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This paper aims to examine the defining poetics of children’s literature, that which makes it what it is, what special characteristics it possesses and why. The paper will briefly examine some background and history of children’s literature showing how different social forces have impacted upon it, for example the effect of the European Enlightenment, the control of the state and the ongoing force of didacticism. It will also look at the role of children’s literature in society, as a moving political force and its classification and the status of its writers.

Most historians of children’s literature agree that the first books in Europe intended especially for the entertainment of children were products of the 18^th C. They were not exclusively instructional in content and they did consider the entertaining of the child a legitimate literary objective. But Mary E. Shaner believes that in the last quarter of the 15th century three medieval romances, Sir Amadace, Sir Ysumbras and Sir Gowther were edited for the entertainment and instruction of the young and published in booklets along with Urbanitatus (called Stans Puer ad Mensam in the manuscript), part of the Lay Folk’s Masse Book and part of the Lytyl Children’s Book respectively. She observes that the violent and bloody action of these three romances is something no modern author or publisher would consider suitable for children. But violence and blood are no strangers to children’s literature, from fairytales or the popular penny-dreadfuls of the late 19^th century to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, comic books, video games and TV of modern times.

Erasmus (1466-1536) compared children to "trees that grow askew if not bound to a support and grafted." The widespread acceptance of original sin and fall from grace was responsible for the notion that children were especially vulnerable to evil influences and had to be trained and watched and force fed with manners and morals, much like vitamin C and cod liver oil were used in the twentieth century. Some books with extreme views considered children to be wild and even animal-like and in need of domestication and socialization before being accepted into the human race and allowed any rights.

Erasmus suggested that people could advance themselves to higher levels of society as a result of the acquisition of accepted good manner. For example a primer could offer one instruction in self-restraint and social assimilation, with practical tips such as "not to laugh when others are scolded and to lend one’s ink and quills to the pupil who has left them at home." The emphasis was, in the 16^th century, on duties rather than rights and, however cherished the child might have been, whether a boy or a girl, children’s status was still an inferior one.

In the late seventeenth and eighteenth century a new and more optimistic view of the world arose in Europe which reached its peak with the Enlightenment movement. Among the major contributors to the new view of the child in this period were John Locke (1632-1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788). Like Erasmus, Locke stressed the importance of early learning in the formation of habits, but he went further with the argument that education was 90% responsible for making children good or evil, useful or not. More radically he argued that nine out of ten children are made good or evil, useful or not, by their education. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), within a decade of its appearance had altered the way people looked upon human efforts in material matters. Mary Jackson states that he undertook to prove that "mortals are born with no innate ideas; each enters the world with a mind like a blank slate, neither inherently moral nor immoral. Experience writes on this slate through the medium of the senses, gradually building concepts, principles, and human judgment. This logic called into question the doctrine of original sin, which had been for centuries the cornerstone of Christian orthodoxy. By successfully compromising the idea of inborn principles, Locke undermined the all-important tenet of innate human evil with the result that the child’s moral status could no longer be defined by a presumption of savagery or original sin." Rousseau believed in the merits of sincerity over the risks of spontaneity and placed a high premium on learning from nature, which was reflected in the 18th century cult of the noble savage. Rousseau envisaged a reformed society which would come about as a result of a more "natural" education, free of inherited prejudices. He recommended Robinson Crusoe as the ideal book, raising it to new heights of fame in his Émile.

In Britain charity schools were responsible for many lower class children learning to read and write and were sponsored by groups such as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The most popular 17th century Christian religious work for children, James Janeway’s A Token for Children: An Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children and its sequel (1672), depicted poor children enduring slow and painful deaths and reminded them that they were not too little to go to hell. These horrors remained in circulation, reaching all levels of society for over a hundred years in Britain until rescue arrived in the form of books in a totally different mood. The latter included Ann Law’s Children’s Bible (1759) and John Newbery’s The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread (1764) and The History of Little Goody Two Shoes (1765) which aimed to be lively and striking and reflected the new spirit with tales of worldly improvement.

