Before commencing this module conduct a personal stock take of your knowledge of children’s literature.
On your blog list some strategies you use or could use to increase your professional knowledge of children’s literature.
Pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup of tea, take a Tim Tam, and settle in for an infodump on my area of special interest (TL; DWTR – children’s literature is my jam).
If I were to be selected for Tom Gleeson’s Hard Quiz, my topic would be children’s literature. What kind? Any kind. I’m partial to Australian writers and post-modern subjects, but I’m not fussy. I love it. I don’t just read it, I absorb it. I talk it (at great length, with anyone who will participate in the discussion). I fangirl out in a big way over meeting authors, or when an illustrator likes or comments on a review post I’ve put up on Bookstagram.
On last count, my children’s book collection (which is now also my six year old’s personal library) is sitting at approximately eight hundred books. Of these, I have read all but about two dozen (and that’s because I only received them two days before moving house last month). They range in intended audience from baby and toddler, all the way through to Year 11 and 12 prescribed texts, with the bulk being aimed at children somewhere between Kindergarten and Year 8.
Some are three generations old (Mary Grant Bruce’s Billabong series, Louisa May Alcott, a girls’ annual). Some are two (a set of Little Golden Books, Joyce Lankester Brisley’s Milly Molly Mandy series, Beatrix Potter). Some have travelled across two or three families in my generation (Marjorie Flack’s Angus books, Richard Scarry’s Busytown chronicles, Gene Zion’s Harry the Dirty Dog pair). Many were gifted to me in childhood, arranged in alphabetical order on my bookshelf (yes, I was that way inclined even in the early 90s!), and kept ever since. I cannot bring myself to part with The Little Rocking Horse, The Good Luck Lamb, My Sister Sif, Tomorrow When The War Began, or Peeling The Onion.
Some are books I remember from childhood and have replaced after prematurely jettisoning – thank goodness for op shops, Amazon secondhand sellers, and Book Depository and Abe Books before their demise. Some I have been given to assess for work (major perk). Some my son has been given. We are guilty of spending way more than we should on Book Club. Every year on Christmas Eve we celebrate Jollabokkaflod (Scandinavian holiday literally translating into ‘book flood’. There is no avenue for acquisition that I’ve turned down (yet).
Some of my favourites are signed copies. How To Bee, The Dog Runner, and Across the Risen Sea (Bren Macdibble), Grace the Amazing and Clara Capybara (Aleesah Darlison), Meet Sidney Nolan, and Oliver’s Grumbles (Yvonne Mes), Oswald Messweather, and Pippa (Dimity Powell), Rosewood Then And Now, and Logan Then And Now (Karen Tyrrell).
How well do I actually know them? I can play the most memorable passages of the best ones in my head, but I can also tell you about the character development in Nova Weetman’s The Jammer and Pamela Rushby’s The Mud Puddlers. I can describe the composition of illustrations in The Comet and Rachel’s War. I can extol the humour created by the juxtaposition of experiences in Your Holiday Was The Best! and the foreshadowing and foreboding expressed by onomatopoeic language in At The End of Holyrood Lane. I can explain how specific language used for fictional narrative and for scientific fact are blended seamlessly in The Opal Dinosaur. And boy do I enjoy an in-depth discussion about the ethical dilemmas people seem to face about the validity of Victoria Jamieson’s graphic novels as literature and the need for analysis of Steven Herrick’s poetry by secondary school students.
Don’t get me started on the multiple person perspective novels of Caroline B. Cooney and Jaclyn Moriarty. That’s a whole other cup of tea and you’re going to need a Tim Tam refill before we embark on that one.
Ahem.
That said, I am also acutely aware of how much I don’t know, how quickly things are changing, and how very many new publications come out each year that cause undulations in the literary landscape. To limit this post to a thousand words (and because, like me, I’m sure your tea is running low and your Tim Tam crumbs are long gone) I’d like to acquire some quite specific skills and knowledge in order to improve my professional understanding of children’s literature. These include stronger visual literacy analysis skills (especially in comparing graphic novels to comics and illustrated versions, but also in analysing picture books with older readers), a wider range of lenses/frameworks from which to view YA novels (adding on to postmodern, feminist, Marxist, etc.), and an understanding of the process that books and authors and illustrators go through with the marketing department of their publishing house before receiving a commission (leading to a deeper understanding of levels of gatekeeping within the profession and industry).
I think one of the best ways to achieve all of these is to talk to the authors/illustrators wherever possible. To ask students what they think, and then take that away and research it (for a student there is nothing more affirming than someone coming in and saying ‘I’ve thought about what you said; look, so-and-so (industry expert) agrees with you. Definitely keep on that track!’ Talking to other teachers and teacher librarians is also vital. Reading professional/industry literature is irreplaceable. And, of course, continuously, voraciously – read across the shelves.
Well, I’m off to turf the tea leaves and pop the crockery in the dishwasher. Infodump over; I hope I’ll see you again sometime soon for another installment of ‘Ang’s Love of Literature for Littles’!