In this book edition of her doctoral dissertation, Sanne Parlevliet examines the dynamics between Dutch adaptations of literary classics for children in 1850-1950 and the historical and social contexts within which they were created. Central to her approach is the flexible nature of adaptations, which take up a position between ancient source texts and contemporary readers. In order to examine the nature and the function of the adaptations, Parlevliet carries out a poetical, institutional and ideological critical textual analysis.

An introductory chapter describes the interpretation given to the subjective notions ‘adaptation’ and ‘classic’ and a motivation for the choice of period. Parlevliet stresses the historical embeddedness of her research and situates it within a tradition of “historically oriented research of adaptations’ as opposed to ‘text oriented research of adaptations” (27-28). The latter would focus upon the literary adaptation strategies without taking into account the social context of the adaptations. In my opinion, the distinction between the two approaches is not as rigid as her opposition implies. It does, however, pin-point her position and the function of the analysis of the literary strategies within this research. Literary analysis is not a goal as such, but a means to highlight the interpretation given to changing notions as child, education, children’s literature and literary masterpieces in a certain place, within a certain period. The fact that children’s versions of literary classics are modelled on these views gives them a contemporary character and, Parlevliet argues, is one reason why literary classics are able to maintain their central position within the changing field of children’s literature. To describe this process, Parlevliet applies the characteristics of ‘written folklore’ (Assmann, Schriftliche Folklore) which serves as a framework for analysing the changing place of the adaptations in the following chapters.

The ‘classic texts’ which Parlevliet discusses are “works of world literature which were originally written for adults, but frequently retold for children” (13).¹ This definition is the result of an elaborate analysis of the literary poetics concerning adaptations (Chapter Two) as expressed in reading lists, reflections and fore- and afterwords. Roughly sketched, the analysis of these sources reveals that the views on adapting literary works take the child reader more and more into account, although pedagogical concerns such as literary, ethical and aesthetic education remain of primary importance until the mid twentieth century. This interesting evolution serves as a motivation for examining the period 1850-1950, as does the position of adaptations of classics for children within the book market in this period. The institutional analysis (Chapter Three) indicates that the production of adaptations increases, despite the growing supply of ‘original’ children’s literature written in Dutch in 1850-1950. By analysing the publishing strategies and the popularity of adaptations of classics, Parlevliet points out how her text corpus can be seen as a form of written folklore as to the way it is transmitted and the status of the author. Especially the adaptations by unknown authors had the fleeting character of written folklore, as they were easily replaced by new versions of the same story.

Parlevliet intelligently uses the poetical and institutional analyses as a means to delimit the elaborate corpus of retellings of classics to enable an in-depth textual analysis. The first selection includes the literary works which were most commonly characterised as classics in the general debate on adapting world literature for children. On the basis of the production figures, the four most frequently retold stories are selected for textual analyses: Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Till Eulenspiegel and Reynard the Fox.

In Chapter Four, Parlevliet gives an overview of the most frequently used adaptation strategies, thus pursuing the ‘openness’ and variable form of the retellings as written folklore. The analysis of these changes reveals the temporality of retellings; they were altered under influence of changing images of the child constructed by adults. Ideas on the child’s literary competence are visible through, for example, the use of language and adaptation of elements of cultural context. The addition of suspense and humour reveals adult’s ideas on the literary preferences of children and deleted passages in the adaptations of the stories of Robinson, Till, Gulliver and Reynard lay bare the values and norms they considered suitable for child readers.

The influence of the historical context is pursued in more detail in the following three chapters where specific changes in the meaning of the stories are analysed. It is clear that these ideologically critical analyses demand a certain amount of flexibility and intuition from the researcher. In accordance with the relevance for the examined aspect, other texts and adaptation strategies are more elaborately discussed than others. Chapter Five describes the way pedagogical ideas on the formation of character influenced especially the story of Robinson Crusoe, which shifts from a cautionary tale on the consequences of disobedience to a positive example of self-reliance. The story of Reynard is central to the discussion of the representation of family life in Chapter Six, as the cheating fox is transformed into an ideal father and husband in several adaptations. The ideological messages on children’s relations with animals, central in Chapter Seven, remain to a large extent implicit; passages where animals are badly treated were deleted and positive relations between animals and humans added. These analyses show the socialising function of the adaptations and reveal an increasing attention for the preferences of child readers.

In the concluding chapter, Parlevliet summarises the discussed aspects of the position of adaptations of literary classics in 1850-1950 and stresses their flexible nature. The fact that they change rapidly under influence of contemporary ideological and pedagogical considerations, and of ‘original’ children’s literature ascertained the central position of literary classics in children’s literature.

This dissertation offers a detailed and pertinent analysis of the place of adaptations of classical texts in Dutch children’s literature in 1850-1950 in which theoretical aspects and rich source material fluently merge in a highly intelligent structure. A clarification of the general concepts is followed by an analysis of the poetical and institutional context, as a necessary framework and a selection procedure for the textual analysis. Moreover, Meesterwerken met ezelsoren provides valuable insights to the research of adaptations as an important section within the field of children’s literature. The description of adaptations as written folklore is one of the strongest aspects of this dissertation. Parlevliet application of the concept is innovative and, as she herself rightly points out, a matter to be pursued in further research.

Sylvie Geerts, Ghent University

Work Cited

Assmann, Aleida, ‘Schriftliche Folklore. Zur Entstehung und Funktion eines Überlieferungstyps’[Written folklore. On the origin and function of a type of tradition]. In: Jan Assmann, Aleida Assmann and Christof Hardmeier red., Schrift und Gedächtnis. Beiträge zur Archäologie der Literarische Kommunikation. 1983. Munchen: Wilhelm Fink. pp. 175-193.

Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth explores the effects of ideology on the English-to-German translation of children’s literature under the socialist regime of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Drawing on Eagleton’s reflections about literary canon, Thomson-Wohlgemuth points out that there is a definite connection “between the literary output in East Germany and the doctrine maintained by the small group of people holding the power in that time” (225).

