ABSTRACT
Young children’s literature differs from other literature in the nature of its cooperation: It is typically triadic, not dyadic. Not only can the reading adult take on the role of coach to the author’s role as trainer for the benefit of the child. Modern children’s books can also have characters professing to be aware of the reader and ask them for interference on their behalf. While cooperation in a dyad is usually inclusive, in a triad cooperation can be exclusive: A character can ask the child to cooperate against another book character, or against the book itself, or defend the book against the reader. Authors of children’s books can collude with the child against other adults (e.g. in avant-garde books that see children as needed agents of social change, or in ethnic propaganda). Through triadic cooperation, the child is raised to distributed adult cognition, only to find that there are play zones there as well. The child is also acculturated to the aesthetics of art, both linguistic and visual. It is therefore not surprising that many mainstream authors such as Oscar Wilde have made forays into children’s books (and painters such as Marc Chagall have illustrated them).
