Child Lit Core Authors

Nodelman (2008) - The Hidden Adult

Children and adults viewed as opposites, but the voice of the adult is present throughout e.g. an assumed adult narrator. Adults most frequently believe that children’s literature should be about education, because children are understood as innocent and inexperienced. Adults also think that child lit should act as protection, from knowledge and experience. Learning occurs not through repetition, but through variations of similar events. Texts colonise children towards adilt constructions of innocence.  

Nikolajeva (2009) - Aetonormative theory

Adult normativity is created in children’s literature and centres children as the other. However, contemporary children’s literature is attempting to cautiously subvert oppressive functions and interrogate established power structures e.g. dystopia. Aetonoramtive inquiry suggests that childhood and adulthood are both normal conditions, one doesn’t have power over the other. Carnival - children are allowed to become powerful but only for a limited time under specific conditions

Gubar (2016) - The Hermeneutics of Recuperation

Children have been conceptualised as passive objects of socialisation - disagrees with Rose. The Kinship model emphasises viewing children and adults as fundamentally different yet acknowledging age related differences. Important to recognise children’s agency, testing what happens if children are positioned as the standard. However, still struggles to actually define what agency is.

Cadden (2019) - narrative theory

The implied audience of an introduction is often different to the main text, it sells the books to the parents, acts as a means screening. Series fiction is often criticised for being formulaic, but this formula can allow for comfort against any threats in the narrative. Entertainment and literary analysis are sometimes secondary to the instructive quality of child lit, the attempt to shape a child into a rational person. Internal focalization - the narrator’s perspective is equivalent to the hero’s, can be fixed to one character or variable between characters, sometimes allowing to see the same event through different eyes.

Rudd (2005)

Argues against Rose, suggests that this neglects the role of the child as a social being, makes the child appear voiceless.. Impossible to have an essentialist idea of child lit, as constructions of childhood are constantly changing. Common theme - childhood grounds entire being and other power discourses e.g. race and gender are ignored. Hybridity – encapsulates the ambivalence of childhood and adulthood, there is no clear boundary, but one gradually becomes the other.

Marotta (2024)

1. - Neo-slave narrative – reimagines the experiences of enslaved people and the legacy of slavery. Afrofuturism – uses fantasy elements to create visions of black liberation and freedom  

2. Slave narrative inspires African American feminist novels – black young women are the heroes and enable women to see powerful versions of themselves and their ancestors  

3. Need to understand intersectionality to understand the impact of the neo-slave narrative on YA novels – examine gender, ethnicity and age together  

Philips (2023) - Being-girl

Girlhood is a liminal space, a flexible identity - positioning girlhood as an active existence that is diverse and intersectional, with varied experiences. There is no single presentation of how to be a girl. Use of maps in YA fantasy - introduces a new world, girls are not bound by the constraints of our own world.

Thompson (2019) - black fantastic

Children’s multicultural books are usually historical fiction, and fantasy is reserved for white readers - black characters are eroticised as victims. Slavery meant a loss of cultural identity, loss of names, language and tradition – the black fantastic creates images of refusing this social death.

Nodelman (1992)

Can criticise this perspective - argues that there are parallels between Orientalism and representations of childhood. The invisibility of children’s ideas and desires mirrors the experience of colonised people

Gilton (2007) - Approaches to looking at race relations

1. Colour blindness - we will have reconciliation once we ignore race and forget past discrimination

2. Anglo-Conformity - encourages racial minorities to adopt European values to move up social and economic ladders.

3. White responsibility - locates racial problems within majority cultures, focussing on structural racism, systems can be designed to favour one group over others

4. Multiculturalism - emphasises the value and worth of all cultures. Requires all groups to have mutual respect

Rose (1984)

There is no child in children’s literature, because it is written by adults, and that adults try to seduce children into this idea of the ideal child. Children’s literature is a projection of adult’s desires and fantasies about childhood. Because of this, children’s literature can never truly belong to children

Trites (2018)

YA speculative fiction novels are categorized as feminist because they feature a strong female protagonist, but this can be problematized. Speculative fiction and embodiment – the body must be regarded as a site of social, political, cultural and geographical instructions – the body is itself as cultural product.