In the first three chapters, Thomson-Wohlgemuth demonstrates that party ideology was omnipresent and permeated the publishing industry at all levels. She makes clear that there was only one ideological view acceptable to the regime, namely Marxism-Lenism. In the first chapter, she analyzes the historical context of children’s literature in the GDR. In contrast to the marginalization of children’s literature in western capitalist countries, in the GDR children’s literature had a status equivalent to that of literature for adults. Children’s literature was to be seen as a privileged medium to educate children in communist ideology – “literary writing was regarded as a political articulation” (226) – which resulted in a predominantly “didactic literature” (226). A very famous author representing this ideological position is Alex Wedding, who started her career in the Weimarer Republic. In Ede and Unku (1931), she emphasized the idea of preparing children for a communist and socialist society.

After giving an overview of the highly political and ideological function of children’s literature in the GDR, in Chapter Two Thomson-Wohlgemuth analyzes the institutional context of the publishing scene. She highlights two publishing houses for children’s literature which gained a very important role in the GDR: the Kinderbuch-Verlag and the Verlag Neues Leben. The fundamental questions at the centre of her study are concerned with the ideological functions of translations of children’s literature in the GDR, how and under which circumstances it underwent censorship and how they fit in the canon of children’s literature in the GDR which was dominated by the educational interest, emphasizing realistic depictions of positive heroes.

However, children’s literature had not only a very important ideological role, it was partly used as a medium to articulate critical messages between the lines, mainly in using allegories and mythological or fantastic genres, like the author Christa Kozik did. As the GDR emphasized the genre of realistic children’s literature, other genres published in the era prior to the building of the Berlin Wall and the total separation between East and West in 1961 were underrepresented. The political function of literature for young readers explains why indigenous children’s books took centre stage and why translated English-language books existed rather at the fringes of the literary system.

According to Thomson-Wohlgemuth, English-to-German translations had two functions: first, to supplement those genres or text types which were rare in children’s literature produced within the GDR. And second, to translate books which presented similar ideologies to those of the GDR. This meant a kind of censorship that was multi-faceted and by no means limited to superficial textual changes. Translated books, including English-language books, had the task of supplying readers with the appropriate ‘correct’ insights. Much of the literature produced in capitalist societies “was rejected out of hand and books that were accepted were ‘reinterpreted’ for the socialist reader (226). Drawing on Lefevere’s theory of rewriting and patronage, rewriting in the East German context manifested itself in the “selection of ideologically suitable texts leading to the creation of a socialist literary canon. (…) The most visible form of rewriting took the form of text modifications, which were performed on the manuscripts during the translation process” (227). For instance, religious or violent references were nearly always eliminated from the texts.

The study clearly points out, that children’s literature in the GDR emphasized education, especially in the first period of the GDR. Popular genres like comics were only allowed if they purveyed the ‘right’ ideology. But one should keep in mind, that in the period immediately after Second World War, literary institutions in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD) also criticised comics as ‘shmutz und schund’. During the cold war, both the GDR and the BRD, tried to establish moral values through children’s literature, promoting pedagogical and didactic views on children’s literature. One could argue that, in the 1950s, the BRD also had a “literature with a mission” (228). Thomson-Wohlgemuth consequently draws attention to the fact that censorship is not limited to socialist East Germany or other totalitarian states, but may be extrapolated to all societies. In her conclusion, she considers the various forms censorship can take and questions whether there is a “moral border” between “acceptable omissions and unacceptable ones” (231). Unlike totalitarian states, pluralist societies operate on the principles of self-determination within a free market structure. Yet, as Thomson-Wohlgemuth argues, the principle of making profit can also be considered a type of censorship, as it has great impact on which books are published.

Sabine Berthold

Humboldt University of Berlin

]]> http://www.irscl.com/president/2010/08/review-translation-under-states-control-books-for-young-people-in-the-german-democratic-republic/feed/ 0 http://www.irscl.com/president/2010/08/review-what-do-you-see-international-perspectives-on-children%e2%80%99s-book-illustration/ http://www.irscl.com/president/2010/08/review-what-do-you-see-international-perspectives-on-children%e2%80%99s-book-illustration/#comments Sun, 22 Aug 2010 12:07:19 +0000 dale http://www.irscl.com/president/?p=268 What do you see? International Perspectives on Children’s Book Illustration. Edited by Jennifer Harding and Pat Pinsent. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. 258 pages. £ 49.99 (hardback); £ 25.99 (paperback).

From Sweden to South Africa, from Australia to Cyprus – the range of countries covered in this collection of 22 essays on picture books is astonishing. Based on the fourteenth annual conference held by the British division of IBBY in conjunction with Roehampton University, this volume boasts authors no less heterogeneous than the countries they report on: researchers in children’s literature, but also illustrators, teachers and librarians of children’s books. Moreover, these authors employ a diversity of approaches which range across methodologies utilized for art history and literary studies, qualitative research into visual literacy and interviews with artists. The articles are classified into the following four sections: “Europe”, “Further Afield”, “Remembering the Child Audience” and “Conclusion”. The classification of the first two chapters awkwardly situates the reader Eurocentrically since “Further Afield” implies ‘further afield from the European point of view’. This section includes subjects from Japan, Mexico, the US and Pakistan, but its classification overlooks the globalized nature of picturebooks: an article on the ethnically Japanese, artist Kitamura is classified “Further Afield”, although he lives and publishes in Britain; another essay describes a picture book on Pakistan designed for the British and American market; the last article in this section even has its main focus on British pop culture. The essays and the introductions to all parts of the book, however, are more convincing and more sensitive to intercultural issues than the organisational framework of the collection.

