What's Left?

In his essay "A Plea for Radical Children's Literature," Herbert Kohl asks:

Are there any good books for young people that are not written from the perspective of the virtues of individualism, competition, and capitalism? Are there any about social, economic, and racial struggles that do not end up, even in triumph, having the heroines and heroes conform to the norms of our economic system? Are there any good tales about young people involved in collective struggles for social and economic justice? Stories that do not celebrate wealth? In other words, are there any books written for young people that question the economic and social basis of our society?

(60)

According to Kohl, "There is a vast, almost empty field when it comes to progressive fiction for young people" (61).

And yet, the field only appears empty because, first, many progressive works for children have been forgotten and, second, the political content is often quite subtle. If we look only in the United States, supporters of the Abolitionist movement wrote children's stories that questioned the logic of slavery. In the early twentieth century socialists produced a lively body of stories, primers, and magazines, all designed to encourage young people to feel, as one socialist educator put it in 1917, "these two great principles—reason and comradeship" (qtd. in Mickenberg 59). The communist left produced "proletarian children's literature" that attempted to build revolutionary consciousness in children. Beyond such organized efforts, throughout the twentieth century independent radicals have—consciously or unconsciously—translated their social idealism into literature for children that challenges the status quo.

Nevertheless, Kohl is right to assert that most of the children's literature that makes its way into libraries, classrooms, and bookstores—at least on the surface—appears to be either apolitical or upholding the existing social order. This should probably not surprise us. As several of the articles in this special issue on Children's Literature and the Left demonstrate, some books that seem to be apolitical or politically retrograde are in fact socially engaged and advocates for progressive social change. June Cummins's article neatly illustrates this idea by recovering the previously unrecognized political dimensions of Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family books (1951–78). On the other hand, as the articles by Elizabeth Parsons and Kimberly Jack suggest, a book that appears to be radical may also contain messages that are anything but. Parsons's discussion of books recommended by the Marxist Internet Archive is a case in point. The children's literature section of the archive aims "to contribute to a contemporary communist theory of teaching and child-rearing" (Ryan). Parsons questions what this project means in practice given that, in a number of the recommended texts, "Marxism is only implied by the empowerment of the underdog." As she illustrates in her provocative discussion of J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh's Mr. Lunch books (1993–96), the problem with the trope of the underdog is that while the powerless change position within an oppressive system, they do not change the system itself.

The Mr. Lunch books do not appear on the Marxist Internet Archive's recommended list, perhaps because of what appears to be a pro-capitalist guise; however, as Parsons suggests, in these books the guise exposes the contradictory nature of capitalism itself. Instead of taking a clear position (pro- or anticapitalist), the books present an ambiguous message that invites children to ask questions. Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin's Click, Clack, Moo (2000) does appear on the archive's recommended list, presumably for the book's positive representation of labor organizing. But as Kimberly Jack shows us (in part through brilliant readings of Betsy Lewin's illustrations), in this and subsequent books by Cronin and Lewin, the portrait of labor and political processes is at best ambivalent and at worst cynical. Sure, the farm animals in Click, Clack, Moo effectively organize to achieve their goals, but these goals—electric blankets for cows—appear frivolous. Indeed, this is part of what makes the book so funny.

So, what is "left" in children's literature...