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The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Litera- ger! The Hidden Adult is the stake to
ture. By Perry Nodelman. Baltimore: Johns lay those vampires. Nodelman’s chap-
Hopkins UP, 2008. ter on defining children’s literature
(133–244) is also a history, a compen-
Reviewed by Peter Hunt
dium, of what has been thought about
the subject, written by someone who
Just to save a certain amount of time:
was not only there when most of it was
all readers of this review should at
being thought and who contributed
once clear a space on their shelves,
a great deal to that body of thought,
buy this book, and read it—or, at least, but also someone who has read every-
read pages 133–244, which alone are thing. Here are all the arguments and
worth $35.00 of anyone’s money. This reasoned discussion of them; for older
is a fundamental, indispensable book readers, they are old skirmishes—with
for anyone with any pretensions to Jacqueline Rose asserting the “impos-
understanding the ideas surround- sibility” of children’s fiction, Karín
ing children’s literature (the body of Lesnik-Oberstein damning all criti-
texts) and “Children’s Literature” (the cism out of hand, Peter Hollindale’s
field of study). I think that is clear “childness,” .. and Peter Hunt’s “child-
enough? ist criticism.” The whole exercise is,
And why? Because, as Nodelman as Nodelman says himself, “a concise
says, “despite its long history, chil- and revealing overview of how adults
dren’s literature criticism . . . has a over the past century or so in Europe,
habit of forgetting its own past, or North America, and elsewhere have
even, sometimes, utterly lacks aware- generally tended to think about chil-
ness of that past’s existence” (134). dren and literature” (138), and it is
Worse, criticism “tends to maintain fundamental. By supplying such an
an innocence of its own by hiding—or overview, Nodelman does not close off
completely forgetting—any awareness debate: rather, he supplies us with the
of its past adulthood” (136). Those materials for an informed debate.
who teach children’s literature know But this book is much more than a
that the downside of an otherwise review of ideas: it is a magnum opus,
challenging and invigorating subject and the essence of such books is that
is having to tramp wearily around the they should be idiosyncratic. (Nodel-
endlessly repeated series of questions man has, after all, already written
about what the subject is, its relation the most indispensable unidiosyn-
to “literature” and to children, and all cratic book for students working with
the other undead questions. No lon- children’s literature: The Pleasures