Talk:Children's literature/Archive 2

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The list of famous works

I don't think 'the list keeps reappearing' is a good enough reason, personally. A list that might be good would be 'Children's Books Famous for Being Major Historical Turning Points'. It might include, say, Orbis Pictus, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, Cat in the Hat, The Hobbit, Annie on My Mind, and so on. But there are so many criteria for fame, or importance (I saw the conversation above and thought 'but BtoT won the Newbery and is taught in every fifth grade in the US! and every English schoolchild knows Blyton! Whereas Struwwelpeter has historical importance and no popular fame at all! What does famous mean, anyway?). Given the vagueness of the term, a general, unannotated, chronologically-ordered list which includes both Cat in the Hat and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen isn't actually useful. They're both famous, but for very different reasons -- and to a certain extent the very fact that they make it onto the list of children's literature authors and their pages don't get deleted indicates a certain amount of fame. The award-winning books should get linked from the various award pages, as they get created, and the popular culture books (Nancy Drew, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) are linked all over the place. Shouldn't this list just get deleted, and then redeleted every time it's created, unless somebody decides to replace it with a more meaningfully designated list such as the historical turning points list, or something else that has meaningful criteria for inclusion? Deborah-jl 05:02, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Right, it's been three months since I made the suggestion, and nobody's argued. I'm implementing. Deborah-jl 08:56, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for not noticing your suggestion up to now. This article is important to me, but I don't always keep tabs on changes. The list you deleted was quirky and needed pruning, but your new list did not strike me as a huge improvement. I think you deleted too many important items (such as "The Wizard of Oz"); on the other hand, I've never even heard of "Annie on my Mind", and your criterion for what makes it a historical turning point strikes me as peculiar. Why not first children's book written by a woman, or a racial minority, or first anti-colonial children's book... the winds of time are felt in children's literature just as they are in every other aspect of culture. I feel that the books on the list should be books that contributed significantly to the international canon of children's literature, whatever that means. I do agree that justification for the items on the list is more important than plot summaries, and that this should aim to be some sort of historical timeline rather than a list of favorites. But I think you went a bit too far with your deletions. I originally tried to select books that were widely translated and considered canonical not only in the United States; over the course of time, people tend to add their favorites and the American bias re-emerges. (Not that I'm not biased, I'm just differently biased, and slightly more internationally oriented). I'm reinstating some books that I still feel are seminal. "The Wizard of Oz", for example, is a quest like "The Hobbit" and about a child travelling to another world like "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe"; it predates both these books by several decades, and was more widely translated; it is considered one of the great American classics for children; doesn't it deserve a place of honor on an historical timeline? --Woggly 18:41, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. The question is, then, should the list be of classics or historical turning points? I'm happy to add more; the books I added were the ones for which I could come up with reasons for their importance. I can go into source citation for why I chose the books I did -- I'm happy to do so, in fact -- but suffice to say the children's literature scholars consider "Annie on my Mind" to be an important book. (First book written by a woman is less so -- many Victorian children's books were written by women. Early children's books with non-Caucasian characters presented as non-alien; well, that would be important, and adding both "The Snowy Day" and "Stevie" -- the second having been written in response to the first -- is probably a good idea.) But it looks like we think the list has two distinct purposes. I think it should be a list of historically important books that changed the direction of children's literature, and you think it should be a list of canonical books in the sense of books that people have heard of and still read. Perhaps we need both, and they should both be removed from the page and linked as separate? "list of canonical children's books" and "list of historical turning points in children's literature". Because the two lists are fundamentally different. "Orbis Pictus" is important, but not canonical; "Pippi Longstocking" is canonical but perhaps (?) less important. (By the way, I agree that this list is too English-language focused, and I took out too many of the works in translation, but when I couldn't think of a reason for their importance other than being classics I removed them.) Deborah-jl 13:07, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Woggly, per our ancient discussion, I'm creating two new lists: Children's Literature Timeline and Children's Literature Canon. I think this article should be primarily descriptive, and shouldn't include any lists except as in-line examples. That being said, I suspect my article titles need to be, er, wikified? And you're far more of a wiki expert than I. Deborah-jl 22:57, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

External Links

The following links have been moved here from the main page:

If you believe any of these should be replaced per Wikipedia:External links please discuss it here first. brenneman(t)(c)