Most of what the young read or heard read before 1740 was also intended for adults. Indeed, well into the second half of the 18th century adults were reading books that were later to become children’s. Then, as at the start of the century, children read once-popular and fashionable adult castoffs.

John Newbery (1713-67), the first commercial publisher to be successful in building a sound business of publishing for children, opened his firm in London in 1744 and in the same year published his first children’s book, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book. This is seen by some as the landmark children’s book of that era. It had as its motto ‘Delectando Monemus’ (Instruction with Delight). He skillfully combined elements which appealed to his child readers, with morality, which appealed to their teachers and parents. For example he used the character of Jack the Giant Killer, a characteristic figure in children’s tales, as a moral preacher. His slogan was "Trade and Plum Cake Forever", which reflected the entertainment-amusement purposes of his book, not to mention his commercial aspirations.

Although some leisure books for children had been produced earlier in the century, the idea of a business dedicated wholly or even principally to them was unheard of. The

influences which controlled the production of juvenile books in the early decades of their history were actually trade and business, not religious or educational ones. Nevertheless the justification that the amusement included in his books combined instruction with morals was still deemed necessary. For the first time in books for the young, the Renaissance formula (borrowed from the Greeks) for literature, "to delight and instruct", was thought acceptable. Within limits enjoyment was seen to be not only good in itself but also beneficial for children, as it assisted learning, guaranteed cheerful perseverance, and generally improved children’s prospects. Increasingly, children were held accountable for making themselves into proper adults and this came to be perceived in a more secular way, with purely religious goals becoming secondary. The themes of rags-to-riches and virtue-rewarded had enormous appeal to young readers, especially those of the lower middle classes.

Despite still being reserved solely for the pious and morally upright, the winning of material achievement took priority over earlier visions of spiritual rewards in the lives reflected in the new Enlightenment period books; and an ambition for self-improvement and advancement challenged the former acquiescence to one’s appointed position in society- remarkable developments stimulated to a great degree by the 18th century’s new science and technology.

Newbery’s death in 1767 left a void in the London publishing scene and in the last part of the 18th century many changes took place in the books produced for children in Britain, considered as transition years. The enjoyment and improvement principle of life, reflected in children’s literature soon produced a backlash and Newbery’s successors, notably Trimmer and More always show the rich and high-born as generous whereas in Newbery’s Goody Two Shoes, Sir Timothy Gripe and prosperous Farmer Graspall were villainous and greedy. This was frowned upon by the religious and high class as it undercut the power of the church and the state.

From 1790 to 1815 the influence of Trimmer and More resulted in a flood of moral tales emphasizing religion and painting over the sins of the great and rich for reasons of national security.

Meanwhile, in France, the Revolution of 1789 resulted in a republic whose continued existence was under threat and four years later a public re-education campaign was launched with publications aimed at children as one of the main efforts of molding and bringing into being a new French citizen.

In 1792 French children were by law required to die for their country; boys of 15 and girls of 13 had to take an oath pledging to defend the Republic with their lives. Their rights as citizens were established as a result of this duty to fight and die.

An example of one of these publications is Bourdon de la Crosnière’s 1793-4 Recueil des Actions Héroïques et Civiques des Républicains Français, which chronicled some of the heroic actions of children and gives examples of their heroism which illuminated the fact that the ultimate right of the child was the right to die for the nation. One legendary hero, Joseph Barra, a drummer boy, who was martyred when scarcely 13, refused to relinquish a pair of horses to the rebel foes, defiantly crying "Vive la Republique" as he died. Another account tells the story of a 14-year-old boy by the name of Latour who ran away to join the army without telling his family, was captured at Tournai, but managed to escape and after many adventures returned to Paris.