In her introduction to the “Europe” section Pat Pinsent pleads for picture books as a means for intercultural understanding and deplores the scarcity of continental children’s books translated into English. Her introduction is followed by an interview with the Polish illustrator Jan Pieńkowski. brought to life by high-quality colour prints; similarly, most chapters are lavishly illustrated.

Penni Cotton outlines European programmes for the distribution of picture books fostering intercultural understanding; Petros Panau focuses on three books concerning diversity. “Vojtěch Kubašta and His Influence on the Resurgent Pop-up Book Market” by Lisa Boggis Boyce describes Kubašta’s work and the history of pop-up books. In an especially brilliant and amusing article by Magdalena Sikorska, Sven Nordqvist is portrayed as a postmodern artist because of his blend of tradition and innovation. His use of parody and irony and his depictions of the characters’ moods through the objects surrounding them are discussed in depth.

Finally, Stefania Tondo presents Italian picture books retelling “Alice in Wonderland”, whereas Nikki Gamble and Ann Lazim interpret a contemporary version of “Little Red Riding Hood”.

The section entitled “Further Afield” starts off with the summary of an interview of the Britain-based, Japanese artist Satoshi Kitamura and his publisher by John Dunne. Then Prodeepta Das briefly writes about her experience as a photographer for a children’s book on Pakistan: She was not permitted to take pictures of women in rural areas (only a small girl chould be shown), although she was allowed to photograph two women wearing hijabs in Karachi. Unfortunately, Das’s article is very short: only a page in length. A lengthier, more detailed discussion on the consequences of these restrictions on the visual images that children get would have been worthwhile. Jean Webb undertakes a thorough analysis of Native American picture books in the vein of post-colonial theory in “Aesthetic Hegemony: Western Scholars and Native American Culture” whereas Evelyn Arizpe celebrates “25 years of Illustration for Children in Mexico.” Dianne Hofmeyer presents a heterogeneous picture book market in “Beyond Borders: South African Illustration as a Visual Feast”. One of the books, “An African Christmas cloth” by Reviva Schermbrucker, is particularly striking in its fusion of cultures: the European tradition of the traditional Advent calendar is taken up but transformed into a stitched and photographed “Christmas cloth” with African manger animals.

Furthermore, Mieke K.T. Desmet convincingly presents a post-modern “story box” based on the Peking Opera and a version of a classical Chinese tale. The chapter is completed by Peter Cook’s article on the image of children in the Sixties; even though the subject is not primarily about children’s book illustration, it is intriguing to read how pop music was influenced by children’s literature. One critical remark, however, is that Cook argues that the “looking-glass ties” mentioned in the famous lyrics of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” comes “directly from Lewis Carroll and the Alice books” (p. 142), but does not provide a specific reference, The mere mention of a looking glass as a direct connection to Carroll seems rather unconvincing.

In the third section, “Remembering the Child Audience”, most studies are empirical. Kate Noble defines “visual literacy” based on video footage of children; Sandra Williams describes enthusiastic reactions of eight-to-nine year old children deemed “under achieving readers” to Jeannie Baker’s Where the Forest Meets the Sea. Vasiliki Labitski, teacher and illustrator, writes about a storybook project at school. Then the delicate issue of picture books for children in foster care is approached by Stella Thebridge. Rebeka Butler searches for the implied audience in children’s books on the Holocaust. Finally, the Cypriot artist Dora Oronti focuses on her own work and on that of her pupils.

The section entitled “Conclusion” showcases young talents affectionately presented by Martin Salisbury, and two Flemish illustrators, Sabien Clement and Tom Scham, presented by Jennifer Harding. The structure of the collection might have been more conclusive if all the interviews and portraits of artists had been grouped into one chapter, thereby avoiding the Eurocentric names of the first chapters. Apart from that, What Do You See? Provides a fascinating and multi-facetted insight into picture books worldwide.

Evamaria Zettl, Univeristy of Education Thurgau (Switzerland)

This book takes as its starting point the Swedish literary theorist Göte Klingberg’s influential study Barnlitteraturforskning – En introduktion [Children’s Literary Research – An Introduction], which was first published in 1972. Hans-Heino Ewers engages in a dialogue with Klingberg, whose terminology he believes to be outdated and in some cases even obsolete. His goal is to coin new terms for key notions of children’s literature or “children’s literary communication” (3; 9), as he calls it.

This monograph is divided into four major sections. In the first, Ewers takes the classical communicative model composed of sender, message and receiver as his starting point to discuss literature for children and young adults. In this process of literary communication, Ewers distinguishes several intermediary stations, which can either pass the message on unchanged or modify it or expand the group of addressees. In the second chapter, he points out that children also receive literary messages which were not originally meant for them. He therefore differentiates between actual and intended children’s reading. Chapter Three deals with the role of mediators in children’s literary communication and how they can act as gatekeepers, influencing the process. In the next chapter, Ewers defines these gatekeeping mediators as adult co-readers of children’s literature. Possible messages in the text aimed at the adults co-reading then constitute the implied co-reader. He goes on to redefine crossover literature as literature with multiple addressees and suggests the terms monosemic and bisemic multiply addressed children’s literature to replace Barbara Wall’s “single address” and “double address” respectively, a replacement which I do not deem necessary, as Wall’s terminology is widely accepted and still works fine.

In Part Two, Ewers takes up all possible forms of literary action systems, such as production, distribution, consumption or evaluation systems. In Chapters Seven to Eleven, he sums up the specific functions of children’s literary distribution systems, such as the market for children’s books, public libraries as well as kindergartens and schools. He shows that all of these distributive systems exert some evaluative influence since their participants make a prior selection of books before making them available to the general public in one way or another. This is especially true of the educational system. Chapter Twelve provides an overview of the historical changes throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries which eventually led to the pluralisation of the distribution systems. Next, Ewers goes on to explain how the different children’s literary action systems together constitute “a kind of ‘polysystem” (96). Arguing that the individual systems are relatively independent and each sanction children’s literature according to their own criteria, he concludes that “current children’s literature seems to be a multi-stranded field with relatively weak centralization” (100). Ewers summarizes all of the chapters in this section (except for Chapter Twelve) in a table at the end. These overviews are very lucid and provide a useful tool for surveying the characteristics of the different action systems.

