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The Relevance of Children in the

Criticism of Children's Literature
Daniel D. Hade
Published online: 03 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Daniel D. Hade (1992) The Relevance of Children in the
Criticism of Children's Literature, The Review of Education, 14:2, 145-156, DOI:
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The Relevance of Children in the Criticism of

Children's Literature
Daniel D. Hade
Peter Hunt (Ed.). Children's Literature: The Development of Criticism.
London: Routledge, 1990.
Alison Lurie. Don't Tell the Grown-ups: Subversive Children's Literature.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990.
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First-time students in my children's literature classes are often surprised by the

children's books they read. Books, which they assume are simple, are often not sim-
plistic. A careful reading of Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak, 1963), Gorilla
(Browne, 1983), or Black and White (Macaulay, 1990) can reveal a complexity which
is shocking to the beginning student of children's literature. The problem for them
is image. This is after all children's literature.
Image is also a problem for the critic. Critics of children's literature have long
wished that criticism of children's literature held the same legitimacy among aca-
demics as criticism of adult literature. However, there are two barriers to children's
literature achieving this legitimacy. One is its audience. It is believed that literature
written for children cannot possibly stand up to "serious" criticism as can literature
for adults. The second barrier is the group of adults who concern themselves with
children's literature: teachers, librarians, and parents. Most often this group of
adults has a utilitarian interest in literature: how best to use it and share it with chil-
dren; how best to make it available to children; and, how best to interest children in
reading it. Such pragmatic issues do not give rise to "serious" criticism. In efforts to
break down these barriers, critics of twenty years ago frequently argued that, as a
genre, children's literature really was no different from literature for adults. That
children were the primary readers of this literature was immaterial to criticism.
Matters of pragmatism simply had nothing to do with the job of the critic. Brian
Alderson (1990) in "The Irrelevance of Children to the Children's Book Reviewer,"
a piece which was emblematic of this position, argued:

It may be objected that to assess children's books without reference to children is to direct some absolute
critical standard relating neither to the author's purpose nor the reader's enjoyment. To do much less,
however, is to follow a road that leads to a morass of contradictions and subjective responses, the most

DANIEL D. HADE teaches in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Pennsylvania State University.
(Correspondence: Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, 255 Chambers Building, Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, PA 16802.)

145
 146 Daniel D. Hade

serious result of which will be the confusion of what we are trying to do in encouraging children to read,
(p. 55)

Alderson clearly sees little role for the reader informing criticism. Rather, for Al-
derson it is the other way around. It is an objective, "absolute critical standard"
which informs the reader, first the adult critic and then by means of some "trickle
down" application, children.
John Rowe Townsend (1990) made a similar separation between criticism and
the reader in his piece, "Standards of Criticism for Children's Literature." He stated
that critics of children's literature usually evaluate books according to at least one of
four attributes: suitability, or the appropriateness of the book for children; popular-
ity, or how well children will like it; relevance, or the power of the book's themes to
make the child aware of social or personal problems; and merit, or how well the
book was written. Townsend argued that suitability, popularity, and relevance
were really concerns for the buyer and reader of the book, but not the literary critic.
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In another piece, Townsend (1967) was even more pointed in arguing that the so-
cial, political, or cultural content of a book and the power this content may have
upon the reader has little to do with literary merit. Any of the attributes which de-
scribe the experiences children have with books are, for Townsend or Alderson,
simply not part of literary criticism.
From Alderson's and Townsend's perspective the child as reader had to be ex-
plained away or ignored for critics to do serious discussion of children's literature.
Yet criticism could never assume away children. If critics such as Alderson or
Townsend chose to ignore children in their criticism, they had to state why. This put
critics in the position of making children relevant to the discussion simply by argu-
ing that children were irrelevant.
When I look at the writings of critics, I conclude that in practice it is difficult, if
not impossible, for critics to ignore the audience when that audience is children.
Compare three books about fantasy and folklore: Stith Thompson's (1946) The
Folktale and Kathryn Hume's (1984) Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to Reality in West-
ern Literature, books which assume the reader of literature is an adult, with Jane
Yolen's (1981) Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood.
Yolen's first chapter, "How Basic Is Shazam?," sets out four functions that myth,
legend, and folklore serve in the education of children. The inference is that before
one can discuss the literature of childhood, one must first show how it is indispensa-
ble for the child reader. What reading folklore does for the adult reader is not even a
question for Thompson. Hume begins her book with six chapters on the writing of
fantasy before she concludes with one chapter on reading it. The inference is that
what fantasy does for the adult reader, while interesting enough to be part of
Hume's book, is not the primary concern.
Children's literature textbooks are structured similarly to Yolen's book. If you
read the opening chapter of the most frequently used children's literature textbooks
(Cullinan, 1989; Huck, Hepler & Hickman, 1987; Norton, 1991; Sutherland & Ar-
buthnot, 1991) you will find a rationale for the existence of literature for children
and many arguments for the personal and educational benefits of literature for chil-
dren. Even Alderson cannot escape the moral imperative of defining children's lit-
erature in terms of what it offers to the child. He suggests in the above quote that
adults have some agenda in "encouraging children to read." Later in that essay he
 Criticism of Children's Literature 147