These stories of children sacrificing themselves for the public good were a departure from the traditional civilities, and Bourdon’s heroic stories were endlessly repeated and summarized in subsequent morality books. Bourdon’s Recueil also includes descriptions of the military exploits of several women. As the political situation stabilized, women, their propaganda use over, by late 1793 were being banned from many public meetings. Children also were returned to their previous position in the scheme of things and, no longer seen as agents in the forging of a new society, were once more subjected to the same kind of didactic traditional courtesy books and secular catechisms concerned only with keeping them in their place. This change of stance concerning what should be taught to children happened many times in different countries and different eras, as a result of varying historical, political and social influences. In the following section an example of the use of children’s literature in a more modern context will explore this further.

A common thread running through children’s literature from its origins is didacticism. Firstly children had to learn how to read, and then from their reading they had to learn how to behave and how to fit into their society. This pattern has been repeated constantly despite very different social conditions. We have seen that various factors have shaped the form that didacticism has taken in children’s literature at various times in history; from the idea of original sin during Erasmus’ time to the ideas of self-improvement in the Enlightenment as shown in Britain by Newbery, and the depiction of children as heroic agents of change during the French Revolution. The propaganda purposes that children’s literature serves stand out blatantly in times of extreme social conditions, when an about turn from the norm can occur. Another fascinating example of this is the use that was made of folklore and children’s literature in shaping the new society of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, although unfortunately it will not be possible to explore this in the present paper.

Revolutions have often shown empowerment of children and women. Looking at other kinds of society, we find a similar use of children’s literature in socialist countries where the state rather than the marketplace dictated its parameters. Maxim Gorky, for instance, promoted children’s books teaching the ideology of the Soviet Union, in order to train good Soviet citizens for the future.

Children’s books were used as a support for the desired social conditioning of their day in moral, religious and political spheres, often reflecting accepted adult tastes in literature and sometimes acting as forerunners to trends that were to become prevalent. They represented society’s efforts to program the young into conformity with prevailing cultural values.

In socialist countries, perhaps more than capitalist ones, children were seen as the hope of the future and the builders of the new socialist society. As such, they and the writers and illustrators who produced material for them, were taken seriously. In theory, at least, these artists were as famous and as financially rewarded as those who produced books for adults. In reality, however, they were not considered as important as writers of adults’ books and as a result their work was not scrutinized as thoroughly by the censor. Thus, children’s books were able to address issues that could not be touched in adult literature; one example of such was the controversial subject of protection of the environment where children’s literature was able to shelter the ecological cause. Nature is a favorite topic for children’s writers and this added further camouflage

The East German constitution supported conservation and as elsewhere this was a traditional children’s subject. As economic development became a great priority, however, resulting pollution was hushed up, so much so that anyone making public information concerning pollution of air, water or soil could actually be punished for giving away state secrets. Despite the classification of such information, more people were growing aware of the life-threatening ecological imbalances around them. The difficulty lay in voicing their fears. Information about pollution in the country was published for the first time in Reimar Gilsenbach’s 1982 "Rund um die Natur", a non-fiction work for young readers..

An important figure in this issue was Wolf Spillner. In 1977 his Geese over Reiherberg championed the cause of Lake Drambeck, a nature preserve in Mecklenburg. When he first wrote about the situation, for the E. German farmer’s weekly "Neue Deutsche Bauernzeitung", his article was rejected as being defamatory to farmers.

Wolf Spillner was born in the Harz Mountains in 1936 and grew up near Hamburg. Later he settled in East Germany, where he wrote children’s non-fiction and was involved in nature photography and ornithology. During the time that he showed his commitment to conservationism in a general kind of way he did not meet with any criticism, but when he promoted the cause of Lake Drambeck he attracted opposition. As he was banned from discussing the issue in the newspaper he turned the issue into a story for children. The book appeared in the Kinderbuchverlag in 1977 as ‘Gänse überm Reiherberg’ (Geese over Reiherberg). The Boje-Verlag, Stuttgart brought out a West German version in 1981, under the title ‘Wildgänse überm Moor’ (Wild Geese over the Moor).

