“Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline” in Metamorphoses in Children’s Literature and Culture, Barbara Drillsma-Milgrom, Leena Kirstinä (eds.). Turku: Oy Enostone, 2009. pp.47-54 Formatting different from printed version

Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline

Sebastien Chapleau, Cardiff University, Wales, U.K.

In an article on childist criticism, Peter Hunt suggested that it could be linked to the notion of anarchy,

in the sense that the individual, the local, the fragment, were at the core of such a criticism. Today, it

is this notion of anarchy that I would like to deal with, implicitly, and, in a similar fashion to Hunt, I will

discuss it through the notion of respect for children’s cultures. This will lead me to look at some of the

things one tends to do within the world of children’s literature studies. It will also lead me to reflect

on some of the things one tends not to do, as well as some possible changes that could happen were

we to adopt a childist attitude.

Peter Hunt has spent of great deal of his career as literary critic concentrating on the silenced voices

of children, particularly within the academic criticism of the literature that is aimed at them. He has

always made his point clear: when it comes to writing or speaking about books for children, most

adult critics leave aside, most of the time completely ignoring, what children actually think about the

texts that they read. Consequently, what prevails in the academic criticism of books for children is

often very remote from the lives of children. This, according to Hunt, can be seen as a result of

wishing children’s literature criticism into mainstream academia. “Childist criticism”, he writes, “was

implicitly against the flow of “children’s literature” as a study, into mainstream academia.” He argues

“Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline” in Metamorphoses in Children’s Literature and Culture, Barbara Drillsma-Milgrom, Leena Kirstinä (eds.). Turku: Oy Enostone, 2009. pp.47-54 Formatting different from printed version that academic literary criticism, which is mainly adult-centred, is mainly interested in what adults

think about texts. His point, with which I sympathise, might be very blunt but, I believe, is extremely

pertinent in the world of (children’s) literary criticism. Looking at the last hundred or so books I have

received in the past three years as reviews editor for The Journal of Children’s Literature Studies, I

cannot see many – if any at all – references to what children actually think about the books being put

under scrutiny. This silencing of the child’s voice, Hunt argued, equates to a sort of betrayal. In other

words, silencing children, adult critics have often shown their disrespect towards the cultures of

childhood.

Hunt’s views are clear throughout his writing: “[childist criticism] suggests that we do not, and cannot,

and perhaps should not know what readers are doing in their heads; whatever is being done is valid in

its own context. However, as not knowing what interpretations are being made is to relinquish power

– power to mould or direct a reader into an interpretation that we recognise or wish to validate –

Childist Criticism would be anathema not only to value-traditionalists, but to educationalists who,

after all, are not equipped to award marks to anarchy.” (2004, n.p.)

I am sure that his words have been read by most of us, that many of his books and articles are on our

library shelves, and that his ideas will often be received sympathetically. In his writing, Hunt does not

mean to suggest that what has been done, or what is being done in the world of children’s literature

criticism is unnecessary or unjustifiable, but, rather, that because of what he sees as the central

“Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline” in Metamorphoses in Children’s Literature and Culture, Barbara Drillsma-Milgrom, Leena Kirstinä (eds.). Turku: Oy Enostone, 2009. pp.47-54 Formatting different from printed version position of childhood within our discipline, it could be interesting to consider children’s views too, as

well as adults’.

This, I would say, is what could be seen as the first wave of childist criticism. What seems to be

nearing our shore, I would now like to suggest, is a second wave, a wave interested not only in

children’s own reading voices, but also in their writing hands. If literary criticism is primarily interested

in reading and writing, the first wave of childist criticism can be said to be/have been dealing with the

reading child, the second wave to be looking at the writing child. This second wave is still rather small,

but I hope will gain strength in the coming years. Helping it on its way is the purpose of this essay. A

secondary purpose will be to argue that the first and second waves could meet and joyfully flood the

world of children’s literature criticism.

In the second edition of The International Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, David Rudd spends

some time writing about the constructive child who, he argues to a certain extent, needs to be part of

children’s literature criticism. This constructive child is a child who is not just a receiver of culture, but

also a producer of it. Looking at what this constructive child produces is a way forward, Rudd argues.