elaborates. "But once one assigns to reading the vital role, which I believe that it has,
of making children more perceptive and more aware of the possibilities of lan-
guage, then it becomes necessary to hold fast to qualitative judgments formed upon
the basis of adult experience" (Alderson, 1990, p. 55). It isn't, then, that the book is
well-written that is important; it is that well-written books make children more per-
ceptive and aware of the possibilities of language. Well-written books do some-
thing good to children who read them, and of course, for Alderson, it takes an adult
to make the decision for children as to what is well-written. But, as Kelly (1985) and
Taxel (1991) have shown, to argue that literary or artistic merit is the only standard
for criticism is to disguise another moral agenda.
Whether acknowledged by the critic or not, in discussing children's literature the
reader matters. If Alderson and Townsend had really succeeded in making chil-
dren irrelevant to criticism, they would be making irrelevant that which distin-
guishes this literature from other literature. Rather than seek ways around the issue
of children, what criticism of children's literature ought to do is develop a theory of
children's literature as children's literature (Nodelman, 1980). Peter Hunt and
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Alison Lurie have each contributed a book of criticism which begins with the child
as reader of children's literature. Peter Hunt's edited book, Children's Literature: The
Development of Criticism, shows how scholars of the past and present have handled
this issue and points promisingly toward directions criticism may take in the fu-
ture. Alison Lurie's Don't Tell the Grown-ups: Subversive Children's Literature, a book
which reworks several of her previously published essays, begins bravely but ulti-
mately collapses under an intriguing but poorly constructed argument.
Peter Hunt teaches English and children's literature at the University of Wales,
Cardiff, and is the author of several novels for children and adolescents. His book is
billed as an introduction into the development of criticism of children's literature
with an emphasis upon how critics have viewed the purposes of children's litera-
ture. In the introduction to the book Hunt states his definition of children's litera-
ture as "a species of literature defined in terms of the reader rather than the authors'
intentions or the texts themselves" (Hunt, 1990, p. 1). With this concern for the child
reader as a guide, Hunt selects pieces from critics who deal with this issue.
The first section of the book contains essays written prior to 1945. Hunt includes
pieces from well-known literary figures such as Dickens, Ransome, Chesterton, and
Ruskin. Excerpts from two earlier writers, Sarah Fielding and Sarah Trimmer, show
that questions of audience and purpose were on the minds of the very first critics.
Sarah Fielding's The Governess or Little Female Academy, published in 1749, is con-
sidered by some to be the first novel written for children. Hunt includes an extract
from her "Preface" to this book in which she addresses her readers about their re-
sponsibilities in reading her book. "Before you begin the following Sheets, I beg you
will stop a Moment at this Preface, to consider with me, what is the true Use of
Reading; and if you can fix this Truth in your minds, namely, that the true Use of
Books is to make you wiser and better, you will have both Profit and Pleasure from
what you read" (p. 16). Later Fielding tells the reader that "(t)he Design of the fol-
lowing Sheets is to prove to you, that Pride, Stubbornness, Malice, Envy, and in
short, all manner of Wickedness, is the greatest folly we can be possessed of" (p. 17).
It seems amusing to us today that an author would write a preface to readers
reminding them of their responsibilities and explaining the themes of her book.
Perhaps we should not be so amused. From the moment children enter school, if not
 148 Daniel D. Hade

