By Catriona Mills

Originally posted 10 Sept. 2001

Like many readers out there, I am hopelessly addicted to children's literature. Not picture books, although there's a lot to be said for the aesthetic pleasures that a really good picture book provides. No, my particular weaknesses are different.

I can't go past a girls' school story; provide a title such as Margaret Plays the Game or a cover illustration of plucky, red-blazered schoolgirls pulling an unconscious toddler from a pond, and you've guaranteed yourself a buyer in me. Then there are girls' mystery stories. I started with Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew, but there are so many intrepid Kims, Dorothys and Megs out there that my bookshelf can barely contain their adventures. But for me the real danger, the books that have uncontrollably spilled from the one shelf originally allocated to them to colonise three others, are the children's fantasy books. Brought up on Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy, the Narnia series and the Dark is Rising sequence, I found David Eddings and his ilk very poor substitutes indeed. There are authors out there who write very good adult fantasy. But not one has ever been able to incite the strange mix of longing and terror with which I read - and still read - The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe or Over Sea, Under Stone.

These books, I freely admit, offer vicarious pleasures. I never attended a boarding school, let alone wore a red blazer and rescued fellow students from kidnapping attempts. I never belonged to a secret club with a hidden clubhouse, nor was I ever kidnapped myself by a mysterious pearl-worshipping Japanese sect. And dragons, wizards and mystical objects have unfortunately given me a wide berth (which, when I'm not reading, I have to admit is probably a good thing). But they're all there, in the pages of some of the most involving and evocative fiction every written.

So many old friends met me in the pages of Peter Hunt's comprehensive guide to children's literature. With them came the comforting thought that perhaps it is not just me who has an entire bookshelf devoted to children's literature. Certainly, as Hunt suggests, there are many people who have a vested interest in the field of children's literature; the projected readers of this guide "might well be students of literature interested in exploring a new literary field; but they might equally be librarians or teachers concerned with what children's books can do; or historians, or sociologists, interested in how this highly influential body of books impinges on their discipline; or they might be (as well) parents, or non-specialist human beings" [1]. Because the important thing about children's literature is how broad it is; a category of texts that, as Hunt comprehensively demonstrates, has existed "since at least the eighteenth century" although even Chaucer tried his hand at this field, with Tretis of the Astrolabe, written for his son and published in 1391 [2, xiv]. Children's literature covers "virtually every literary genre (including one rarely found in other literature); it extends into non-print media; it ranges across the world. I short, we are dealing with a parallel universe to the world of canonical literature" [2].

Children's Literature makes this parallel universe comprehensible. Hunt offers every available guide to what can be a confusing and seemingly disparate group of texts. This text does not replace the key authors and texts, it simply grounds them and draws comparisons between familiar texts and those that we may have overlooked. For those readers interested in the history of children's books, there is a chronology, "designed to interpret movements and suggest interrelationships" [x]. Here books are grouped under headings such as "Religious and Evangelical Writers," "Early Australian, Canadian and New Zealand Landmarks," or "War Books."

This list, which contains only authors, titles and publication dates, is followed by more comprehensive listings. Hunt begins with a list of "Writers," and follows it with a list of "Key Texts." Among the latter are established favourites such as Anne of Green Gables, Little Women and The Secret Garden, interspersed with the fantasy of the 1960s and 1970s, from authors such as Alan Garner and Susan Cooper. In the list of writers are found the obligatory Enid Blyton, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl, but also the woman who has single-handedly lured a generation of children away from electronic amusements and back to the library, J.K. Rowling. With her are Terry Pratchett, and writers who never believed that "having a happy ending should be one of the requirements of a children's books," authors such as Robert Cormier [51].

These lists alone highlight Hunt's initial point, that children's literature is not a genre, it is a disparate and nebulous object that in some fashion defies the rigid categorisation of the 'adult canon.' What Hunt has done is not define children's literature, or create a critical model by which it can be explained. Instead, he has provided a key - or a magic wardrobe, if you prefer - by which we can access this material and from which we can return to the texts themselves for our ideas about what children's literature means.

That is not to say that this book is uncritical. Hunt's short pieces - and given the breadth of the topic, they must be short - on each author or text offer fascinating anecdotes and insights into these works that reawaken the critical interest in children's literature that is sometimes buried under sheer visceral pleasure. Although I read and enjoyed Harriet the Spy a long time ago, I never saw it as a tragic book. Now I can't help wonder to what extent "marketing" - and Hollywood's manic treatment of the story - influenced my reading. The fact that J.K Rowling's latest Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - had nearly six million copies in print on publication day [122] creates a connection between children's literature and consumer power that may sometimes be overlooked. And the discussion of Enid Blyton's output, rate of production and skilled marketing of her product provides some comfort for those of us who have always considered Blyton a rather guilty pleasure. Hunt's brief pieces on "Matters of History" - such as "Tone and Address" and "Gender, Politics and Ideology" - or "Topics" - such as "Fantasy," "War" and "Censorship" - provide a critical base for those readers who wish to use this book to leap into a more critical approach to children's literature.

But for me, and I suspect for many readers, the real pleasure in this book is in its comprehensive guide to a field that we have always enjoyed and probably always will. It is comforting to be told by an established critic in the field that the school story "is one of the most addictive of the genres specific to children's literature" [299]. It certainly goes a long way towards explaining the curiously large collection currently lurking on my shelves. But it is more pleasurable to flick through the lists of authors and works in search of those that I had forgotten, or even never read. For those who are only peripherally concerned in the field of children's literature, Hunt's guide is an ideal place to begin. For those of us who are already trapped in Wonderland it is both a pleasure and a danger.

Details

Hunt, Peter. Children's Literature.
Publisher: BLackwell.
Price:49.95 Australian.
334pp.

Citation reference for this article

MLA style:
Catriona Mills. "Just for Kids? Review of Children's Literature" M/C Reviews 10 Sept. 2001. [your date of access] .

Chicago style:
Catriona Mills, "Just for Kids? Review of Children's Literature," M/C Reviews 10 Sept. 2001, ([your date of access]).

APA style:
Catriona Mills. (2001) Just for Kids? Review of Children's Literature. M/C Reviews 10 Sept. 2001. ([your date of access]).
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