Tag Archives: how to read children’s literature

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“How to Read Children’s Literature”

Children’s Literature is a peculiar genre in that its intended audience is imagined and its writers are far removed from the readers. When writing/creating a character, it’s easiest to draw from one’s own life to shape his/her experiences. I would imagine that there would be a lot of backlash if the entirety or great majority of African American literature was written by upper/middle class white men. Sure, there’s a great deal of imagination that goes into writing a story, but when the voice of an entire minority is being represented in literature by those in power, erasure happens. Children’s Literature is characterized by a lack of proper representation of those it portrays. Adults write for children and thus, assume this abstract reader. In Jonathan Klassen’s “How to Read Children’s Literature,” the reader adult writers imagine is called the “implied reader.” Klassen explains that the implied reader is “a role the text implies,” but what happens when the child isn’t the reader we assumed him/her to be?

What happens when adults imagine this nonexistent child and it doesn’t match up to the actual children who are reading? If children are seen as “other” and yet are seen as lacking sovereignty over themselves, completely dependent, and inferior to the adults they will one day become, this “implied reader” does no justice to the real child reader whose mind and imaginary worlds are viewed upon with condescension. What would it mean for our society to fully accept children as conscious citizens rather than wild animals that need to be tamed and how would that reflect in children’s literature and how it’s viewed?

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A new way to read Children’s Literature

In this passage, I came across an experiment that Perry Nodelman had administered. He read a poem to his class and asked for their opinion. To his surprise, they said they would not share the poem with children. He asked if they enjoyed the poem and they replied with a yes. So why would they not share this enjoyable poem? According to the passage, “In thinking about the poem as a text for children, they had ignored their own responses and, instead, guessed how some hypothetical children might respond. Many adults base their judgments of children’s literature upon such guesses” (Page 1, Seeing Beyond an Adult Perspective). That made me wonder why Children’s Literature is created mostly by adults. Sure–they could definitely use their childhood experiences to imagine what a child would want to read. But, that child (who is the adult now) was born in the past. What do children want to see now? Wouldn’t it be better to actually ask children what they want to see? There are more young authors creating Children’s Literature now. I haven’t read any of their works yet, but would it be any better than the children’s books we grew up with? It’s something I’m curious about.