The story began when the local farmers’ collective were antagonized by conservation regulations and a public meeting of all concerned parties was held in 1971. This was when Spillner’s newspaper report was rejected and the editors of Kindersbuchverlag, who had published his picture book ‘Die Vogelinsel’ (Bird Island), suggested turning it into a novel for children. Although neither the central topic nor its literary treatment were typical of children’s books, the child’s perspective on the subject was responsible for it being published with no impediment. Farmer’s collectives may have been highly regarded, but then so was youth. So if conservation was in conflict with agriculture specifically or with economic priorities generally, there were hardly any better vehicles for representing that conflict than the young, especially as they are conceded a special bond with nature.

An outline of the children’s story:

Thirteen year old Knuppe, a passionate angler lives in a village in Mecklenburg close to a nature preserve. An ornithologist, Dr. Häublein, arrives with his wife and a student to stay for a few days, pitching a tent near Knuppe’s parents’ house, intending to ring the wild geese in the nature preserve. Knuppe joins the three, gives up fishing in the protected lake and is presented with a goose egg. Emma, the hatched gosling, adopts him as her foster parent. Knuppe’s father is unhappy with the conservation regulations both in his capacity as the accountant of the local farmers’ collective and as a hunter. The same is true of other residents of the region. At a public meeting, Knuppe’s father makes a claim of 10,000 marks in compensation for damages to grazing land caused by the wild geese. When Knuppe calls the claim dishonest since those particular meadows were never used for grazing, the farmers’ collective is denied the money and Knuppe’s father feels that he has been compromised. Later that year he inadvertently shoots Emma, but doesn’t tell his son. When the boy discovers the deed he believes that his father has acted out of a desire for revenge. A local outsider, a stubborn invalid, admired by both Knuppe and his friend Kalle, manages to reconcile father and son.

The character of Knuppe is based on the author himself and material from Spillner’s own biography was incorporated into the book. The entire situation was described accurately in the children’s book, with all the details that the rejected newspaper article had contained.

W. Spillner and his E. German colleagues Benno Pludra and Gunter Saalmann acknowledge the reasoning capabilities, intelligence and idealism of children, accepting that children can be capable of coping with disappointments, as when facing up to the fact of reality’s shortcomings and yet still striving to meet the demand of the ideal with energy and optimism. This is a view in opposition to the traditional idea of dictating what children should think and how they should behave, but in the example of Wild Geese children’s literature is still used to convey an author’s political stance.

Thus it can be seen that even when children’s literature departs from the prevailing moral standards it still serves didactic or propaganda purposes. It is also evident that this has not been confined to one part of the world; children’s literature has been used to further various causes in both Eastern and Western Europe. Further study will show a similar function in other areas as well.

In addition to, and perhaps because of, its highly, indeed inherently, didactic nature, children’s literature and its authors remain marginalized in all modern societies. Generally children’s books are not included in what is thought of as cultural heritage and are hardly mentioned in national histories of literature. Encyclopedias and other reference books rarely list children’s authors and works unless they are exclusively written on that subject. Children’s literature has, in this way, been divided off from "real" literature. Because of its

lack of importance in culture children’s literature has not been designated as a subject of study in higher education until very recently. Even then, with few exceptions, it has still not been recognized as a subject for departments of literature. Recent changes in the attitude toward children’s literature in curriculum only highlight its inferior position. If children’s literature is considered a legitimate field of research at all, then it is mostly by departments of education, due to children’s books being seen as more a part of this sphere rather than literature.

The position of children’s literature within the educational system is the result of social justifications and reasons which have led to its development and which have fixed the educational system as its major frame of reference. The writer Jill Paton Walsh expresses her view of this positioning with the following comment:

"Many teachers see the children’s writer, like the children’s doctor, the children’s psychiatrist, the children’s teacher, the children’s home, as part of the apparatus of society for dealing with and helping children, as a sort of extracurricular psychiatric social worker."

