Children’s Literature: My Past and Present

by

Andi Miller

For a long time the study of literature, for me, was about the “classics.” Like most hungry young English majors, I was all about the dead white guys. Although, as I moved through my program I became increasingly interested in those “other” writers; the ones time forgot and that I decided should fit into my own personal canon of classics. An undergraduate college education is largely about self-discovery, and as such I was discovering feminism and the underappreciated female author, discovering multi-ethnic literature, and at long last the “other” I really wanted to champion—literature for children and adolescents.

Last week I found out that I will have the opportunity to teach an online children’s literature class in the fall for a university in the southern portion of Oklahoma. It seems my interstate teaching career will continue as I take the helm of online classes for North Carolina and Oklahoma, and terrorize my in-person students here in Texas as well. It is a wonderful opportunity for me to teach in the field I love once again since my last opportunity to do so was as a graduate student.

Sadly, there was a time when I was not so excited about children’s literature. Like most people, I thought of it as “kid stuff,” and I probably even committed the cardinal sin at some point of calling it “kiddie lit.” Children’s literature scholars hate that. Really hate it. Claws come out, there’s foaming at the mouth; it really is not pretty. Now that I will be teaching it again, I feel rejuvenated, invigorated, and downright giddy to dive back into some of my favorite children’s books. I can’t say precisely what changed my mind about children’s literature. There was no miraculous revelation, no single moment when I was overtaken by its gentle grandeur. Rather, just a semester-long metamorphosis.

Picture the year 2005, fall semester, when I set foot into my first graduate class: Oral Tradition and Modern Children’s Fantasy. My reasons for taking it were based largely on two important points: I love fairy tales and their retellings and, admittedly, it sounded like a fun class that would ease me into the graduate school thing with minimal pain (in comparison to the Bibliography and Methods of Research class I was also taking). I was sort of right. On the first day, the professor scared the stuffing out of me with her cool exterior, great shoes, and soft-spoken authority. I wasn’t quite sure if it was the right decision. I would never have guessed that one course could color the entirety of my teaching career.

As we began the class with a fairy tale blitz—several weeks of traditional fairy tales, theoretical readings, and disturbing movie adaptations—I was reminded of the striking and often horrifying differences between the classic tales and their syrupy (i.e., Disney) counterparts. I came to understand the extent to which fairy tales and their retellings act as a mirror of a culture’s values and hypocrisies. For example, a story like “Cinderella” is constantly being regurgitated, revised, and scrambled. While the Brothers Grimm wrote “Cinderella” for adults and in a grisly way, with stepsisters who cut off parts of their feet to fit into the glass slipper, Disney softened the story and made it palatable for a child audience. Since Disney the “Cinderella” story has been revised further with films like Ever After adding a feminist twist wherein Cinderella is independent and can take care of herself. As society changes, so do fairy tales.

Our later readings would include children’s titles from the fantasy realm without ties to fairy tales: David Almond’s Skellig, Roald Dahl’s The Witches, Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy. What all of the books made me realize is the extent to which children’s literature as a whole is a battleground or a proving ground, an in-between place where adults try to teach children about life, love, and morals but sometimes end up revealing unflattering biases.

My favorite example is Lois Lowry’s The Giver. The protagonist, Jonas, is chosen from a homogenous society devoid of difference to be a receiver of memory. That just means that he will have knowledge of books, emotions, and pain that have been eradicated from his society. Instead of free thinkers, his is a society of likeness where children are assigned a set of parents—motherhood, sex, and reproduction in general are completely taboo—and at their coming of age they begin taking drugs to retard their hormones and are assigned a life-long career based on their aptitudes. Most Americans would scoff at such an idea. The removal of personal choice? The loss of individual identity? That’s madness! However, when the reader takes a moment to analyze the book a little more deeply, the society has motivations not so far removed from our own concerns: stability, safety, and prosperity. It is very hard for students, parents, and the populace to argue with those three, but in Jonas’s world the choice must be made—there is no happy medium. 

In many ways, teaching this children’s literature course brings me full circle. “I once was lost and now I’m found . . . ” and all that. When I graduated from my Masters program I did not have an opportunity to teach children’s literature largely because it is still considered an obscure field in academia. However, sneaky as I am, I usually work a few pieces of children’s literature into any course I teach. Now I feel fortunate and am very grateful to have the opportunity to teach a class devoted solely to children’s fiction, and I hope I can open some of my students’ eyes in the same way that mine were opened in graduate school. I want my students to see that there is much to be learned from children’s literature, not only for children, but for adults as well. “Children’s Lit” will never be just for kids.

Books Mentioned in This Column:

The Classic Fairy Tales (W.W. Norton, 1999)

The Giver (Laurel Leaf, 2002)

The Golden Compass (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2006)

Skellig (Laurel Leaf, 2001)

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy (Oxford University Press, 1999)

The Witches (Puffin, 2007)


Andi is a recovering university academic employed by the North Carolina community college system as an English instructor. While she decided to forego a Ph.D. and career as a professor, she fills in all the free time her current position affords her with editing literary publications, reviewing, freelancing, and blogging at Tripping Toward Lucidity: Estella’s Revenge. Her work can be found in the journal, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), and Altar magazine as well as online in various venues such as PopMatters.com. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), and writes fiction. Her turn-ons include new books and gelato, while her turn-offs are reality television and washing dishes. Contact Andi.