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    TEXTO 4 Hateley (2018)

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    vases eta tumult ener ey ins publidhed 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN, and by Routledge ‘711 Third Averse, New York, NY 10017 Routledge isan imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group an informa busines (© 2018 selection and editorial mater, Bettina Kimmetling- Meibauer; ‘ndivideal chapters, the contsibutors "The right of Bettina Kmmerling- Meibauer to be identified atthe author of the editorial material, ‘and ofthe authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections "7 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, All sights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted of reproduced or uiied in any form ‘of by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafer invented, including photocopying and recording, ain any information storage of tetieva system, ‘without permission in writing from the publishers. ‘Tademark nots: Product or corporate names may be teademarks or registered tridematks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infinge British Libary Cutalsguing in-Publcation Dats A catalogue record for this book is sviable from the British Library Library of Congress Catslogingin-Publiation Data ‘Names: Keummeriing-Meibauer, Betina editor. Title-The Routledge companion to picturebooks / edited by Betina Keummeriing-Meibaver, Description: Milton Pav, Abingdon, Oxon : New York : Routledge, 2018. | Includes index. Identifier: LCN 2017016030, IBN 9781138853188 (hardback :alk. apes) | ISBN 9781317526399 (epub) | ISBN 9781317526605 (pai) | ISBN 9781317526382 (kindle) Subject: LOSH: Chuldren’s iterate—History and criticism, | Pictute books for childien—History | Picture books for childzen—Techaigue. | Picture books for childeen—Authorship. | CChildeen—Books and reading, | Narzative art | Graphic novels—History and eritcizm, | Mustrated books—History | Young adult literature—History and criticism, Chasifcation: LEC PN1009.A1 R695 2018 | DDC 002~ae23 LC record avilable at bape/ecn loc. gov/2017016030 ISBN: 978-1-138-85318-8 (Abi) ISBN: 978-1-315-72298-6 (ebk) “Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC 13 CANON PROCESSES AND PICTUREBOOKS Erica Hateley Canonical works are understood to have intrinsic and historical significance. They © artistic or aesthetic achievement according to prevailing norms, and transcend those norms to reach wider audiences. While the intrinsic value of a canonical work is often asserted on aesthetic grounds, such qualitative judgments are readily extended to abstract philosophical or metaphysical judgments, lofiiy if tenuously described as insight into the human condition (Bloom 1994). Many literary scholars have a paradoxical relationship with the concept of a canon: on the one hand, we desire a tradition and an aesthetically rewarding reading experience to form the core of our prac~ tice; on the other hand, we are suspicious of norms becoming normative, and of every inclusion entailing exclusions. While canonical thinking survives within professional reading communities it often does so in the breach: today, itis the new norm to understand the canon as always-already problematic, but this means that canonicity remains a productive force within children’s literature studies Children’s literature is understood by many people — pethaps especially those who remain committed to the idea of a stable and secure literary canon — as ‘lesser’ or ‘simpler’ than general literature, This may be because the literary and sociocultural values that have long been associated with the literary canon are logically distinct from (are even defined by distinction from) child- hood, inexperience, lack of education, or immaturity. Even within children’s literature studies, there occasionally persists a notion that picturebooks are for the youngest of readers, and are thus somehow simpler than novels. Thus, it could be said that from a canonical perspective, picture- books are doubly marginalized as a ‘lesser’ form of a ‘lesser’ form of literary art (see Kimmerling. Meibauer 2003: 17) This chapter takes for granted that neither children’s literature in general nor picturebooks in particular are ‘lesser’ than any other form of literature. It considers how such hierarchies might oper- ate within the field of picturebooks. Pierre Bourdieu's sense of field’ refers to the many institutions, practices, dispositions, and actors who shape the norms and possibilities of cultural production: mplify an At stake in the literary field, and more specifically in the field of criticism is, among other things, the authority to determine the legitimate definition of the literary work and, by extension, the authority to define those works which guarantee the configurations of the literary canon. Johnson 1993: 20 128 Canon processes and picturebooks ‘The field extends beyond criticism, though, and includes sites and actors as varied as places of exhibition such as galleries and museums; institutions of consecration like academies