Children’s Literature Studies : (eds) M. O. Grenby & Kimberley Reynolds

Children’s Literature Studies: A Research Handbook by M.O. Grenby

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the book I’d have wanted before I did my MA in Children’s Literature. That’s not to cast aspersions on my MA (which was, to be brief, one of the best accidents that ever happened to me), but rather to illustrate the differences that occur when researching children’s literature as opposed to, say, interrogating Romeo and Juliet.

Split into six parts, with several chapters in each, this book covers a substantial amount of ground. It discusses children’s literature research skills, looks at how to best utilise and find resources in libraries and archives, how to work with and manipulate visual texts, how to carry out historical research before delivering a penultimate introduction of key theoretical concepts and summing up with a brief but potent section on the changing form and format of children’s literature which is, as Reynolds states, “potentially the area where the greatest change in what constitute’s children’s literature will in the next decade” (206).

That quote is a particularly useful one to frame discussion of this book due to its awareness of the malleability of the nature of children’s literature. It’s spectacularly necessary for researchers who are beginning to work in an area, whatever that area may be, to understand the context of their creative practice. We stand on the shoulders of giants in whatever we do, and you need to know and to be able to comprehend and to rationalise where your point of view fits into this world. That’s something this book does very well; it introduces and frames a fluid, changing world, one that changes substantially depending on whichever reader may read the source text, and it also validates the necessity for us to engage in that dialogue.

There’s an inevitability in the world of research to see reference to the books of Judith Bell for research guidance. Whilst something like Doing Your Research Project: A Guide for First-Time Researchers in Education, Health and Social Science certainly helps to prepare you for the experience of research and dissertation / thesis writing and does so with classiness and verve, the generalistic nature of it cannot hope to address the subject specific nuances of children’s literature. As this book states: how do you transcribe a quote from a picture book? How do you reference a cut out teddy-bear? How do you rationalise the adult vs child reader and how do you understand the role you play in both instances?

It may not have all the answers here, but it helps you in figuring out how to frame the question. And that’s one of the greatest skills you need when you start to question and look at children’s literature, you need to be able to understand what and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Children’s Literature Studies : A Research Handbook is an excellent start in that process.

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Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

I think about things, probably much more than I should, and sometimes the expressing of things is difficult. That’s life, I suppose, that tongue-knot that comes when you least expect it. But it’s how you deal with it, that’s what matters. It’s how you learn to speak, to write to express yourself even through all the boundaries you place in your way.

And that’s why I love blogging. I love the freedom of it, the way the space can be constructed as however you wish. I love the way that by engaging in it, you’re engaging in,  well, everything. You’re throwing out little hooks into society and every now and then you’re meeting somebody who just blows your mind. An anchor. Somebody to hitch your colours to, somebody who speaks about the things you believe . Somebody who says what you want to say, what you want to be said.

Books have done a lot for me. They’ve given me power and words for the darkest darknesses. In a way that’s why I write – I want to share that power with others. I want to pay it forward. I believe in the transformative power of literacy. I believe in books.

And I believe in people. One of the greatest joys of doing this blog has been finding my anchors. People such as Ali from Fantastic Reads, Zoe from Playing By The Book, Melanie from Library Mice and Anne-Marie from Child-Led Chaos. People such as Yvonne from Babbleabout, Megan and Claire from Women Write About Comics, Saranga from New Reader’s Start Here and Carmen Haselup. There’s  more, of course there’s more, but I’m moments from typing in all of the lyrics to ‘The Circle of Life’ so I’m going to stop it there.

The thing about this community (am I calling it a community? I think I am. That’s kind of splendid) is that there’s so much here.So much skill, knowledge and passion. So many genuinely fascinating people doing genuinely fascinating things, pushing, prodding and examining children’s literature be that examining the representations of female animal characters in children’s literature, running edible book festivals, reviewing forgotten classics and giving voice to the great unsung stories that deserve to be sung about that little bit louder.

And I think that’s a bit amazing and should be a little bit recognised. Hence this.

Discovering your story

Image: ooh_food (Flickr)

I am very stubborn. (Hi Mum. Don’t laugh). I am very stubborn and quite contrary and distinctly independent. I have a few things I believe in, very very much.

One of those things is that books – literacy – libraries – all these things fall under one of our greatest achievements as humanity. We share knowledge. Share it with the turning of a page. How amazing is that? That we give such a gift – such a power – free of charge?

But what’s more amazing is when you discover that you already have a story. That you own it – you know it – and you want more of it. Literacy is amazing, but what’s more amazing in a way is the realisation that you – are – the story. When you discover the building blocks for where you want to go – and where you’ve already been. More formally, I suppose one could call this a discovering of your own literature – oral and textual – and through a discovering of that literature, a discovering of yourself.

