Name: Tanya Kashyap

Registration Number: 2133170

Date: 10th August, 2022

Asynchronous Work- Notes

 Children's books are important educationally and commercially—with

consequences ranging from language to politics: most adults, and almost
certainly the vast majority in positions of power and influence, read children's
books as children, and it is inconceivable that the ideologies permeating those
books had no influence on their development.
 Children's books are the domain of that culturally marginalised species, the
female, from writing to publication to interaction with children. 
 "Children's literature" has not become the "property" of any organisation or
discipline: it does not "belong" to the Department of Literature, the Library
School, or the local parents' organisation. It is appealing and interesting to
students (official and unofficial) of literature, education, library studies,
history, psychology, art, popular culture, media, the caring professions, and
other fields, and it can be approached from any specialist perspective.
 Because children's books do not exist in a vacuum—they have real,
argumentative readers and visible, practical, consequential uses—theory of
children's literature is constantly blending into the practise of connecting
books and readers.
 Jonathan Culler sums it up, ‘Literature…is a speech act or textual event that
elicits certain kinds of attention’ (1997:27)—or which is accorded a certain
value by those members of the culture in a position to accord values. 
 Books that would have a low status on some cosmic value scale (but are highly
successful commercially) are excluded from serious consideration; others—perhaps
'classics'—are taught, prescribed, and written about. In primary and secondary education,
this can lead to a backlash against reading: if children read one kind of book in school,
and another outside school, then certain books will be regarded as ‘other’.
 Childhood changes from place to place, from time to time (see, for example, Hoyles
(1979), Pollock (1983), and Cunningham (1995), and in a lighter but no less revealing
vein.

History, Ideology, Politics

 Children's books have a long history all over the world, and they have
absorbed elements of folklore, fairy tales, and oral tradition. They have a
postcolonial tinge in many places, such as many parts of Africa, and an
uneasy relationship with indigenous culture; elsewhere, they have seemed
important enough to totalitarian states to face severe censorship. Similar
patterns can also be observed all over the world.
 Throughout the history of children’s literature, the people who have tried
to censor children’s books, for all their ideological differences, share a
rather romantic view about the power of books. They believe, or at least
profess to believe, that books are such a major influence in the formation
of children’s values and attitudes that adults need to monitor nearly every
word that children read. 
West, 1996:506. 
 • Many of the most vehement actions taken against books, publishers, libraries, and
teachers have been carried out in the United States by right-wing organisations, most of
which are fundamentalist Christian in nature. Perhaps the most well-known has been
Educational Research Analysts, a Texas-based organisation led by Mel and Norma
Gabler that has provided 'evidence' for local campaigners while also attempting to
influence publishers (sometimes through state textbook-buying boards). The Diary of
Anne Frank, The Wizard of Oz, and adult books widely read by children and young
adults, such as The Catcher in the Rye, have all been banned in their home countries.
 Throughout children's literature, the question of how far children is likely to be
influenced by what they may or may not perceive in the texts has been a shifting
conundrum throughout children's book history.
 According to Brian Alderson, "there is no doubt that scientific bibliography is capable of
playing as important a role in supporting the very varied activity that is taking place
among children's books as it does in the field of literary studies elsewhere" (1977:203;
see also Chapter 10). However, because the study of children's literature has been skewed
towards the reader and affect rather than the book as artefact, we have a lot of speculative
and theoretical criticism but very little ‘solid' bibliographical support.

Reading Children’s literature

 It is unwise to assume that reading and interpreting children’s books is a simple process,
and one of the recurrent themes in this volume is the relationship between reader and text.
  In contrast, cultural studies (which usually deal with ‘non-literary’ texts, such
as television—and often children’s books) tend ‘towards “symptomatic
interpretation”— that is, identifying broad, portable themes’ (Culler
1997:52). 
 Picture books are inherently polyphonic; even the "simplest" require complex interpretive
skills.
 Underestimating the power of the picture book (or comic book) is equivalent to
underestimating the 'child' as reader—a critical error, as I hope I have demonstrated.
Doonan, for example, is more concerned with aesthetics than with the complex
mechanics of reading pictures.

The Uses of Children’s literature

 Children's literature is regarded as the last repository of the ducis et utile philosophy: the
books may be enjoyable, but they must also be useful. Children's books are about the
world, and one aspect of critical theory that has turned off many children's book
practitioners is its solipsistic turn.
 It is the recognition that the study of children's literature includes not only subtle textual
distinctions but also practical, life-changing actions that holds the ‘subject' of children's
literature together. The phenomenal range of 'best' children's book prizes awarded each
year includes books that are not just abstractly 'the best,' but also portray minorities,
promote peace, or are chosen by children.