The third major part of the book is devoted to the semiotics of children’s and young adult literature. According to Ewers, literary communication is essentially a matter of encoding and decoding messages by means of symbols and signs, which are made tangible in a literary work. The children’s literary symbol system makes use of the same signs and combinatory rules as “elevated” adult literature, but applies them in an entirely different way, according to four fundamental children’s literary norms. Ewers identifies these norms as follows: children’s literature as didactic; as literature suitable for children and young adults; as a fully adequate form of literature; and finally as the revival of folk literature. These four norms can in turn be combined into, which Ewers presents in Chapter Sixteen. Ewers argues that the author as an organizational category, which is quite common in adult literature, is of far less importance in children’s literary discourse.

In Part Four, Ewers treats the central children’s literary norm of child suitability, which implies adaptation of the message to the child receivers on two levels: comprehensibility and appeal. Instead of sticking with Klingberg’s generally accepted term “adaptation”, he chooses to call this process accommodation, an intervention which to my mind complicates matters unnecessarily. Chapter Nineteen provides an overview of the different forms of accommodation that can cater for children’s decoding ability as well as their likings and needs: these can be code-related; paratextual; stylistic; formal/structural; genre/related; material- and content-related; thematic accommodation and finally accommodation with respect to value judgment. In this chapter, Ewers explicitly refers to his predecessor Klingberg’s theory of adaptation, at times concurring with him, at other times criticizing and complementing his views.

In Chapter Twenty, Ewers provides his audience with example analyses of two German children’s classics: Der kleine Wassermann [The Little Water-Sprite] by Otfried Preuβler (1956) and Ben liebt Anna [Ben Loves Anna] by Peter Härtling (1979). The analyses constitute a practical application of the concepts of accommodation, showing clearly what Ewers has in mind when talking of the different modes of adapting a children’s book to its reader audience. Nevertheless, contextualising and perhaps summarizing the books would have made the examples more accessible to an international circle of readers to whom these works may not be familiar. In the final chapter, Ewers comes to the conclusion that, ironically enough, it is difficult for children’s literature to fulfil the criteria of child suitability.

Overall, Hans-Heino Ewers provides his readers with a set of terms which are indeed fundamental: It deals with basic concepts of the children’s literary system and discusses evolutions in the field up to the present day. Some of the expressions do, however, appear unnecessarily complicated and therefore do not seem easily applicable at all. Moreover, the book was originally written in German and only later translated into English, “in order to make them [Ewers’ theoretical ideas] internationally available” (1). Although the publisher claims that this work is “[i]nternational in scope” (see the back cover), most examples and findings do relate to the German situation, making the work slightly less international than announced. It therefore remains to be seen whether it will be able to become a groundbreaking study that is widely used and referred to. Finally, I should add that the English translation is not always as felicitous as one might hope. Small linguistic and typographical errors appear throughout the book, and one term even is linguistically wrong: “Primarily children’s literature” should, in my view, have been better translated as “primary children’s literature”. In Ewer’s German publications, however, the terms work well and so I feel that translation problems may have undermined the inherent quality of this study.

Sara Van den Bossche

Ghent University, Belgium

Works Cited

Ewers, Hans-Heino. Literatur für Kinder und Jugendliche. Eine Einführung [Literature for Children and Young Adults. An Introduction]. München: Fink, 2000.

Klingberg, Göte. Barnlitteraturforskning. En introduktion [Children’s Literature Research. An Introduction]. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1972.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s the study of children’s literature expanded in Flanders and the Netherlands. Rita Ghesquière published the first academic textbook exclusively dealing with children’s literature in 1982 (Het verschijnsel jeugdliteratuur – The phenomenon of children’s literature). Although the book was written in Dutch, children’s literature was approached as an international (mainly Western-European) phenomenon. Discussing a wide variety of aspects of children’s literature it has been a good introduction to the specificities of literature for young people for almost three decennia. The publication of a revised edition proves how, in spite of recent set backs regarding, for example, the attention given to children’s books in daily newspapers, interest is still blooming both in and outside academia. In Jeugdliteratuur in perspectief (Children’s literature in perspective), Ghesquière incorporates recent publications on children’s literature, discusses new insights and examines the latest developments in the field.

Referring to Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory, Ghesquière approaches children’s literature not as a derivative of literature for adults, but as a literature in its own right and with its own dynamics. In the preface, she states that the position of children’s literature, both within the literary field and in relation to adjoining domains such as pedagogics and philosophy, has changed since the first edition of her book. The same holds for the image of the child (7-8). This observation has lead to a thorough reader oriented description of the wide range of aspects of children’s literature in the new edition. Whereas the perspective of a well-read adult often shone through the explanation of the phenomenon in her first book, Ghesquière’s revised version is much less colored.

The book is composed around the specific communication situation of children’s literature. Ghesquière claims it is essential for the nature of children’s literature that, unlike literature for adults, the communication situation of children’s literature consists of two separate motions: before the actual child is able to read it, the book has been read, selected and evaluated by adults (23-24). Therefore, after a first introductory chapter on the history and nature of children’s literature, Ghesquière dedicates each chapter to one of the agents in this specific communication situation.