These are my roots. These are my building blocks books. These are my stories.

PC 49 from the Eagle. Everything from the Eagle. Dan Dare. The way the Colonel protected the lady astronaut. Sam Small (Pick Oop Tha’ musket!). Sir Gawain. Sir Percival. The dirty bits in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Knights. Spike Milligan. Troy. Ithaka. King Arthur. The Four Marys. The Chalet School. Everything ever written by Michelle Magorian. My Little Pony. The Last Unicorn. Transformers. Even the bits when Optimus Prime died and Hot Rod took over (So yes, I did cry). Aragorn. The Colour Purple. Ariel (with the note we wrote in sixth form that says ‘oh look it’s another depressing poem’). Twinkle. Twinkle! The Silver Brumby. Oh the Silver Brumby. Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. My Friend Flicka!

This is my literacy, a weird hybrid of horses and comics and consonant dropping soldiers. Knowing this – knowing why I liked it then / now / forever – helps me to know where I’m going, because I know where I’ve been. I know what I am. And I like it.

I am built by books, and I am being built anew every day.

I am a reader.

Fear

There are not many places in this world that make me afraid, but hospitals do. For reasons.

Fear is a curious, tight thing. That panic that burns and grows in your throat, that pressure behind your eyes, that inability to form the words that you know you have to say. The way that it seems that only you, only you is caught inside this pot of pure darkness, and the way it seems that you can’t even touch the world to re-root yourself in it.

Fear is the thing that comes for us all at some point in our life. Whether it’s fear of the dark, that shadow on your window, that unknown person on the bus, that dog with it’s jaws unfolded, it comes. Fear doesn’t stop. It hits, sharp, sharp, sharp.

And it changes. It shapes, and it shifts, and it becomes something new when you least expect it.

To sweepingly generalise, in children’s literature I feel like we’re taught to manage it. Taught that it’s okay to be scared and here’s how to do deal with it. Problem. Solved. Fear. Gone. Darkness. Managed. We preserve and we protect. We fight for the right of the ‘innocent’ to remain innocent. For the Famous Five to find the baddie and sort it out.

But then, what do we do as individuals when the darkness comes in our real life? When the fear and the shadows and the pain kicks in? Books for sadness, for pain, exist (I love you Michael Rosen btw) and I’m so massively proud of those that do.  They exist to help fill in the gaps, the moment where life shatters and needs to be rebuilt. We trust books with every other moment in our lives but I stood in a bookshop earlier today and wondered about those books that pick us up when we’re down – and why they don’t exist in children’s literature so much.

So I wrote about it because, as ever, I find clarity in words and in putting down my thoughts on paper. I don’t think I’ve reached a conclusion, but I’ve started to unknot some thoughts inside my head. And I think those thoughts are related to things like that sick-lit article from the DM, and after attending a talk on the Narnia series, hearing a question on why write books of this complexity for children? And it’s also related to the whole ‘misery memoir’ genre greatly.

Is this then a form of societal censorship? Mediation? An ideological reflection of the genre? Or do kids not want to be sad in their books? Are books for excitement? For escapism? Am I writing this from the perspective of an adult reader of children’s literature as opposed to that of a child? Is it commercial – would these books not sell? Or  is it more complex … is sadness a result of love? You love, and then you lose. Is it that the books for grief, for bereavement, are out there but are simply – hidden?

(Can you tell I’m having a scholarly kick? Here’s your congratulatory Pikachu for putting up with it).

Period.

I read a lot of children’s literature but I don’t read that many that feature periods. Menstruation. That time of the month. Call it what you will, but it’s not an unusual phenomenon. I was reminded of the scarcity of periods in children’s literature after reading this blog post from 2010.

The thing that struck me after reading that was that I don’t think much has changed. I mean, I certainly remember discovering Runaways and swooning with love that it actually mentioned periods. It made that series instantly so much more real to me. And feeling like that was – and is – a rare occurrence  Were it not for Judy Blume and Paula Danziger, I’d be struggling to name authors and titles who acknowledge menstruation. Lord knows it certainly doesn’t occur in my great love of girlsown where the girls magically grow up in a sort of splendid glass-housed isolation.

When puberty came, with its lumps and bumps and hairs, me and my friends found solace in Just Seventeen (and were we from today, I think we’d be weeping with joy over Tumblr). And now that I think of it, we also found a lot of solace in Lady Chatterley’s Lover but that was for, um, slightly different reasons…!

But I digress. I’m looking for recommendations of titles to read – children’s books, picture books, comics whatever. Let me know if you’ve got any ideas where I should start. And I promise to collate the titles together as a reading list which I’ll archive somewhere (here! - Menstruation in Children’s Literature)

PS – I’ll also be updating my list of books featuring gifted and talented characters in the near future – additions always welcome