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[CCBC-Net] Hidden Adult/manipulation
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From: Perry Nodelman <perry_nodelman>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:49:10 -0500
On 20-Jul-09, at 9:31 PM, Claudia Pearson wrote:
>
>
> Is it possible that we are looking at children's books as adults
> rather
> than as children?
>
I certainly hope so. We aren't something other than what we are, and i resolutely stand by my conviction that we can't actually know in advance of being told about it how any other human being might look at a book--including a child. I'm not convinced that age is more important than individual character or circumstances or that, consequently, all people of the same all share the same response to anything. If there is some sort of communal "childlike" response in a group of children, I suspect it''s because they've already been socialized to be childlike in that way. And as I suggest in part 3 of The Hidden Adult, I don't have much faith in the frequently repeated claim of many writers that they write for the "hidden child" still within them. I find it hard to imagine how that child might remain unaffected by the nostalgia of the adult looking back at it. And like Sendak in those words I quoted in an earlier e-mail, my own memories of being a child are more tormented and chaotic and painful than full of the gentle innocence that so many writers have produced over the decades and identified as the product of their hidden child. I have to suspect that the child within is more often actually their internalized version of the implied reader characteristic of children's literature and implied by so many texts for young people than an accurate version of their actual earlier selves. But then maybe I had a less typical childhood than I imagine I did?
I should add that the chaos of pain of my own childhood were not extreme or obvious to others--I had usually loving parents, no abuse, not too much poverty, etc. But I remember it all as being all so hard to understand, all so complicated, and all so filled with expectations of others I couldn't ever seem to fulfill, so unlike the blissful world of Dick and Jane and Sally in the readers. It seems to me that the world is set up so that a lot of young people, if not most, must often feel that way? It's certainly a version of childhood depicted in a surprisingly large number of novels for adults about child characters.
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
Received on Wed 22 Jul 2009 10:49:10 AM CDT
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:49:10 -0500
On 20-Jul-09, at 9:31 PM, Claudia Pearson wrote:
>
>
> Is it possible that we are looking at children's books as adults
> rather
> than as children?
>
I certainly hope so. We aren't something other than what we are, and i resolutely stand by my conviction that we can't actually know in advance of being told about it how any other human being might look at a book--including a child. I'm not convinced that age is more important than individual character or circumstances or that, consequently, all people of the same all share the same response to anything. If there is some sort of communal "childlike" response in a group of children, I suspect it''s because they've already been socialized to be childlike in that way. And as I suggest in part 3 of The Hidden Adult, I don't have much faith in the frequently repeated claim of many writers that they write for the "hidden child" still within them. I find it hard to imagine how that child might remain unaffected by the nostalgia of the adult looking back at it. And like Sendak in those words I quoted in an earlier e-mail, my own memories of being a child are more tormented and chaotic and painful than full of the gentle innocence that so many writers have produced over the decades and identified as the product of their hidden child. I have to suspect that the child within is more often actually their internalized version of the implied reader characteristic of children's literature and implied by so many texts for young people than an accurate version of their actual earlier selves. But then maybe I had a less typical childhood than I imagine I did?
I should add that the chaos of pain of my own childhood were not extreme or obvious to others--I had usually loving parents, no abuse, not too much poverty, etc. But I remember it all as being all so hard to understand, all so complicated, and all so filled with expectations of others I couldn't ever seem to fulfill, so unlike the blissful world of Dick and Jane and Sally in the readers. It seems to me that the world is set up so that a lot of young people, if not most, must often feel that way? It's certainly a version of childhood depicted in a surprisingly large number of novels for adults about child characters.
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
Received on Wed 22 Jul 2009 10:49:10 AM CDT