 

One of the major means by which society attributes high status to writers is by the awarding of prizes. However, if the list of Booker Prize winners is examined a

proportionate number of children’s writers will not be seen, nor will their names be seen on the Nobel prizewinners’ list. Children’s writers have been excluded from almost all of the prize lists, except for those specially created for the field.

Such special prizes were established, as Lucia Binder observed:

"When the International Board on Books for Young People under the initiative of its founder Jella Lepman decided to establish an international award for children’s literature, it did so with the intention of creating a symbol of international cooperation, but also of finally giving the profession of writing the proper recognition which it had not hitherto received from the general public"

 

Such special prizes for children’s writers may have given them a more visible position in society, but they also highlight their inferior status. Different but (not in reality) equal is the justification for such policies, as in the separation of "ethnic" and "women’s" categories from the Anglo-Saxon, male mainstream. These are seen as specialist categories which cannot be judged by normal literary criteria and need special criteria of their own.

A look at the composition of juries awarding prizes for children’s literature highlights the non-literary evaluation in use for such prize giving; most of them coming from the field of education as Lucia Binder notes. She also finds that their reasons for making the award emphasize this even more, saying that children’s books deserving prizes are those which "deal with the real problems of children and which help them to understand themselves as well as other people and the world in which they live"

It is not the literary value of the book which makes it a prizewinner but rather its educational value. The jury which awarded the 1978 Hans Christian Andersen Medal to Paula Fox announced the reason for their decision as follows:

"Children’s books such as those by the American author Paula Fox, who was this year awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, can help children to develop understanding for one another and also help the many adults who are having their own "Year of the Child" during the "Century of the Child" to find a way of teaching the child and the adolescent. In her movingly told stories Paula Fox has succeeded in capturing moments in the lives of children which can be of decisive importance in their personal development."

 

The decisions taken by such juries reflect the expectations of society as well as the criteria used in judging children’s books, as Walter Scherf notes in an introduction to a list of prize winners: "Awards reflect the views of an era. The lists of prize-winning titles give evidence of our period’s ideas on education more forcefully and authentically than it could be found anywhere else."

Society expects the children’s writer to have the approval of adults as well as to entertain and educate children. This is a very complex requirement as children and adults have completely different tastes. But the outcome which emerges clearly is that children’s views alone cannot make adults accept a book. "Good literature is good literature; it satisfies both children and critics," claims the critic Rebecca Lukens.

In their evaluation of children’s culture, critics focus rather more on the adult’s opinion and tend to ignore the child’s. If children’s literature is successful in appealing to adults it has a good chance of receiving a positive evaluation. These external attitudes perpetuate the poor self-image of children’s literature as well as depriving it of all status symbols. Simultaneously, children’s literature must cope with trying to satisfy both adults and children and to harmonize with what society believes to be good and suitable for the child.

A low self-image of children’s writers arises from the non-recognition of their work as "literature" as well as the fact that its intended audience are not in a position to determine the criteria for its evaluation. The status of the writer for children has always been inferior to that of the writer for adults. This may explain why writers for children, especially men, would not sign their work for quite a long time after this had ceased to be the practice with adult writers. Perrault, for example published his immensely popular Contes de ma Mère l’Oye (1697) in his teenage son’s name, feeling that it was not seemly for a member of the French Academy to be involved in anything so trivial as fairy stories to be enjoyed by a youthful audience.

Peter and Iona Opie noted that: "At the beginning of the nineteenth century moralists and educators customarily had their names on the title pages of their work; but those who sought to entertain the public remained discreet about it. They were not held to be advancing man’s spiritual and intellectual welfare like their calf-bound contemporaries, and could not therefore expect to be admired. In only one of the frolics we chose, for instance, was the full name given of its author."