The second chapter is dedicated to the several senders of children’s books. Next to authors, their psychological and social motivations for writing for children, illustrators and publishers, Ghesquière appropriately spends a long and very up-to-date paragraph on translators of children’s books, as a large part of children’s literature, especially in small countries, consists of translations (41). The third chapter deals with the child reader as the overt addressee of children’s literature. Both psychological and sociological aspects of reading are passed in review. The complicated interplay between the senders and this child audience is the subject of Chapter Four. Ghesquière expounds the fundamental asymmetrical communication situation between the sender and the addressee very clearly by showing how children’s books deal with death and sexuality. Next to this asymmetry on the level of the production of children’s literature, the asymmetry on the level of the distribution of children’s literature is critically discussed. The fifth chapter deals with the interesting issues of the function, the effect and the reception of children’s literature. However, the discussion of the function of children’s literature would have benefitted from a more clear separation of the intention of the sender and the subsequent or other ideologies imposed on the text. Ghesquière does mention the function of a text is closely connected to the intention of the author, but she does not elaborate on her short declaration of the existence of additional functions, either consciously or unconsciously written into a children’s text (111).

Ghesquière graces her theoretical accounts with a rich repertory of examples. The descriptions and quotations from many children’s books, both older and very recent ones, show her extensive knowledge and expertise on the subject. In some cases, one has to be familiar with the works mentioned to be able to relate the quotation to Ghesquières argument on a deeper level than just as an illustration. Ghesquière does not elaborate on all the examples she mentions, thereby sometimes missing the chance to demonstrate the uniqueness of a particular genre for children or to work out thought provoking border crossings. The book might have gained from having fewer, but more elaborated, text examples.

Although the social, psychological and communicational dimensions are the focus of the first five chapters, the last and longest chapter is completely dedicated to the ‘text’. The overview of genres is quite brief, but the discussion of the success of series books is very interestingly developed. Ghesquière has rightly changed her short paragraph on the success of ‘trivial books’ from her first book into a discussion of the success of series, which makes her discussion less judgmental. She has also chosen to discuss different examples from those mentioned in the first edition. Ghesquière has selected four series for particular attention, covering both series that are successful with children (Geronimo Stilton and Harry Potter) and series that have met with the particular approval of adults (Polleke, written by the laurelled Dutch author Guus Kuijer and the Dance sequence by Aidan Chambers). She succeeds in nuancing the division between child and adult approval by showing that the disapproval of series that are successful with children is sometimes based on the lack of reading the whole series (Potter). Moreover, her reader oriented approach leads her to caution adults for criticizing books that they themselves (no longer) like to read, but which are (still) appreciated by children.

Discussing children’s literature as a literary phenomenon and not limiting the discussion to Dutch and Flemish children’s literature makes Ghesquière’s book a very good introduction to the phenomenon of children’s literature for students, teachers to be and others interested. Her critical discussions and the many suggestions to build on her observations and conclusions are inspiring. Moreover, opening by claiming that the position of children’s literature both within the literary field and in relation to adjoining domains has changed, just as the image of the child has, makes curious about a more concrete interpretation of the last thirty years. Ghesquière has brought her book up to date regarding the international (Western-European) state of affairs in social, psychological and literary child studies and in children’s literature itself, but she has not changed her main argument concerning the nature of children’s literature. The comparative perspective she puts forward in the beginning raises very interesting questions about the development of children’s literature as the outcome of a process of (de-)autonomization and a different idea of the child reader in the last decennia of the previous century and the first decennium of this one. For example, what are the implications of the growing tendency to approach children directly as consumers on the communication situation of children’s literature? And how does children’s literature deal with the fact that ways of communication between adults and children are expanding greatly through new media? Ghesquière’s book is a goldmine of information on the complex field of children’s literature. That it also conjures up new questions goes to show the dynamics of the field and also demonstrates that Jeugdliteratuur in perspectief is not only an up-to-date introduction, it is an inspiring starting point for new research as well.

Sanne Parlevliet

University of Groningen, The Netherlands

ISBN 953-175-219-2

In everyday communication, the term Croatian children’s literature is mostly used to refer to contemporary works. However, in the field of research into Croatian children’s literature, the situation is somewhat different. Although we cannot say that the historical approach dominates the field of Croatian children’s literature research, it would be unwise to neglect its presence. Moreover, historical works constitute a research enclave modest in quantity, but interesting, versatile and competent in terms of both its literary qualities and cultural significance. This research enclave includes studies which put the historical aspect of Croatian children’s literature in the center of their interest, such as the overviews of Croatian children’s literature of the 19^th century by Milan Crnković. It also includes collections of papers, reprints and first prints of children’s literature written in the late 18^th and early 19^th century by Alojz Jembrih, as well as exhibition catalogues, among which the catalogue of Croatian picture books until 1945 by Štefka Batinić and Berislav Majhut stands out.

Contrary to the prevailing approach to the history of Croatian children’s novel, Majhut’s The Adventurer, Orphan, and Children’s Band: Croatian Children’s Novel until 1945 does not start with the classic of Croatian children’s literature, The Marvellous Adventures of Hlapić the Apprentice by Ivana Brlić Mažuranić, which first appeared in 1913. Although Majhut, like his predecessors, adopts a teleological vision of literary history as well as value based literary criticism, his book carefully documents all Croatian children’s novels published prior to 1945 known to him, not only those which are thought to be aesthetically successful, and he manages to mention more than thirty predecessors of The Marvellous Adventures of Hlapić the Apprentice.

It should be emphasized that Majhut’s book does not only influence the periodization of Croatian children’s novel, but also the borderlines of the history of Croatian children’s literature in general. In one of several valuable chronological tables appended to the book, Majhut displays about sixty titles aimed at child audiences, written and printed before 1850. Thus he disputes the view generally accepted in literature, which places the beginning of Croatian children’s literature in 1850.

