Ideology in Selected British & Egyptian Children’s

Literature: A Comparative Study

A PhD thesis in Literature

Submitted to the Department of English Language and Literature

Cairo University

By

Yasmine Mohamed-Samir Motawy

Under the Supervision of

Professor Nadia El-Kholy

(Professor of English Literature, Cairo University)

And

Assistant Professor Nagla Saleh Al-Hadidy

(Assistant Professor of English Literature, Cairo University)

2012

1  
For Samir and Nadia…En theos.

2  
 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank a number of people for helping me complete this work;

Professor Nadia el Kholy for her encouragement to re-enter a world of children’s literature
that has brought me much happiness and for being so generous in sharing books, advice and
time.

Dr Sanaa Makhlouf, Dr. Iman Hamam, Khadija Omar and Hamida Stelzer for being there to
think with, and for their painstaking reading of various parts of this work.

The late and great Dr Abdelwahab Elmessiri for taking interest in my project from the very
beginning and taking the time to talk and share sources, as well as Walid Taher, who I could
talk to for hours about so much more than books.

Ms Dalia Ibrahim for trusting me with Nahdet Misr’s children’s publications and being so
forthcoming with material and information about publishing in Egypt and Dr Loubna Abdel
Tawab and Mr Abdel Tawab Youssef for letting me into their personal libraries that contain a
wealth of critical Arabic works on children’s literature, and Dr Walid El Hamamsy for being
the voice in my head when I edit.

Professor John Stephens for telling me to turn this into a critical discourse analysis, and
generously mailing me chapters and articles from miles away: You show me what it is like to
love a discipline.

My parents and a lot of school teachers for making me love books as well as my collaborators
on my first piece of writing on children’s writers, a fourth grade group project on Roald Dahl:
Katie McCormick, Lindsey Gear and Karmela Ruth, thanks for making it so much fun, I am
still doing it 25 years later.

Adel and Waleed Motawy and all my friends and family for their encouragement.

Most of all I would like to thank Ahmed, Amina and Sharifa Korachi for tolerating my
incessant typing away especially these past few months; thank you Amina for telling me that
Browne’s gorilla drawings are the best and for helping me notice so much of what is going on
in picture books. Thank you Sharifa for liking A Sailing Boat in the Sky the most, it really is a
good book.

Thank you Ahmed, for a great deal.

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 Abstract

Name: Yasmine Mohamed-Samir Motawy.

Department: Department of English Language and Literature.
University: Cairo University.
PhD Specialization: Comparative Literature.
Title: Ideology in Selected British & Egyptian Children’s Literature: A Comparative Study

Keywords: ideology, picture books, Fatma el-Maadoul, Quentin Blake, Walid Taher,
Anthony Browne, Babette Cole, AbdelWahab Elmessiri, Egypt children literature, British
picture books.

This dissertation analyzes a selection of acclaimed contemporary children’s picture books

from Britain and Egypt and asks how closely these texts propagate or challenge the dominant
ideology and discourse of their time and place.

The introduction discusses the child audience, the basis for the comparative analysis, the
rationale for the selection of the texts, the review of the critical works used and the critical
methodology employed.

The first chapter starts by contextualizing the books’ publication within a historical and
cultural moment and lays down the theoretical frameworks relevant to the analysis while
maintaining that the text and image create a discourse that is amenable to critical discourse
analysis.