earlier, they are told that reading is something good to do and that reading will
make them better people. If authors today are no longer telling children what sense
to make of their work, then other adults have filled the vacuum. The majority of our
reading practices in school still has adults, either in the form of a teacher or more
often in the form of an absent textbook or skills packet author, influencing the politi-
cal, social, and theological meanings children make of their books.
Sarah Trimmer, editor of The Guardian of Education around 1800, was one of the
first reviewers of children's books. Her journal's name speaks to her purpose in
working with children's books. In a favorable review of a book she stated "some of
[its] faults, a pair of scissors can rectify" (1802, p. 431, emphasis in original). Trimmer
cautioned that "Formally children's reading, whether for instruction or amuse-
ment, was confined to a very small number of volumes; of late years they have mul-
tiplied to an astonishing and alarming degree, and much mischief lies hid in many
of them" (Hunt, 1990, p. 18). For Trimmer adults are needed to keep children from
the harm of these mischievous books.
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This attitude is still with us, although present day critics generally do not explic-
itly state that there is "much mischief" in children's books. Instead we get criticism
from every political and ethical perspective on how books for children are too hu-
manist, racist, sexist, ageist, satanic, capitalist, or communist. Trimmer, as does
Fielding, seems to understand intuitively that reading is a moral and political act.
This is reason for concern for both writers, as Fielding does not trust the reader to
do what is proper in reading her book, and Trimmer does not trust authors to write
moral texts.
The second section of the book, "Key Essays in Children's Literature Criticism,"
includes the Alderson and Townsend pieces discussed earlier. Those pieces, along
with an essay by Felicity Hughes, show the attempt of critics to make the criticism of
children's literature more academic. Given the time in which these pieces were
originally written, the 1960s and 1970s, "academic" meant the search for objective
standards to apply against literary works. The last essay in this section, Aidan
Chambers' "The Reader in the Book," is a departure from this tradition. Chambers
quickly distances himself from previous critics. "We need a critical method which
will take account of the child-as-reader; which will include him rather than exclude
him; which will help us to understand a book better and the reader it seeks" (p. 91).
Using Wolfgang Iser's (1974) idea of the "implied reader," Chambers argues that
structurally children's books imply a child reader. It is this author/reader relation-
ship that Chambers suggests is rich in possibilities for criticism. "One of the valu-
able possibilities offered by the critical method I look for is that it would make more
intelligently understandable those books which take a child as he is but then draw
him into the text; the books which help the child-reader to negotiate meaning, help
him develop the ability to receive a text as a literary reader does, rather than making
use of it for non-literary purposes" (Chambers, 1990, p. 93).
One of the ways authors draw children in, Chambers suggests, is by taking sides
when they tell children's stories. They not only put children at the center of their
stories, they are also clearly sympathetic to the child's side of the story. In Where the
Wild Things Are, it is clear that Max is being naughty. Yet Sendak is also clearly
aligning himself with Max and not with Max's mother. This suggests that there ex-
ists a moral and political alliance between the author and the author's child charac-
 Criticism of Children's Literature 149

ters against the adult characters in the story. It seems obvious that children would
be attracted to books with this kind of political relationship.
The difficulty of producing an edited book designed to sustain an argument on
the development of children's literature criticism is shown in the third section,
"Specialist Criticism." There are but two essays here, a reader-response piece by
Hugh Crago (1990) and William Moebius's (1990) "Introduction to Picture Book
Code". While the essays included in this section are important to the development
of each specialty criticism, they seem a diversion from the argument Hunt is trying
to make in this collection, and I wonder why he included them in a book that makes
no pretense to be comprehensive.
The fourth section of the book Hunt calls "Directions in Children's Literature
Criticism." Given all the possible choices he could have made for this section, it is
telling that Hunt chose Lissa Paul's (1990) "Enigma Variations: What Feminist The-
ory Knows about Children's Literature" and Margaret Meek's (1990) "What Counts
as Evidence in Theories of Children's Literature." Each extends certain aspects of
Chambers's child-reader-in-the-book argument, and each takes very seriously the
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child in developing their critical perspective.