Allowing the voice of the child to be heard is necessary. To illustrate his point, Rudd mentions the fact

that children produce “literature in vast quantities, oral and written, both individually wrought and

through collaborative effort (sometimes diachronically), and in a variety of forms: rhymes, jokes,

songs, incantations, tall tales, plays, stories and more.” (33)

“Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline” in Metamorphoses in Children’s Literature and Culture, Barbara Drillsma-Milgrom, Leena Kirstinä (eds.). Turku: Oy Enostone, 2009. pp.47-54 Formatting different from printed version

More recently, Kimberley Reynolds, in her Radical Children’s Literature – Future Visions and Aesthetic

Transformations in Juvenile Fiction, argues for a somewhat similar approach. She writes, in her

conclusion entitled “The Foundations of Future Fictions”, that “a major transformation of children’s

literature […] is taking place in cyberspace. As critics in the field regularly observe, children’s literature

is the only body of writing to be defined by and named for its audience: children read children’s

literature, they do not produce it […]. The situation is changing, and a great deal of writing by children

is finding audiences via the Internet. As this trend continues, the nomenclature of writing read by the

young may be forced to adjust. ‘Children’s literature’ may indeed come to refer to writing by the

young for the young, meaning that the work produced by adults for children to read will have to be

relabelled.” (180)

Here, the similarities between Peter Hunt’s ideas and those of David Rudd and Kimberley Reynolds lie

in the fact that they focus on the importance of listening to children’s voices in the domain of

children’s literature criticism. Hunt was interested in the reading child, and how his/her voice could

give a new dimension to children’s literature criticism. David Rudd and Kimberley Reynolds, here, are

interested in the writing child, the child who is not a passive consumer of culture, but an active

producer of it. Doing so, one is bound to re-read through Jacqueline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan, or

the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction, Karín Lesnik-Oberstein’s Children’s Literature – Criticism and the

Fictional Child, and Jack Zipes’s chapter on the institutionalisation of children’s literature in his Sticks

“Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline” in Metamorphoses in Children’s Literature and Culture, Barbara Drillsma-Milgrom, Leena Kirstinä (eds.). Turku: Oy Enostone, 2009. pp.47-54 Formatting different from printed version and Stones – The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter.

Indeed, where they concentrate on the constructed child in a somewhat pessimistic fashion, we could

now suggest that there is more to their argument than just pessimism. After years of silence – or,

rather, silencing – it might be time for literary critics in the domain of children’s literature to start

listening to children and possibly re-shift some of their work.

An example of children’s writing Kimberley Reynolds briefly looks at in her Radical Children’s

Literature is fan fiction (180). Referring to Alison Evans’s dissertation on the topic, Reynolds writes

that on the very popular website fanfiction.net, it can be estimated that fans produce the equivalent

of around eight-thousand fifty-thousand-word novels annually. The material is there, available to

anyone, on the Internet. It is easily accessible and most of the time clearly organised.

As explained by Reynolds through her reading of Jenkins, reading the work of fans enables us to see

how they express their approval and disapproval of their favourite narratives. It particularly enables

them, Jenkins writes, to engage with issues present in the texts. For instance, as Jenkins shows

through a close analysis of Star Trek-based fan fiction, some “fan writers characterize themselves as

“repairing the damage” caused by the program’s inconsistent and often demeaning treatment of its

female characters.” (47) It appeared to Jenkins that a lot of the fan fiction he read over the years, as

well as a lot of fan communities he talked to, were trying to complement their favourite narratives.

This is, for instance, quite noticeable with Harry Potter-based fan fiction where a large number of fans

“Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline” in Metamorphoses in Children’s Literature and Culture, Barbara Drillsma-Milgrom, Leena Kirstinä (eds.). Turku: Oy Enostone, 2009. pp.47-54 Formatting different from printed version have re-shaped the relationships between the characters, particularly Hermione and Harry, thus

sometimes showing how they wish some of the adventures had unfolded. All in all, and this on a more

basic and general level, and this is something present in Hunt’s childist ideas when dealing with the

reading of texts, fan fiction enables us to gain some insight into how readers engage in writing with

the texts they read.

