Kids Lit in the News

This summer, NPR compiled a reader list of the “best-ever” young adult fiction–and faced a blizzard of criticism that the list was too white.  Salon summed up the controversy and analyzed the blame.  What do you think of this list and the way in which it was compiled?  How would you generate such a list?  And what are your personal favorites?

BBC News commented on the not surprising (to me) idea that Roald Dahl’s books for kids can be awfully bleak.  What did surprise me is the outrage in the comments.  Many readers clearly thought this was an insult, and did not want a cherished author slighted, or their (faulty?) memories of his work compromised.  Are you a Dahl fan? Does this article bother you?  What do you make of the readers’ responses?

I’m not especially a Harry Potter fan (not a hater, either), so I haven’t read much on J. K. Rowling.  Therefore, I learned a lot about her interesting background and the difficulties she had adapting to her life among the (g)literati in this article from The Guardian.  The big news is that she’s about to publish a novel for adults–and it’s not even fantasy.  The Casual Vacancy, which satirizes small town politics and the English class system, will be available September 27.  I have to admit that I have a kindle copy pre-ordered.  Are you ready for an adult novel from the person responsible for the Potter craze?

Kid Lit Reading Questions

I developed these questions for students to use  when reading, blogging, or otherwise preparing for class discussion.

Just as literature itself always inescapably reflects and enacts power dynamics, so does children’s literature, including educational texts, picture books, and advice to parents.  Values of some sort are always transmitted along with the information and/or entertainment.  This is sometimes easier to see in historical works at some distance from us, although sometimes their very strangeness can make analysis difficult.  When writing or reflecting on literature published anytime, but especially before the Twentieth Century, it may be helpful to reflect upon the following.

1. What is historical place and time of this text?  What do you know about this period in terms of main political events and its culture? What were the attitudes and beliefs of this time period?
2. How does this work seem to reflect that historical context?  In what ways (if any) does it seem to deviate from it?
3. How is it similar to/different from other works (literary or otherwise) from this period?
4. Who was its target user and /or intended audience, and in what setting it would probably have been used? You may have to make an educated guess; some examples are more obvious than others.
   
5. What sorts of language technologies or communication forms are emphasized in your document and what kinds are downplayed or ignored? What does it teach children about reading and/or education, either the how (medium & method) or the what (content)?
6. What does this work teach children about the world, and their place within it?  What are the limits of this world or sphere?  Is domestic, urban, national or global?  How might the culture of this world be described?  That is, how does it operate, what are its rules, who has power within it, etc?
7. Look back over your answers to the questions above. Based on these answers, along with anything else that strikes you about the text, how would you describe the cultural politics of your document? That is, who might be empowered in this literature and who might be marginalized?

8. How does engage the imagination of the child-reader? What fantastical elements are apparent, and how does that fantasy operate in relationship to their real world?  Does it follow similar cultural rules or does it deviate entirely?  What might be the purpose of this alternate reality?
9. Look closely at the language used.  (Language includes descriptions, images, metaphors, vocabulary–WHAT is being said as well as HOW.)  How do you think this reflects the text’s values?
10. Is there anything that surprised you about the text?  Did anything strike you as particularly unusual? What might account for this strangeness?

This is a long list of questions, but it is surely not inclusive.  What questions do you think it would be useful for students and other readers to ask when encountering the otherness of children’s literature?

Women (not) in contemporary lit

Think that Women’s Studies and the opening of the literary canon mean that gender inequities in publishing are a thing of the past?  Check out these stats, compiled by VIDA: Women In Literary Arts.  The data, which they gathered last year as well, OVERWHELMINGLY suggest a disturbingly deep and widespread bias. Although this caused quite the kerfuffle in literary blogs and in editorials, seemingly little has changed within the last year.

This is interesting (as well as appalling) on many levels.  One puzzle that strikes me: we usually hear about girls being steered away from the STEM fields from an early age.  If young women are rewarded for their prowess in the language arts early in their educations, why is there this reverse at the top levels, where literacy becomes literature?  “Sexism is pervasive” may be an accurate answer, but its grand narrative vagueness is unsatisfying and ultimately unhelpful.  Where is the glass ceiling located?  In MFA programs?  Journalism schools? How is it justified?  Does the feminized construction of the American reader create a backlash against real women writers?  Is the implicitly masculine Romantic genius still a compelling category for understanding literary writing?

The field of Book Studies, with its theories and methods for understanding the nexus of authorship, reading, and publishing, and its ability to look for parallels in the past as well as project the future, is well situated to tackle this problem.  I would like to think that scholars feel some urgency in taking this on.  Let’s not just leave it to the blogosphere.

Ong Resources

Thomas J. Farrell posted this description of his extensive bibliography on Walter Ong on SHARP-L (re-posted with permission):

In the spirit of the Ong Centenary Year, I am making two new Ong-studies resources available in downloadable files at my UMD homepage:

(1) my twelve-category classified bibliography of selected works that can be related in one way or another to Walter Ong’s work; and

(2) an index to accompany the classified bibliography.

The classified bibliography is 160 double-spaced pages in length. It includes an introduction to Ong’s thought and an overview of the twelve categories, which are listed below in this message.

Each bibliographic item in the classified bibliography has an individualized code number consisting of the Roman numeral of the respective code and an Arabic numeral designating its respective number in the alphabetized list in the category. The code numbers are then used in the index.