Meek argues that whatever children's literature is, it must be the children's part
which is its distinguishing characteristic. Literature for children might be viewed as
a model or "cultural paradigm" for subsequent literature which the reader reads. It
is children's literature which initiates children into literature.
According to Meek, children's literature teaches children how literature is to be
read. This offers many possibilities for criticism. Agreeing with Chambers, Meek
also suggests critics might describe how an author organizes a text so that an inex-
perienced reader can read it. For example critics might pay more attention to the
voice of the narrator in children's stories. Criticism of children's literature often is
focused upon the author. Both Chambers and Meek advocate a criticism which at-
tends to the narrator as it may be the narrator's voice which distinguishes children's
literature as children's literature. In the end, Meek argues "what we need is analysis
of discourse which does not say that children's stories are simpler forms of adult
telling, but insists that they are the primary kinds and structures of later tellings"
(Meek, 1990, p. 176).
The text, then, is the real teacher. Real reading lessons come from an author and
not from a basal reader. "In children's reading, in children's literature, we can be-
come aware of the conventions, the repertoires, and demonstrate how they are
learned and developed as literary competencies. That, in my view would make a
poetics of children's literature and children's reading" (p. 178). For Meek, a theory
of children's literature becomes also a theory of reading, and vice versa.
It is disappointing that though this piece is ten years old, there has been little
research on this continent based upon Meek's argument. Taking her cue from
Suzanne Langer (1953), Meek suggests that although the kind of criticism she is call-
ing for would be relatively easy to do, critics just haven't tried very hard to do it.
Such criticism would require reading researchers to abandon their fascination with
mechanical models of cognitive psychology and for critics of children's literature to
turn away from their preoccupation with the author. Both groups of scholars would
have to take seriously the relationship between the child-reader and the author of
children's literature, a relationship which is not just psychological but also social
and political.
 250 Daniel D. Hade

According to lissa Paul (1990), children, like women, lack physical, economic,
and linguistic power. Children are confined to certain spaces (rooms, playgrounds,
schools), have little money, and must make do with adult language to describe their
world. Because their political status is so similar to that of women, feminist theory
and feminist semiotics can better make the signs of children's literature visible and
give them meaning than can "male-order criticism." Because children lack power
and control, according to Paul, they resort to deceit and trickery to get what they
want. In many ways children's literature is the descendant of trickster stories, but
instead of Jack tricking the giant or Anasi tricking powerful animals, it is children
tricking the adults. Children's literature, then, is about repression and overcoming
repression through deceit. Very, very few child characters (in the books children
truly love) ever really give in. For example, Max may return home in Where the Wild
Things Are, but he returns because he wants to, not because he is forced. He returns
not defeated, but as a winner.
But repression isn't just a condition of childhood. Everyone has experienced re-
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pression and oppression in some form and at some time. Instead of looking at chil-
dren's literature as an us (adults) and them (children) issue, a danger of the
argument Paul is making, Paul suggests that children's literature keeps alive within
adults their childhood. Exploring children's literature isn't then the job of an objec-
tive criticism—which in its attempt to make meaning visible also keeps the signs of
repression invisible. Rather, it is the task of a criticism which seeks to play with pos-
sibilities of meaning in order to explore that which is alive in us. Paul sets this out in
a paragraph she must have taken much pleasure in writing.

Male-order criticism is pointed towards the one penetrating strategy that removes even the last G-string
of mystery and lays bare the text. But it doesn't quite work; the emperor's magic new clothes degenerate
into a low'brow skin flick. Bare texts don't allow for the kind of intellectual play upon which readers
(especially critics) thrive. Feminist criticism, on the other hand, is about keeping the voyeur's attention
and imagination engaged while the clothes are being taken off. Critical interest centres on the play of
meaning, not the sadly naked revelation of meaning. (1990, p. 155).

