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[CCBC-Net] A question for Perry
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From: Mullin, Margaret Boling <mbmullin>
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:30:25 -0400
I really appreciated Marcy's question and Perry's response.
I was planning to post this response to Marcy individually, but then decided to post to the list. As an elementary teacher and doctoral student in literacy education, I also read children's and young adult literature avidly. I thought that Perry's reflection about the presence of manipulative messages in advertising was right on target.
As a teacher, I believe that children's lit, both picture books and novels provide excellent vehicles for helping students learn how to identify and respond to such manipulative messages. Such approaches are typically referred to as critical literacy and focus on helping students disrupt commonplace notions, examine multiple viewpoints, focus on sociopolitical issues, and take action to promote social justice. In my experiences with my students, I find that they are much more interested in participating in discussions focused on bullying, whose voice is heard, who is marginalized or excluded, and fairness. These discussions help my students become involved on a very personal level, as compared to discussions which ask them to focus on which strategies they've used to understand the text. Perhaps critical discussions give them an authentic reason to understand a text. When I give students opportunities to unpack issues in the text, they are much more engaged and choose to read more.
Two articles might be of interest to teachers interested in learning more.
Lewison, M., Flint, A., & Van Sluys, K. (2002). "Taking on Critical Literacy: The Journey of Newcomers and Novices." _Language Arts_, 79(5), pp. 382-392.
Clarke, L. & Whitney, E. (2009). "Walking in Their Shoes: Using Multiple-Perspectives Texts as a Bridge to Critical Literacy." _The Reading Teacher_, 62(6), pp. 530-534.
Best, Margaret Boling Mullin Elementary Reading Specialist, Indianapolis, IN Doctoral Candidate, Dept. of Literacy, Culture & Language, Indiana University
Quoting Perry Nodelman <perry_nodelman at shaw.ca>:
> On 18-Jul-09, at 2:00 PM, Marcy Troy wrote:
>
>> Perry,
>>
>> I have been reading about your book for several days and twirling
>> your ideas around in my brain. Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish I
>> could have read your book before posting, but I can't. So if my
>> wonder is answered in your book, forgive me. As a relatively new
>> teacher, I love to read picture books to my 4th and 5th graders.
>> Oftentimes, we talk about the message. We also read many novels. If
>> I am understanding your position, you feel that the embedding of a
>> message in childrens literature is manipulation of the minds of
>> children. Is this a correct statement about the message that you
>> wish to convey in your book, The Hidden Adult ? If so, I would be
>> interested to know why you think it is a bad thing.
>
> I hadn't really thought about in in these terms before this
> conversation on CCBC-net, but yes, Marcy, guess I do think that
> children's literature in inherently and characteristically
> manipulative. As a literature written by adults for people they think
> of as needing both protection from certain aspects of reality and
> education about other aspects of it, it has to be manipulative,
> right? It wants to manipulate its implied audience into knowing less
> than there is to know about things like sex and and violence, and
> also, learning information and values that the adults in charge of
> writing and producing and sharing it with children approve of. Or
> even in just assuming an idea of childhood that might well not fit a
> child reader's sense of him- or herself, they imply a manipulative
> drive to encourage child readers to be more like the children the
> texts present as typically and desirably childlike.
>
> As for it being a bad thing. Well, in my last post yesterday, I named
> four ways in which it might actually be a good thing, or at least not
> inherently and absolutely harmful to young readers. But I do think
> that it is often a bad thing, because I believe that any effort to
> manipulate other human beings of any age without them being aware they
> are being manipulated is, well, manipulative--an assault on their self-
> control and their inherent right to figure things out for themselves
> and arrive at values and beliefs they fully understand the
> implications of.
