It promises to be the behind-the-scenes tell-all about children's lit. I guess it kind of is? But it's also not earth shattering or particularly surprising. I guess I'm jaded, and uninterested in the gossip. ( )

Bird, Danielson, and Sieruta deliver an entertaining tour through the history of children's literature and kidlit criticism, with a whole chapter devoted to "the celebrity children's book craze." They write about GLBT books, racism, censorship, "quality" books vs. the dreaded comics and popular series (e.g. Nancy Drew), and "BP" and "AP": Before Potter and After Potter. Authors and illustrators are quoted and written about (e.g. Maurice Sendak, Laura Ingalls Wilder, E.B. White, Shel Silverstein, Judy Blume, JK Rowling), as are influential editors and children's librarians, such as Anne Carroll Moore and Ursula Nordstrom. This edition was published in 2014, and while it's not outdated, much has happened in the kidlit world in the past seven years.

Quotes

Children's books may evolve more than any other genre. It's the only one whose primary audience does a complete rollover in the time it takes to move from diapers to driver's licenses. And each new generation of children comes to the bookshelves seeking stories that reflect their time, their society, their truths, their reality. Children's literature has had to grow and change to meet those needs. (2)

"Children's literature makes us fall in love with books and we never recover - we're doomed." (Tony Kushner in a 2003 tribute to Maurice Sendak, 5)

Children are the natural audience for subversive literature. Think about it: they have no rights, and they're continually at the mercy of the adults around them. (20)

"...below the dollhouse of children's literature there was a semi-finished basement..." (Adam Rex, 34)

"We are squeamish. We are Disney-fied. We don't want children to suffer. But what do we do about the fact that they do? They trick is to turn that into art." (Maurice Sendak in 2009, p. 36)

Citation: Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature (Nel & Mickenberg) (68)

Citation: Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror by Jennifer Finney Boylan. "It's impossible to hate anyone whose story you know." (JFB, 77)

Why is it that adults and kids read books in such different ways? Is it because, as more sophisticated readers, adults have a better sense of subtext than children? Or is it rather that grown-ups...approach each book with an already entrenched set of beliefs and prejudices? (85)

...visibility and popularity are often key components in getting a book censored. (106)

...a historical novel has "two historical periods to deal with: the time in which it is written and the time it is written about..." (Janet Spaeth re: Little House, 123)

In many cases, books for young people are immune to criticism simply because their primary audience, children themselves, neither know nor care what the critics think. (142)

Children's book criticism has always played an important role in library purchasing; it has assisted parents and educators in guiding children's reading; it has brought attention to quality books that might have been ignored or lost....it has not always...had much effect on what children themselves choose to read. (153-154)

[NYTBR ran side-by-side positive and negative reviews of Wild in the World by John Donovan in 1971] ...it's surprising that, in the decades since, none of the children's review journals have initiated a point/counterpoint review column in which two reviewers debate a controversial book. (161)

"Really, I just wanted the story to end with the boy chopping the tree down and the tree falling on the boy, thereby making the boy the inaugural recipient of the Darwin Award" (author Laura Purdie Salas, re: The Giving Tree, 167)

Good authors...do not set out to teach virtue so much as they set out to tell a story. (Katherine Paterson, re: celebrity authors, 179)

Good books for children, the legendary editor Ursula Nordstrom once noted, are those written by authors who strongly recall the feelings and experiences of their own childhood. (180) ( )

Entertaining and sassy look at some of the trends in children's literature as well as some of its underbelly. It's not all fluffy bunnies! Most evident here is the 3 contributors' love and respect for the genre. "The one constant truth about children's literature is the immense influence it has on its readers' lives.... Literature writes children's book author Julius Lester, is one way we enter the realm of the imaginative, and it enables us to put ourselves in another's shoes and experience 'other modes of being. Through literature, we recognize who we are what we might become.'" Tony Kushner says "Children's literature makes us fall in love with books and we never recover -- we're doomed." (5) Some of the topics the authors look at are subversiveness in children's literature -- think Dr. Suess and Cat in the Hat. There is more to a good book than a moral lesson and sometimes children learn those lessons best by seeing what not to do. This evolution of children's lit in the 20th century from didactic primer to imaginative expression is probably the biggest impact and improvement on the genre. There are some secrets of authors' lives revealed (sometimes too much! don't really want to know about the sex life of the author of Mary Poppins!) and the celebrity author trend -- awesome quote by Jane Yolen about a potential role-reversal with Madonna! some revelation of pseudonyms -- James Frey writes on after his Oprah-shaming as part of the Pittacus Lore duo. Great chapter on book banning and what people hate to see in the children's books, as well as some revisionist history around racism and cultural sensitivity (Oompa Loompas for one) and a interesting look at the Potter phenomenon and its financial influence on children's lit (whole new NYT bestseller list for one). If you geek out on kids' books, don't miss this one. ( )

This was just a fun read throughout. Some of it I knew, much of it was new to me, it didn't feel too bloggy (if you know what I mean--there weren't 100 repetitive chapters, for instance), and I was happy to return to it whenever I got the change (lunchtime, waiting for the water to boil, the bath--those are all separate times, I don't personally boil my bathwater).

Could have done without the sidebars where they polled themselves on certain subjects. If you have nothing to say on the subject (as one of them did at one point) why are you publishing that fact? Weird.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). ( )

Very interesting. Dirt on many authors and how they came to be. Also some history of the YA genre is good tale as well. Highly recommend this to my colleagues. ( )