The popularity of the Harry Potter books among adults and the
critical acclaim these young adult fantasies have received may seem
like a novel literary phenomenon. In the nineteenth century,
however, readers considered both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as
works of literature equally for children and adults; only later was
the former relegated to the category of "boys' books" while the
latter, even as it was canonized, came frequently to be regarded as
unsuitable for young readers. Adults -- women and men -- wept over
Little Women. And America's most prestigious literary journals
regularly reviewed books written for both children and their
parents. This egalitarian approach to children's literature changed
with the emergence of literary studies as a scholarly discipline at
the turn of the twentieth century. Academics considered children's
books an inferior literature and beneath serious consideration.
In Kiddie Lit, Beverly Lyon Clark explores the marginalization
of children's literature in America -- and its recent possible
reintegration -- both within the academy and by the mainstream
critical establishment. Tracing the reception of works by Mark
Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett,
L. Frank Baum, Walt Disney, and J. K. Rowling, Clark reveals
fundamental shifts in the assessment of the literary worth of books
beloved by both children and adults, whether written for boys or
girls. While uncovering the institutional underpinnings of this
transition, Clark also attributes it to changing American attitudes
toward childhood itself, a cultural resistance to the intrinsic
value of childhood expressed through sentimentality, condescension,
andmoralizing.
Clark's engaging and enlightening study of the critical
disregard for children's books since the end of the nineteenth
century -- which draws on recent scholarship in gender, cultural,
and literary studies -- offers provocative new insights into the
history of both children's literature and American literature in
general, and forcefully argues that the books our children read and
love demand greater respect.
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