Here are the twelve categories in the classified bibliography:

Category I:    Selected Works about Orality (see Ong’s ORALITY AND LITERACY: 1-76; see Classified Bibliography: 17-56)

Category II:    Selected Works about Cyclic Thought and Linear Thought (see Ong’s ORALITY AND LITERACY: 138-44; see Classified Bibliography: 57-61)

Category III:    Selected Works about Agonistic Structures (see Ong’s ORALITY AND LITERACY: 42-45, 69-70; see Classified Bibliography: 62-86)

Category IV:    Selected Works about Writing Systems (see Ong’s ORALITY AND LITERACY: 77-114; see Classified Bibliography: 87-88)

Category V:    Selected Works about Written Authorship (see Classified Bibliography: 88-91)

Category VI:    Selected Works about the Art of Memory (see Ong’s ORALITY AND LITERACY: 33-36, 136-52; see Classified Bibliography: 92-93)

Category VII:    Selected Works about Commonplaces and Composing (see Ong’s ORALITY AND LITERACY: 107-10; see Classified Bibliography: 94-100)

Category VIII:    Selected Works about Reading (see Classified Bibliography: 101-03)

Category IX:    Selected Works about Visuality (see Ong’s ORALITY AND LITERACY: 115-21; see Classified Bibliography: 104-20)

Category X:    Selected Works about the Inward Turn of Consciousness (see Ong’s ORALITY AND LITERACY: 174-76; see Classified Bibliography: 121-26)

Category XI:    Selected Works about the Quantification of Thought (see Ong’s ORALITY AND LITERACY: 127; see Classified Bibliography: 127-29)

Category XII:    Selected Works about Print Culture (see Ong’s ORALITY AND LITERACY: 115-35; see Classified Bibliography: 130-60)

As you can see from the parenthetical information about each category listed above, ten of the twelve categories are keyed to specific parts of Ong’s book ORALITY AND LITERACY: THE TECHNOLOGIZING OF THE WORD (2002 ed.), which has gone through more than thirty printings in English and has been translated into eleven other languages.

Either URL in the signature below will connect you to my UMD homepage, where you can check out these two new resources if you want to.

–Tom

Thomas J. Farrell
Professor Emeritus
Department of Writing Studies
University of Minnesota Duluth
Email: tfarrell@d.umn.edu
Homepage: http://umn.edu/home/tfarrell
Homepage: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

A Chilling Example of the Book Arts

This circulated on SHARP-L. I am reposting with permission of Ivan Gulkov.

Mr. Gulkov explains,

What I managed to find out about this video:

The 75 pound book was handscribed on 965 sheets of calf velum, in
version of fraktur specifically designed by Martin Wilke
(1903-1993), bound in thick wooden boards, decorated with an
engraved, cast iron plate. The order came from Dillinger Hütte and was
worked on by an unnamed smith from Köln. The work was finished by
April 20th 1936, and presented to Fuhrer on his 47th birthday.

The video above is from a film “Das Buch der Deutschen”, that was
first shown along with a longer feature “Kaiser von Kalifornien” on
the July 21th, 1936. The original footage is stored in the
“Bundesrepublik Deutschland” archive at Koblenz.

Contrary to expectations, the book did not last for a 1000 years,
and was lost at the end of the war…much like the third Reich
itself.

Sources:

Zeitungsausschnitt aus dem Jahr 1936. Abgedruckt in: Jürgen von der
Wense: Blumen blühen auf Befehl. Aus dem Poesiealbum eines
zeitungslesenden Volksgenossen 1933–1944. München 1993, S. 92.
Точнее:
http://oprion.livejournal.com/101146.html?thread=506138#t506138

Claudia Koonz, The Nazi conscience. Harvard University Press, 2003

When I wrote him for permission to repost, he kindly provided me with this extra information:

A couple more links that might prove useful:

An “Ordinary Fascism” documentary by Mikhail Romm (1965, USSR)
This is where I found the recovered footage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik2Vx8v_KlU
Available on YouTube with English subtitles, and I can’t recommend it enough.

The archive that holds the complete film (sadly not easily accessible to the public)
http://www.bundesarchiv.de/benutzung/zeitbezug/bundesrepublik/index.html.de

Dillinger Hütte – German steel manufacturer that supplied the ore
http://www.dillinger.de/dh/index.shtml.en

Haus der Kunst (museum) that that featured the book in an exhibition of the “Breath of German Genius” right next to the Gutenberg bible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haus_der_Kunst

Marting Wilke – type designer who’s blackletter fraktur won the competition and was used as the main book hand. Naturally, he didn’t boast this dubious honor, and is known only for his script fonts.
http://www.identifont.com/show?16I

The Emperor of California
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Kaiser_von_Kalifornien

Judging a book by the cover

The story of the development of the cover of The Great Gatsby makes for fascinating reading.  Not only does this article discuss the evolution of the art, it also sheds light on the relationship between Fitzgerald and his famous editor, Maxwell Perkins.  It is also interesting to see the list of truly dreadful titles that Fitzgerald came up with for this now eponymously iconic work.

Books vs. Booking

THis is not a current blog post (half a year old, OMG!) but it is more relvant than ever: Post-Artifact Books and Publishing

What tools will we embed within digital artifacts to signal this shifting relationship with literature?
To surface our shared experience?
To bridge the raw pre- and post- artifact spaces that so define the future of publishing?
To build the future book?