The second chapter looks at the stories of direct socialization by Fatma el-Maadoul’s texts:
Allah fi kul Makan (God is everywhere 2004), Ana wa Jadaty (my grandmother and I 2008),
Atamanna Law Kuntu Muhaafiz Al-Qahira (I wish I were the Governor of Cairo 2006),
Shady wa Hind fil Souk (Shady and Hind in the market 2005), and Wazifa li-Mama (a job for
mom 2004) and Shirley Hughes books: The Shirley Hughes Collection (2000), Alfie Gets in
First (2004), Alfie and the Big Boys (2007) and their confirmation of a postcolonial and neo-
colonial ideology.
The third chapter examines the metatextual retellings of classical fairytales by Babette Cole,
using the texts: Long Live Princess Smartypants (2004), Prince Cinders (1987), and Princess
Smartypants (1991), as well as Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri’s: Cinderella wa Zeinab Hanem
Khatoun (Cinderella and Zeinab Hanem Khatoun 1999), Nur wal Thi’b Al-shaheer bil
Makaar (Nur and the not-so sly wolf 1999), and Sirr Ikhtifaa Al-thi’b Al-shaheer bil Mihtar
(the secret of the disappearance of the puzzled wolf 2000), and Anthony Browne’s Into the
Forest (2004) and The Tunnel (1989), that expose the problematic underlying assumptions in
popular fairytales, but largely replace them with other ideologies.
The fourth and final chapter recognizes the opportunity for child empowerment in the works
of Quentin Blake: A Sailing Boat in the Sky (2003), Mrs Armitage and the Big Wave (1997),
Mrs Armitage on Wheels (1990), Mrs Armitage, Queen of the Road (2003) and Walid Taher’s
Al-noqta al-sawdaa (The black dot 2009), Fizo Al-muhtaram (Respectable Fizo! 2004), Fizo
Asbah Sa’eed (Fizo is happy 2008), Fizo fil-Dulaab (Fizo in the closet 2008), Fizo Qabl Al-
‘id (Fizo before Eid 2004), Fizo Ya’rif … Ya’rif (Fizo knows … knows 2004), Nisf Fizo (Half
a Fizo 2008), and Sharikat Fizo (Fizo’s company 2004). These authors/ illustrators

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effectively utilize humour and community to allow children finding genuine community-
based solutions.
This dissertation posits ideological indoctrination in direct opposition to ‘empowering texts’
which present children with opportunities to explore the realities and challenges of their
contemporary world, and find solutions to them, unencumbered by the ideologies that adult
writers who are not part of that ‘New World’ propagate in their texts.

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................................................. 3

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................... 4

INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................. 8
I. OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................................... 8
II. DESCRIBING THE GENRE: AUDIENCE AND SOCIETY................................................................ 10
III. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS: UNDER THE SHADOW OF OTHERNESS........................................ 12
IV. SELECTION OF TEXTS: CRITERIA AND RATIONALE .............................................................. 15
V. REVIEW OF CRITICAL WORKS ................................................................................................... 18
VI. METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................................................... 24

CHAPTER ONE:PUBLISHING IN BRITAIN AND EGYPT AND THE IDEOLOGIES

WITHIN ............................................................................................................................................... 27
I. PUBLISHING IN BRITAIN............................................................................................................... 27
A. THE SIXTEENTH TO NINETEENTH CENTURY ............................................................................ 27
B. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY..................................................................................................... 30
C. EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY .................................................................................................. 30
D. PUBLISHING FACTS AND FIGURES TODAY ............................................................................... 33
II. PUBLISHING IN EGYPT ................................................................................................................ 38
A. HISTORICAL .............................................................................................................................. 38
B. MODERN ................................................................................................................................... 41
C. CURRENT INITIATIVES .............................................................................................................. 45
III. IDEOLOGY IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE ................................................................................ 47

CHAPTER TWO: THE MUNDANE IN HUGHES AND MAADOUL: THE INSTITUTION

SOCIALIZES AND ESTABLISHES NORMALCY ....................................................................... 52
I. HUGHES AND MAADOUL .............................................................................................................. 52
II. SHIRLEY HUGHES ....................................................................................................................... 61
III. FATMA EL MAADOUL ............................................................................................................... 64
IV. SHADY WA HIND FIL SOUQ ........................................................................................................ 65
V. ATAMANNA LAW KUNTU MUHAAFIZ AL-QAHIRA ....................................................................... 69
VI. WAZIFA LI-MAMA ...................................................................................................................... 74
VII. ANA WA JADATY ........................................................................................................................ 80
VIII. HERE COMES THE BRIDESMAID ............................................................................................. 92
IX. ABEL’S MOON ........................................................................................................................... 102
X. ALFIE GETS IN FIRST ................................................................................................................. 111
XI. BEYOND SOCIALIZATION ........................................................................................................ 114

CHAPTER THREE: RETELLINGS OF CINDERELLA AND LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD IN

COLE, ELMESSIRI AND BROWNE ............................................................................................ 119
I. THE METATEXT .......................................................................................................................... 119
II. FEMININITY ............................................................................................................................... 122
III. CINDERELLA STORIES: PRINCE CINDERS, PRINCESS SMARTYPANTS, AND ELMESSIRI’S
CINDERELLA................................................................................................................................... 114