and salons; institutions for “the reproduction of producers” themselves such as schools and universities; and other, specialized agents, includ~ ing dealers, critics and art historians. The vast array of official forms of recognition includes government arts councils, literary prizes, academic exegeses, and authorized biographies, not to mention translations and publication in multiple editions Kolbas 2001: 62 Even this list fails to take into account the popular cultural means by which canonicity is performed and extended. Not only are picturebooks translated fiom one language to another, but often from cone medium to another as they are adapted for films, plays, video games, and increasingly, for digital applications. The picturebook creations of HA. Rey, Jean de Brunhoff, Maurice Sendak, and Dick Bruna anchor massive merchandising and multimedia industries. Nonetheless, while popular esteem retains potency, canons are tually about ‘quality’ rather than popularity Defining canon ‘The scholarly ‘canon’ derives etymologically from the Greek kanon, meaning ‘rod’ or ‘law! and insti- tutionally from the religious practices of textual scholarship which designated particular books of the Bible as genuine for the purposes of Church dogma (“Canon” entry in OED). As a concept canonicity is thus concerned with ideals and norms, and is a “standard of judgement or authority; test, criterion, means of discrimination” (“Canon”). Canon is also connected with institutional and cultural structures of power, as judgment and discrimination must be wielded by someone who has authority within a particular institutional or cultural structure. There is a close relation between the character of an institution and the needs it satisfies by validat- ing texts and interpretations of them. The desire to have a canon, more or less unchanging, and to protect it against charges of inauthenticity or low value (as the Church protected. Hebrews, for example, against Luther) is an aspect of the necessary conservatism of a learned institution, Kermode 1979: 77 Just as churches needed an agreed-upon biblical canon to anchor their hermeneutic and institutional practices, secular literary scholars required a textual canon to anchor their hermeneutic and institu- tional practices ‘With the rise of English studies through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, canonicity came to apply to particular groups of sacred secular texts ~ a contradictory phrase which reflects the extent to which liberal humanist literary scholarship shared the structures and practices of their religious forebears, Canon came to designate the genuine works of a particular author, as with the {still occasionally contested) list of plays written by William Shakespeare, More importantly, canon also came to apply to specific works of literature which formed the core of disciplinary knowledge and practice in English studies, Hypothetically, the canon is a body of literary works which ~ if read according to the institutional and hermeneutic norms of the discipline ~ would provide one with a knowledge and understanding of the essential history and highest aesthetic achievements of literature perse.In turn, the acquisition and exercise of such institutional and hermeneutic norms would usher the reading subject into a hallowed position of authority both dependent on and derived from the survival of that canon, 129 Erica Hateley Canons as productive and problematic ‘The cultural authority which derives from mastery of and servitude to the literary canon is closely tied up with academe, Unsurprisingly, as the product of a profession comprising largely middle-class, classically trained men, the (somewhat stable) literary canon that emerged and was maintained in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in English studies was itself populated largely by middle- clas, classically trained male writers. The lives and works of canonical authors and academics alike appeared to be organized around a narrow set of shared or desired cultural and social values. Hence, the shorthand for the canon;"“dead, white European males” (Kolbas 2001; 37) ‘Within academe, what came to be called the canon wars were precipitated by increased partici- pation in higher education by previously subordinated or excluded groups, Just as frst-wave femi- nism and civil rights movements enabled the opening up of social and educational opportunities to women and non-white people, so too did the literatures by and for these newly enfranchised groups become possible tools of education and objects of study. The new citizens of academia observed that the Western literary canon could be interpreted as an exemplification and tool of the same cultural hegemony that had previously made academe the province of a narrow and privileged social cohort. Defenders of the canon not only agreed but also argued for a continuation of such narrowness: "lit- crary criticism, as an art, always was and always will be an elitist phenomenon” (Bloom 1994: 17) Debates about canons and canon formation tend to split between, crudely, the aesthetic and the