In the earlier reading Kiddie Lit Beverly Lyon Clark points out that, “immaturity does not seem like a permanent label.” She then illustrates that immaturity is not limited to the child, but also can include social awkwardness and ignorance.

Why then does children’s literature get a bad rap for being immature, beneath, unworthy of the “mature” reader’s effort?

In our class readings so far I keep coming back to this idea of state of the child. The intended audience, children, of children’s literature is supposed to be in this place of innocence of needing to learn how the world works. The adult reader has moved past the need for these stories. The reading selection How to Read Children’s Literature outlined the idea of the “implied reader.” If a children’s book like Goodnight Moon, that I’ve read at least a hundred times with kids I’ve babysat, is intended for children then why do I like it so much? I’m not, I don’t think, I’m the implied reader. Right?

Here’s what I’m stuck on and don’t really have an answer worked out just yet: What if children’s literature has more than one implied reader? And why can’t that be ok in the lexicon of Literature?

In the Jacqueline Rose essay she references the socially unacceptable sexual repression of both JM Barrie and Lewis Carroll and discusses what both writers are likely alluding to.

My first reaction to her pointing this out is, “but I love these stories! Not cool!” I felt like that was too dark, wrong connection to make of a story that I read innocently as a child and with nostalgia as an adult.

I started thinking, after getting over the lured overtones that I got hung up on, what if it’s sexual discovery that’s this invisible line between child and adult? I mean the Bible points out how innocent and good life was for Adam & Eve. Sexual discovery is still that line in the sand between before and after; child and adult. Ok, maybe not the entire line; too Freudian for my taste. But the discovery of how to live in the community and how to navigate more complex gray areas is the mark of one who is no longer a child.

This idea of discovering maturity might allow us to use stories to consider, to explore, the impact this discovery when it’s made at the right time, too soon, or too late. (Anyone read Confederacy of Dunces? Ignatius is a guy that may have been a little late to adulthood based on this whole discovery idea.)

When considering children’s literature it’s starting to look to me like the adult writer, who catering to an implied child reader, is trying to lead that child in degrees to discover the world. But it turns out the adult reader inadvertently becomes the implied reader (in the case of Peter Pan we’d have to “strike that and reverse it”). There’s looking back to a life before discovery a deeper understanding of what maturity brings and what is lost when maturity is gained.