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 A. PRINCE CINDERS ..................................................................................................................... 125
B. PRINCESS SMARTYPANTS .......................................................................................................... 132
C. LONG LIVE PRINCESS SMARTYPANTS ........................................................................................ 136
D. CINDERELLA WA ZEINAB HANEM KHATOUN ............................................................................. 140
IV. RETELLING LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD: INVERTING AND ALLUDING ................................. 150
A. ELMESSIRI’S LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD ................................................................................. 150
B. BROWNE’S LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD .................................................................................... 159
V. BROWNE: MULTIPLE METATEXTS .......................................................................................... 164

CHAPTER FOUR: HUMOR AND COMMUNITY-BASED SOLUTIONS IN TAHER AND

BLAKE............................................................................................................................................... 172
I. TAHER ......................................................................................................................................... 173
II. BLAKE ........................................................................................................................................ 174
III. ILLUSTRATORS/WRITERS ........................................................................................................ 175
IV. THE HUMOR ............................................................................................................................. 177
A. FIZO ........................................................................................................................................ 180
1. PLAY AND MASQUERADE ................................................................................................... 184
2. REPETITION ........................................................................................................................ 186
3. CLIMAX, DEFLATION AND LAUGHING AT PREVIOUS SELVES ........................................... 179
4. SARCASM ............................................................................................................................ 187
B. MRS ARMITAGE ...................................................................................................................... 190
1. INCONGRUITY ..................................................................................................................... 198
2. PLAY ................................................................................................................................... 199
3. HEROISM ............................................................................................................................ 201
V. COMMUNITY AND EXPERIENCE: AL-NOQTA AL-SAWDAA AND A SAILING BOAT IN THE SKY YT
A. INTERSECTIONS ...................................................................................................................... 206
B. COMMUNITY ........................................................................................................................... 210
C. THE WAY THE DOT CRUMBLES .............................................................................................. 212

CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................................. 215

APPENDIX: PERSONAL INTERVIEW WITH WALID TAHER............................................. 222

PRIMARY SOURCES...................................................................................................................... 225

WORKS CITED................................................................................................................................ 227

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Introduction

“Where is the use of a book,” thought Alice,“without pictures or conversations?”

(C.S. Lewis Alice in Wonderland 1)

I. Overview

In Britain the term ‘children’s literature’ began to gain widespread usage when in the

mid-eighteenth century, the publishing industry, led by publisher John Newbery (1713-1767),

determined it lucrative to cater to the desires of a growing and literate middle class of

children for books that neither gave religious instructions nor offered moralizing tales, but

rather with imaginative stories intended to be read for pleasure (Grenby 277).1 Accordingly,

historians generally trace the origins of children’s literature in the form it exists today to no

earlier than the eighteenth century (Alberghene 225). However, the commercialization of

children’s literature fully developed in the period between 1945 and 2000, when the overall

general value of books for young readers as commodities had increased in both quantitative

and qualitative terms. During this period and beyond, Jack Zipes, the genre’s leading literary

critic confirms that the revenues made by publishing houses through the sale of books

targeted at young readers far exceeded that made by any other category of literature (Zipes

Sticks and Stones 67).

The development of Egyptian children’s literature on the other hand is a rather

different story; As a literary core it derives its roots from the strong oral tradition of the

                                                                                                                         
1
His books were illustrated and came with a ball for boys or a pincushion for girls making them the
first commercial “multimedia gendered experience” (Hunt Children’s Literature 3). Today, British
children’s literature is rich with innovative and diverse publishing practices that capitalize on the
creative genius of a great number of world-renowned children’s authors and illustrators such as
“Lewis Carroll, Arthur Rackham, Robert Louis Stevenson, A.A. Milne (and E.H. Shepard), Kenneth
Graham, Enid Blyton, Beatrix Potter, Roald Dahl, [and] C.S. Lewis” (“The UK Children's Books
Market.”). Also, the record-breaking commercially successful J.K. Rowling has made children’s
literature a crucial cultural phenomenon, generating much academic scholarship and interdisciplinary
criticism and definitively drawing international attention to the genre.