Paul's argument is a political and moral one. She looks squarely at the same issue
Fielding, Trimmer, Alderson, and Townsend looked at. Where they saw "much
mischief" and the need to control children and meaning, Paul sees the need for chil-
dren to be tricky and for readers to be playful in making meaning. Paul's criticism is
a criticism of liberation.
I could quibble over what Hunt has included in his book and what he has not. It is
disappointing to find few critics from outside the United Kingdom. He might have
included Perry Nodelman, Paul Hazard, Roger Sale, Eleanor Cameron, or Jack
Zipes. But the pieces he has selected are seminal pieces from prominent critics and
are appropriate for what he is trying to accomplish.
I was irritated by a few features of the book. The Table of Contents is incomplete.
Along with reprinting entire essays, Hunt has also included brief excerpts of impor-
tant critical essays, such as the Sarah Trimmer and Brian Alderson excerpts; unfor-
tunately these excerpts are not listed in the Table of Contents. Access to these
excerpts could have been gained through the index; however, there is no index in
the book. The bibliography is embedded in a final chapter written by Hunt. The
essay is breezy and is punctuated with several razor-sharp comments about other
critics' works. But finding a specific reference requires a page-by-page search.
 Criticism of Children's Literature 151

Hunt's book is most decidedly not a reference work. He has a point of view to
promote and with the critics he has selected and the manner in which he has organ-
ized the book, Hunt shows what he considers to be the major questions of criticism
of children's literature. These are questions of what distinguishes the genre and
how critics account for children as the audience for this literature. By frequently
and positively referring in his introductory notes to Chambers, and by placing
Meek and Paul last and discussing their work approvingly, Hunt argues that read-
ership must be accounted for in criticism, and he infers that such criticism of chil-
dren's literature could point the way for literary criticism in general. His book, then,
does not simply look back to what critics have done in the past, but points forward
to where criticism ought to go. It is a signpost, but Hunt does not pretend to have
arrived at an answer.

Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Alison Lurie teaches children's literature and
folklore at Cornell University. In Don't Tell the Grown-ups, Lurie's thesis is that chil-
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dren are different from adults—not just physically and psychologically different,
but also culturally different. They share a set of understandings, values, even folk-
lore which differ from the world of adults. Children are not sweet and innocent.
Their playground rhymes, chants, jokes, and songs often are satirical of adults' in-
tentions for children and from adult perspectives, naughty. This pattern, Lurie ar-
gues, can also be observed in children's literature. Though there are many books
which adults foist on children (most showing children how they ought to behave),
the books which children truly love (Lurie calls them "sacred texts") are those
which are subversive of adult values.

These books, and others like them recommended—even celebrated—daydreaming, disobedience, an-
swering back, running away from home, and concealing one's private thoughts and feelings from un-
sympathetic grown-ups. They overturned adult pretensions and made fun of adult institutions,
including school and family. In a word, they were subversive, just like many of the rhymes and jokes and
games I learned on the school playground. (Lurie, 1990, p. x)

Lurie has presented the basis for a definition of children's literature as children's
literature. Authors of "sacred texts" remember what it is truly like to be a child, a
member of a distinct culture embedded in the more powerful culture of adults. Be-
ing subversive is one of the few means for the less powerful to achieve control over
their lives, and authors of children's books show this relationship in their books.
This argument shares much in common with Lissa Paul and echoes Chambers's
point about children's authors taking sides with the child. It is also reminiscent of a
study conducted by Norma Schlager (1978). Schlager analyzed the characters in the
most frequently read and least-read Newbery Award winning novels. She found
that the most frequently read books had child characters who acted without the as-
sistance or interference of adults. Popular books such as Island of the Blue Dolphins
(CDell, 1960) showed children surviving without any aid from adults, while un-
popular books such as Dobry (Shannon, 1934) showed children dependent upon
adults. Borrowing a term from David Elkind, Schlager called this "cognitive con-
ceit," the belief of children that they can function quite well without the interference
of adults. Although Schlager discussed this phenomenon in terms of the theories of
cognitive and personality development of Piaget and Erikson, Lurie sees this as a
political struggle between two cultures.
 252 Daniel D. Hade