political. The aesthetic model of canonicity emphasizes intrinsic textual values, and sees the canon as an effective tool for the preservation and continuation of cultural heritage. The political model of canonicity emphasizes the social and ideological production, circulation, and reception of texts ~ including canonicity itself as a tool thereof ~ and critiques the role of the canon as a tool for the preservation and continuation of a particular culture heritage. Canon wars are fought less over the idea of a canon per se than over who or what is included in a given canon, and who or what deter- mines such inclusion, Canon wars and children’s literature ‘The incursion of children’s literature into English studies could be seen at part of the canon wars themselves: the inclusion of previously excluded or under-represented populations and works which challenged the Dead White Male syndrome of the Western Canon. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed both the canon wars ~ most visibly fought along lines of gender and race — and the migration of children’s literature studies into English programs (while never abandoning its diseiplinary roots in pedagogical and library studies). What is true of children’s literature studies is also true within chil- dren’ lnterature studies: canons are contentious. Children's literature scholars find themselves engaged in a range of (somewhat contradictory) canonical enterprises. Children’s literature can be legitimized as a field by integrating children's literature into the traditional canon and constructing a canon of children’s literature. However, such strategies are necessarily subject to the same possibilities and problematics of any canon, The chil- dren’: literary canon is further complicated by its long history outside the academy, its affective canon or"paracanon” (Stimpson 1990): those books which are loved, cherished, and passed from generation to generation within domestic cultures. Even the most straightforward enterprises of canonicity are complicated when applied to pic turebooks. While the Modern Language Asociation (MLA) volume Teaching Children’s Literature: Issues, Pedagogy, Resources (1992) includes material about picturebooks, its essays about canonicity remain firmly focused on traditions of folktales and novels for young people. For example, in an extay called “Canon Formation: A Historical and Psychological Perspective,” J.D. Stahl calls for “a process of discovery and analysis concerning which works serve best to exemplify the cruxes of children’s literature” (1992: 20), but makes no mention of picturebooks. Presumably, this omission derives from 130 Canon processes and picturebooks wider norms of literary canonicity than from anything that inheres in the field of childzen’s litera ture itself. In 2005, The Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature: The Traditions in English (Zipes et al 2005) was added to Norton’s juggernaut of pedagogical canonicity. Comparing it with other Norton anthologies, however, Karin Westman finds that “the organizing principle is form rather than the pas- sage of time. As a result, it is challenging to build a picture, let alone a canon, of children’ literature’ (2007; 284), Picturebooks are one of the forms given a section within the Norton anthology, and readers can see a chronological canon for picturebooks there ranging ftom Heinrich Hoffmann to Lane Smith but, as Westman suggests, may not readily see connections between picturebooks and children’ literature more generally let alone the wider literary tradition, Norton’s canon of picture. books does exemplify the paradoxes of canon formation: every inclusion indexes many exclusions, it serves as an introduction to and overview of a particular literary tradition, and it invites any number of criticisms along both aesthetic and ideological lines. Canon processes The competing and complementary logics of canonicity described as aesthetics (that which isin the work) and politics ( cor more simply text and context, aso inform the ‘symptom of canonical reputation. Tt i useful to think in terms of eanon processes ~ what Ken= neth Kidd calls “canonical architecture” (2007: 169) and Deborah Stevenson calls canonical “accel rants” (2009: 118) — tinan committing to either an aestitetic or a sociopolitical perspective on how texts become canonized. Canon processes all seek (consciously or not) to celebrate something inher cent within a literary work. However, by virtue of deeming such celebration necessary, aso suggest that that ‘something’ may not be inherent, of at least not inherently valuable in and of itself. Rather, canonical processes are cumulative, and confer that which they claim to recognize: canoniciy. vhich imbricates the work), Prizing ‘The most commonplace and recognizable processes of ‘legitimizing’ picturebooks are by way of awards and ‘best of'lists.As Kidd notes, prizing traffics in the cultural logic of canonicity with “the selection process an ostensible simulation of the test of time” (2007: 169). Over time, prestigious prizes accrue metrics of longevity and