>
> But of course, the world is always going to try to manipulate us all
> against our will, and Macdonald's and Burger King are going to try to
> make us believe without really thinking it through that a sensible
> portion for one person is an amount of hamburger that might well feed
> three or four traditional gluttons, and the guys on Fox News are going
> to work hard to convince us that shouting down opinions they dislike
> represents rational political discourse and that rich white men are
> the most truly oppressed and downtrodden group in America. And
> children's books are therefore always going to try to manipulate an
> audience they inherently take to be vulnerable to manipulation, or
> else the literature wouldn't even keep on existing. If the literature
> won't really change, then, it's up to wise parents and teachers to
> help the children they know change, and develop enough critical
> thinking skills to fend off manipulation--and even, also, to wisely
> enjoy the clever attempts to manipulate them without having to buy
> into the often suspect values and ideas about who they are or should
> be that texts for young people so often try to sell their audiences.
> Learning to read and respond to the pleasure a text for children
> offers without necessarily needing to commit to its themes and values--
> that would open up young readers to a vast range of intriguing
> children's literature experiences.
>
> Dancing contentedly on the brink of doom, with a safety net of
> critical thinking.
> 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
>
>>
>> Not intending to be confrontational, just trying to understand,
>>
>> Marcy Troy
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: ccbc-net-request at lists.education.wisc.edu
>> To: ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
>> Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 12:00:02 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
>> Subject: CCBC-Net Digest, Vol 48, Issue 17
>>
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>>
>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. Hidden Adult and Adult Agenda (Megan Schliesman)
>> 2. Re: Hidden Adult and Adult Agenda (Perry Nodelman)
>> 3. Re: Hidden Adult and Adult Agenda (Perry Nodelman)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:31:32 -0500
>> From: Megan Schliesman <schliesman at education.wisc.edu>
>> Subject: [CCBC-Net] Hidden Adult and Adult Agenda
>> To: "ccbc-net, Subscribers of" <ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu>
>> Message-ID: <4A60B574.1070604 at education.wisc.edu>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>
>> 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/
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>>
>>
>> End of CCBC-Net Digest, Vol 48, Issue 17
>> ****************************************
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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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Received on Sun 19 Jul 2009 04:30:25 PM CDT
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:30:25 -0400
I really appreciated Marcy's question and Perry's response.
I was planning to post this response to Marcy individually, but then decided to post to the list. As an elementary teacher and doctoral student in literacy education, I also read children's and young adult literature avidly. I thought that Perry's reflection about the presence of manipulative messages in advertising was right on target.
As a teacher, I believe that children's lit, both picture books and novels provide excellent vehicles for helping students learn how to identify and respond to such manipulative messages. Such approaches are typically referred to as critical literacy and focus on helping students disrupt commonplace notions, examine multiple viewpoints, focus on sociopolitical issues, and take action to promote social justice. In my experiences with my students, I find that they are much more interested in participating in discussions focused on bullying, whose voice is heard, who is marginalized or excluded, and fairness. These discussions help my students become involved on a very personal level, as compared to discussions which ask them to focus on which strategies they've used to understand the text. Perhaps critical discussions give them an authentic reason to understand a text. When I give students opportunities to unpack issues in the text, they are much more engaged and choose to read more.
Two articles might be of interest to teachers interested in learning more.
Lewison, M., Flint, A., & Van Sluys, K. (2002). "Taking on Critical Literacy: The Journey of Newcomers and Novices." _Language Arts_, 79(5), pp. 382-392.
Clarke, L. & Whitney, E. (2009). "Walking in Their Shoes: Using Multiple-Perspectives Texts as a Bridge to Critical Literacy." _The Reading Teacher_, 62(6), pp. 530-534.
Best, Margaret Boling Mullin Elementary Reading Specialist, Indianapolis, IN Doctoral Candidate, Dept. of Literacy, Culture & Language, Indiana University
Quoting Perry Nodelman <perry_nodelman at shaw.ca>:
> On 18-Jul-09, at 2:00 PM, Marcy Troy wrote:
>
>> Perry,
>>
>> I have been reading about your book for several days and twirling
>> your ideas around in my brain. Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish I
>> could have read your book before posting, but I can't. So if my
>> wonder is answered in your book, forgive me. As a relatively new
>> teacher, I love to read picture books to my 4th and 5th graders.
