Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children's Literature in America

by Beverly Lyon Clark

Honor Book for the 2005 Book Award given by the Children's Literature Association The popularity of the Harry Potter books among adults and the critical acclaim these young adult fantasies have received may seem like a novel literary phenomenon. In the nineteenth century, however, readers considered both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as works of literature equally for children and adults; only later was the former relegated to the category of "boys' books" while the latter, even as it was canonized, came frequently to be regarded as unsuitable for young readers. Adults―women and men―wept over Little Women . And America's most prestigious literary journals regularly reviewed books written for both children and their parents. This egalitarian approach to children's literature changed with the emergence of literary studies as a scholarly discipline at the turn of the twentieth century. Academics considered children's books an inferior literature and beneath serious consideration. In Kiddie Lit , Beverly Lyon Clark explores the marginalization of children's literature in America―and its recent possible reintegration―both within the academy and by the mainstream critical establishment. Tracing the reception of works by Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, L. Frank Baum, Walt Disney, and J. K. Rowling, Clark reveals fundamental shifts in the assessment of the literary worth of books beloved by both children and adults, whether written for boys or girls. While uncovering the institutional underpinnings of this transition, Clark also attributes it to changing American attitudes toward childhood itself, a cultural resistance to the intrinsic value of childhood expressed through sentimentality, condescension, and moralizing. Clark's engaging and enlightening study of the critical disregard for children's books since the end of the nineteenth century―which draws on recent scholarship in gender, cultural, and literary studies― offers provocative new insights into the history of both children's literature and American literature in general, and forcefully argues that the books our children read and love demand greater respect.

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books, School

280 pages, Paperback

First published August 29, 2003

About the author

Dr. Beverly Lyon Clark is a Professor of English at Wheaton College, in Norton, Massachusetts, with a particular interest in feminist theory and children's literature. She received her BA from Swarthmore College, and her Ph.D from Brown University.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

so i assume this is someone's published dissertation or something. i didn't expect it to be riveting, but i did sort of expect a cohesive argument. to distill it to one thought: children's books are not as well respected as this lady would like them to be. done. i just saved y'all a bunch of reading time. the best thing about this book were some nice quotes. from ray bradbury:

Baum was, at heart, a little-old-maid librarian crammed with honey-muffins and warm tea. Lewis Carroll sipped his tea cold, digested ciphers and burped logic gone a teensy bit awry. Carroll would have got you out of bed at five in the morning to recite logarithms. Baum would have leaped into your bed and done you in with a pillow fight.

and anthony holden:

The more popular (or bestselling) an adult book...the less likely it is to be considered literature, while the popularity of a children's book sees big literary claims being made on its behalf.

this last quote comes after b.l.c. gets whiny about the new york times creating a separate bestseller list right before the release of the fifth harry potter book, because the first four volumes were still on the adult bestseller list, and the assumption was that the fifth one would also make the list, and that would suck for adults who wanted to read books designed for adult tastes. and i don't always agree with the books that make the bestseller list, but good lord—five harry potters at one time? it's absurd. i just don't agree with this argument about the victimization of young literature. even though i have recently come to see that the current crop of children's and teen fiction is much more sophisticated and entertaining than i had believed before i started this class, it still is what it is: literature intended for younger readers. and considering how many adults read teen fiction and harry potter and the like, her argument has no validity. there are tons of critical responses to literature for the young adult, and millions of adults are reading books designed for teens and younger. i suspect more adults are reading twilight this summer than are reading gravity's rainbow. her dissatisfaction with the marginalization of children's books, and then her dissatisfaction with its "bestseller" status brings me to my last quote, from horace scudder:

We are no doubt unreasonable readers; we object to the blood-and-thunder literature, and when in place of it we have the milk-and-sugar we object again. What do we want?

come to my blog!

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know much about kids, but I'm positive that most kids don't give a flying fuck if Harold Bloom cares about the books they are reading, or if he says that their favorite novel is not considered a classic. To be fair to Bloom, kids also don't care what Derrida, Jameson, Fyre, Edmund Wilson, Eagleton, Walter Benjamin, Henry James or any other theorist thinks about their reading tastes. If you don't believe me go up to some Twilight fan and tell them that if Derrida were still alive he would probably never write a single word about the book they are reading and see if they don't do much more than stare blankly at you.

This woman cares though. She seems to care a lot about what these types of people think about children's books. But exactly what she wants I have no idea. She doesn't like them being treated as children books, she doesn't like them being 'turned' into adult books. She doesn't like any kind of criticism being leveled at them (for example it's ok to praise early Disney, but as soon as the quality of Disney starts to decline, you better not start taking critical pot-shots at the family industry he has created and is now milking), but she also doesn't want the critical (i.e., academic) world to not mention them either.

I think she would be happiest if everyone just smiled a lot and wrote articles about how wonderful books she likes are.

There are so many things wrong with this book. She never really proves much about the quality of the books she is arguing for. Instead she relies on things like sales statistics, appearances on librarian's reading lists (and at what number, sometimes to my bewilderment when she gets annoyed at a book only being number four on a list) and the number of times a book has been written about (or not written about) in academic journals. That's fine, but is the book any good? What makes it that attention should be paid to the book? According to her criteria in the future, the late 20th century literature that should be most deserving of being studied is James Patterson and Nora Roberts. The numbers don't lie. (This though might be more true in her eyes than one would think, she also seems to have the opinion that the NYT Best-seller list is a be all end all of cultured readers.)

