Why Children's Literature?

It's a question I know I'll be asked by the committee, and something I'd better have an answer to in my proposal. Why not a group of short stories or a chapbook of poems? Why this? And then the most irksome question of all: How can something written for children be literature?

I've always wanted to write for children. But I don't think it's because I want to be tied down to a particular audience or genre. It's more because I don't. Children are way more open-minded than adults. They don't have parochial expectations of what you're allowed to do. They want to learn, not to categorize and control. So what you can write is wide open.

The late Maurice Sendak said, "I don't write for children. I write, and then someone says, 'That's for children' ... So I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think."

'Nuff said.

I'm also going to be asked why illustrations have to be included and how the committee can possibly judge artwork like that. So I've been doing research to come up with an answer for that too. Perry Nodelman is a critic of children's literature and professor at the University of Winnipeg, and in Touchstones: Reflections on the Best in Children's Literature he writes, "The stories in picture books are not told by words alone, with visual enhancements to delight the eye; they are stories told by words and pictures working in consort with each other" (2). You need both the word and the picture for the story to work. And you don't need to be an expert in both art and children's writing to evaluate them. Nodelman also says, "an illustration for a story is quite a different thing from a picture on its own. In fact, the primary purpose of the pictures in children's books is illustrational rather than aesthetic: they are there to help to tell stories, and their ability to excite a viewer's aesthetic sense is no more significant than the ability of well-chosen words to excite a reader's aesthetic sense" (1). So the real issue here is not art or writing, it's the story. And anyone who can appreciate the story should be able to ask the question of both the art and the writing: Is it working?

The last point I want to address is that, believe it or not, I've actually been asked why children's literature should be considered real literature. I think the much bigger question is why it shouldn't be. But anyway, if you want a real good answer to that, you should check out Radical Children's Literature: future visions and aesthetic transformations in juvenile fiction. Some have argued that children's lit is simplistic or conventional, mainly employed to teach and indoctrinate children. But I just don't see how you can say that. Children's lit has often been extremely subversive, edgy, and envelope-pushing. It talks about things adults are afraid to talk about, in ways that are innovative and beautiful.

I talked to Susan Abbotson, a professor who teaches children's literature at our very own Rhode Island College. (As a side point, if children's literature wasn't a legitimate field of literature, why would they offer an English class that teaches it?) She gave me some really good resources to look into, so the research continues and I literally have a stack of critical books on children's lit and illustration that I'm working my way through. I'll keep y'all updated on my findings.

Links to the books I referenced:
Touchstones: Reflections on the Best in Children's Literature
Radical Children's Literature