>> Oftentimes, we talk about the message. We also read many novels. If
>> I am understanding your position, you feel that the embedding of a
>> message in childrens literature is manipulation of the minds of
>> children. Is this a correct statement about the message that you
>> wish to convey in your book, The Hidden Adult ? If so, I would be
>> interested to know why you think it is a bad thing.
>
> I hadn't really thought about in in these terms before this
> conversation on CCBC-net, but yes, Marcy, guess I do think that
> children's literature in inherently and characteristically
> manipulative. As a literature written by adults for people they think
> of as needing both protection from certain aspects of reality and
> education about other aspects of it, it has to be manipulative,
> right? It wants to manipulate its implied audience into knowing less
> than there is to know about things like sex and and violence, and
> also, learning information and values that the adults in charge of
> writing and producing and sharing it with children approve of. Or
> even in just assuming an idea of childhood that might well not fit a
> child reader's sense of him- or herself, they imply a manipulative
> drive to encourage child readers to be more like the children the
> texts present as typically and desirably childlike.
>
> As for it being a bad thing. Well, in my last post yesterday, I named
> four ways in which it might actually be a good thing, or at least not
> inherently and absolutely harmful to young readers. But I do think
> that it is often a bad thing, because I believe that any effort to
> manipulate other human beings of any age without them being aware they
> are being manipulated is, well, manipulative--an assault on their self-
> control and their inherent right to figure things out for themselves
> and arrive at values and beliefs they fully understand the
> implications of.
>
> But of course, the world is always going to try to manipulate us all
> against our will, and Macdonald's and Burger King are going to try to
> make us believe without really thinking it through that a sensible
> portion for one person is an amount of hamburger that might well feed
> three or four traditional gluttons, and the guys on Fox News are going
> to work hard to convince us that shouting down opinions they dislike
> represents rational political discourse and that rich white men are
> the most truly oppressed and downtrodden group in America. And
> children's books are therefore always going to try to manipulate an
> audience they inherently take to be vulnerable to manipulation, or
> else the literature wouldn't even keep on existing. If the literature
> won't really change, then, it's up to wise parents and teachers to
> help the children they know change, and develop enough critical
> thinking skills to fend off manipulation--and even, also, to wisely
> enjoy the clever attempts to manipulate them without having to buy
> into the often suspect values and ideas about who they are or should
> be that texts for young people so often try to sell their audiences.
> Learning to read and respond to the pleasure a text for children
> offers without necessarily needing to commit to its themes and values--
> that would open up young readers to a vast range of intriguing
> children's literature experiences.
>
> Dancing contentedly on the brink of doom, with a safety net of
> critical thinking.
> 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
>
>>
>> Not intending to be confrontational, just trying to understand,
>>
>> Marcy Troy
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: ccbc-net-request at lists.education.wisc.edu
>> To: ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
>> Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 12:00:02 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
>> Subject: CCBC-Net Digest, Vol 48, Issue 17
>>
>> Send CCBC-Net mailing list submissions to
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>>
>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. Hidden Adult and Adult Agenda (Megan Schliesman)
>> 2. Re: Hidden Adult and Adult Agenda (Perry Nodelman)
>> 3. Re: Hidden Adult and Adult Agenda (Perry Nodelman)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:31:32 -0500
>> From: Megan Schliesman <schliesman at education.wisc.edu>
>> Subject: [CCBC-Net] Hidden Adult and Adult Agenda
>> To: "ccbc-net, Subscribers of" <ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu>
>> Message-ID: <4A60B574.1070604 at education.wisc.edu>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>
>> 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/
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>>
>>
>> End of CCBC-Net Digest, Vol 48, Issue 17
>> ****************************************
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>
Received on Sun 19 Jul 2009 04:30:25 PM CDT
