ABSTRACT

Harvey Darton’s pioneering monograph Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life opens with the following definition: ‘By “children’s books” I mean printed works produced ostensibly to give children spontaneous pleasure, and not primarily to teach them, nor solely to make them good, nor to keep them profitably quiet’ (1). Darton’s exclusive treatment of non-didactic material as the quintessential prototype of children’s literature1 still reverberates through most twentieth-century definitions of the genre. Sheila Egoff, for example, suggests ‘that the aim of children’s writing be delight not edification; that its attributes be the eternal childlike qualities of wonder; simplicity, laughter and warmth; and that in the worldwide realm of children’s books, the literature be kept inside, the sociology and pedagogy out’ (quoted in Lesnik-Oberstein, 25).2 In addition to this apparent levity, Perry Nodelman also insists on the covert depths of children’s literature and on its subversive potential: ‘These texts can be easily and effortlessly heard or read, but once read, they continue to develop significance, importance, complexity, to echo ever outward and inward. These are texts that resonate’ (2).