User:Robina Fox/Social issues in children's literature

Social issues in children's issues is a subsection of Children's literature currently being edited before becoming a separate article.

Children's literature is very often expected not only to entertain or to educate about the world but to inculcate morals and desirable social attitudes. Examples Aesop's Fables#Children; John Newbery's A Little Pretty Pocket-Book promised to "infallibly make Tommy a good boy and Polly a good girl". Trad. fairy tales objected to by Puritans, defended by Oliver Goldsmith and Coleridge, then came Andersen's tales with a “moral impulse in line with traditional Christian standards". [Ref: Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek's Folk and Fairy Tales, introduction] Grimm's Tales sanitized by (example) and others. The History of Sandford and Merton = vs snobbery (and racism).

Controversies often emerge around the content and characters of prominent children's books. Well-known classics that remain popular throughout decades commonly become criticized by critics and readers as the values of contemporary culture change. Critical analysis of children's literature is common through children's literary journals as well as published collections of essays contributed to by psychoanalysts, scholars and various literary critics such as Peter Hunt.

Debate over controversial content

A widely discussed and debated topic by critics and publishers in the children's book industry is whether outdated and offensive content, specifically racial stereotypes, should be changed in new editions. Others argue instead that original content should remain but that publishers should add information to guide parents in conversations with their children about the problematic elements of the particular story. Some see racist stereotypes as cultural artifacts that should be preserved. In The Children's Culture Reader, scholar Henry Jenkins references Herbert R. Kohl's essay "Should We Burn Babar?" which raises the debate whether children should be educated on how to think critically towards oppressive ideologies rather than ignore historical mistakes. Jenkins suggests that parents and educators should trust children to make responsible judgments.

Some books have been altered in newer editions and significant changes can be seen, such as illustrator Richard Scarry's book Best Word Book Ever. and Roald Dahl's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In other cases classics have been rewritten into updated versions by new authors and illustrators. Several versions of Little Black Sambo have been remade as more appropriate and without prejudice.

Stereotypes, racism and cultural bias

1900 edition of the controversial The Story of Little Black Sambo

Popular classics such as The Secret Garden, Pippi Longstocking, Peter Pan, The Chronicles of Narnia and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory have been criticized for their racial stereotyping.

The academic journal Children's Literature Review provides critical analysis of many well known children's books. In its 114th volume, the journal discusses the cultural stereotypes in Belgian cartoonist Herge's Tintin series in reference to its depiction of people from the Congo.

After the scramble for Africa which occurred between the years of 1881 and 1914 there was a large production of children's literature which attempted to create an illusion of what life was like for those who lived on the African continent. This was a simple technique in deceiving those who only relied on stories and secondary resources. Resulting in a new age of books which put a "gloss" on imperialism and its teachings at the time. Thus encouraging the idea that the colonies who were part of the African continent were perceived as animals, savages and inhuman-like. Therefore needing cultured higher class Europeans to share their knowledge and resources with the locals. Also promoting the idea that the people within these places were as exotic as the locations themselves. Examples of these books include:

• Lou lou chez les negres (1929) – Lou Lou among the blacks
• Baba Diène et Morceau-de-Sucre (1939)
• Babar series promoting the French civilizing mission (1931)
• Tintin au Congo (1931) – Tintin goes to teach lessons in Congo about their country, Belgium

The Five Chinese Brothers, written by Claire Huchet Bishop and illustrated by Kurt Wiese has been criticized for its stereotypical caricatures of Chinese people. Helen Bannerman's The Story of Little Black Sambo and Florence Kate Upton's The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg have also been noted for their racist and controversial depictions. The term sambo, a racial slur from the American South caused a widespread banning of Bannerman's book. Author Julius Lester and illustrator Jerry Pinkney revised the story as Sam and the Tigers: A New Telling of Little Black Sambo, making its content more appropriate and empowering for ethnic minority children. Feminist theologian Eske Wollrad claimed Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking novels "have colonial racist stereotypes", urging parents to skip specific offensive passages when reading to their children. Criticisms of the 1911 novel The Secret Garden by author Frances Hodgson Burnett claim endorsement of racist attitudes toward black people through the dialogue of main character Mary Lennox. Hugh Lofting's The Story of Doctor Dolittle has been accused of "white racial superiority", by implying through its underlying message that an ethnic minority person is less than human.