8  
Thousand and One Nights, the tales of Kalila wa Dimna and the epic heroic renditions of the

Sira Al-hilaliya whose translations have also inflamed the imaginations of many pre-modern

as well as contemporary Western literary greats, including a number of children’s writers;

even the folkloric character of Aly Zebak is said to have inspired the character of Robin Hood

(Youssef ‘An Adab Al-atfal 14). Abdel Tawab Youssef, children’s author and literary critic

summarizes the beginnings of the modern genre of Egyptian children’s literature and how it

was influenced by both the Napoleonic invasion and British colonization that exposed

Egyptian children to the works of Perrault, Lafontaine, Lang, Grimm and Anderson that were

adapted into Arabic by poets like Ahmad Shawki and Uthman Galal (17). In 1873

renaissance intellectual Rifa’a el-Tahtawi published Al-murshid Al-amin lil Banat wal Banin

(The trustworthy guide for girls and boys), a guidebook of new educational techniques based

on “endless drilling and practice and exercise over a length of time” (Mitchell Colonising

89). This was possibly the first time children were directly courted as an audience in the

Arabic language, yet with a directive that is nowadays dismissed as outdatedly didactic.

Although the Dar al-Ma’aref publishing house published the first Arabic language series of

illustrated children books in 1912, modern Egyptian children’s literature owes its real genesis

to Kamel Kilany, who wrote around 200 books since 1927, mostly drawn from Arab folklore

and world classics (Alqudsi 64). His generation of children’s writers – and that which closely

followed – dealt mainly in historical, Quranic and folkloric stories and themes of moral

lessons, nationalism, and religious values. Today, Egyptian publishing is going through an

exciting historical transformation; a UNICEF survey shows that from 1928 until 1978 Egypt

published fifty children’s books every year, and in 2004 this figure jumped to 1300

(Mohamed). Although this is a modest number compared to 10,519 new titles published in

the UK in 2002 that retailed at £141.9 million the figure is significant in its own right (“The

9  
UK Children’s Books Market.”).2 This change has been further enhanced by the “Reading for

All” campaign under the slogan “A book for every child” with the participation of the

General Egyptian Book Organization (GEBO), the establishment of the Suzanne Mubarak

Award for Children’s Literature under the Egyptian Council for Children’s Books, the

translation of international children’s works and national writing competitions which resulted

in a growing reading culture (Khayat). This marked a transformation in the content and form

of children’s texts; in the past fifteen years, children’s books have become more original in

content and design, less didactic, better illustrated and published with quality comparable to

that produced by Western publishing houses.

This contemporary phenomenon in the production of children’s books has now

allowed serious academic research to examine, study and evaluate this ‘new’ literature on its

own merits as well as a counterpoint to its Western counterparts.

II. Describing the Genre: Audience and Society

Children’s literature as a genre has until recently been marginalized from ‘serious’

literature and reductively examined solely in association with education and child literacy in

academic spheres. This has been compounded by the fact that the overwhelming

preponderance of women in both the academic and publishing fields have associated the

genre with maternity and awarded it a subsequent low status in the arts (Hunt “Poetics and

Practicality” 42 and Zipes Sticks and Stones 54). However an increase in the number of

eminent journals on the subject as well as prominent universities that have co-opted the genre

to produce myriad courses, degrees and graduate and postgraduate dissertations on children’s

literature are evidence of a rapid inclusion of children’s literature in the field of literature

proper. Escalating interest in scholarly work related to children’s literature has also been

consolidated by the growing number of seminal critical works that supply the “critical
                                                                                                                         
2
An attitude met with skepticism from those who doubt the dissemination of children’s books in a
country with widespread illiteracy and poverty like Egypt.

10  
vocabulary” of the genre and the number of peer-reviewed scholarly journals in the discipline

(Nel 23).

