CCBC-Net Archives

From: Marcy Troy <*marcytroy*> Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:00:47 -0400 (EDT) · marcytroy

-- 
Megan Schliesman, Librarian 
Cooperative Children's Book Center 
School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison 
600 N. Park Street, Room 4290 
Madison, WI ?53706 
608/262-9503 
schliesman at education.wisc.edu 
www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ 
------------------------------ 
Message: 2 
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:13:26 -0500 
From: Perry Nodelman <perry_nodelman at shaw.ca> 
Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Hidden Adult and Adult Agenda 
To: Megan Schliesman <schliesman at education.wisc.edu> 
Cc: "ccbc-net, Subscribers of" <ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu> 
Message-ID: <AD312A76-CACD-48BF-BABA-3357DD77136F at shaw.ca> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes 
On 17-Jul-09, at 12:31 PM, Megan Schliesman wrote: 
> 
> 
> Perry Nodelman wrote: 
> 
> "I find myself having to admit that some of the things i like about 
> those likeable texts are exactly the ways in which they work to 
> manipulate their readers, including me." 
> 
> Perry, I'm curious about whether you see this manipulation as being 
> conscious, or whether it has become subconsciously imbedded in our 
> understanding of the genre, so that authors and artists may in fact 
> be--at least at times--unwitting participants. ?Of course, we can all 
> think of books where the manipulation is obvious rather than artful, ? 
> but 
> it is those artful books--the ones that manage to be well written, 
> sometimes beautifully written, and child-centered--that I find ? 
> myself thinking in terms of this idea of the manipulation of the ? 
> child reader. 
Hmm. ?I'm wondering if it's a combination of both conscious ? 
manipulation and unconscious embedding. 
A lot of it is, of course, conscious. ?We do tend almost always to ? 
talk about children's books almost exclusively in terms of their ? 
pedagogical effects on children--and not always just in relation to ? 
their obvious didactic contents. ?For instance, we say things like, ? 
"It's a funny book, so it'll help children to develop a sense of ? 
humour," or, "it's a fun read, which will encourage children to think ? 
positively abut literacy" ?(University students I taught in children's ? 
lit courses were always saying things like that, and I hard to read ? 
then that a good enough reason for children to read a fun book would ? 
be simply that it was fun.). 
Also, most of our endless worrying about which books to keep out of ? 
children's hands is a concern with what the books might teach or how ? 
they might manipulate pliable young minds. ?Our current North American ? 
discourse about children and books is almost a hundred percent about ? 
how the books can or should or shouldn't or will or won't manipulate ? 
young readers. ?And when I say "our" here, i don't mean just adults-- 
how often have you heard a child say something like, "It's a good ? 
book, but not for little kids younger than me because they might get ? 
nightmares from it." ?These children have already learned the ? 
acceptable way to talk about children's books--in terms of going ? 
through all the reasons for keeping them out of vulnerable younger ? 
hands before actually recommending them as safely okay. 
And in that context, then, it'd be almost impossible for anyone with ? 
much knowledge of children's books not to be engaged in unconscious ? 
thinking about how the books might effect or manipulate young readers, ? 
without any even awareness of doing so. ?From its beginning, ? 
children's literature has been defined as a literature which both ? 
educates young readers and, just as significantly, leaves things out-- 
things children ought not to know about in order to preserve their ? 
childlikeness. ?If you know your business as a writer or editor or ? 
publisher or library purchaser, then, and you know what makes a ? 
children's book a children's book and what makes a saleable children's ? 
book, then you're probably unconsciously operating with ideas about ? 
children's literature based on your previous experience of it that ? 
emerge from those primal concerns. (Your own description, Megan, of ? 
books that "well written, sometimes beautifully written, and child- 
centered," for instance--how much are our idea of good writing in ? 
texts for young people tied up with ideas of suitable simplicity, and ? 
how much is "child-centered" understood in terms of how well the book ? 
evokes the right kind of utopian childhood?) 
As far as I can see, all the qualities characteristic or even just ? 
typical of texts for young people that I describe in The Hidden Adult ? 
emerge from and relate to ?efforts to manipulate of child readers, to ? 
create a safe version of childhood for children to imagine as being ? 
where they are and who they are. ?As I say in The Hidden Adult, ? 
children's literature is like the home that so many of its ? 
conventional texts insist is the best place for children to be--a ? 
haven protected against the dangers of the bigger world out there. ? 