The situation was quite different for women writers, however. As they already held a subordinate position in society, they had nothing to lose. By writing they could only improve their status. Women were closer to children so writing for them was considered quite appropriate in their case.

Things have changed and nowadays children’s writers do sign their works. Men and women in equal numbers write for children and are equally respected. Yet, most writers do not seem happy with their position in society as children’s writers. Almost all of them use some kind of denial strategy to avoid being placed in the category of solely children’s writers, as the following comments will illustrate:

"Not long ago, I spoke at a girl’s boarding school where I was asked over and over again, "Why do you write for children?" My immediate response was, "I don’t." Of course I don’t. I don’t suppose most children’s writers do."

 

"I have never written for any age-group at all, but merely for myself…The themes of my children’s books are mostly quite adult, and in fact the difference between writing for children and for adults is, to me at any rate, only a quite small gear change."

 

"Each book I have written I have desperately wanted to write. Whether or not they had anything to do with children has never occurred to me. I have never liked children’s books very much, I don’t read very many of them."

 

The poor self-image of a children’s writer can be seen clearly if it is compared with the self-image of the writer for adults, especially the author of prize-winning works. Such writers are held to be the pillars of the literary establishment and as such are honored as serious, influential members of society. Their views on societal issues are sought, discussed and repeated, while the views of a children’s writer are seldom asked for. Shavit notes: " This social position forces him to constantly protect his status in society, which consequently remains peripheral and apologetic."

It can be seen from the above comments that even writers of children’s books themselves do not accept their work as belonging to that category due to the poor status associated with it. Other writers have used the form of children’s literature to communicate ideas that otherwise would not have been accepted, while still others seem to have been arbitrarily placed in the juvenile category as a result of previous work or by virtue of their work being in the form of picture books.

Concerning definitions of children’s literature, Azeriah seems to find this a fairly simple matter:

"Even thought there is no clear definition of children’s literature, one hardly fails to recognize a work addressed to children. A few tentative definitions, or shall we say descriptions, have been advanced. These are concerned with (a) classification: children’s books are those books which both adults (parents, teachers, educators, and publishers) and children consider as children’s; (b) form: children’s books use a much simpler type of narrative devices (no excessive use of stream of consciousness, no complex time shifts, etc.); (c) representation of reality: children’s books describe a particular version of reality in a particular way."

 

In reality the situation may not be quite that simple. A book which was perceived to be in the category of children’s literature due to both the previous record of its author and its presentation as a picture book is When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs, which received outstanding attention from the press as a best-seller. It tells how Jim and Hilda Bloggs, a typical English retired couple, deal with the approach of the nuclear bomb.

This book, an account of a post-holocaust situation brought about by nuclear attack showing radiation sickness and its horrifying effects and ending in the death of the two main characters, is to be found in the children’s section of Edinburgh University’s educational library at Moray House, despite its obvious unsuitability for children. Due to the previous widespread success of Briggs’ children’s books such as The Snowman and Fungus the Bogeyman and due to its appearance as a cartoon book, this work has quite wrongly been classified as a children’s book. Richard Kilborn observes in his book Multi-Media Melting Pot: Marketing When the Wind Blows:

"But whilst it seems proper to draw analogies between When the Wind Blows and other (nuclear) fictional narratives, Briggs’ text must also be seen in the context of a much larger body of work which expresses the despair and anxieties of the nuclear generation. Nowhere is this despair more poignantly expressed than in some of the Japanese picture books and stories which encapsulate the memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps the best-known example is the cartoon series Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazsawa, who was a boy of six living in Hiroshima when the bomb fell."

 

In this work, Briggs follows the Japanese manga tradition. This consists of cartoon books for adults. In other countries cartoons are more often associated with children and this is perhaps the reason for the misclassification in this case.