Like Hunt, Lurie argues for a definition of children's literature based upon "liv-
ing texts," those books which are actually read and enjoyed by children. Unfortu-
nately, much of her book is a contradiction of the argument she presents in the
forward and first chapter. If true children's literature are those texts which are actu-
ally read and enjoyed by children, then it is strange Lurie would include chapters
on books and authors which children today rarely read. The writers she discusses
were, for the most part, active around the turn of the century. Some such as Beatrix
Potter are read by children today, but others are obscure. Lurie has a chapter on
Ford Maddox Ford. That Ford wrote stories for children was news to me. I looked
for Ford in several children's literature reference books, including Townsend's
(1974) history of children's books, Darton and Alderson's (1982) history, and Car-
penter and Pritchard's (1984) dictionary. No mention of Ford could be found. There
is a chapter on the fairy tales of Updike and Fitzgerald, which even Lurie acknowl-
edges are for adults. Mrs. Clifford rates a chapter. She wrote some totally horrifying
stories that children don't read. For that matter even the chapter on James Barrie
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and Peter Pan seems out of place for this argument. Do many children actually read
Peter Pan?
After building a definition of children's literature based upon the child as a
reader, one wonders where the child-reader went. After the first chapter, that child
disappears and cannot be found again. Her criticism becomes more reporting than
illumination of books. We learn about authors' lives but not much about how this
knowledge informs us about these authors' works. Lurie does provide some his-
torical data showing why these works would have been subversive to their contem-
porary readers, but not much. When she does relate an author's history to an
interpretation of that author's work, she tells us a little about why that work may
have been subversive for the author, a little less about why it would have been sub-
versive to readers of the author's day, and nothing about why the work is subver-
sive to children today. Like too many critics of children's literature, Lurie really
can't sustain an argument for long when the argument is based upon children.
Taken individually, many of the chapters make interesting reading. Lurie's
chapter on folklore makes the argument that folklore is truly women's literature.
Not having the access to writing that men had, it was women who kept storytelling
alive, inventing new stories and passing down old ones. Lurie notes that most of the
Grimm brothers' sources were women and that when one takes the entire body of
their collected stories, one gets a picture of active women and ineffective men. Lurie
hints at the political aspects of this argument, that typical characters in folktales are
poor and powerless and make their successes at the expense of the more powerful.
Unfortunately, hints are all we get.
Lurie's chapter on Beatrix Potter also shows both the strength and weakness of
this book. Lurie notes how Potter (1901) in The Tale of Peter Rabbit, while telling the
reader how naughty Peter is, is winking at the reader at the same time. Potter has
taken sides with the subversive Peter, letting the reader know that Peter leads a far
more exciting life than his siblings. But again, an opportunity to develop the argu-
ment slips away, as Lurie is more interested in how Potter's life connects with her
stories than she is in developing a sustained political criticism of Potter's work.
The inadequacies of Lurie's argument become obvious when one compares
Lurie's discussion of Burnett's (1962) The Secret Garden with Paul's treatment of the
same book. Lurie digs into Burnett's past to discover an interest in Christian Sci-
 Criticism of Children's Literature 153

