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    Hidden Messages in Children's Picture Books
    Hidden Messages in Children's Picture Books
    Hidden Messages in Children's Picture Books
    Ebook105 pages2 hours

    Hidden Messages in Children's Picture Books

    By Claudia Pearson

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    About this ebook

    Analyzes six picture books to offer insights into the way children’s books can lead young children to either adopt and accept stereotyped gender roles for women, or challenge these socialized structures. What Maria Nikolajeva says: "Pearson's interpretation of the Velveteen Rabbit is very exciting to use in juxtaposition to the more conventional one."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLook Again Press
    Release dateOct 1, 2010
    ISBN9781452492599
    Hidden Messages in Children's Picture Books

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      Book preview

      Hidden Messages in Children's Picture Books - Claudia Pearson

      Hidden Messages in

      Children’s Picture Books

      A Feminist Analysis

      Claudia H. Pearson

      Published by Look Again Press, LLC at Smashwords.com

      ISBN 978-1-4524-9259-9

      Copyright 2010 Look Again Press, LLC

      www.LookAgainPress.com

      All rights reserved.

      Cover art, Whispering Angels by Augustino Carracci

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please return to Smashwords to purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Birmingham, Alabama

      Description: Hidden Messages In Children’s Picture Books analyzes six picture books, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Little Island, Horton Hatches the Egg, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Are You My Mother?, and Monster Mama to offer insights into the way children’s stories can lead young children to adopt and accept stereotyped gender roles or challenge them. If women want to change the way they are perceived, the first place to start is with the stories we tell. We can not challenge that which we are unaware exists. As Judith Fetterly has pointed out:

      To create a new understanding of our literature is to make possible a new effect of that literature on us. And to make possible a new effect is in turn to provide the conditions for changing the culture that the literature reflects. To expose and question that complex of ideas and mythologies about women and men which exist in our society and are confirmed in our literature is to make the system of power embodied in the literature open not only to discussion but even to change. (xix-xxx)

      * * *

      CONTENTS

      Introduction

      Victorian Velvet and the Modern Woman:

      The Velveteen Rabbit 19

      Single and On Her Own:

      The Little Island 37

      She-Man: Horton Hatches the Egg 47

      A Rationalization:

      The Witch Must Die 67

      Letting Children Make Mistakes:

      The Tale of Peter Rabbit 73

      Defined By Our Actions:

      Are You My Mother? 81

      We Are All Monsters:

      Monster Mama 95

      Works Cited 115

      Hidden Messages in

      Children’s Picture Books

      Introduction

      To create a new understanding of our literature is to make possible a new effect of that literature on us. And to make possible a new effect is in turn to provide the conditions for changing the culture that the literature reflects. To expose and question that complex of ideas and mythologies about women and men which exist in our society and are confirmed in our literature is to make the system of power embodied in the literature open not only to discussion but even to change.

      - Judith Fetterly (xix-xxx)

      Perry Nodelman has published a book in which he defines children’s literature as texts which have messages from adult authors to an audience of children. While some messages are obvious, others are less apparent and require the reader to look again. Interestingly it is the books which contain hidden messages which are often the most popular.

      Educated adults might assume they know what a word or picture means, and might not realize that it could mean something altogether different to an imaginative child, or even to another adult. Adults reading a picture book may look only at what is on the surface, which is why picture books are often described as simple or childish. They might see nothing more than the softness of the rabbit, the pastel colors, the simple words. But the complexity of a good picture book often hides in its seeming simplicity.

      Indeed, what adults see in a picture book is often influenced by their assumptions about what books contain, about the meanings of words, and even about childhood itself. Peter Hollindale asserts that the adult can never inhabit the presentness of childhood and can only look at childhood with an adult’s perspective. They can situate themselves in childhood only as adults looking back, and consequently their adult perspective imports their understanding of what children’s literature is and should be into the way they read picture books.

      But even what seems to be nonsense to an adult can have meaning to a child. As Gianni Rodari points out, in the human mind words and illustrations do not function in isolation. Like a rock tossed into a pond, they create ripples on the surface that reflect the light and lap at the edges of our conscious thoughts. Sinking into the depths, they bump up against other words and images we have collected. Reaching the bottom, they stir the mud and leaves of deep memory that are buried there. Eventually they come to rest, new elements in our reservoir of symbols. He explores the way oddly paired words, what he calls strange binominals, react with one another to engage the young listener in constructing fabulous new meanings for the paired words.

      George Bodmer concurs, stating that, Given our great ability to make metaphors, it is almost impossible to put words together without a reader being able to conjure up some linear meaning from it. Likewise, Ellen Spitz notes that the pairing of seemingly disconnected things in picture books can reveal a universe of shifting realms in which the boundaries between fantasy and reality are not yet firmly established (Picturing 434-35).

      Indeed there is nothing contemplated in the human mind that is not shaped by our individual perceptions. Our concept of the reality of the present is tainted by the way we reconstruct our past, and the future we envision is limited to what we allow ourselves to imagine is possible. Psychological analysis tends to focus on this subjectivity, on the way our personal orientation to the world leads us to notice one thing and not another in a story or a dream, to pronounce some things more significant than others. It also recognizes the way our memories are often shaded by the ever increasing temporal distance from childhood.

      At no time is our unique perception of the world easier to observe than in childhood. As we grow older we are taught and come to believe that words and symbols have specific, sometimes universal meanings, and we convince ourselves that we are objective and unbiased observers. But at the same time, as we learn to empathize with others, we realize that individual beliefs about what things mean can differ. This paradox is at the heart of narrative synthesis, for it is often through story that we seek connecting and common ground, and hope to discover universal truths about human experience.

      This is why even simple picture books can expand a child’s understanding of himself, his relationships, and his place in the world. To a child, the simple but well written story of a child leaving home to start school can be as symbolically complex as the dreams and nightmares reflected in novels by Neil Gaiman, Frank Hebert, Ursula LeGuin, and Stephen King are for adults. Some will be requested over and over again, much to the chagrin of parents for whom the meanings seem to be fixed. On the other hand, picture books that are truly simple, which have fixed meanings that are easily understood, are often tossed aside and ignored after they have been read once or twice. They have little to offer a child’s imagination.

      Picture books are short and the words and images used seem to be simple, but picture books speak to children in ways that neither words nor pictures can alone, in ways that we as parents and teachers and librarians should be aware of and appreciate. Even non-rhyming picture books texts are typically poetic in form, and each word and each picture can operate on many levels, which is why, even though the text is typically very short, and is often described as simple, picture books are not easy to create.

      Part of their complexity for a

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