Author Archives: Kimberly

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Picaninny

When we look at early children’s texts that involve African Americans, the African Americans were usually depicted as a picaninny. A picaninny is an African American character whose features are over dramatized by either illustrations or descriptions of the character. Most picaninnies are drawn/described as very dark in color, having a large red mouth, being poorly dressed, the girls would have “kinky” braided hair and the boys would mostly be bald with a shines head, and lastly most picaninny characters were aged infant-teen. Picaninnies were originally founded for the purpose of emphasizing the harm of slavery and how it effects children both physically and mentally. One of the first picaninny characters was actually Topsy frm Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Through Topsy, Stowe wished to depict how slavery could currupt an innocent child. The story of Little black Sambo is a bit controversial when it comes to the question whether it is racist or not. Many believe that Sambo is a picaninny, it’s hard to tell since he does share some traits of the picaninny (such as the big red mouth, dark skin color, and age), however, some of his traits are completely off (such as his expensive clothes, intelligence, and hair). What’s even more interesting, is that there are other versions of little black sambo, which were not written by the original author, that are unarguably racist. These other authors and many others after them took this image of a picaninny and currupted it; they made it into a joke, which we can clearly see in our previous reading, the coon alphabet. http://http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/74/2b/1c/742b1cee7ed4c0f7b097a75a500c6758.jpg

 

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The Wizard of Oz

Since its first debut in 1900, The Wizard of Oz has become a well known classic in American literature. While most people today opt in for just watching the movie, the book holds so much more culture and information. Comparing the novel to the movie, I think that the movie does a great job of interpreting the way use author describes Kansas to the way he describes the Land of Oz. To depict this, the movie shows Kansas in black and white and when Dorothy enters Oz, the movie switches to color, which was a total coincidence at the time because that’s when color television first came out and they thought it would just make a great edition to the movie. In The Wizard of Oz, the interpretation of the imagery described my the author plays a big part in how we understand the story being told. Again, comparing it to the original movie, by using both black and white, and color imaging, there is an emphasis on the wonders and magical-ness of Oz. Also, it is interesting to know that throughout the many republications of The Wizard of Oz, there have been countless illustrations drawn for the novel. I think that’s really interesting considering that other novels such as Alice in Wonderland and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer still use their original illustrations. The original illustrations for the Wizard of Oz were drawn by W.W. Denslow, now you seldom see the original illustrations. The original illustrations were also printed in green and red because at that time It was very expensive to print in full color. Each different illustration or image that we see impacts our own perspective and interpretation of the novel itself, so it would be interesting to do more research as to why there are so many different versions of the illustrations.

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Alice in Wonderland: Behind the Scenes

Alice in Wonderland is a classic piece in children’s lirature. It has been translated in so many different languages and has so many different version that Morton N. Cohen says it’s only second to the bible. There are many different rumors as to how Alice in Wonderland was created (the most popular being that Lewis Carroll was on an ecstasy trip; which I have seen no evidence of thus far). You would think that Lewis Carroll must have spent half of his life creating the fantastical world of Alice, would it surprise you that Lewis Carroll actually made the story up in only half a day! Lewis Carroll, better known as Charles L. Dodgson to his friends, was doing a favor for a fellow colleague by taking his three daughters and a friend on a boat trip in 1862. This afternoon is often referred to as the “golden afternoon” because it was at this time that all of the little girls started to get bored and fidgety on the boat and it was at this moment that Dodgson decided to tell a tale to the girls to come them down. You see, even though Dodgson was the very image of a boring man (he was a mathematician and was very shy, no one would think he held an ounce of creativity), he already had the experience of story telling off the top of his head. Dodgson was the eldest son of ten children and the responsibility of caring for and entertaining the children was often left to him. And thus, the story of Alice began, on that very boat trip. Dodgson uses many names that are familiar to him and the three girls, for example, his favorite of the three was Alice Liddell, which is why he named the main character Alice; his friend on the boat was named Robinson Duckworth and acted as the inspiration for the duck in the book; and lastly, Cheshire was a town he was fond of which inspired the Cheshire Cat. Dodgson himself said that the book would have never been written if it were not for Alice Liddell who upon hearing the story was very fascinated and harassed Dodgson for weeks until he agreed to make a paper copy for her so she could read it whenever she wanted. It took a couple of years, but Dodgson finally wrote one single copy of the tale. The book was displayed in Alice Liddell’s father’s office who was the dean of the school at that time and had many visitors. All of the visitors would sit to read the Alice book as soon as the saw it and became fascinated with it, eventually urging Dodgson to write an official copy and get it published.

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Group A: The Case of Peter Pan

In the article “The Case of Peter Pan”, disturbing details on how classic “children” novels are written are revealed. When you think of stories like Peter Pan, you generally think of the Walt Disney, happy ending version. Few people know the true original story, and those who do know it definitely question how it ever became a children’s classic. As discussed in class, novels such as Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland serve as outlets to their perverse writers. These writers were obsessed with children and the idea of childhood. Never never land is a phantasmic world where children stay children — however, the price to pay is that they can never leave. During class discussion, a very important point was brought up: children don’t want to stay children, they want to grow up, sometimes a little too fast. It is the adults that wish to go back to childhood and stay young forever. The novel was not even originally intended to be a children’s novel and had to be edited so it could be deemed “appropriate” for children. This brings us to the realization that most children’s books are not really intended with the child in mind and are instead sort of forced upon them. It really beckons the question of what children’s literature really is, and I hope that we will have a better understanding of it as we go forth in the class. 

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Little People: Thoughts

The article offers a somewhat informal timeline of the notion of “childhood”, which will help our class to better understand the modern definition of childhood and what children’s literature is truly about. Childhood did not always hold the same meaning as we know it today, there was a time where childhood was virtually nonexistent. The author reviews pieces of literature called the Yale series, which is a compilation of research and essays written by social scientist to examine how to notion of “childhood” came to be and its evolution through the years.

The first glimpse we get into the past is the Middle ages to the sixteenth century. This was a time where the average age to be married was quite young (preteens), and little to no consent was needed by parents for their children to be married; unless you were a daughter of nobel  blood. It is logical to assume that when these “children” were wed, they would be off to start their own household. However, depending on what part of Europe you were from and your or your family’s profession, it was forbidden for households to be split up. Even before marriage, boys and girls were sent away for an average of five years to learn trades or mannerisms from higher classes. Children were basically seen and treated like adults.

In the eighteenth century, there was a boom in  bastard children who were either murdered, abandoned, or left in special hospitals. Most of the children left in these special hospitals died for various reasons including poor sanitary practices, neglect, and even experimentation as we discussed in class. Later on in the nineteenth century in France, it was possible for a bastard child to seek child support from their fathers, so long as he was not married. This was the start of the realization that children ought to be cared for.

Relating this to the early twentieth century, many children worked in factories and sweat shops to help support their families, some were even as  young as seven! according to the Yale series, children felt a sense of pride and independence in the work that they did. after child labor laws were set into practice, it was an extreme polar change for children. Whereas once they were able to support themselves and their families, they were now required to go to school, which did not really give them much freedom to experience “childhood” and play anyway. From then on innocence was instilled on children and the idea of “appropriateness” was brought into play.