Most literary scholars who study children’s literature are frequently aligned with the

views of Benjamin Bloom of the University of Chicago who ascertains that the first eight

years of life are the most rapid in terms of development and most crucial in building character

(MacCann 1);

Those of us who study children’s literature would reply that it is arguably the literary
form most worthy of serious attention. These are the books people read before they
are fully formed. Their ideas about themselves and the world in which they live are
still developing, but so are their ideas about poetry, prose, art, and book design. (Nel
23)

Aidan Chambers, award-winning British children’s novelist concurs:

In fact, children–much like adults–read as a way of forming attitudes, finding points

of reference, building concepts, forming images to think with, all of which interact to
form a basis for decision-making judgment, for understanding, for sympathy with the
human condition. Literary experience feeds the imagination, that faculty by which we
come to grips with the astonishing amount of data which assails our everyday lives,
and finds patterns of meaning in it. (Introducing Books to Children 28)

Hence children’s books, and the images that accompany them are arguably the most

important literary cultural markers of any society, and this newfound gentility has been long

coming. In fact the inclusion of texts so critical to the foundation of character so late in the

day raises serious questions about the challenges that presented themselves to those who

sought to incorporate them. Peter Hunt indicates that the reason may lie in the tension of the

rhetorical situation itself where the author is never the same as the audience, and where

deciding on a definitive purpose of the text is fraught with dangers:

the relationship between [the literature, the children, and the adult critics] is complex,
partly because childhood and ‘the child’ are difficult to define, partly because adults
need to ‘construct’ the child in order to talk about the books, and partly because the
literature is assumed to be ‘good for’ children in some way. (Hunt Understanding
Children’s Literature 15)

11  
 Later on, Hunt suggests that the difficulty may lie in assigning children’s literature to

an academic slot, for perhaps the male-dominated field of English literature with its “abstract

theory and its canon and its ignoring (until very recently) of the reader, is precisely where it

should not be” (“Poetics and Practicality” 43-44). Even generating critical work attached to

the genre is problematic, as theorist Karin Lesnik-Oberstein reminds us that it is all heavily

coloured by the critics’ ideas of ‘childhood’ and what that idea entails (“Essentials”). Similar

questions about the exact purpose of children’s literature reverberate in the Egyptian scene of

children’s literary criticism, however the general consensus seems to be that the function of

the genre is primarily as a socialization tool which provides an aesthetic literary and artistic

experience, teaches the child something about himself/herself, promotes linguistic, mental,

moral and sensory development and aids emotional maturity and psychological adjustment to

the world the child is exploring (Kenawy 28). Child literature theorists like Peter Hunt assert

that such didactic goals are an inevitable result of a genre where the writer and reader are part

of a hierarchical power structure, even though many writers of children’s books side with

children and claim they produce ‘subversive’ literature which challenges the status quo (5).

Whether this championing of the child is intentional or not, writers’ attitudes and approaches

are certainly deliberate and worthy of examination.

III. Comparative Analysis: Under the Shadow of Otherness

The comparative nature of this thesis therefore posits the children’s literary production of two

nations that have influenced one another at various junctions. One is a literature that derives

from an unbroken Western literary tradition and another that is aware of its “otherness” in

spite of its early start. The history of English children’s literature experienced many breaks

during times when literary production was marginalized, mediocre or simply nonexistent.

The problem of understanding one literature conceived in relative literary poverty, where

most children barely receive a basic education and have limited access to books, is deepened

12  
when compared to one where children are catered to with age-appropriate multimedia

(O’Sullivan Comparative 8).

The evolution of a nation is paralleled in how it chooses to socialize its children,

making the genre particularly well suited for a comparative study that fulfils this purpose. An

English-language comparative thesis is also particularly important given the scarcity of

translated Egyptian children’s works available to Western scholars.

The children’s books considered in this thesis are either (i) illustrated books, where

the text can stand on its own but is accompanied by pictorial representations, or (ii) picture

books, where the words and images inextricably interact to convey a message (Nikolajeva

“Verbal and Visual Literacy” 238).3

Settling on a framework of studies is difficult, and forces a consideration of many

theoretical paths in literary study. The popular reception aesthetics, for instance, become

difficult to discern when the literary product is directed at a discriminating audience that

accepts or rejects without deigning to offer substantial justification for its preferences.

Assessment is further complicated because the child is not necessarily the one to select the

book or in fact read it him/herself. However what is possible is to evaluate the inescapable

ideological premises – either intentional or implicit – in the works, since as Jack Zipes,

renowned children’s literature scholar insists: “literature is inseparable from the society

within which it is created” (Nikolajeva “Fairy Tales in Society’s Service” 187). It is also

inseparable from the society it is creating; early studies based in “schema theory” showed

how stories mentally fit into what children already knew. Martinez proposes a more recent

research rooted in “literary response theory” reveals that children can “construct meanings

from authentic works of literature,” an idea that relies on Louise Rosenblatt’s description of
                                                                                                                         
3
Picture books rather than purely textual literary products are introduced at a time before the child’s left and
right hemispheres lateralize to divide the processing of verbal and visual information, a time of burgeoning
understanding and perception and therefore “carry for each of us considerable truth value, for they combine both
our own epistemological histories and a nostalgically emotive context” and hence make an indelible ideological
fingerprint on young minds (Harper 397-399).