Even Dr. Seuss, famous for children’s nonsense books of a fairly innocuous kind, in 1984 produced an anti-arms race book, The Butter Battle Book, the book’s subject being the fight for world control between the Zooks and the Yooks over which side bread will be buttered, ending with both sides producing a terrifying weapon; the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo (sarcastically copying Nukespeak terminology.) Although this book was actually aimed at children, unlike When the Wind Blows it contains a serious message for adults and reflects a political stance prevalent in its era of the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and opposition to governments and their quest for military supremacy.

Classification of children’s books then may not be as simple as it would appear, as can be seen also from further comments by authors:

"Is there a conscious difference in the way I write for grown ups and children? No, there is no difference of approach, style, vocabulary or standard. I could pick out passages from any of the books and you would not be able to tell what age it was aimed at."

 

Jill Paton Walsh observes: "Very often the decision that they are children’s writers was made in the first instance by a publisher. Once made it is difficult to alter… We live in an age of shrinking literacy and it seems we must accept that books which give us pleasure to write and our own adult friends pleasure to read, will appeal in the world outside only to the unsophisticated and the young."

Patricia Wrightson "admits" that she writes for children but describes her writing for adults: "So I ventured to try my hand at a novel for children, very deliberately making my work into a course of training: requiring that in each book I should break new and (for me) difficult ground, and hoping to graduate to adult novels some day."

Isn’t this very strange? Imagine these same comments coming from teachers or writers of educational books which are aimed at very particular age ranges in the publishers’ lists. (My lessons aren’t aimed at any age group in particular; I decided to test run my lessons on children first and if they worked to then give them to adults!) It is quite inconceivable, so why should well-known and successful children’s writers make such comments?

Maurice Sendak adds: "We who work on children’s books inhabit a sort of literary shtetl. When I won a prize for Wild Things, my father spoke for a great many critics when he asked whether I would now be allowed to work on ‘real’ books."

All these writers echo the feeling that writing for children is something inferior, something other than "literature" as understood by intellectuals and that if they are unlucky enough to be pigeonholed as writers for children they are fated forever to inferior status as writers as well as being restricted in their writing by society’s attitude toward children’s literature. So to be confined to the children’s system is something that writers try to avoid at all cost. They try to pose as adult writers just amusing themselves with children’s writing to better their position, gain more freedom in their writing and above all to escape from the poor self-image of children’s literature. In order to do this they deny even writing for children when it would seem obvious that this is actually what they are doing! They deny their child audience and claim deep interior meanings for their work, which may not even exist; and they deny any distinction between writing for adults and writing for children. In this way children’s writers try to stress that children’s and adult literature deserve the same respect even though they themselves appear not to believe this. Further investigation may determine whether girls’ literature holds the same inferior position within the field of children’s literature as children’s literature has in relation to literature in general.

In the field of teaching the status of teachers for children and adults seems to be the other way round as teachers of adults are not really considered proper teachers because they don’t need to have a degree in education; this bias can be seen especially in the field of English teaching. For example the CTEFLA qualification for teaching English to adults is a relatively short course, reflecting the notion that teaching adults is much easier than teaching children and doesn’t need any special teaching skills.

A further demonstration of children’s writers’ desire to be taken as serious writers can be seen in the assertion that children’s books should be judged by the same criteria as adults’, or, in C.S.Lewis’s words, "I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story."

The poor self-image as perceived by the writers themselves is pervasive; not only does society in general see children’s literature as inferior but even its own creators do. Thus the situation is perpetuated and reinforced from within.

If writers do not purposely write for children, it seems that the only thing which actually places them in this category is their publisher’s designation. Despite such designation a book is often not considered by adults to have been written for children.

Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is said to be the third most sold book in the world after the Bible and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. It seems to have become a matter for debate whether Le Petit Prince really was "just" a children’s book, although Ruth Lynn clearly defines it as such: "Unlike the World War I period, a number of noteworthy children’s fantasies were published during World War II. These include … Antoine de St. Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince (1943),…."