And in our time, especially, childhood is increasingly understood by ? 
far too many parents, teachers, librarians, and others as a state of ? 
constantly being under siege by the dark forces of out there--and ? 
therefore, for many children nowadays, a prison of constant adult ? 
surveillance and never being very far away from the world-views of the ? 
Disney folk and their cronies in the kid's entertainment biz and never ? 
going outside to play unsupervised with your friends and without an ? 
appropriately age-rated video game in your hand. ?Childhood IS, more ? 
and more constantly, a state of being under authority and ? 
manipulation? ?And so children's literature is that, too? 
Cheerily on the edge of doom, 
Perry 
_____________ 
Perry Nodelman 
http://pernodel.wordpress.com/ 
Book Trailers: 
The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3t7JAfPQeA 
The Ghosthunters2: The Curse of the Evening Eye 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qapDE1Kwnis 
The Ghosthunters I: The Proof that Ghosts Exist 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw0ow7oQV7k 
> Perry Nodelman wrote: 
> 
> "I find myself having to admit that some of the things i like about 
> those likeable texts are exactly the ways in which they work to 
> manipulate their readers, including me." 
> 
> Perry, I'm curious about whether you see this manipulation as being 
> conscious, or whether it has become subconsciously imbedded in our 
> understanding of the genre, so that authors and artists may in fact 
> be--at least at times--unwitting participants. ?Of course, we can all 
> think of books where the manipulation is obvious rather than artful, ? 
> but 
> it is those artful books--the ones that manage to be well written, 
> sometimes beautifully written, and child-centered--that I find myself 
> thinking in terms of this idea of the manipulation of the child ? 
> reader. 
> 
> Your discussion of A Very Special House by Maurice Sendak suggests a 
> concsiousness to this. Would you say that is typically true? 
> 
> And what do others of you-- readers, and writers or illustrators-- 
> think 
> about this? 
> 
> Megan 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Megan Schliesman, Librarian 
> Cooperative Children's Book Center 
> School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison 
> 600 N. Park Street, Room 4290 
> Madison, WI ?53706 
> 
> 608/262-9503 
> schliesman at education.wisc.edu 
> 
> www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ 
> 
> _______________________________________________ 
> CCBC-Net mailing list 
> CCBC-Net at lists.education.wisc.edu 
> Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... 
> http://lists.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net 
------------------------------ 
Message: 3 
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:51:57 -0500 
From: Perry Nodelman <perry_nodelman at shaw.ca> 
Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Hidden Adult and Adult Agenda 
To: "ccbc-net, Subscribers of" <ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu> 
Message-ID: <A5EC2055-AC4D-46A0-90E9-136A922A5FC4 at shaw.ca> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes 
Looking it over again, I see that last post of mine was pretty ? 
depressing--too depressing, maybe? ?Let me try to think of some ways ? 
in which all of children's literature always might not be dangerously ? 
counter-productive from beginning to end. 
So: ?it's characteristically and inherently manipulative. ?Well, yes, ? 
I think it is. ?But: 
First, in good texts for young people it's fun as a reader to be ? 
manipulated. The rich experience they offer of a childhood utopia ? 
where childhood innocence is always better than adult cynicism and ? 
pessimism and things always work out very well for the children we ? 
care about can be very, very satisfying to read about, for both ? 
children and adults. It's like chocolate, maybe--a delight to taste, ? 
but too much eaten too inattentively can make you sick (and tired of ? 
chocolate). ?And if you're controlling how much chocolate you eat, ? 
then why waste your chocolate ration on bad chocolate? ?Concentrate on ? 
the really tasty quality stuff--let yourself be manipulated ingeniously 
Second, ?the chocolate can still taste good even to those who know how ? 
sick it can make you, and who eat it carefully and warily. ?So, too, ? 
manipulative books; ?you can enjoy their attempts to manipulate just ? 
as much if you know how manipulative they are and actively work ? 
against letting them manipulate you too much. ? It can be a game with ? 
two equal players, not just one manipulater and one completely ? 
gullible manipulee. ?The more critical thinking the better, for human ? 
beings of all ages and stages. ?Down with thoughtless and ? 
unquestioning responses. ?Down, I say! ?Let children be wise enough to ? 
be able enjoy the same kind of nostalgia for what we identify as ? 
childlike innocence as adults do when they read children's books. 
