Why We Should Take Children's Lit Seriously

As a graduate student, I never took a course in children's literature. In fact, I don't remember even being offered the opportunity. I do remember hearing one professor speak disparagingly of "kiddie lit," which I now realize is a controversial but widely-used term, but I had no idea that this was a field of legitimate study (and indeed, some scholars argue that it isn't). Children's/YA lit has gained grudging acceptance in the academy and I've read some truly outstanding scholarship on the subject, but I've learned most of what I know about this field from much younger experts.

Birth of a Book Group
Two years ago, I was asked to put together a fantasy/science fiction book group for readers between the ages of 10 and 15. I figured I could draw on some of my old favorites--A Wrinkle in Time, The Chronicles of Narnia, Alice in Wonderland--but I wasn't up on any current fiction except Harry Potter, so I went to my public library to do some research. I casually asked a librarian if she could recommend a few books and was overwhelmed by her response--Pat led me all over the junior and teen sections, showered me with lists of award-winning books, and fired authors and titles at me until I begged for mercy. We sat down at a table as I feverishly took notes, stumbling over the spelling of unfamiliar names like Sabriel and Abarat. I wish I could remember which title Pat was talking about when a young woman playing a computer game nearby suddenly turned around and said fervently, "That is SUCH a great book!" That's how I met Julia.

Julia joined us at the table and started rattling off all the books I absolutely had to read. After a while, her sister, Katherine, wandered over to see what we were doing, and soon both girls were darting into the stacks and bringing back armfuls of their favorite books, breathlessly providing plot summaries and arguing over which were the best. I've spent my life among books and people who love them, but it had been a long time since I had heard anyone talk about reading with such passion and urgency. I knew I had to get this book group up and running. Julia and Katherine became the first two members.

Next month the Gryffindors will celebrate our two-year anniversary (yes, I live in fear of being sued for copyright infringement, but we love the name). In addition to facilitating the meetings, I publish two newsletters, The Denton Runes and Dragonbites, to recommend books and advertise special events at the Denton Public Library and at the Barnes & Noble store where the group meets.

Here are some of the things I've learned over the past two years:

1. We are living in a second Golden Age of children's/YA literature, fueled by but certainly not limited to the Harry Potter phenomenon. (The first Golden Age was in the 19th century--more about that later.) There's just a lot of good stuff out there right now, including a number of books with very strong female heroes. I plan to talk about many of these books in more detail in future posts, but let me just list, in no particular order, some of the most impressive authors I've read: Shannon Hale, Scott Westerfeld, Jonathan Stroud, Philip Pullman, Patricia Wrede, Maiya Williams, Louis Sachar, Carl Hiaasen, Justine Larbalestier, Terry Pratchett, J. K. Rowling, Orson Scott Card, Gail Carson Levine, Rick Riordan, Vivian Vande Velde, and Gabrielle Zevin.

2. "Children's literature" covers a lot of territory, everything from soft-cover picture books for infants to racy teen reads like the Gossip Girl series (think Sex and the City for the Clearasil crowd and you've got the idea). This tendency to lump everything together under one umbrella term leads to confusion about what is age-appropriate. Harry Potter and Eragon may be extremely popular, but they're NOT for six-year-olds.

3. Children's/YA lit has a much larger audience than you might think. The Gryffindors was intended for tweens and young teens, but we had so many adults attend the first few meetings that I changed the description to "readers of all ages." Some are parents who come with their children; some are aspiring children's authors or fans of a particular book; others are college-age readers who find that YA books are more thought-provoking and original than adult fiction.

4. They may be writing for young readers, but these authors aren't kidding around (sorry, I couldn't resist that one). They're taking on serious issues and creating real art.

• Cornelia Funke's Inkheart raises the issue of an author's moral responsibility for his or her creation.
• Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind confront the moral complexities of war.
• Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is a rewriting of Milton's Paradise Lost by way of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience and "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."

In her study Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children's Literature in America, Beverly Lyon Clark asserts that the study of children's lit raises some fascinating questions about canonicity, commodification, and censorship, but she gives us an even more important reason to take children's lit seriously: "The term kiddie lit captures our culture's ambivalence toward children and children's literature: dismissive? self-mocking? pejorative? ironical?" (2).

Our regard for children's lit has a lot to do with our regard for children, period.