quality, particularly if their designation of instant classics is confirmed by long-standing interest in or influence of a winning title, In turn, such prizing strate- ses accredit the arbiters as well as the chosen books. When national prizes for children’s literature are instituted, companion prizes/categories for illustration or picturcbooks soon follow. This could be seen asa continued subordination of picturebooks to prose literature (a consequence of canoni- cal traditions in the wider literary field), or more productively, might be interpreted as a sign of the impossibility of taking seriously children’s literature as an art form without including picturebooks. In the United States, the Newbery Medal was instituted in 1921 and was joined by the Caldecott ‘Medal in 1938. In the United Kingdom, the Carnegie Medal was established in 1936 followed by the Greenaway Medal in 1955. Australia’s national awards for children’s literature, administered by the Children’s Book Council of Australia, first offered a general award in 1946 and added an award for picturebooks in 1955 (see Hateley 2017). While each award is marked by specific agendas or mandates, they share an intention to identify high quality picturcbooks. They thus construct canons of picturcbooks and also potentially contribute to wider canons of literature in their respective nations International prizes have followed suit: the International Board on Books for Young People’s prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award for writing was first given in 1956, and since 1966 there has also been a Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration, The Bologna Children’s Book Fair, first held in 1963, confers BolognaRagarzi Awards to picturebook illustrators from around the world, More recently, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (currently the richest prize in children’s a Erica Hateley literature), which is not exclusively focused on picturebook art, nonetheless gave two awards in its first year (2003): one to a writer and one to a picturebook exeator. “Even this small selection of national and international prizes for picturebooks indicates not only that there is a serious industry of ‘accrediting’ picturebooks as canonical art, but that this industry. has been accelerating through the latter half of the twentieth century: This is in keeping with prizing. culture more broadly: but also with the increased presence of children’s literature within the academy. Prize culture also serves to reinforce the connections between literary history, reception, and evalua~ tion as intertwined mechanics of canonicity: Key early figures such as John Newbery and Randolph Caldecott are remembered in the prestigious awards, In turn, award winners are not infrequently used as the exemplary corpus for content analysis and criticism in educational and literary studies. Professional readers and readings ‘There are a number of genres that align with canon formation inchiding lists and anthologies of best, great, essential, or classic children’s books. Probably because illustrations are expensive and complicated to reproduce, it is less common to see anthologies of picturcbooks, although there are any number of illustrated collections of historical or classic children’s literature — frequently called “Treasuries,” signaling the multiple forms of capital and symbolic value being circulated within and by them. Despite Peter Hollindale’s assertion that “only an academic madman (not, perhaps, too rare a creature) would dream of preparing a detailed scholarly edition of The Tle of Peter Rabbit (1993: 24), there has been at least one sustained scholarly treatment of a picturebook in Philip Net’ The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (2007), In recent decades, a proliferation of scholarly editions of children’s books; biographies of picturebook creators, editors, and publishers monographs, edited collections, and journal articles about picturebooks has marked the increasing canonicity of picturebooks ‘One influential scholarly intervention into the canon of picturebooks was the Children’s Lite erature Association's ‘Touchstones project. In 1980, the Association formed a committee to explore “Developing a Canon in Children’s Literature” and in the years immediately following produced a canonical list (1982-1983) and then three volumes of criticism called Teuchstones: Reftections on the Best in Children’s Literature. The third volume was dedicated to picturebooks, and Perry Nodelman’s introduction exemplifies the tensions which characterize any thoughtful canonical undertaking in the post-canon wars era, On the one hand, there is the desire for a shared and authoritative point of | reference and tradition for scholars to build on. On the other hand, Nodelman is clearly conscious of the cultural myopia and elitism which so often accompanies canon-making: in naming touchstones the ChLA did not intend to make pronouncements from on high, to prescribe for certain and forever which children’s books are to be considered the impor- tant ones. In fact, the intention was to