Q+A

What three points would you like readers to take away from your new work, “Kid Lit: An Introduction to Literary Criticism.”

First, that all stories are political. Every story – even a joke you tell to friend, or a family story around the dinner table – has a world view. Second, if you look beneath the surface, you’ll that see children’s stories can carry some strong messages – about gender, about Others, about the world, about our cultures. For instance, “The Lion King” depicts a happy oligarchy – lions give orders, giraffes bow to them, and hyenas are outcasts. “How to Train Your Dragon” presents a participatory democracy. The best idea wins.

My third take-away for my students is, Wake up! Stop being passive consumers of these narratives. You must begin to own these stories, break them down and see what makes them tick. It will lead to a life of critical thinking, which is beyond value.

Part of your method seems to be comparing unlike characters – Jim Hawkins in “Treasure Island,” for instance, and Po from “Kung Fu Panda.”

Yes, I really want my students to begin to see the similarities in these hundreds of hours of stories they are watching and hearing. Both Jim Hawkins and Po overcome an absent parent, take a dangerous journey, meet wise men, and find their true identities as they defeat death. The similarities can go on and on, sometimes ridiculously so. You can see how valuable it is for students to begin to notice patterns in all the COA stories. Disney movies offer children narrative frameworks that help them imagine what it means to move from childhood to adulthood.

What is the current state of Children’s Literature?

These are interesting times for Kid Lit. On the one hand, the digital world has brough us an explosion of creativity. Over the past decade, there has also been an opening of up of gender roles, and portrayals of the family unit. Works like Nnedi Okorafor’s “Binti” are ushering in a new generation of epic fantasies which do not feature white men.

On the other hand, you have a regression to really conservative values in the wave of superhero narratives. And recent surveys show that the world of Kid Lit is still very racially imbalanced.

You call the coming-of-age matrix the most important section of “Kid Lit: An Introduction to Literary Theory.” Why?

Children’s Literature tends to fulfill one of three functions: explaining the family; explaining the world; and explaining how to grow up. Of the three, coming-of-age is currently dominant. We see elements of it everywhere, especially with the gluts of dystopian y.a. and superhero narratives – all of which are essentially adolescent, coming-of-age identity tales.

The segment regarding ‘Empire’ is the one you term ‘least crucial.’ What does empire have to do with Kid Lit?

So many of what we regard as the Children’s Classics — Peter Pan, The Secret Garden, Alice in Wonderland, Wind in the Willows, Dr. Doolittle, The Jungle Tales and to a lesser extent Winnie the Pooh — are creations of high empire. They reflect Great Britain at is most self-confident. We see worlds of plenty, a concern with language and manners, and a clear social order, with aristocrats like Badger, Toad and Christopher Robin foreigners and riff-raff at the bottom. Asterix, Tintin, Babar and Curious George can be similarly seen as holdovers of the French empire, which was the last to give it up. The get their impact from depicting French society encountering Others from its colonies.

After Josh was born, we moved on to “Peter Pan,” which is delightfully dark and death-obsessed, with complex psychological concerns. Peter cannot form lasting memories because then he might learn from them, and thus, like the rest of us, grow-up. At several points he forgets he has killed someone.
Kristopher Jansma

How are the two ‘wild child’ heroes, Tarzan and Mowgli different?

Anna Kozak points out that Mowgli is open and forthright about his superiority over the animals of the jungle, in the British fashion of imperialism. Tarzan is in the American tradition of empire – he is actually superior, but he pretends he is not. Americans do not like the imperial identity.

Are all the rich people evil in the Harry Potter stories? Is magic earned, or inherited?

Yes. All the heroes and their families are middle- or lower-class. Draco Malfoy and family, the Minister of Magic, Tom Riddle – all the villains are aristocrats, and speak with accents. Remus Lupin might be the exception.

As to magic being earned or inherited, clearly the answer is both. Harry was born with it, while Hermoine practices diligently and gets better throughout the series. A similar dual-road-to-magic structure exists in Tolkein and in The Once and Future King.

Few literary properties hit all the markers of the coming-of-age story the way Harry Potter does. It is fertile ground for reader theories and literary criticism.

You note in your Introduction that “Kid Lit” is weak on picture books and international children’s literature.

Yes, I couldn’t handle the full spectrum of Kid Lit all at once. The driving idea or impetus behind the Kid Lit project is to bring scholarship out of the amber of scholarly journals and dissertations and into the classroom, where these powerful ideas could have a wide impact. I am already finding scholarship on picture books, Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak and others. So the Second Edition will be very exciting, with lots of new content for teachers and students. We hope to expand the website so that Kid Lit becomes an ongoing resource.

Q+A

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