Katniss is the object of exchange between men a traditional love triangle, doesn't sustain any female friendships, as these are often sacrificed for the success of the revolution.

Young women are presented in terms of whiteness, compulsory heteronormativity and future motherhood – gender binaries in speculative fiction are emphasized rather than blurred 

Skin – the skin women will inscribe their own objectification e.g. tattoos or scars – the body becomes a politicized object, rather than a self-defined identity  

McGee (2024)

Whodunit – classic formula that creates order out of chaos, a contest between a clever reader and an experienced author

Children’s mysteries are more of a hybrid than those for adults, take a broader conceptualisation of mystery - traditional forms are adapted and parodied.

Moran (2001)

Nancy drew draws freedom from the lack of adult authority figures in her life – means that no one can encourage Nancy to accept the passive gender role thrust onto her by society.

Patriarchal standards suggest that women develop a bad reputation by knowing to much, and are supposed to remain passive. Female detectives oppose this – they act in order to know.

Andrew (2017)

The boy detective, on a journey towards manhood, an ideological tool to encourage working class boys to develop into ideal men, ensures that working class boys are controlled and contained in certain ways  

• The containment of childhood – discipline, conformity, reinforcing a status quo 

• Discouraging undesirable models of masculinity  

Cadden (2000)

YA novels – usually written in 1st person – contains the consciousness of young characters. Ironic that adults simulate a young person’s voice – can never be truly authentic.

James (2011)

Post disaster novels are increasing in western cultural discourses – rise in the dystopian mood. Post-disaster allows for social commentary e.g. world politics, gender, the meaning of life and death. Exists outside the boundaries of law, sanctions violence, only the fittest survive

Rise of YA has coincided with the prevalence of warrior women figures in western popular media. They act as ‘pseudo-males’ but are highly sexualized, limiting their power.

Ames (2013)

21^st century – adults view adolescents as apolitical, uninterested in global politics. However, the reading preferences of this generation do not reflect this.

Adolescents turn to the safe confines of fiction to wrestle with politics.

Hard to verify that young people are then interested in the social commentary of these novels

Veldhuizen and Groningen (2023) - The Child Detective

Child detective literature clashes with protectivism – it is designed to challenge the reader, and is celebrated for being “grotesque” and “mind-boggling”. (links really well to Rose and Nodelman) 

Whodunnit – highly formulaic, but centre around less intense crimes when for children, sometimes the restoration will reveal that there was no crime at all – moral and emotional protectionism.

The child detective - “an amateur who investigates the crime nonchalantly, almost as an elegant hobby” “the child detective approaches the crime like a serious game, with set rules, roles and expectations”. Detective is often connected to the crime. Children act in groups, not alone.  

Child is often not given space in adult discourses so cooperation is limited – a temporary participation in the adult world

The younger the child, the less narrative agency is given, things are made more explicit – less implicit questions and more explicit interrogatives drive the story  

Veldhuizen and Groningen (2023) - The Adolescent Detective

YA detective fiction focusses on negative aspects of humanity, crimes are more violent and complex, increases in feeling of powerlessness and a desire for revenge. Often have ambiguous endings. Seeks to expose societal flaws and re-establish social order

Adolescent detectives are viewed as more capable so more likely to navigate the mystery on their own – arouses stronger negative emotions as they can be placed in more dangerous situations.

Routledge (2010)

Argues that detective fiction for young readers is an artificial category, and frequently overlaps with that written for an adult audience. Argues that child detectives offer different possibilities for plotting, but share common origins with the main genre.

Diverges from the adult genre through its interest in children as agents of detection.

Has its origins in the development of childhood as a concept in Victorian society - could link to Enola Holmes

The invisibility and presumed innocence of children gives them privileged access to criminal proceedings - could link to Nodelman and Rose

Child detectives are given freedom from adult supervision - being a detective involves an exploration of their relationship with adults and understanding their own identities.