open discussion rather than to close it. Nodelman 1989: 3 ‘With some hindsight, ChLA’s canon of picturebooks seems at once intuitive and restricted. They include pioneering figures such as Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane, and Arthur Rackham, but the list overall tends ~ unsurprisingly, given the majority population of the ChLA ~ towards an Anglo- phone and predominantly North American tradition, But then, so too did Barbara Bader’ influential contribution to constructing a tradition (and thus arguably a canon) of picturebooks which both refiected and shaped the rapidly consolidating field of children’s literature scholarship in English, American Picurebooks from Noah's Ark to the Beast Within (1976). Equally logically, histories of picture books such as Brian Alderson’ Sing « Song of Sixpence: The English Picture-Book Tradition and Randolph Caldecott (1986) and Joyce Irene Whalley and Tessa Chester's A History of Children’s Book Mlustation (1988) advanced British histories that articulated national traditions and fed international canons, 132 ‘Canon processes and picturebooks European histories and criticism of picturebooks also appeared in recent decades, and scholars of several national traditions of picturebooks are well-served by them (see Doderer and Miller 1973 Birkeland 1993; Christensen 2003; Druker 2008; de Bodt 2015) ‘What all of this ‘canonical architecture’ shares is its mediating function, These canon processes make visible the competing and complementary interests of the professional communities which ‘use’ children’s literature, including librarians, teachers, and scholarly critics. In practice, they are all mutually constitutive and affirming, Prizes are named for publishers and given by librarians prize-winning books are then used by scholars as core samples for content analysis, teaching, and. the production of professional readings. Prizes, teaching, and analyses encourage publishers to keep books in print; parents, teachers, and librarians purchase award-winning books, and so on, John Guillory’s extended critique of the mutually constitutive practices of canonicity and edu- cation, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (1993), makes a compelling case that the machinery of canonicity is connected with education as a system of social and cultural reproduction, Guillory argues that “the distinction between the canonical and the noncanonical can be seen not as the form in which judgments are actually made about individual works, but as an effect of the syllabus as an institutional instrument” (30). Thus, the most powerful marker of increasing canonicity for picturebooks might be that unlike many other types of literature, they are now present in all stages of formal (and informal) education from early childhood to postgraduate university education. Apicturebook canon of the moment? Having rehearsed the complexities and contradictions (perhaps even impossibilties?) of a cmon of picturebooks, the temptation to take a scholarly risk is great ~ to follow in the footsteps of the canonists who have come before, and to offer a canon of one’s own. And so, a gambit: reflecting on canonical processes and picturebooks today suggests the following figures (in alphabetical onder) as a concentrated canon of picturebook makers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century: Mit- sumasa Anno, Anthony Browne, Roberto Innocenti, Maurice Sendak, Shaun Tan, and Tomi Ungerer. ‘This is not to naively assert a consistent nor even universal canonicity of these figures. Rather, itis to suggest that these picturcbook creators offer usefil case studies (something which is beyond the purview of this chapter) for the flow of aesthetic, socio-cultural, economic, and associated symbolic capitals in an international context. t-may be that in the early twenty-first century, Maurice Sendak is the canonical picturebook creator, as even a brief consideration of the canonical markers accrued by him and his best-known picturebook Where the Wild Things Are (1963) shows. From 1966-2014, a significant collection of Sendak's original artwork and associated materials were deposited with and curated by the Rosen- bach Museum in Philadelphia. There have been numerous exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world organized around Sendak's life and work (“Maurice Sendak Collection”). In 1988 a special exhibition dedicated to Sendak was mounted at the Bologna Children's Book Fair as part of its twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations. In 2013, a large touring exhibition was mounted to mark both the fiftieth anniversary of Where the Wild Things Are and the death of Sendak; Mat- rice Sendak: The Memorial Exhibition is scheduled to tour the United States into 2019 and perhaps beyond ("Sendak Memorial Exhibition”). Such markers of national and international esteem have been matched by book awards. Where the Wild Things Are received the 1964 Caldecott Medal, and Sendak would later be awarded the National Book Award {in 1982, for Outside Over There (1981)}. Internationally, he won the 1970 Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration and was the illus- trator who won one of the frst two Astrid Lindgren Memorial Awards ever given, in 2003. Sendak’s works have been adapted for stage, television, and cinema; Where the Wild Things Are has had both an animated and a live-action adaptation, Perhaps more canonically significant is the extent to which Sendak’s work has been taken up by other picturebook creators. Isabelle Niéres has described the 133 Erica Hateley sways that intertextual and interpictorial allusions in picturebooks constitute a creative history of the genre, and nates that: it should not be difficult to compose a collective homage to Maurice Sendak from the picturebooks written and illustrated by Etienne Delessert (Story number 1), "Tomi Ungerer (The Beat of Monsieur Racing), Mitsumasa Anno (U.S.A. Susan Vatley (‘The Monster Bed), ‘Claude Ponti (Aadéle et la Pell), Mem Fox andVivienne Goodman (Guess What?), Beatrice Poncelet (T’auis tombé), and Gwen Strauss and Anthony Browne (The Night Shimmy). Nidres 1995: 55 These could be seen as creative canonical architecture: picturebook makers designating a canon of their chosen form. In turn, many of the examples cited by Niéres were produced by picturebook illustrators who are themselves canonical figures, confirming that to engage in a canonical enterprise is often simaltancously a gesture of self-canonization. In Making Mischief: A Maurice Sendak Appreciation (2009), Gregory Maguire notes Sendak’s oun tendency towards intertextual play and “visual conversations” with other artists (5). Making Mischief is just one of several recent books which both observe and extend Sendak’s work as a reflection and extension of much wider traditions. While Sendak’s long career was marked by a number of critical and popular marks of esteem, it was the 1980s — the decade of canon wars and consolidating chil- dren’ literature scholarship — that saw an escalation in Sendak’s canonicity. Selma Lanes published a large illustrated account of Sendak’s work in 1980, The Art of Maurice Sendak (in 2003, this was updated and extended by Tony Kushner’ The Art of Maurice Sendak: From 1980 t0 the Present). As mentioned earlier, the 1980s saw Sendak receive a National Book Award in the United States and enjoy Guest of Honor status and an exhibition dedicated to his work at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 1988."The same year, Sendak published a collection of his own essays about children’s literature, Caldecott and Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures, and further located himself within a canoni- cal tradition, The scholarly industry of Sendak analysis, and thus of cumulative canonicity, has accelerated in recent years. In early 2015, the MLA International Bibliography listed over one hundred separate works of criticism dealing with Sendak’s work, Following Sendak’s death in 2012, the NewYork Times obitu- ary called him “the most important children's book artist of the 20th century” (Fox 2012). Since then, three major scholarly monuments to Sendak’s canonicity have appeared: Leonard Marcus edited ‘Maurice Sendak: A Celebration ofthe Artist and His Work in 2013 (a companion volume for an exhibi- tion curated by Justin G. Schiller and David MV. Dennis); The Comics Jounal published an eighty. page interview with Sendak (Groth 2013), along with essays about Sendak’s life and work; and, in 2014, the highly esteemed literary studies journal PMLA included a tribute to Maurice Sendak with contributions from eight scholars Perhaps the greatest indicator of Sendak’s canonical status is the extent to which many of these rarkers can operate without reference to Sendak's actual work. Like other great canonical artists, it is possible to recognize the cultural value of Sendak’s name without necessarily having direct know! ‘edge of his work: in this sense, he may well be the Shakespeare or the Dickens of picturebooks. Like other canonical figures, of course, to know only the reputation is to miss out on wonderful reading experience, and the greatest achievement of Where the Wild Things Are is the book itself, Sendak and the others on this chapter's canonical short list have created books that exemplify what it is to be a picturebook:a complex and complete (whic is not to say difficult or closed) narra~ tive or readerly experience which is understood most filly when visual and verbal elements are each attended to (both separately and together). Further, these visual and verbal elements will atain high aesthetic levels, and will both reflect and shape their histories and contexts of production. They may be iconoclastic, but it will be an iconoclasm borne of mastery. They will speak to readers of many ages, and from many times and places. And often, they will do so in just thi 134 Canon processes and picturebooks ‘The works of Mitsumasa Anno, Anthony Browne, Roberto Innocenti, Maurice Sendak, Shaun ‘Tan, and Tomi Ungerer are useful for thinking about canon processes in picturebooks, with an eye to both the national and the international, to the aesthetic and the political, and