Education

Books of Our Childhood: What is Childrens Literature?

A young boy reading

One of the childhood memories that I remember quite clearly is sitting on my parents
bed, nestled between my mother and two brothers, as we read stories before bed. Fam-
ily vacations always included a book being read aloud from the front seat while we
drove for long hours. It is likely that many hold similar memories of reading with their
parents when they were young. At the time, we do not think about what genre the sto- Author
ries fit under or who the author is, we simply enjoyed the stories. This love of literature
has stayed with me as I have grown and moved out of my parents house, but recently I
noticed there is some discord over what constitutes childrens literature. Camille Webb
Student at Brigham
The scholarly journal, Bookbird, is what drew my attention to this issue. The editors Young university-Idaho
recently called for submissions from children and youth authors of original writings.
By doing a special issue focusing on the work of children and youth authors, Bookbird
is pointing out a section of childrens literature that has been largely ignored previous- Disclosure Statement
ly. Most, if not all, of the books I read with my family when I was younger were written
by adult authors. In fact, it is difficult to find any published literature that has been
written by children or youth. So, why is there a lack of representation of the voices of This article is for an as-
the intended audience? Shouldnt children have a say in what literature they are read- signment in my ENG252
ing and what is written for them? There are young ones who are already writing sto- class. It has not actually
ries; their work should be classified as childrens literature. been published.

One of the reasons writing by children has not been considered childrens literature
previously is that scholars do not consider children to be authors, therefore anything
they write is not literature, let alone childrens literature. Kimberley Reynolds is quot-
ed in Peter Cummings article (introducing the special issue of Bookbird) as saying that
[historically, children have not written what has been published as children's litera-
ture because they had little access to the equipment necessary to do so and . . . it was
generally assumed that they had too little experience of the world or the craft of writ-
ing to have anything to say or to say it interestingly. Scholars have assumed that chil-
dren have nothing interesting to say and no experience to write from, and have not
considered their writing literature. I believe that, just because it falls under a different
category, the writings of children and youth should not be dismissed. Children are,
obviously, the intended audience of childrens literature and can likely relate better to
one another than adults. This is what Mary Branley is saying in her article, Writing
with Children: From Teacher to Writer, when she says, children understand chil-
dren better than adults do With this idea in mind, it makes sense for children to be
writing the literature that will be read by other children.
That being said, childrens literature does not, and should not, refer only to literature
written by children. The work of adult authors, written for children, should still be con-
sidered childrens literature. The definition that we accept for childrens literature
needs to be broadened, not made to exclude writing intended to be read by and to chil-
dren. Things written by children can be considered literature, but things written by
adults, for children can also fall under the same category. It is not a one-or-the-other
situation. The current definition seems to want one party to be the author, and the oth-
er to be the audience. However, childrens literature today is different than it has been
in the past, and the author and audience can intermingle.
When I was young, I did not pay attention to who was writing the literature that I read,
and whether they were an adult or one of my peers. Now that we are classifying litera-
ture, we too should be less concerned with who is authoring the books, and look in-
stead at the content. The books that we read with our parents when we were young are
still childrens literature. Children have greater access to tools that will allow them to
publish their writing, and we should make room under the umbrella of childrens liter-
ature for such writing.