With such successes being few and far between in any genre, it can be seen that a special something is necessary to achieve it, whether the work was originally intended for children or not. Writing material for children is not an easy option and writers face great competition, in this as in any other field.

Despite, and even as a result of, endless cultural constraints, children’s literature has developed to its present level and scope. It has evolved from the interaction among and the convergence of several cultural systems or fields, prominently the social, educational and literary. Belonging to both the literary and socio-educational systems means that it has to satisfy two widely different requirements at the same time, juggling the needs and expectations of both. It has to do this while, at the same time, fighting for position as a field to be reckoned with, a field of importance, within these systems.

As Mary Jackson remarks in her preface:

"Children’s literature, a so-called minor area, is unlike any minor field I know, for the term usually connotes a paucity of authors and works, relative insignificance, and meager esthetic quality as compared to the best of an era."

 

Children’s literature is an enormous field; it has great significance in terms of influence on major writers; and its potential for providing the underlying social or human background affecting major literary periods has only recently been admitted or accepted. Upon closer inspection we find that it is not a minor field at all. Rather it has been designated as insignificant and given minor attention because of two still potent social and academic biases- a habit of discounting or devaluing culture when it is applied to the world of the child and an academic tendency to belittle whatever seems simple and uncomplicated.

Children’s literature has presented critics with educational and moral dilemmas in the past with arguments for example over the allegedly corrupting influence of fairy tales, and other morally unacceptable ideas such as reading for pleasure which in turn have given way to the present day concern with multiculturalism and other current social values and concerns in children’s books.

This paper started by looking into the background of children’s literature and the effect upon it of historical and social influences such as the Enlightenment, revolutions, resistance, political and ecological movements and political systems such as capitalism and socialism, and how such influences have affected the poetics of children’s literature.

It has been found that didacticism was prevalent in many historical periods, not only the modern period and that it influenced children’s literature in both socialist and capitalist countries. This appears to be the case until today.

Secondly the question of defining children’s literature has been addressed by examining what writers themselves have said on the subject, investigating an anti-nuclear example, as well as looking at the modern experience of marginalization, a process which affects the status and self-image of these authors strongly, as they have shown. Also the different criteria used in the evaluation of children’s books as opposed to those used for adult books and the difficulties of the classification of children’s books have been briefly mentioned. The latter has shown itself to be not as simple as one would first imagine.

Further study will seek to investigate didacticism in other parts of the world, and how children’s literature travels across cultures, with the aspects of illustration and translation being given particular attention.

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Binder, Lucia, "Hans Christian Andersen Prizes 1978." In How can Children’s Literature Meet the Needs of Modern Children: Fairy-Tale and Poetry Today. Fifteenth IBBy Congress, Arbeitkreis für Jugendliteratur, Munich: 1978, 123-27.

Briggs, Raymond, When the Wind Blows, London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd. 1982.

Burlingham, Cynthia, Picturing Childhood. Illustrated Children’s Books from the University of California Collections, 1550-1990: The Evolution of the Illustrated Children’s Book, UCLA 1997.

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Egoff, Sheila, G.T. Stubbs, and F. Ashley, Only Connect, New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.

Egoff, Sheila, Thursday’s Child: Trends and Patterns in Contemporary Children’s Literature, Chicago: American Library Association, 1981, 45-47.

Gardam, Jane, "On Writing for Children: Some Wasps in the Marmalade." Part 1, Horn Book Magazine 60:489-96, 1978.

Higgonet, Margaret R.,"Civility Books, Child Citizens and Uncivil Antics", Poetics Today Vol. 13:1 (Spring 1992), 123-140.

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Hurlimann, Bettina, Three Centuries of Children’s Books in Europe, London: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Jackson, Mary V. , Engines of Instruction, Mischief and Magic; Children’s Literature in England from its Beginnings to 1839, University of Nebraska Press, 1989.

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