The first thing that comes to mind when I hear Tom Sawyer is the white washed fence. It stands in my mind as a representation of the imagination that children are very much connected with, as well as the skill of being a con artist. Tom is very cunning and isn’t much for hard work, and he’s smart enough to know that everything is on based perception. Tom changes the perception of the boy walking past, who perceives  that Tom is working extremely hard.

What do you call work?”

“Why, ain’t that work?”

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer.”

“Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”

The brush continued to move.

“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth – stepped back to note the effect – added a touch here and there – criticised the effect again – Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:

“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”

Tom saw an opening to free himself simply by changing the boys perception of what he saw. This power lies in all children as well as adults, and it’s alarmingly simple to use. What really matters is what you allow your self to see. If one takes the same idea and applies to other readings, something surprising might occur  in how you view things that once seemed very black or white.

Think critically! It’s such an easy thing to say and yet so hard to truly do. Reading The Case against Peter Pan, I was plunged into idea of thinking critically in terms of children’s literature. The idea of packaging a story that came out of a fetish book, seems absolutely insane. Yet, on a daily basis children are being marketed adult content with “child like” themes. As a society, children’s books are promoted by schools, retails chains, libraries, etc, without being critically analyzed to see if their promoting other agendas. Peter Pan has reached iconic status, and is passed from generation to generation. Its troubled past becoming a myth of sorts, It’s disturbing to unknowingly marvel at such a story when it’s brought to life again time after time in books, and to never question it’s origin. It isn’t enough to try and figure out what children’s literature is, without knowing where it came from, and why it exists. In Charles Dickens “Hard Times” children were made to be filled with facts, empty vessels for knowledge being taught to them by adults. This method didn’t work for any of the children in “Hard Times” that later became unfulfilled adults. The analysis of the case of Peter Pan made it apparent that children are still viewed as empty vessels, only facts have been replaced with adult versions of “child like” fantasy.