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[CCBC-Net] Hidden Adults & manipulation & A Snowy Day
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From: James Elliott <libraryjim>
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:29:53 -0400 (EDT)
I just ordered a copy for my library. I'm hoping my Children's services staff will read it -- after I do, of course.
Jim Elliott North Georgia.
----- Original Message ----- From: Kathy Johnson <kmquimby at sover.net> To: ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu Sent: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:48:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [CCBC-Net] Hidden Adults & manipulation & A Snowy Day
I, too, need to get my hands on a copy of The Hidden Adult. I do think that writers, like all artists, want to have a particular effect on their audience, and thus we are inherently manipulative. Perhaps the question is whether we are manipulating our young audience to achieve conformity or whether we are manipulating them in order to open their eyes.
I have vivid memories of both of these types of manipulation from my childhood reading. Even before they became popular picture books, the Berenstain Bears showed up in a monthly women's magazine (Good Housekeeping? McCalls?). At first, I was thrilled that there was something for me to read in one of my mother's magazines, but not too many months passed before I caught on to the didacticism behind each one-page story. That was it. I never read another Berenstain Bear story. Even when my daughter discovered the picture books, I refused to read them to her, leaving those particular titles to her father.
The Snowy Day is a book I loved as a child, both in the flesh and in the version I saw and heard on Captain Kangaroo. For white girl like me, growing up in extremely rural Vermont (hometown pop. circa 1960, approximately 450), was amazing. I didn't know about cities, or people of any other color, but I did know about snow. Seeing Peter do things with snow that I did, seeing the snowbanks pile up in the city the way they did beside my rural road, all that gave me a "wow!" experience, one that I have trouble putting into words. I think it had something to do with finding commonality despite or within difference. The Snowy Day became one of my favorite books. It was also reassuring that he avoided the big kids' snowball fight, because I generally avoided the big kids who were intimidating even when they didn't intend to be.
As a pre-published writer, as a parent, and as a reader of the gamut from picture books to YA, I have become aware that picture books do tend to portray childhood as idyllic, with the less positive aspects of life creeping in as readers age. I don't know what we do about the idealized image found in picture books, because they are the genre the least directly available to their young audience, who must rely on adults to read the books to them, to allow them to check the books out of the library, or to purchase the books. Writers and illustrators, and editors and publishers, are constrained by what those adults find acceptable.
Thanks to Perry for his thought-provoking comments. This has been an eye-opener!
Kathy Quimby
>I'm looking forward to reading in The Hidden Adult Perry's comments
>on The Snowy Day. It was published in 1962, but I wasn't aware of it
>until 1971 when our first child was a toddler who adored listening to
>stories. There it was, in the library of a small Minnesota city, the
>perfect book for a small black boy who was surrounded by a lot of snow
>and a lot of white faces. I have a hard time seeing how Keats is
>manipulating kids in this simple story. Peter doesn't join the big boys
>in their snowball fight, but the implication is that he's figured out on
>his own that he's not old enough. He thinks the snowball will survive in
>his warm house, but this isn't so much a teaching moment as an
>opportunity for little kids to realize that Peter is making a mistake.
>Our son had this book memorized before he was three. I didn't find out
>that Keats was white until a few years later, which points toward another
>topic about authors writing outside their experience. I'm not going there
>. . . it's getting late.
>
>Sorry for rambling on, but it was fun thinking about these ideas.
>
>Sheila Kelly Welch
>Author/Illustrator
>
>
Katherine M. Quimby P.O. Box 437 Cambridge, VT 05444-0437 Tel: (802) 644-8233 Email: kmquimby at sover.net
"Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box." --Twyla Tharp
_______________________________________________ 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 Mon 20 Jul 2009 11:29:53 AM CDT
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:29:53 -0400 (EDT)
I just ordered a copy for my library. I'm hoping my Children's services staff will read it -- after I do, of course.
Jim Elliott North Georgia.
----- Original Message ----- From: Kathy Johnson <kmquimby at sover.net> To: ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu Sent: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:48:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [CCBC-Net] Hidden Adults & manipulation & A Snowy Day
I, too, need to get my hands on a copy of The Hidden Adult. I do think that writers, like all artists, want to have a particular effect on their audience, and thus we are inherently manipulative. Perhaps the question is whether we are manipulating our young audience to achieve conformity or whether we are manipulating them in order to open their eyes.
I have vivid memories of both of these types of manipulation from my childhood reading. Even before they became popular picture books, the Berenstain Bears showed up in a monthly women's magazine (Good Housekeeping? McCalls?). At first, I was thrilled that there was something for me to read in one of my mother's magazines, but not too many months passed before I caught on to the didacticism behind each one-page story. That was it. I never read another Berenstain Bear story. Even when my daughter discovered the picture books, I refused to read them to her, leaving those particular titles to her father.
The Snowy Day is a book I loved as a child, both in the flesh and in the version I saw and heard on Captain Kangaroo. For white girl like me, growing up in extremely rural Vermont (hometown pop. circa 1960, approximately 450), was amazing. I didn't know about cities, or people of any other color, but I did know about snow. Seeing Peter do things with snow that I did, seeing the snowbanks pile up in the city the way they did beside my rural road, all that gave me a "wow!" experience, one that I have trouble putting into words. I think it had something to do with finding commonality despite or within difference. The Snowy Day became one of my favorite books. It was also reassuring that he avoided the big kids' snowball fight, because I generally avoided the big kids who were intimidating even when they didn't intend to be.
As a pre-published writer, as a parent, and as a reader of the gamut from picture books to YA, I have become aware that picture books do tend to portray childhood as idyllic, with the less positive aspects of life creeping in as readers age. I don't know what we do about the idealized image found in picture books, because they are the genre the least directly available to their young audience, who must rely on adults to read the books to them, to allow them to check the books out of the library, or to purchase the books. Writers and illustrators, and editors and publishers, are constrained by what those adults find acceptable.
Thanks to Perry for his thought-provoking comments. This has been an eye-opener!
Kathy Quimby
>I'm looking forward to reading in The Hidden Adult Perry's comments
>on The Snowy Day. It was published in 1962, but I wasn't aware of it
>until 1971 when our first child was a toddler who adored listening to
>stories. There it was, in the library of a small Minnesota city, the
>perfect book for a small black boy who was surrounded by a lot of snow
>and a lot of white faces. I have a hard time seeing how Keats is
>manipulating kids in this simple story. Peter doesn't join the big boys
>in their snowball fight, but the implication is that he's figured out on
>his own that he's not old enough. He thinks the snowball will survive in
>his warm house, but this isn't so much a teaching moment as an
>opportunity for little kids to realize that Peter is making a mistake.
>Our son had this book memorized before he was three. I didn't find out
>that Keats was white until a few years later, which points toward another
>topic about authors writing outside their experience. I'm not going there
>. . . it's getting late.
>
>Sorry for rambling on, but it was fun thinking about these ideas.
>
>Sheila Kelly Welch
>Author/Illustrator
>
>
Katherine M. Quimby P.O. Box 437 Cambridge, VT 05444-0437 Tel: (802) 644-8233 Email: kmquimby at sover.net
"Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box." --Twyla Tharp
_______________________________________________ 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 Mon 20 Jul 2009 11:29:53 AM CDT
