Children’s Literature in the Age of Protest
Buy Issue for $35 at JHUP- Children’s Literature in the Age of Protest
The essays contained in this volume were written and revised during a calendar year of tremendous global unrest. Beginning in January 2011, a peaceful demonstration by protestors in Egypt marked the beginning of what would become a full-scale revolution; using public marches, labor strikes, and acts of civil disobedience, this civilian-led effort would culminate in the resignation and prosecution of longtime President Hosni Mubarak and the scheduling of the country’s first free and open elections in more than thirty years.
An analogous revolutionary fervor permeated countries around the Middle East. In nations like Libya, Syria, and Iran, students, civilians, and even members of the standing militia rose up—with varying degrees of efficacy—to express their dislike of elected officials, protest long-standing political policy, and challenge the cultural status quo.
Social unrest was equally ubiquitous in Europe. Throughout Spain, Greece, and Italy, citizens took to the streets to protest austerity measures that had been adopted in the wake of global financial recession and the accompanying Eurozone crisis.
In the United States, civilian revolt also permeated the year 2011. In mid-September, the Occupy Wall Street protesters set up their camp in Zucotti Park in lower Manhattan. Denouncing corporate greed, government bailouts, and the growing divide between the rich and the poor, their message—and methods—spread quickly. Within weeks, parallel Occupy movements appeared in towns and cities as well as on university campuses not simply around the country, but around the globe.
As even this brief overview suggests, the year 2011 was one of widespread resistance, revolt, and insurrection. Indeed, given both the power and the pervasiveness of these sentiments, historians, political scientists, and cultural commentators have credited 2011 with inaugurating a new age of protest. Nicole Pope succinctly summarized the place and purpose of this new revolutionary zeitgeist, saying that “It has taken different forms around the world, but it boils down to ordinary citizens wanting better control over their own lives.” [End Page vii]
The essays in Volume 40 reflect this spirit of questioning, upheaval, and change. The nine critical articles and two Varia pieces represent one of Children’s Literature’s most radical and rebellious volumes in recent years. Akin to the sociopolitical backdrop against which these essays were prepared for publication, they are borne from places of intellectual insurrection and even critical protest.
The issue begins with Kara K. Keeling and Scott Pollard’s provocative essay, “The Key Is in the Mouth: Food and Orality in Coraline.” The article combines Lacanian theory with the history of British foodways to explore the important but largely overlooked presence that victuals play in Gaiman’s text. As Pollard and Keeling demonstrate, Coraline “uses food to negotiate adult authority in the novel’s parallel worlds so that she can settle securely into the present moment of her childhood.”
This concern with personal power and childhood autonomy is likewise at the core of Pamela Swanigan’s essay, “Much the Same on the Other Side: The Boondocks and the Symbolic Frontier.” Giving much-needed critical attention to Aaron McGruder’s nationally syndicated comic, she explores the role of speculative thinking and the frontier mindset in the construction of the strip’s child characters. As Swanigan argues, when viewed in light of these issues, The Bookdocks “shed[s] a complicating light on often-simplified concepts such as the suburban dream, school integration, and the ‘color line’ itself.”
In “Not Exactly: Intertextual Identities and Risky Laughter in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian,” Adrienne Kertzer reflects this volume’s spirit of revolt and rebellion by examining questions of personal identity, literary history, and American Indian culture, especially as they manifest in Ellen Forney’s illustrations. Drawing on Thomas King’s theory of reading, Kertzer explores the iconoclastic place that Alexie’s equally iconoclastic text holds in children’s literature.
The next essay, Rebekah Fitzsimmons’s “Testing the Tastemakers: Children’s Literature, Bestseller Lists, and the ‘Harry Potter Effect,’” spotlights issues that are always culturally controversial and even critically explosive: namely, the power of mass culture and assessments about aesthetic worth. Using J...