to both child and adult audiences: their books ate great artistic achievements; all are firmly rooted in specific historical or cultural contexts, but also transcend them; all access the general through the particular, and thus create unique work which is accessible by many. Even this very short lis, though, reveals biases on the part of the listmaker. Even as these picturebook makers may have experienced varied forms of eul- tural and social marginalization connected with their particular cultural, national, religious, sexual, or other subjectivities, the list privileges the Global North, has only male artists, and is lacking in ethnic or cultural diversity: The same patriarchal and Anglocentric logics that have shaped canon formation historically seem also to have shaped, consciously or not, the maker of this short canonical list. It is difficult to engage in canon formation without recourse to existing canon processes, especially when those processes were used as measures for inclusion on the lis. ‘The figures chosen are obviously canonical when viewed through the lens of canonical architee~ ture, accelerants, or markers. Pro-canonists would presumably suggest that such markers are quite rightly attached to great works of art, Crities of canons might suggest that nothing attracts one canonical marker like already having accrued such a marker, and that the literary field depends on such mediations to constitute and justify its own existence. The commonalities of canonical markers accrued by these picturebook creators should not be mistaken for a one-size-fitsall recipe for canon icity, More importantly, they should not allow us to be blinded to other creators’ works, or to other ‘works of the canonized. The great risk of consensus canons is critical apathy: a taking-for-granted that 2 work is “great,” that it rewards close (Fe)reading, or that it has something new to tell us about ourselves or the world in which we live, rather than undertaking a close and conscious (re)reading of the books themselves, The paradox of desiring and distrusting canons should lead us to farther research into particular histories of canonization and decanonization; the effects of crossover picturebooks, artists’ books, and picturcbooks for adults on the literary field; the prevalence of fic~ tion over nonfiction in canonized works: negotiations between national and international contexts: and the many and varied ways in which canonicity exerts pressures both productive and problematic. in picturebook cultures. References Alderson, Bran (1986) Sing 4 Song fr Sinpene: The English Picwre Book Tadton and Randolph Caldeot, Cas- bridge: Cambridge University Press Bader, Bubara (1976) Amerzan Picurbaoks rom Noahs Ark tthe Beast Within, New York: Macrollan Birkeland, Tone, and Storass, Feoyds (1993) Den nore biltioks, Oslo: Cappel. loom, Harold (1994) The Histon: Canon: The Books and Schaal ofthe Ager, Oslando, FL: Hlarcour, Brace Canon, n,” Oxford Engloh Dicionan: Christensen, Nina (2003) Den dansk hledbyg, 1950-1999, Roskilde: Roskilde Universitetforag. dle Boat, Saskia (2015) De verelden: Nederlandse Boks in dette eeu, Nijmegen: Vai Doderer Klaus, and Miller, Helmut (ed) (1973) Das Bildebuch: Geshe und Enturclung. Weinheim: Bel Dauker, Elina (2008) Medenismens bilder Den modem bilderoken i Norden, Stockholm: Makadam Fox, Margalit 2012) “Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies a 83” New York Times (May 8, 2012), wwwenytimes.com/2012/05/09/books/maucice-sendak-childeene-author dies-t-83.htr, Groth, Gary (2013) “Maurice Sendak Interview!" The Conic Journal 302: 30-109 Guillory John (1998) Cultural Capital The Problem of Literary Canon Formation, Chicago: University of Chicago Pres. Hazcley Erica (2017) “Visions and Values‘The Childrens Book Couseil of Australia’ Prizing of Picturebooks in the Twenty-First Century” in Bettina Kiimmerking- Meibauer and Anja Mille (ed) Caton Constitution and Canon Change in Childe’ Ltatre, New York: Routledge, 205-221 Hollindale, Petct (1993) “Pete Pan The Text and the Myth” Childe’ Ltoatre in Eduation 24.1: 19-30. Johnson, Randal (ed) (1998) “Editors Introduction,” The Fuld of Calan Production: Essays on Art and Literature by Pictre Bourdieu, New York: Columbia Univensity Pres, 1993, 1-25. 135 Erica Hateley Kermode, Frank (1979) “Institutional Control of Interpretation, Sulmapundi 43: 72-86 Kidd, Kenneth (2007) “Prisiog Childrens Literature: The Case of Newbery Gold” Children’ Litewture 35: 166-190, Kolbas, E. Dean (2001) Crit! Theory and the Liteary Canon, Boulder, CO:Westview Kammesing-Meibaser, Bettina (2003) Kindetitetur Kanonbidung und iterarzche Pertung, Stuttgart and Weimar ‘Meter. Lanes, Selma G. (1980) The Art of Mauvce Sendak, New York: Abradale Press/Harry N. Abrams Maguite, Gregory (2009) Making Misch’ Maurice Sendak Appreciation, New York: Wiliam Morow. Marcus, Leonard S. (ed) (2013) Maurie Sendak. Celeation of the Artist and Is Work, Neve York: Abrams “Maurice Sendak Collection,” The Rosenbah of the Fre Library of Philadelphia, warwrosenbach.org/learn/

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