I think that page at the Book Award Annals shows what is currently considered good children's literature, since it lists children's books that have been nominated for more than one award for children's literature. It doesn't speak directly to the point of the article, though. Still, I think this would be appropriate:
It's interesting that these books are never considered for awards as "Literature" without the "Children's" qualifier, except for Sci-fi/Fantasy awards. Does that say something about the Sci-fi/Fantasy genre? Or about our perception of children's literature?
KennyLucius 18:01, 2005-08-19 (UTC)
Certainly that page shows a subset of what is considered good children's literature, though there's far more than that available (and far more books not listed there which have won more than one award). A picture book or book for much younger children, for example, is very unlikely to win more than one award (though there are exceptions, such as A visit to William Blake's Inn). This isn't because they aren't as good, but because there are fewer available awards. In the ALA (source of the majority of US children's lit awards), there are awards for age category (more or less -- the Caldecott isn't strictly age bound) and for certain ethnic categories (and there are bizarre internal politics making it difficult though not impossible to get more than one of those). So many of the books that win more than one award win an ALA award and a genre-specific award from a group that has a children's lit section in its genre awards. In fact, you will find if you investigate that more of those Sci-Fi fantasy swards listed are child-specific. A few aren't but in general you'll find that SF&F readers are much more likely to admit to reading children's fiction than general readers, because of the intricacies of that culture. The Hugos, for example, which are rankings of general popularity by the SF&F fans who attend Worldcon, have had children's lit nominees for some time (although no winners until HP). Deborah-jl 00:52, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps more to the point, there are some surprising absences on that site which make me distrust it a wikipedia-worthy link. Where's the Boston Globe / Horn Book awards, which are extremely important US awards? Where's the Carnegie and the Greenaway? Deborah-jl 00:57, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I suppose those awards should be listed. Perhaps they will be in the future. It is unlikely that we will ever see a publicly-available database that lists every awarded childrens book, though. Sometimes you just have to use what is available or nothing at all.
I don't understand why you distrust it as a wikipedia-worthy link. The guidelines are pretty clear. Do you sense some questionable motive behind the absence of those awards?
I have often thought that the fantasy genre is almost identical to the Children's genre. Certainly there are fantasy books that are "adult-only", and children's books that are not fantasy (or even fiction); but they often coincide. I was wondering why that list doesn't show an even more pronounced correlation, and I think the answer is in the values of each genre. Both seek to present an obviously fictional situation that illuminates or accentuates some facet of our reality. Those awards for Children's books look for a fictional situation that can be grasped by a child that stimulates a child's mind, and in some way expands the child's real-world understanding or sophistication. The Fantasy awards are mostly concerned with the same thing (even the fan-based awards) except that the age restriction is absent. Consequently, a book that wins both a children's award and an award not restricted to children probably has several levels: a "surface" narrative that is interesting and entertaining to the unsophisticated, an emotional or political narrative that is meaningful to adults, and probably a quality that appeals to the extremely literate (allegorical or symbolic narrative).
None of that is relevant to the article, I suppose, but it is interesting. Perhaps if BAA adds more children's awards to its database, a pattern will emerge. I hope so, because books that work for children as well as adults really rock my cradle. A mix of simplicity and profundity...okay, I have to stop now ;-) KennyLucius 15:58, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Literary status

Should any mention be made of how children's literature has come to be accepted as a legitimate genre (and even field of study) by literary critics? I've just written a brief article on Roger Sale, whose Fairy Tales and After was one of the first books of literary criticism dealing respectfully with authors like Baum and Beatrix Potter. I was wondering if there was room for some treatment of this here (though I admit that, outside of Sale's wonderful book, I don't know much more about this topic and would need either help or some additional research). Jwrosenzweig 00:05, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I think the right thing to do is to make a children's lit theorists page that's categorized as litcrit (and the litcrit articles need tons and tons of work) and link to it from here. It should cover the major schools of thought (childist crit, childism==Orientalism, etc), the major theorists in the field (Peter Hunt, Perry Nodleman, Lissa Paul, Walter Moebius, etc), and maybe some of the important journals (ChLAQ, LandU) and associations (ChLA) as well. ...Am I volunteering to start? Maybe. Deborah-jl 04:31, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Define your terms

At the moment the table is on the useless side. Who decides, on what criteria, whether a given book is, as opposed to fits some characteristics of, a children's book, an adults' book or even a for-everyone book? And I'm surprised anyone ever tried to pass off The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time as a children's book, considering the amount of bad language in it. -- Smjg 09:58, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

This page has needed revamping which I've promised for months now; I think it's time to get down to it. You're right that we need to be more specific about what this chart defines, which is to say that these are undefined terms, used loosely to mean "chi;dren's literature is defined as those books which are written for, marketed to, bought by, taught to, or win awards for children". And the table is to show how nobody's single definition works. For example, loads of books fit all those criteria which are, as you say, full of bad language. Curious Incident is vatiously marketed as a YA or adult book but is also pushed at children. And when this page and the YA page have finally been revamped, it will be time to make them play together a little better. Sigh. Deborah-jl 21:43, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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