It should be pointed out that Majhut’s radical break with formerly accepted periodization of Croatian children’s literature does not have its roots in discovering an unknown children’s library from the 19^th century. Apart from a few exceptions, the Croatian children’s books that Majhut mentions have been stored, registered and available to the public at The National and University Library in Zagreb. His “discovery” is based upon a change of interpretative approach, and not on new sources. While previous histories of Croatian children’s novel included specific works into the body of children’s literature in accordance with their idea of appropriateness based upon the modern notion of the child reader, Majhut’s book starts from the historical notion of the child reader, or, rather, from the target audience precisely defined within the children’s book itself. In his case, a book is considered to belong to children’s literature if it is explicitly stated so in the name of the series, book title, subtitle or anywhere in the text. Furthermore, in his overview of Croatian children’s literature, Majhut pays attention both to the fiction and non-fiction, as well as to the translations. Majhut primarily defines children’s literature as an authorial or publishing project; a project defined in accordance with the assumption about the age-related features of the reading act. This definition of children’s literature enabled him to perceive and minutely describe the phenomenon, which would have otherwise remained invisible. The fact is that the first Croatian children’s books, which were explicitly intended for children, were also aimed at adults, as was the case in some other national children’s literatures (e.g. German, English, etc.).

In an effort to provide greater insight into the Croatian novel for children prior to 1945, rather than following the standard practice of describing the aesthetic peak of the Croatian children’s novel of the period, Majhut has focused on the stance of the reader. However, his reader is not a creature of “flesh and blood” known from the studies in ethnography or microhistory of reading. Majhut’s implied reader is defined in the scope of the Constance School reception theory and Anglo-American reader-response theory. The potential of the idea of the implicit reader was recognized somewhat earlier in Anglo-American research on children’s literature than it was in the Croatian context, where Majhut’s represents something of a break through. Its adoption into the field of children’s literature studies was sometimes a mere uncritical embracing of theoretical concepts under pedagogical supervision (e.g., Perry Nodelman), or, alternatively, it was connected with “empirical” studies of child’s reading inspired by psychological research (e.g., Michael Benton, Geoff Fox). Majhut justifiably submits both approaches to argumentative criticism. Rather than adopting the term uncritically and mechanically, Majhut offers its radical contextualization in accordance with his understanding of children’s literature as an autonomous system “that does not reproduce the relations of the system of adult literature within itself” (72). Following Northrop Frye’s theory of literary modes, he defines the implicit reader in relation to the hero, to other characters and to the environment of the novel. However, unlike Frye, Majhut advocates a nonlinear and interchangeable comprehension of the literary modes. Indeed, Majhut places the adventure novel for children across both the high mimesis mode and the romance mode. Accordingly, he successfully includes novels about an innocent and prosecuted heroine, Saint Genoveve, as well as the Croatian version of Kipling’s work entitled Pustolovine malog Moglia (The Adventures of Little Mowgli).

By placing the hero, his surroundings and the implicit reader into mutual power relations and taking their specific aspects into account, Majhut describes the three dominant genres of Croatian children’s novel: the above mentioned adventure novel present in Croatian children’s literature from its beginnings, the orphan novel which appears in 1890s and which is contrasted to the adventure novel in that that it promotes the ideology of home; and finally, the novel about a group of children, which asserted itself in 1930s, and which is important for the history of Croatian children’s novel because it affirms, as Majhut puts it, children’s values, or, in other words, an autonomously child-specific perspective of the world.

Majhut’s parallel analysis of the three genres also includes methodical and knowledgeable elaborations of their narrative elements, techniques and relevant social conventions. In the process, the author tirelessly corrects earlier ahistorical, and sometimes superficial, evaluations of Croatian children’s novels. An important contribution of Majhut’s book is the insight that distinguishing features of children’s novel in previous works on the history of Croatian children’s novel (i.e. children’s values, children’s perspective and child characters) were in fact historically new features, adopted in Croatian children’s literature as early as the 1930s.

Further merits of this book include several bibliographical lists: a general list of Croatian children’s books, a list of translated children’s novels and a list of Croatian children’s novels. Another valuable appendix is comprised of summaries of eighty Croatian children’s novels published before 1945.

To conclude, Majhut’s treatise sets firm foundations for further research by systematically presenting the basic historical data, and by critically reviewing elements of literary theory. With those components intertwined, this book establishes high standards for the modern study of Croatian children’s literature.

Marijana Hameršak, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research (Zagreb, Croatia) & Ivana Milković, Faculty of Teacher Education (Zagreb, Croatia)

In this revisited version of her PhD thesis, Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth explores the effects of ideology on the English-to-German translation of children’s literature under the socialist regime of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Through a widely documented socio-cultural reconstruction, the author offers convincing evidence that children’s books were considered to be strategic tools for didactic and ideological purposes by the GDR socialist regime and that they were therefore subject to canonisation and censorship.

Although the general cultural and historical background of the study considers the whole time span of the GDR existence, the main research body concentrates on books published from 1961 to 1989. This for precise historic reasons: whereas before the 1960’s the state apparatus and ideology were still at a developing stage, after the building of the Berlin Wall a complete cut-off occurred between the East and the West. In the same years, censorship was formally institutionalised with the foundation of a special head office for publishing companies and bookselling trade, i.e. the Hauptverwaltung Verlage und Buchhandel.

Translation under State Control consists of two main sections. The first two chapters offer an in-depth analysis of the ideological aspects which influenced the publication of translated children’s literature. This section undertakes a close investigation of the East German censorship system. It shows that there was a direct connection between the socialist ideology propagated by the regime and the book selection process, and highlights the fact that a multi-level censorship mechanism was at work, with the Unity Party carrying out its ideological literary policies and the publishers self-censoring when selecting texts for translation.

The second section of the book, which includes the following three chapters, focuses on a series of case studies and highlights the ideological mechanisms at play in text selection and publication through a widely documented set of paratextual evidence. Following Gérard Genette’s theoretical framework, Thomson-Wohlgemuth analyses both print permit files, in which publishers justified their book choice to the censors, and afterwords, published in a large number of volumes. She thus demonstrates that literature was re-written not only to comply with the censor’s expectations, but also to directly guide and instruct the reader in the interpretation of the translated texts.

