>Weighty concerns

by Roger Sutton
Dec 05, 2005 | Filed in Articles & Opinion
>I am not exactly sure what Edward Rothstein is saying in his column in today's New York Times, "Reading Kids' Books without the Kids." He begins with a rather easy poke at YA fiction, true enough as far as it goes but failing to recognize either YA's breadth or its origins. He has a very nice paragraph on the role of the parent in reading aloud Where the Wild Things Are, but goes on to make rather too much of the role of parents in childhood reading, ignoring the fact that one of the great things about reading is that it allows you to forget that you actually have parents and can begin to stake out an imaginative life of your own. His ultimate point has to do with the new Norton Anthology of Children's Literature (which is also reviewed in the paper today) and how the academic shape and context of the book somehow misrepresent the literature in a way that does not happen in a Norton Anthology of Something Else. I think he might be saying that scholars of children's literature read children's books differently from children, and that YA pulp isn't as good as Alice in Wonderland, neither of which observation is untrue, original, or useful.
Roger Sutton
Roger Sutton

Editor Emeritus Roger Sutton was editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc., from 1996-2021. He was previously editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and a children's and young adult librarian. He received his MA in library science from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a BA from Pitzer College in 1978.

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Posted : Mar 23, 2008 03:10

Liz Rosenberg

>Okay, this is one of the truly great lines about children's literature: "one of the great things about reading is that it allows you to forget that you actually have parents and can begin to stake out an imaginative life of your own."

I laughed out loud with delight when I read that. Thanks, Riger!

Posted : Oct 08, 2007 04:28

rindawriter

>I've never been a fan of either Alice in Wonderland as a child or and adult, or of Charlotte's Web as an adult, though I can see the excellence of the works...but books, for me, and books for children, for me in particular, are things I must fall in love with...nothing else much matters.

A muddled and sloppy article and not well thought out, wanders from point to point. I'm surprised at the "Times." Would expect better of them.

At any rate, he's out of touch with teens and preteens. He ought to spend some time talking with and, more importantly, LISTENING to a few... Nothing in any of the books he mentioned in teh first part of his article shocks me or surprises me...not when I compare it all with some real teens' lives and real children's lives.....

Posted : Dec 09, 2005 06:20

Andy Laties

>Well, Rosemary won my heart back in the mid-90s when she said (this is an exact quote): "I wish an architecturally selective tornado would destroy all superstores". This was two years before we closed The Children's Bookstore; the chains already had us surrounded. There's no question that for her, the licensing of Max and Ruby (who after all inaugurated the Board Book revolution in 1978 -- they were the first, weren't they?) is an uneasy capitulation to the new "rules" of children's culture production. To her credit, Max is still cheerfully amoral.

Andy

Posted : Dec 09, 2005 01:43

Roger Sutton

>And somebody should ask Rosemary Wells what she thinks Max-and-Ruby is. Are.

Gauntlet picked up to slap licensed characters around.

Posted : Dec 08, 2005 11:01

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