13  
reader/text relationship as “transactional” with the reader absorbing not only “what the words

point to in the external world [but also] to the images, feelings, attitudes, associations and

ideas that the words and their referents evoke” (223). The ability of the child to deposit

received stories into an existing framework of literary conventions and other stories as well as

their current understanding of the world, refers to the ideological premises that the story is

shaped by. Since no literary work directed at children is free from what the writer consciously

or unconsciously believes children ought to be ‘told,’ the analysis of children’s literature as a

genre reveals a great deal about what ideological premises are being promoted to the children

of any given time or place.

Perhaps Karen Coats best expresses some of the ethical and ideological challenges

that beset any study of children’s literature:

No other literature is quite as implicated in the ethics of readership as books written

for and marketed to children. The question of appropriateness functions almost as a
gatekeeper for the criticism of children’s literature, so much so that scholars often find
their efforts to detect stylistic patterns or perform aesthetic critique sidetracked by the
necessity for undertaking a sort of apologetics for the capacity of children to be adept
readers. Can children be expected to grasp the subtle mechanisms of parody and
irony? Can children really see and perhaps even resist the offensive implications of
rigid gender-role identification? How much can children understand of the horrors of
history such as the Holocaust or American slavery? To how much should they be
exposed? Do children catch the racist ideologies of their texts like a virus, or are they
capable of reading critically and hence perhaps building up their immunities? How
does one present history without reinscribing potentially damaging ideologies?

While John Sommerville draws our attentions to another dilemma:

For social historians have not agreed how best to gauge influence. Does the enduring
popularity of certain children’s classics show that those who were buying for their
kids liked the work when they were children? And would that mean that the work was
more representative than others whose popularity was more momentary? Would it not
be better, in fact, to study more second-rate, ephemeral books if our interest is in
representative works? (517)

Therefore the examination of contemporary Egyptian and British children’s literatures

– that are undergoing great transformations in both content and form – is a worthy endeavor

insofar as it gives great insight into the values and ideas of the time.

14  
 This thesis proposes to analyse the hybrid visual and textual discourse of the selected

representative works to determine how the children’s literature produced by each nation

reflects the latter’s zeitgeist. It juxtaposes these on a trajectory in chapters that look at the

depiction of the everyday, the retelling of fairytales, and the celebration of childhood

imagination and community-based solutions. It uses the scarce critical material on Egyptian

children’s literature along with valuable interviews with Egyptian publishers, authors and

scholars to fill a gap in scholarly research in an area where little is available in the English

language and even less that is qualitatively analysed alongside a more established literary

production to mirror it such as British children’s literature.

IV. Selection of Texts: Criteria and Rationale

The works considered in this thesis are all directed at “a readership situated in what

Piaget labelled the pre-operational stage (2-7yrs) and the concrete operational stage (7-

11yrs)” excluding all works for young adults written by the selected authors (Harper 403).

I have set criteria for the authors I work with as authors who are representative of

current trends in writing for children; Both the Egyptian and British authors have produced

works that have won awards within the past decade. On one hand, Jack Zipes warns us that

although the value of children’s books is partially determined by the prizes they have

received and the critical reviews around them; the academics that are involved in the value

judgment of books are in turn shaped by the departments, universities and literary milieu

within which they operate, hence the dubiousness of the modern canon (Sticks and Stones

68). And while I recognize the influence of academic circles on such decisions, the selection

was primarily based on the ideological angles of the works but was confirmed by the status

prizing tends to create.

The authors I have selected produce mostly original works and their careers do not

rely primarily on retelling religious, folk or classic tales (although many are postmodern

15  
accounts of old classics) as do the careers of many well-loved literary giants such as

AbdelTawab Youssef, Ahmed Bahgat, Yacoub elSharouni, and Kamel Kilany. All represent

a spectrum of directions in the children’s literature of their respective cultures, although the

third chapter deals with postmodern retellings of old classics that are innovative in their own

right as fractured fairytales. The authors are a mix of male, female, old and young, some who

only write for children and some who come from a very different background, some who are

illustrators themselves and some who are not.