This author suffers from an infantile malady that is not uncommon in our country, and especially not among people of the baby-boomer generation. It's not that she loves children's books, but that she seems stuck in the developmental stage where she can not fathom someone having a differing opinion than her. Children have this. They can't understand why someone doesn't like what they like, or how someone can like something they hate. People stuck in this stage of development really like to be in the majority, they like to see that their favorite records are on best-selling lists, that their favorite authors have best-seller written on them. Popularity to them is synonymous with quality. Not that they choose what they like based on what is popular, but they get angry when what they love isn't universally adored. (As a second experiment, tell a baby-boomer that you think the Rolling Stones (or pick a band) are over-rated, vaguely talented and derivative (this argument works for most bands, because most of them are (that's not to say enjoyment can't be had from over-rated, vaguely talented and derivative bands)), I can almost guarantee one of the first arguments they come sputtering out with is about how popular the Stones (or Dylan, or whatever band or person you choose) is. Try it. To really get someone's goat use The Beatles, even if you don't agree with the criteria, just see if they say something extolling their musical virtues, or rather do they say something about Beatlemania, how many people liked them).

There are so many more things I can go off on.
I won't though, I almost gave it three stars because it inspired so much rancor in me against baby-boomers, but it's really only a two star book.

[Heidi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This read pretty much like a dissertation. Certainly well researched, but also quite dull, and obsessively focused on some few particular works of children's literature. Readers could probably get away with reading the last 4 pages and get the general gist of the entire book: critics don't appreciate children's literature and that's a shame. I feel I could've gotten the same point from a journal article. I wish Lyon Clark had infused more feeling or personal opinion into this. It wasn't always entirely clear if she was defending children's literature, or disdaining it along with critics. It seems the most feeling was in the final two sentences: “Children want to grow up quickly because they too get the message: childhood is childish. The best response is probably Walt Disney’s: ‘What the hell’s wrong with something being childish?’” (p. 183).

In short as a librarian I agree...forget the critics--I'd rather kids read Harry Potter, enjoy it and come back for more than Alice in Wonderland and determine they hate reading all together.

[Stephen Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stirring, polemical defense of the study of childhood and children's literature. Her pressing need to thoroughly support herself with statistical data (library circulation numbers, book reviews, "best of" lists, etc.) makes the book authoritative and yet a bit repetitive, and sometimes I found myself wanting to refute everything she was arguing with a simple subjective retort (i.e., "Come on, though! Little Lord Fauntleroy isn't actually that good a book!"), but overall this book is fascinating, informative, clear, and important. Her readings of Burnett, Henry James, and the Oz phenomenon are especially interesting and memorable, and the context she provides about reading practices in the mid-nineteenth century (and how books were written for all age groups to be read together as a family) is important for any nineteenth century literature scholar to have.

[Cara Byrne · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the onset of _Kiddie Lit_, I was eager to read about Clark's take on children's literature, as well as her attempt to answer the questions she raises, including: “How have Americans responded to children’s literature during the last century and a half?” and “How have we constructed childhood?” (168). However, the bulk of her chapters are repetitive in discussing reviews, toy lines, and library circulation numbers. She picks great canonical works, including _Tom Sawyer_, _Little Women_, _Alice in Wonderland_, and _Harry Potter_, yet I wanted a captivating close reading of these works, which I had a difficult time finding. I also do not agree with her reading of race in _Little Women_ (120-1).

I just finished Michelle Martin's _Brown Gold_ and Perry Nodelman's _Words about Pictures_, which, to me, were books that answered the questions about American children's literature that they set out to answer. I can learn about reception from _Kiddie Lit_, but I don't think Clark has really given her readers a solid picture of how Americans have constructed childhood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clark both argues for and provides a history of critical work on children's literature by the gatekeepers of literary criticism in America, whether the journals of the nineteenth century genteel intelligentsia or those of the academy in the twentieth century. Amidst a sometimes boring wash of statistics used to chart the course of interest--from children, adults and critics--in children's literature, Clark manages to make a number of astute observations on the intersections of age with class and gender in the stigmatization of children's lit studies. Interestingly, a book by a literary theorist--who teaches at Wheaton College, not X Elementary School--about the practice of literary criticism, is situated by the University of Alabama not among the volumes of literary theory and criticism in Gorgas Library, but instead in the McClure Education library, among volumes of pedagogical interest to those pursuing a degree in Elementary Education. Telling, no?

[meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

though pretty dense in places, this book had some interesting ideas about the reception of children's literature in america from the 19th century to current day. clark discusses burnett, twain, aclott, baum, lewis, rowling, and disney and what reactions from critics over time say about the construction of american childhood. there are some very interesting ideas and tidbits here, but certainly not a quick and pithy read. not for the faint of heart.

[Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the most thoroughly-researched histories I've ever read. Simply incredible. There is a pattern to the book, which drives its thesis; my only criticism is that Clark makes a claim in the final chapter that she never actually does in the novel.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

A well researched analysis of the different ways "kiddie lit" is perceived---and often brushed off---by adults in America. An interesting premise with a dry approach. I'll stick with Nancie Atwell, thank you.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was awful. Seemed more like someone's thesis. It didn't teach me anything about evaluating children's literature. It just listed people's complaints about books. The last chapter on Disney spoke of the movies. Not the literature they're based on.