The picture book The Snowy Day, written and illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats was published in 1962 and is known as the first picture book to portray an African-American child as a protagonist. Middle Eastern and Central American protagonists still remain underrepresented in North American picture books. According to the Cooperative Children's Books Center (CCBC) at University of Wisconsin Madison, which has been keeping statistics on children's books since the 1980s, in 2016, out of 3,400 children's books received by the CCBC that year, only 278 were about Africans or African Americans. Additionally, only 92 of the books were written by Africans or African Americans. In his interview in the book Ways of Telling: Conversations on the Art of the Picture Book, Jerry Pinkney mentioned how difficult it was to find children's books with black children as characters. In the literary journal The Black Scholar, Bettye I. Latimer has criticized popular children's books for their renditions of people as almost exclusively white, and notes that Dr. Seuss books contain few ethnic minority people. The popular school readers Fun with Dick and Jane which ran from the 1930s until the 1970s, are known for their whitewashed renditions of the North American nuclear family as well as their highly gendered stereotypes. The first black family did not appear in the series until the 1960s, thirty years into its run.

Writer Mary Renck Jalongo In Young Children and Picture Books discusses damaging stereotypes of Native Americans in children's literature, stating repeated depictions of indigenous people as living in the 1800s with feathers and face paint cause children to mistake them as fictional and not as people that still exist today. The depictions of Native American people in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie and J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan are widely discussed among critics. Wilder's novel, based on her childhood in America's midwest in the late 1800s, portrays Native Americans as racialized stereotypes and has been banned in some classrooms. In her essay, Somewhere Outside the Forest: Ecological Ambivalence in Neverland from The Little White Bird to Hook, writer M. Lynn Byrd describes how the natives of Neverland in Peter Pan are depicted as "uncivilized", valiant fighters unafraid of death and are referred to as "redskins", which is now considered a racial slur.

Imperialism and colonialism

The presence of empire as well as pro-colonialist and imperialist themes in children's literature have been identified in some of the most well known children's classics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In the French illustrator Jean de Brunhoff's 1931 picture book Histoire de Babar, le petit elephant (The Story of Babar, The Little Elephant), prominent themes of imperialism and colonialism have been noted and identified as propaganda. An allegory for French colonialism, Babar easily assimilates himself into the bourgeois lifestyle. It is a world where the elephants who have adapted themselves dominate the animals who have not yet been assimilated into the new and powerful civilization. H. A. Rey and Margret Rey's Curious George first published in 1941 has been criticized for its blatant slave and colonialist narratives. Critics claim the man with the yellow hat represents a colonialist poacher of European descent who kidnaps George, a monkey from Africa, and sends him on a ship to America. Details such as the man in colonialist uniform and Curious George's lack of tail are points in this argument. In an article, The Wall Street Journal interprets it as a "barely disguised slave narrative." Rudyard Kipling, the author of Just So Stories and The Jungle Book has also been accused of colonial prejudice attitudes. Literary critic Jean Webb, among others, has pointed out the presence of British imperialist ideas in The Secret Garden. Colonialist ideology has been identified as a prominent element in Peter Pan by critics.

Gender roles and representation of women

Some of the earliest children's stories that contain feminist themes are Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Frank L. Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. With many women of this period being represented in children's books as doing housework, these two books deviated from this pattern. Drawing attention to the perception of housework as oppressive is one of the earliest forms of the feminist movement. Little Women, a story about four sisters, is said to show power of women in the home and is seen as both conservative and radical in nature. The character of Jo is observed as having a rather contemporary personality and has even been seen as a representation of the feminist movement. It has been suggested that the feminist themes in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz result from influence of Baum's mother-in law, Matilda Gage, an important figure in the suffragist movement. Baum's significant political commentary on capitalism, and racial oppression are also said to be part of Gage's influence. Examples made of these themes is the main protagonist, Dorothy who is punished by being made to do housework. Another example made of positive representations of women is in Finnish author Tove Jansson's Moomin series which features strong and individualized female characters. In recent years, there has been a surge in the production and availability of feminist children's literature as well as a rise in gender neutrality in children's literature.

In addition to perpetuating stereotypes about appropriate behavior and occupations for women and girls, children's books frequently lack female characters entirely, or include them only as minor or unimportant characters. In the book Boys and Girls Forever: Reflections on Children's Classics, scholar Alison Lurie says most adventure novels of the 20th century, with few exceptions, contain boy protagonists while female characters in books such as those by Dr. Seuss, would typically be assigned the gender-specific roles of receptionists and nurses. The Winnie-the-Pooh characters written by A. A. Milne, are primarily male, with the exception of the character Kanga, who is a mother to Roo. Even animals and inanimate objects are usually identified as being male in children's books. The near-absence of significant female characters is paradoxical because of the role of women in creating children's literature. According to an article published in the Guardian in 2011, by Allison Flood, "Looking at almost 6,000 children's books published between 1900 and 2000, the study, led by Janice McCabe, a professor of sociology at Florida State University, found that males are central characters in 57% of children's books published each year, with just 31% having female central characters. Male animals are central characters in 23% of books per year, the study found, while female animals star in only 7.5%".