Third, some of what we've been calling "manipulation" is really just ? 
plain old teaching, and some of what adults try to teach children is ? 
things they should legitimately be taught. ?Sometimes we let our faith ? 
in the wonderful individual freedom of each and all to get in the way ? 
if our sense of responsibility to help children find ways to cope with ? 
being alive, as children and in their future life as adults. It's an ? 
adult duty to manipulate children--i.e., to socialize them, to help ? 
them become capable of living in the culture they inhabit and ? 
understanding the world. 
And fourth, the really great children's books, i think, tend to ? 
undermine their own apparent manipulations, to say both what they seem ? 
to teach and its opposite. ?Like the books I admire that I named ? 
yesterday: ?Peter Rabbit is both about the bad things that happen when ? 
you disobey your mother and the satisfyingly heroic adventures you can ? 
have when you do. ?Charlotte's Web is about both enduring friendship ? 
and the ways affections come to an end (Fern's transfer of her ? 
attention away from Charlotte), about both triumphing over impending ? 
death and having to give in to it. ?And so on. ?Really good writers ? 
for children can always find a way of both seeming to meet the ? 
conventions and typical characteristics of children's books and at the ? 
same time defying them, or being ambivalent about them. ?I suspect ? 
that's why so many adults write essays about books like Peter Rabbit ? 
or Charlotte's Web or Where the Wild Things Are; they mean much more ? 
and are much less definite about it than they at first appear to, so ? 
that different readers can interpret them not only differently but ? 
often, oppositely. ?(I say more about this in the last section of The ? 
Hidden Adult.) 
So manipulation, yes. ?Bad for children and other human beings? ?Not ? 
necessarily. 
Stepping gingerly away from the brink of doom, 
Perry 
_____________ 
Perry Nodelman 
http://pernodel.wordpress.com/ 
Book Trailers: 
The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3t7JAfPQeA 
The Ghosthunters2: The Curse of the Evening Eye 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qapDE1Kwnis 
The Ghosthunters I: The Proof that Ghosts Exist 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw0ow7oQV7k 
On 17-Jul-09, at 4:13 PM, Perry Nodelman wrote: 
> On 17-Jul-09, at 12:31 PM, Megan Schliesman wrote: 
>> 
>> 
>> Perry Nodelman wrote: 
>> 
>> "I find myself having to admit that some of the things i like about 
>> those likeable texts are exactly the ways in which they work to 
>> manipulate their readers, including me." 
>> 
>> Perry, I'm curious about whether you see this manipulation as being 
>> conscious, or whether it has become subconsciously imbedded in our 
>> understanding of the genre, so that authors and artists may in fact 
>> be--at least at times--unwitting participants. ?Of course, we can all 
>> think of books where the manipulation is obvious rather than artful, 
>> but 
>> it is those artful books--the ones that manage to be well written, 
>> sometimes beautifully written, and child-centered--that I find 
>> myself thinking in terms of this idea of the manipulation of the 
>> child reader. 
> 
> Hmm. ?I'm wondering if it's a combination of both conscious 
> manipulation and unconscious embedding. 
> 
> A lot of it is, of course, conscious. ?We do tend almost always to 
> talk about children's books almost exclusively in terms of their 
> pedagogical effects on children--and not always just in relation to 
> their obvious didactic contents. ?For instance, we say things like, 
> "It's a funny book, so it'll help children to develop a sense of 
> humour," or, "it's a fun read, which will encourage children to think 
> positively abut literacy" ?(University students I taught in children's 
> lit courses were always saying things like that, and I hard to read 
> then that a good enough reason for children to read a fun book would 
> be simply that it was fun.). 
> 
> Also, most of our endless worrying about which books to keep out of 
> children's hands is a concern with what the books might teach or how 
> they might manipulate pliable young minds. ?Our current North American 
> discourse about children and books is almost a hundred percent about 
> how the books can or should or shouldn't or will or won't manipulate 
> young readers. ?And when I say "our" here, i don't mean just adults-- 
> how often have you heard a child say something like, "It's a good 
> book, but not for little kids younger than me because they might get 
> nightmares from it." ?These children have already learned the 
> acceptable way to talk about children's books--in terms of going 
> through all the reasons for keeping them out of vulnerable younger 
> hands before actually recommending them as safely okay. 