After reading Thomson-Wohlgemuth’s study, one is left with the vivid impression that the political regime in the GDR was similar to a stage director, pulling the strings behind the scene of a huge state production. The study offers interesting insights on the impact of political ideology not only on children’s literature itself, but also on the cultural, social and economic dimensions connected with it. The criteria for book selection and publication ranged from pedagogical potential to financial impact – especially as far as production and copyright costs were concerned – and they were invariably part of complicated and opaque bureaucratic mechanisms.

The whole of Thomson-Wohlgemuth’s discussion revolves around the fact that the GDR regime expected children’s literature to be an effective means for the all-round formation of a new kind of socialist human being. In this context, translation enjoyed the status of an important cultural activity and contributed to the growth of the national conscience. By 1953 translators were therefore officially acknowledged by the regime as “recreating authors”, through the establishment of their own separate institution within the East German Writers’ Association.

In this heavily institutionalised milieu, children’s literature was characterised by sharp contrasts: if, on the one hand, it had a very high profile and was widely noticed and debated; on the other hand, it was largely manipulated. In order to analyse this systematic manipulation process, Thomson-Wohlgemuth expands André Lefevere’s theory of patronage. In contrast with the common Western viewpoint, according to which publishers exert their influence from outside the literary system, she suggests that in the GRD publishers and editors acted from within the system itself, and methodically put into practice the directives issued from a higher authority. She then goes on to draw an interesting distinction between the role of publishers and translators, on the basis of their respective influence over the literary output. Publishers, in her opinion, were “rewriters of literature”, as they were in the position of acting as agents of the selection and adaptation processes, while translators were “rewriters of texts”, as they were in charge of performing the transposition of foreign books into German.

Overall, Thomson-Wohlgemuth’s study offers a clear and exhaustive outline of the editorial mechanisms at play in the literary production destined to children and young people by the socialist regime of the former GDR. Her book is no doubt a fruitful source of information both for scholars and for a more general readership interested in the cultural system of East Germany and of Eastern European countries.

Chiara Galletti, University of Tampere, Finland

Jo Lampert’s addition to Routledge’s ‘Children’s Literature and Culture’ series centres around the premise that 9/11 was a watershed moment in history – a moment that changed the world in deep-seated and enduring ways. Following the work of literary critics such as John Stephens and Peter Hunt in designating children’s literature a political milieu capable of reflecting, and indeed influencing, cultural and historical change, Lampert analyses the formation of cultural identities in literature for children and young adults published since this momentous event of 2001. Examining how shifts in the performance of such identities are contingent on notions of good citizenship, national pride and racial and religious tolerance in America and, to a lesser extent in Australia, Canada and Britain, Lampert skilfully interweaves politics, sociology and literary theory with often surprising results.

Lampert undertakes to analyse three main identity-sets in evidence in children’s books published since September 11: ethnicity, nationalism and heroism. As Lampert herself makes clear, these sets are non-exclusive, and often overlap or converge. This does not constitute a weakness of approach, but rather a useful method by which to foreground the complexity of post-9/11 identities in children’s fiction, in which a previously-lauded discourse of inclusive multiculturalism now competes with a xenophobic call for cultural union in the face of external terrorism. The complexity of post-9/11 identities, in fact, obliges Lampert to delve into both postmodern and post-colonial theory in order to foreground both the transitional and contextual nature of identity formation and the ways in which race, power and politics intersect in the discursive construction of such identities.

The structure of the book strongly foregrounds Lampert’s theoretical approach: the first two chapters provide an exhaustive overview of more general theories of identity formation in a post-9/11 context and the politics in and of children’s literature, whilst the third, fourth and fifth cover more specific examples of ethnic, national and heroic identities in fiction written as a direct response to 9/11. These latter chapters are accompanied by in-depth analyses of selected children’s works. The variety of genres under consideration is ambitious, from picture books through to young adult novels through to comic books, yet the number of texts analysed is relatively small. Again, this is not a weakness of methodology, but rather reflects both the exclusiveness of the theme and the commendable depth of analysis undertaken. These chosen few are also diverse in racial and religious implications, with books with all-American focalisers analysed alongside books narrated by Afghani or Arab-American teenagers, even though the authors of these books are, for the most part, Western in ethnicity and/or outlook.

The questions raised by such texts are marked by their ambivalence. Should American identity be exclusive or inclusive of others? Is 9/11 to be re-inscribed as opportunity or crisis? None of the texts appear to offer definitive answers to such questions. Lampert analyses several intriguing trends in post-9/11 fiction, such as the humanised, sometimes emasculated superhero that emerges as a response to the elevation of the ordinary working man to the status of public hero, so common in the Bush rhetoric of the time; the young adult coming-of-age narrative that functions as a parallel to an American national ‘coming-of-age’ in the face of terrorism; the competition between self-centred introspection and collective responsibility in young people trying to come to terms with this pivotal moment in history; and the curious sense that national identity is no longer bound to geographical terrain but instead to ideological allegiance.

Some of Lampert’s most fascinating work debates the contrasting feelings of alienation and belonging felt by those non-native narrators who must ‘perform’ Americanness (in a nod to Judith Butler) if they are to be accepted as citizens in a changed America polarised into ‘us’ and ‘them’. Lampert makes some particularly nice points about the differentiated uses of language and code-switching in relation to fictional portrayals of ethnic differences, and her work is often highly perceptive. Yet at times one feels as if she is straining a little over-ambitiously to make her point, particularly when one of the novels under question – Deborah Ellis’ Parvana – was written pre-9/11, forcing Lampert to mediate her premise to include a reader’s supposed response after the event (“readers…may hold the knowledge of the attacks in their heads” (74); “Ground Zero may now come to mind” (74)).