On the one hand Growing up with Dick and Jane highlights the heterosexual, nuclear family and also points out the gender-specific duties of the mother, father, brother and sister, while Young Children and Picture Books, on the other hand, encourages readers to avoid books with women who are portrayed as inactive and unsuccessful as well as intellectually inferior and subservient to their fellow male characters to avoid children's books that have repressive and sexist stereotypes for women.

In her book Children's Literature: From the fin de siècle to the new millennium, professor Kimberley Reynolds claims gender division stayed in children's books prominently until the 1990s. She also says that capitalism encourages gender-specific marketing of books and toys. For example, adventure stories have been identified as being for boys and domestic fiction intended for girls. Publishers often believe that boys will not read stories about girls, but that girls will read stories about both boys and girls; therefore, a story that features male characters is expected to sell better. The interest in appealing to boys is also seen in the Caldecott awards, which tend to be presented to books that are believed to appeal to boys. Reynolds also says that both boys and girls have been presented by limited representations of appropriate behaviour, identities and careers through the illustrations and text of children's literature. She argues girls have traditionally been marketed books that prepare them for domestic jobs and motherhood. Conversely, boys are prepared for leadership roles and war. During the 20th century, more than 5,000 children's picture books were published in the U.S; during that time, male characters outnumbered female characters by more than 3 to 2, and male animals outnumbered female animals by 3 to 1. No children's picture book that featured a protagonist with an identifiable gender contained only female characters.

I'm Glad I'm a Boy! I'm Glad I'm a Girl! (1970) by Whitney Darrow Jr. was criticized for narrow career depictions for both boys and girls. The book informs the reader that boys are doctors, policemen, pilots, and presidents while girls are nurses, meter maids, stewardesses and first ladies.

Nancy F. Cott, once said that "gender matters; that is, it matters that human beings do not appear as neuter individuals, that they exist as male or female, although this binary is always filtered through human perception. I should add that when I say gender, I am talking about meaning. I am talking about something in which interpretation is already involved."

In her book La sua barba non è poi così blu... Immaginario collettivo e violenza misogina nella fiaba di Perrault (2014, translated into Spanish Su barba no era tan azul and winner of the first international CIRSE award 2015), Angela Articoni analyzes the fairy tale Bluebeard dwelling on the sentence pronounced by the protagonist to convince herself to accept marriage, an expression that recites to repeat the women victims of violence who hope to be able to redeem their prince charming.

Effect on early childhood development

Bruno Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment, uses psychoanalysis to examine the impact that fairy tales have on the developing child. Bettelheim states the unconscious mind of a child is affected by the ideas behind a story, which shape their perception and guides their development. Likewise, author and illustrator Anthony Browne contends the early viewing of an image in a picture book leaves an important and lasting impression on a child. According to research, a child's most crucial individual characteristics are developed in their first five years. Their environment and interaction with images in picture books have a profound impact on this development and are intended to inform a child about the world.

Children's literature critic Peter Hunt argues that no book is innocent of harbouring an ideology of the culture it comes from. Critics discuss how an author's ethnicity, gender and social class inform their work. Scholar Kimberley Reynolds suggests books can never be neutral as their nature is intended as instructional and by using its language, children are embedded with the values of that society. Claiming childhood as a culturally constructed concept, Reynolds states that it is through children's literature that a child learns how to behave and to act as a child should, according to the expectations of their culture. She also attributes capitalism, in certain societies, as a prominent means of instructing especially middle class children in how to behave. The "image of childhood" is said to be created and perpetuated by adults to affect children "at their most susceptible age". Kate Greenaway's illustrations are used as an example of imagery intended to instruct a child in the proper way to look and behave. In Roberta Seelinger Trites's book Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature, she also argues adolescence is a social construct established by ideologies present in literature. In the study The First R: How Children Learn About Race and Racism, researcher Debra Ausdale studies children in multi-ethnic daycare centres. Ausdale claims children as young as three have already entered into and begun experimenting with the race ideologies of the adult world. She asserts racist attitudes are assimilated using interactions children have with books as an example of how children internalize what they encounter in real life.

External links

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