From: NODELMAN at UWPG02.UWINNIPEG.CA <NODELMAN>
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 21:48:00 -0600 (CST)

Perry Nodelman here again, with a bit of a clarification of what I had to say earlier about the time in which WTM takes place. It worries me that the novel might be considered "timeless"-?cause, frankly, I don't believe that's ever anything but an illusion. A theorist would say that attempts to render fiction timeless, or to suggest that certain aspects of the human condition (or in this case, of the lives of children) are timeless, are an effort to "de-historicize" reality-?ny that human lives and experiences are always at the mercy of forces of time and place and culture. I think that's very true of WTM--it clearly is of our time and a clear expression of values many of us in our time would like to believe in. So what I said earlier is very true: it distresses me that I find myself responding so positively to that "timeless" quality of WTM. It suggests that I--and many others of us adults who work with children's literature--would like to believe in a vision of childhood's timelessness that I am convinced simply doesn't work for most people who are actually children today. It's a utopian wish-fulfilment dream of childhood pleasing to adults, I think--and that's why I'd like to know how actual children actually respond to it. Does it ring true for them (I doubt it would)? Does it give them pleasure even if it doesn't ring true
(I believe it might--I think I like it myself exactly to the degree I know it isn't true.) A world that is clearly today but today without the intrusions of today's technology, today's technologized environments, today's rather ugly and inhumane politics HAS to seem utopian in relation to the real thing.

(And it was just the sense of the existence of TV and computers and malls that bothered me, not necessarily specific programs or store names. The specific store names might well date a book, and it's good they're not inckluded in the book, as someone suggested--but it's hard to fathom an American childhood with no TV even mentioned as existing in it.)

Incidentally: I realized after I sent that first message that I didn't introduce myself. Forgive my bad manners. I teach children's literature at the University of Winnipeg in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I've published a whole bunch of articles about children's literature, and a couple of books about it. I'm currently in the process of finishing up a revision of one of these: The Pleasures of Children's Literature (Longman). The new edition comes with an instructor's manual, and a number of instructors have contributed descriptions of how they use Pleasures in their children lit classes. One who did was Eliza Dresang of U of W-Madison-and she did a wonderful job of it too. Anyway, Eliza told me about this list, and invited me to join it--I'm including a section on internet resources in a new section of Pleasures telling students how to find out more about children's lit. That's how I come to be here. My first children's novel, a fantasy called The Same Plade but Different was puiblished in the U.S. last month by Simon and Schuster--and S and S are publishing a second this fall, Of Two Minds, another fantasy I wrote in collaboration with my fellow Winnipegger Carol Matas. Sequels to both books are in the works. I've never been to Madison in my entire life.

Yrs., Perry Nodelman nodelman at uwpg02.uwinnipeg,ca
Received on Fri 21 Jul 1995 10:48:00 PM CDT