A few editorial mistakes detract from the quality of the book, yet not from the quality of the analyses. What is not so easy to overlook is the comparative lack of contemporary criticism in the theoretical section that begins Lampert’s study. Although her theoretical overview is comprehensive and thorough, it falls short on work published since the turn-of-the-century (post-9/11, in fact), focusing on criticism from the 80s, 90s to the early 2000s. And in a book that highlights the ambiguities in formulated cultural identities after the attacks on the Twin Towers, Lampert’s conclusion that such texts provide evidence “of a world where certainty and uncertainty co-exist” (178) is surely something of a given. Overall, however, this is a thought-provoking and timely critical work that succeeds in highlighting some of the ambiguities, contradictions and ironies in the children’s books produced since 9/11, in a way that opens doors to further analysis, rather than attempting to provide definitive answers.

Alice Curry

Macquarie University, Australia

Work cited

Ellis, Deborah. 2002. Parvana. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwil.

As Jack Zipes suggests in the foreword to this welcome addition to Routledge’s Children’s Literature and Culture series, utopian and dystopian fictions spring from an impulse towards social change. In this edited collection, Hintz and Ostry guide the reader through varying responses to this altruistic human impulse. Through an analysis of both historical and contemporary fiction, the contributing scholars map a diverse range of authors’ attempts to comment on the defects of their societies through the creation of fantastic literary heterotopias. What makes such a broad and unwieldy topic manageable is the editors’ decision to focus on texts that deal overtly with social organisation and modes of governance. This is a welcome move since the amorphous nature of the subject would otherwise overshadow the focused in-depth analyses of selected texts undertaken by the collection’s scholars.

Hintz and Ostry’s helpful introduction immediately foregrounds both the utopian tendency of children’s literature – as a more overtly didactic genre than its adult counterpart – and the Romantic conception of childhood itself as a utopian state. Noting that these inherent links strengthen the cause for research into such topics, Hintz and Ostry’s introduction touches on several of the roles a utopian text might play in a child’s reading experience, namely play, escape and political reflection. It is this latter role that the contributing scholars tend to favour, and the issues raised in relation to a child’s capacity as an individual to affect changes in the wider social systems are often provocative. One such issue raised in the introduction asks us to consider where exactly a text’s utopian status lies. Is it in its form, its content, the intention of its author, the beliefs wielded by its characters or the response it receives from its reader? This is a question that resonates throughout the articles to follow, and provides a thoughtful conceptual frame for the reader of the collection.

Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults is diverse in its modes of analysis. Whilst the main bulk of the work is separated into four sections – ‘Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: Utopia in Transit’; ‘Community and Socialism’; ‘Child Power’; and ‘From the Wreckage: Post-World War II Dystopias and Utopias’ – the volume includes an additional four essays by well-known authors of utopian and dystopian fiction, an interview with Lois Lowry, and an annotated bibliography of children’s and young adult utopian and dystopian fiction. The authors featured – Alberto Manguel, James Gurney, Katherine Paterson and Monica Hughes – offer entertaining and often quirky accounts of their experiences of writing utopian or dystopian fiction, and the interview with Lois Lowry – author of The Giver and Gathering Blue – adds a sense of gravitas and social commitment not present in the lighter accounts that precede it. What gives the volume an edge on previous work on the subject is the comprehensive annotated bibliography at the back of the collection that is proclaimed to be the first of its kind.

As Rebecca Carol Noël Totaro notes in her article on ‘Suffering in Utopia,’ a false dichotomy exists between utopian and dystopian definitions, and it is the intricate links between these two imagined states that produce some of the scholars’ most innovative work. Totaro herself questions how much suffering is acceptable in a utopia whilst Karen Sands-O’Connor notes a worrying return to the paradigms of Empire in the secondary worlds of British fantasy. Maureen F. Moran’s excellent exploration into Tanith Lee’s problematisation of the utopian mode in her Unicorn trilogy – one of the more theoretically-based essays of the collection – flags up the tension between the utopian vision as attainable model or agent of change, and unattainable fantasy. A further contradiction of the utopian mode – in a collection full of such noted contradictions – is highlighted by Kay Sambell as the dilemma experienced by children’s authors when faced with the overwhelmingly nihilistic endings of adult dystopic fiction and the paradoxical necessity to provide child readers with a sense of hope rather than hopelessness. The often ambiguous or ambivalent endings of children’s dystopic fiction lead her to suggest that the genre forces authors to answer this dilemma by finding a “new, more fluid style of didacticism in dystopian writing for children” (173). This is just one of the thought-provoking issues raised in a volume full of thought-provoking issues.

As we might expect from any collection of essays, however, the range and standard is somewhat uneven, and it does not come as a surprise that the volume was first published in 2003 since its arguments, on occasions, appear a little dated. The introduction sets up the expectation that a broad spectrum of texts will be considered, from the ‘Golden Age’ of children’s literature to the speculative offerings of contemporary posthumanism. Unfortunately this is not borne out by the articles themselves which are surprisingly limited in geographical and generic scope. Whilst the vast majority of the novels analysed are American or British (a geo-cultural dearth that is as surprising in today’s climate of cultural diversity as it is critically limiting), examples of post-disaster and posthumanist fiction – so tantalisingly promised and so topical in a world of ecological crisis, artificial intelligence, cloning and genetic modification – are also sadly lacking. A more serious flaw in the collection, however, comes in the comparative lack of theoretical groundwork that must surely underpin a collection of this kind. Utopian and dystopian criticism – as a well-established field of study in adult fiction and with major exponents in Sir Thomas More, Ernst Bloch and Michel Foucault to name but a few – is referenced intermittently and usually only in passing. The collection would have benefited from a preliminary section summarising and theorising such pivotal and influential works, fully legitimising subsequent study.

Despite its flaws, Hintz and Ostry’s collection brings together several first-class essays that undoubtedly advance thinking in this fascinating field. One premise upon which all of the contributing scholars appear to agree is the sense that utopian and dystopian fiction negotiates a space for self-conscious speculation and reflective thinking for children and young adults, who learn much from the premonitory visions such novels contain but – more importantly – take great pleasure in doing so.

Alice Curry

Macquarie University, Australia