ence, a perspective on healing which seems to apply to the manner in which Colin
recovers. As Christian Science is not a mainstream perspective on healing, Lurie can
argue that it is subversive, but it is hardly the kind of information a child is likely to
have when reading the book, and so Lurie says nothing about why the book would
be subversive for the child-reader.
Paul, on the other hand, keeps her focus on the book at all times and uses her
feminist perspective to critique Colin's full development as a character and Mary's
blocked development. Together, Colin and Mary exercise deceit in keeping secret
both the garden and the subsequent strength they are gaining from their visits.
However, when Colin is finally physically well and this knowledge becomes pub-
lic, he surpasses Mary in the story and in so doing pushes Mary to the background.
To Paul the secret garden, the place where Mary helps Colin become well, also be-
comes the place where Mary is defeated, where she can no longer grow. When
Colin grows up he comes into full linguistic, economic, and physical power. When
Mary grows up, she remains as powerless as she was as a child.
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Lurie's argument is a moral and political one. She suggests that there is a clash
between the powerful culture of adults and the much less powerful culture of chil-
dren. She argues that the meanings in children's books are subversive of adult ac-
tions and intentions. I would expect that she would read and criticize the authors
and their work from this perspective. Instead, she reads allegorically, connecting
characters and images from books to persons and events in the authors' lives. We
learn that James Barrie never really grew out of adolescence, but nothing on what
makes his book, Peter Pan, subversive. Lurie tells us that Kate Greenaway's major
fan, John Ruskin was a dirty old man who wanted Greenaway to illustrate the chil-
dren in her books naked, but she doesn't tell us how Greenaway's work challenges
the world of adults. While reading allegorically does not necessarily exclude the
moral and the political, in Lurie's case the moral and political aspects of reading
become lost. Just what is it children would know from these books and stories that
they shouldn't tell the grown-ups? Lurie never makes this clear.
Perhaps this is because, for Lurie, meaning isn't clear in literature but hidden.
She makes repeated references to "hidden meaning" in the books she discusses.
Her criticism gives the illusion that the ordinary reader can never understand the
subversive nature of these texts because only by doing exhaustive research into
authors' backgrounds can it be revealed what political and social institutions they
were mocking. If this is the case, how can these texts possibly be subversive to chil-
dren?
Lurie's book is an opportunity missed. The argument set forth in the forward
and first chapter is an intriguing and promising one. Though Lurie introduces her
argument with children as readers, children quickly become irrelevant to other ar-
guments and disappear from the book. Lurie could have used her argument to dis-
cuss what is common across popular yet also diverse writers such as Dr. Seuss,
Roald Dahl, Beverly deary, and Jack Prelustsky, authors who are not always popu-
lar with critics. She might have used her argument to take on any number of critics
who argue from adult perspectives. That children will attempt to subvert any adult
institution which exercises power over them would be of little comfort to any group
or critic who sees literature as an opportunity to control the minds of children, and
Lurie could have taken on a wide variety of critics from traditional critics to socio-
political ones.
 254 Daniel D. Hade

However, Lurie's promising beginning becomes lost in the kind of esoteric criti-
cism which in the end explains very little about children's books and nothing about
the experience children or even adults might have in reading the work. The jacket,
the forward, and the first chapter promise a book which will explore subversive-
ness as a common element in the books children truly love to read. Instead we get
this argument wrapped around a collection of previously published essays. The im-
pression is that of stitching the subversion argument onto pieces which originally
were written for other purposes—the seams show.
Hunt's book shows the development of how scholars have understood literature
for children. He argues for understanding children's literature through its audi-
ence and especially through exploring how audience shapes the content and the
craft of the telling. He is able to hold this vision of children's literature throughout
the book by displaying scholars who show how such criticism is possible. Cham-
bers and Meek argue that there is something about the way authors of children's
literature craft their language which implies a child audience and even teaches the
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child how to read that particular form of literature. Paul asks us to consider the po-
litical relationships of the characters in literature for children, how characters over-
come or subvert power, and how these relationships in books might compare with
the political relationships between children and adults. From these various at-
tempts at making children relevant to criticism, Hunt can argue that children's lit-
erature is not lesser to adult literature, just different.
Though neither of these books is a developed theory of children's literature, they
provide clues as to how a theory of children's literature as children's literature might
be constructed. The theory would need to explain the particularity of children's lit-
erature and would begin by accounting for its readership. It would explore the cul-
ture of childhood and account for that culture in the literature of childhood. The
theory would make explicit issues of power, control, and liberation for the child
characters and the child reader. It would make clear how the author, through the
narrator, recruits the child as a reader and becomes the child's ally. The theory
would also show how a theory of children's literature is also a theory of reading,
that for a child reader to make sense of a particular book is to know how to read that
book. Above all, it would concern itself with the books children actually read and it
would explore how authors, through both form and content, make such books. If
theoretical work of this kind could be accomplished through a sustained, book-
length argument, it would do much to achieve the kind of academic justification
many scholars of children's literature, including those who have tried to explain
away children, wish the field of children's literature had.

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