It was my original intention to only include works that were produced in their entirety

by one author but could not do so in the Arabic titles because of the lack of author-illustrators

and the generally diminished status of visual illustration.4 In fact, until recently in Egypt,

illustrations in books were not even credited to an artist, the unimaginative drawings were

mostly done by anonymous publishing house employees whose contribution was not even

acknowledged in the book (Alqudsi 63). My reasons for preferring children books produced

entirely by one person are:

1. Many of the finest picture books emanate from one creator (“From looking glass to

spyglass” 48).

2. The textual-visual balance is better maintained as the writer who is visual is not

compelled to textually elaborate details (Ardizzone 291).

3. It effaces the distinction that Magdalena Sikorska draws between illustration that

‘translates’ the text into visual language, allowing the text to dominate semiotically,

and illustration that ‘creates’ new visions that complement and are inspired by the

text.

4. When considering modern British literature, one can no doubt tackle an indefinite

number of texts and authors, hence the need to justify the authors that are to represent

                                                                                                                         
4
Only Walid Taher of the Egyptian writers in this dissertation both writes and illustrates his own books. Adly
Rizkallah the renowned Egyptian graphic artist also writes/illustrates children’s picturebooks.

16  
 the entire contemporary industry, and make a selection of works relevant to the

discussion.

Firstly, Shirley Hughes, Dame of the British Empire and author/illustrator: Her works

deal with issues of class and the everyday challenges of being a child and with themes of

gender and race. The realism of her books makes them a unique celebration of the beauty of

the mundane, and the essentially ‘English.’ Secondly, Babette Cole’s humorous books reveal

serious ideological concerns, social criticism, feminism and subversion of power structures in

parodies of classical tales. Her creative use of humour that is often irreverently offensive,

brings her under attack from critics who question the appropriateness of her bestselling books

for children. Thirdly, Anthony Browne, also a writer/illustrator deals in sophisticated

illustrations and refined narratives rife with discreet parodies and psychological depth, and

his use of complementary/disruptive visual devices introduces the idea of a metatext for

children (Pantaleo “Young Children” 220). And the last British author discussed is Quentin

Blake, who is the first Children’s Laureate, an honor bestowed for “the lifetime achievement

of an eminent living British writer or illustrator of children’s books” (Doonan “Quentin

Blake” 53); Examining the work of one who is both a master illustrator and writer, offers

unique insight into how the ‘iconotext’ is formed.

From Egypt, Fatma el Maadoul is a pioneer in the genre of children’s literature in

Egypt in spite of the fact that her works are often criticized for being commissioned by the

controversial deposed government in its socialization campaigns. As a holder of many

official positions, her books often reflect various national concerns such as children with

special needs, modern family structures, racial and religious tolerance as well as ecological

issues, all topics that were never before discussed in Arabic children’s literature. Secondly,

AbdelWahab Elmessiri’s entire collection of children’s works is published as a series titled

“Stories for this Day and Age.” He is both a literary persona and optimistic political prophet,

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whose self-professed rationale behind writing for children is part of the postcolonial ‘writing

back to the Empire’ movement, this time in the face of American culturally imperialistic

ideas and values, hence the thematic significance of his work in an ideological study (Ezzat

“Right to Read”). Elmessiri’s work is decidedly postmodern in its self-reflexiveness; his

retelling of classic fairy tales is highly intertextual and affords the opportunity to discuss

contemporary cultural influences (Alwakeel 133). And finally, Walid Taher, a prominent

caricaturist and illustrator who created the popular character ‘Fizo’ and whose creative works

have won both national and international recognition.

Although modern Egyptian publishing for children in its present form is barely over a

decade old, and its luminaries limited, they are still too numerous to be given their due

treatment in one thesis so although I refer to many authors, I focus on some of Maadoul,

Elmessiri and Taher’s most ideologically interesting works.

