their imaginations. We had better think quickly again about the nature ofchildhood, and the proper and possible and actual functions of the literary fare, the imaginative diet that nourishes their development today. I will begin with a case history of literary fare, by way of a metaphor. My daughter Charlotte is a teacher-librarian in a London elementary school. This being the modern world, her storage room is now full of computers , and she has become a teacher-librarian/computer resource person, spending less time dealing with books, more with the web and the...