Kimberley Reynolds’s argument is clear about the importance of looking at fan fiction as it is a way to

get children’s literature critics to engage with children’s own writings. It is, I would argue, something

Reynolds sees as easily manageable, as it takes us towards new but still familiar texts. But, I believe

that one could also spend some time looking at those texts written by children, those texts which do

not necessarily engage with the stories they have read. These texts are the texts which, Rudd says,

would make the world of children’s literature studies far messier.

A few months ago, I sent an email to some literary critics to which I attached a story written by a child

called Celia Morris. I sent them the story as I was given it, without editing it. In my email I wrote:

Dear All,

I was wondering whether you could do me a quick summery favour. It shouldn’t take too long. It’s just

about reading a short story and quickly telling me what you think about it. The questions I’d like you

to ask yourselves are: How would I teach or write an essay about this text IF I HAD TO? What would I

“Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline” in Metamorphoses in Children’s Literature and Culture, Barbara Drillsma-Milgrom, Leena Kirstinä (eds.). Turku: Oy Enostone, 2009. pp.47-54 Formatting different from printed version focus on in the story? What literary theories might I find useful? From what critical angle(s) would I

approach this text? etc.

I hope you can do this for me. If you’re on holidays and haven’t got the time, no worries, but please,

let me know!

Hope you’re all keeping well.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Regards,

seb

Amongst the recipients of this email were professors of children’s literature in British and North-

American institutions, and some editors of major journals dedicated to the study of books for

children. All of them had written extensively on a great variety of aspects dealing with the production

of books for children. All in all, their status is highly respectable amongst, but not only, scholars

interested in children’s literature.

What I was hoping to see in the replies to my email is if what they have been doing for years to texts

written by adults for children could be done to a text written by a child. I had my own thoughts about

what could happen to Morris’s story, but I believed that asking other voices to join me in my

argument, I would, perhaps, manage to make my childist argument more stable.

“Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline” in Metamorphoses in Children’s Literature and Culture, Barbara Drillsma-Milgrom, Leena Kirstinä (eds.). Turku: Oy Enostone, 2009. pp.47-54 Formatting different from printed version What they came up in their responses ranged from contextual readings, leading to readings in terms

of genre theories, to closer narratological investigations, taking us to issues of reader-response

criticism. There was also psychoanalysis which would lead us to concentrate on the more symbolic –

and/or hidden symbolism – of the story. All this about a story written by a nine-year-old child. The

point I wish to make here, very quickly, is that even a text written by a child can be read using the

repertoire of theory one usually helps oneself from when analysing stories written by adults.

One of the facts that could easily epitomise literary criticism since it started opening its doors to a

greater variety of texts is that one can use all sorts of critical tools as regards any sorts of texts. As I

said before, some twenty or so years ago, some critics insistently started trying to prove that one

could read Enid Blyton using similar tools as those used when reading William Shakespeare. Perry

Nodelman insists on that when reminding us of the bias of some critics. He writes, as he reflects on

children’s literature criticism in a post-theoretical era, that “[w]hile I was able to extrapolate much of

interest from the after-theory texts I read in terms of my work as a children's literature scholar, I

found almost nothing directly concerned with that work. There was just one scholar who even

mentioned any texts for children. That scholar was Terry Eagleton, who, in the midst of a project with

the central purpose of attacking hierarchical social structures and uneven power relations, makes

jokey ironic comments about texts for children, the humour of which depends on the supposedly

dumbheaded simplicity of children’s literature. “Those who can,” he says, “think up feminism or

structuralism; those who can’t, apply such insights to Moby Dick or The Cat in the Hat” (2); or again,

“Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline” in Metamorphoses in Children’s Literature and Culture, Barbara Drillsma-Milgrom, Leena Kirstinä (eds.). Turku: Oy Enostone, 2009. pp.47-54 Formatting different from printed version “A novel with a moral is not likely to be morally interesting. ‘Goldilocks’ is not the most profound of

fables” (144). The irony, of course, is that “Goldilocks,” which has a house-breaking thief as its

supposedly empathetic protagonist, is at least as morally ambiguous as Moby Dick—and surely as

much deserving of critical attention.” (2006: 16)

Now we know that Enid Blyton can be read as critically as William Shakespeare. Now, therefore, one

should also realise that Morris can be read as variously as Blyton and Shakespeare. The thing is that

allowing Celia Morris and other children into the world of children’s literature studies, or even

literature in general, is surely going to raise issues of selection, issues which had been put aside for a

while by many.

Throughout this paper, I have been trying to suggest that what children produce in terms of literature

could be looked at by us, children’s literature scholars. When presenting my work to another

audience, a few months ago, someone described it as ghettoizing. They told me that breaking a

discipline down, making it too pluralistic, can sometimes be dangerous and, they believed, should not

be encouraged. They are right: children’s literature has established itself quite firmly in academia

now, but is still fighting for its legitimacy in many countries. Making our domain of research open to

fragmentation could be dangerous. They are right, I believe, but only partly. And it is against the

unavoidable bias of those who claim that children’s own writings cannot be part of literary studies

that I cannot but raise my voice.

“Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline” in Metamorphoses in Children’s Literature and Culture, Barbara Drillsma-Milgrom, Leena Kirstinä (eds.). Turku: Oy Enostone, 2009. pp.47-54 Formatting different from printed version

At the other end of this argument, then, we can say that the opening of the literary canon throughout

the later parts of the twentieth century has created more areas of research. This was probably

comparable, in the eyes of many, though maybe in different terms, to the ghettoisation that my

argument would lead to, according to some. But for those who established books for children as a

respectable discipline, it must have been seen differently. It must have been seen as a fruitful

widening of literary studies, whereby varieties of forms would meet and be discussed, and whereby

new theories or critical apparatuses would emerge.

Peter Hunt, as he writes about children’s reading experiences says that ‘Children’s Literature’ as a

study has produced, and is increasingly producing, intellectual achievements of the first order, and I

would not criticise any branch of the profession. But my own predilections are, after years of working

in the opposite direction, for the small, the local, and the particular (which may be “ghettoising”) and

for a practical, pragmatic involvement with the act of reading […]. (2003: n. p.)

As regards the production of texts by children, I would argue in a similar fashion that I am working –

perhaps in the opposite direction as some – for the small, the local, and the particular. I am in favour

of a first-hand manipulation of our discipline, and will always encourage whatever has to do with

children to be part of our domain of research. Childhood is a real thing: let us make our research real.

“Childist Criticism: Some Early Steps Towards the Transformation of a Literary Discipline” in Metamorphoses in Children’s Literature and Culture, Barbara Drillsma-Milgrom, Leena Kirstinä (eds.). Turku: Oy Enostone, 2009. pp.47-54 Formatting different from printed version Writing about the literary forms that children produce, I place myself within a positive frame of mind

and I see, or envisage, a discipline in constant making, thinking and/or re-thinking its foundations and

principles. Why should certain texts be included, or why should they not? I personally believe that

most children’s literature critics are informed of what it is to be subjected to prejudice. Most would

therefore certainly claim that one should not take the notion of value judgement for granted. Because

critics such as Peter Hunt, Perry Nodelman, and Jack Zipes have had to fight against issues of critico-

literary canonisation, they have had to work and reflect on what generates such issues: pointing out

the ideological inadequacies present at the heart of academic debates, pointing out the bias of

established scholars in the domain of literary studies, and so on. The idea of having reached a status

quo, a status quo whereby we feel happy to be able to read books for the young within a university

environment, should, perhaps, not be seen as sufficient. It should not lead to a static position, but,

rather, generate an ever-lasting desire for questioning, a wish to make sure that past mistakes do not

happen again. This is a unifying agenda for a necessarily fragmented discipline.

London, December 2007.