> 
> And in that context, then, it'd be almost impossible for anyone with 
> much knowledge of children's books not to be engaged in unconscious 
> thinking about how the books might effect or manipulate young readers, 
> without any even awareness of doing so. ?From its beginning, 
> children's literature has been defined as a literature which both 
> educates young readers and, just as significantly, leaves things out-- 
> things children ought not to know about in order to preserve their 
> childlikeness. ?If you know your business as a writer or editor or 
> publisher or library purchaser, then, and you know what makes a 
> children's book a children's book and what makes a saleable children's 
> book, then you're probably unconsciously operating with ideas about 
> children's literature based on your previous experience of it that 
> emerge from those primal concerns. (Your own description, Megan, of 
> books that "well written, sometimes beautifully written, and child- 
> centered," for instance--how much are our idea of good writing in 
> texts for young people tied up with ideas of suitable simplicity, and 
> how much is "child-centered" understood in terms of how well the book 
> evokes the right kind of utopian childhood?) 
> 
> As far as I can see, all the qualities characteristic or even just 
> typical of texts for young people that I describe in The Hidden Adult 
> emerge from and relate to ?efforts to manipulate of child readers, to 
> create a safe version of childhood for children to imagine as being 
> where they are and who they are. ?As I say in The Hidden Adult, 
> children's literature is like the home that so many of its 
> conventional texts insist is the best place for children to be--a 
> haven protected against the dangers of the bigger world out there. 
> And in our time, especially, childhood is increasingly understood by 
> far too many parents, teachers, librarians, and others as a state of 
> constantly being under siege by the dark forces of out there--and 
> therefore, for many children nowadays, a prison of constant adult 
> surveillance and never being very far away from the world-views of the 
> Disney folk and their cronies in the kid's entertainment biz and never 
> going outside to play unsupervised with your friends and without an 
> appropriately age-rated video game in your hand. ?Childhood IS, more 
> and more constantly, a state of being under authority and 
> manipulation? ?And so children's literature is that, too? 
> 
> Cheerily on the edge of doom, 
> Perry 
> _____________ 
> Perry Nodelman 
> http://pernodel.wordpress.com/ 
> 
> Book Trailers: 
> The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3t7JAfPQeA 
> The Ghosthunters2: The Curse of the Evening Eye 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qapDE1Kwnis 
> The Ghosthunters I: The Proof that Ghosts Exist 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw0ow7oQV7k 
> 
> 
> 
>> Perry Nodelman wrote: 
>> 
>> "I find myself having to admit that some of the things i like about 
>> those likeable texts are exactly the ways in which they work to 
>> manipulate their readers, including me." 
>> 
>> Perry, I'm curious about whether you see this manipulation as being 
>> conscious, or whether it has become subconsciously imbedded in our 
>> understanding of the genre, so that authors and artists may in fact 
>> be--at least at times--unwitting participants. ?Of course, we can all 
>> think of books where the manipulation is obvious rather than artful, 
>> but 
>> it is those artful books--the ones that manage to be well written, 
>> sometimes beautifully written, and child-centered--that I find myself 
>> thinking in terms of this idea of the manipulation of the child 
>> reader. 
>> 
>> Your discussion of A Very Special House by Maurice Sendak suggests a 
>> concsiousness to this. Would you say that is typically true? 
>> 
>> And what do others of you-- readers, and writers or illustrators-- 
>> think 
>> about this? 
>> 
>> Megan 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Megan Schliesman, Librarian 
>> Cooperative Children's Book Center 
>> School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison 
>> 600 N. Park Street, Room 4290 
>> Madison, WI ?53706 
>> 
>> 608/262-9503 
>> schliesman at education.wisc.edu 
>> 
>> www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________ 
>> CCBC-Net mailing list 
>> CCBC-Net at lists.education.wisc.edu 
>> Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... 
>> http://lists.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net 
> 
> _______________________________________________ 
> CCBC-Net mailing list 
> CCBC-Net at lists.education.wisc.edu 
> Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... 
> http://lists.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net 
------------------------------ 
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Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... 
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End of CCBC-Net Digest, Vol 48, Issue 17 
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CCBC-Net Archives

[CCBC-Net] A question for Perry