V. Review of Critical Works:

Cornelia Meigs’ Critical History of Children’s Literature (1953) and Peter Hunt’s

Children’s Literature (2001) provide a good overview of the history of British children’s

literature as well as introductions to all the important writers in the field, while Ali Haddad Al

Yad wal Baraem: Dirasat fi Adab Al-tifl (the hand and the seedling: studies in child literature)

(2000) and Abdel Tawab Youssef’s ‘An Adab Al-atfal (on children’s literature) (1995)

provide similar coverage of Egyptian children’s literature.

Until the mid-1980s John Rowe Townsend had asserted that critical works on

children’s literature were either child or book centered (Jones 289), but by 2002 Roger Sell

decided that a third category had come to dominate, and that was “theory people” (Lesnik-

Oberstein “Introduction” 4). The voices in dialogue in this review are mainly from the latter

group. In the 1990s, Peter Hunt, John Stephens, and Maria Nikolajeva turned the tide of

realist aesthetics in the field to embrace a more metafictional, postmodernist perspective

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while Jacqueline Rose went so far as to declare children’s literature “impossible” and Karin

Lesnik-Oberstein proposed that the child himself was “fictional” (qtd. in Jones 289). Rose

offers one of the most controversial pronouncements on children’s literature in her canonical

1984 work The Case of Peter Pan, or The Impossibility of Children’s Fiction, where she

questions the entire premise on which children’s literature is produced, and declares that

‘childhood’ itself a precarious construct (Kidd “Psychoanalysis” 111). Like many other

critics, she points to the power imbalance between the authoring adult and the child audience,

but her controversial title created an implicit problem in the feasibility of criticism of

children’s literature that is based on a series of assumptions that adult critics make about the

reality of the child addressee. Roderick McGillis on the other hand insists that even this is too

lofty a notion and that not much has changed and that most children’s criticism is an

evaluation of their moral and didactic worth (The Nimble Reader 19).

Because of the textual economy imperative in children’s work, the gravity of the

choice of words gives the examiner of language in children’s literature valuable insights into

the socio-historical context that the writer is writing in. And because of the freshness of the

child’s encounter with early literature, the works s/he reads and that are read to her/him help

form her/his functional and critical literacies and become part of her/his socialization

experience. There is also a subsequent abundance of work on children’s reception theories by

scholars such as Neil Cocks and Emer O’Sullivan that rely on the theories of Iser, Holland,

Bleich and query into “the source of literary meaning, and…the nature of the interpretive

process that creates it… [issues that] are fundamental to how young readers read” (Benton 7).

John Stephans challenges the canonical 1990 Aiden Chambers article “The Reader and the

Book” and its identification of the various parties involved in responding to the text whose

truth remains elusive to all, as promoting a “passive construction of the reader” (Cocks 110),

and that furthermore reader response theories create simplistic dualities that evade the

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possibility of a more “complex” reading. However he finds that once we agree that these texts

are produced for an imagined child, they can be read as “cultural signs of adult political

standards and socialization practices” as this study attempts to do (May 82).

While this research does not utilize reader-response theory it is still important to

recognize it for the useful outline it provides with which to study plurality of meanings within

a literary work; the creative participation of the reader; and the acknowledgement that the

reader brings idiosyncratic knowledge and personal style to the act of reading; and the

awareness that interpretation is socially, historically and culturally formed (Benton 8). In his

work Developing Response to Fiction Robert Protherough suggests that “there are five major

ways in which children see the process of reading fiction: projection into a character,

projection into the situation, association between book and reader, the distanced viewer, and

detached evaluation” (Benton 14). Also working within the reader-response school,

psycholinguist Richard Gerrig proposes the idea of “willing construction of disbelief” which

expresses how readers suspend their values and knowledge base when they read a literary

narrative for the duration of their engagement with it (Gerrig and Rapp). I refrain from

exploring the reader-response perspective because of the inherent instability of this enterprise

when attempted with children who “from an adult perspective, children are the ‘other,’

mysterious beings who in turn attract us, repel us, and bedevil us” (McGillis Self, Other, and

Other Self 217) in favor of a more postmodern discourse analysis.

In an attempt to quantify the contribution of the premier folklore scholar and German

professor, Jack Zipes; Donald Haase credits him with pioneering fairy-tale studies by

providing “an interdisciplinary model of sociohistorical and cultural analysis that explains

and illuminates the fairy tale in all its manifestations throughout history” (129). Jack Zipes’

sociohistorical approach in Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for

Children and the Process of Civilization (1983), Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children,

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