Microsoft Word final-current Developments at the Intersection of British Children-online-version doc

Ästhetische Wirkung
. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1995, p. 16; Peter Hunt (Ed.) Children’s 
Literature:
The Development of Criticism. London; New York: Routledge, 1990, p. 1; Peter Hunt, Criticism, 
Theory, and Children’s Literature. 
Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 42, 43, 60.
15
Compare Hunt, An Introduction, p. 11.

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feature lively dialogue. Following the daily life of children, dialogue facilitates the reading 
and can transport complex contents more easily.
Amongst the textual features, the choice of topics for children’s literature stands in the 
foreground. For a long time, it was a matter of protecting children by means of selection of 
the topics and thus preserving certain taboos such as abuse or to safeguard the naivety that 
adults attribute to children. So a noticeable turn of the tide has come to pass, since modern 
children’s literature has renounced all taboos.
The obligatory happy endings which, from the fairy tale tradition, are associated with 
children’s literature may not have had their day in modern works, but they have waned 
visibly. Moreover, the endings have become more contradictory, more open and pensive. 
Here too the influence of adult literature is obvious. Open endings in literature for children 
represent a new challenge and an enrichment of the spectrum, allowing for more variety. So in 
how far are the differences between adult and children’s literature relative or surmountable? 
How can it be explained that even numerous renowned standard works of literary history omit 
children’s literature completely, whereas others simply class it among the “also-rans”?
One characteristic feature often attached to children’s literature is the age of its 
intended
readership. As a result of the increasing dilution of artificial borders between the 
individual age groups and their preferred reading matter, it is nowadays no longer possible nor 
appropriate to regulate who should read what at what age. Under the present circumstances 
and developments, it is viable to say that an intentional children’s literature roughly covers the 
period between a child’s first encounter with literature and eighteen to twenty years. 
Depending on the various genres of children’s literature, narrower or even wider age limits 
are also conceivable.
Readership, textual and stylistic features are exemplary and prominent
bones of 
contention in the current debate. Lesnik-Oberstein for example clearly emphasises the 
problem of definitions. According to her, their wooliness impedes any sensible definition of 
the compound term “children’s literature”. What is
more, she questions a possible separation 
of “children” and “literature” and points out that “[t]he disparities between the various 
definitions of ‘children’s literature’, ‘children’ and ‘literature’, are problematic to children’s 
literature criticism because they undermine the goal it sets itself.”
16
Indeed, without an 
16
Karin Lesnik-Oberstein. “Defining Children’s Literature and Childhood”. In: Peter Hunt; Sheila Ray (Eds.) 
International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature. 
London; New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 17-
31, p. 22.

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unequivocal terminological basis any criticising and commenting on a discipline must 
necessarily appear strange. Following the lines of this argumentation one may conclude that 
no critic can provide absolute certainty, let alone claim to universal validity, of what exactly 
constitutes the construct of the “child”. Even though Lesnik-Oberstein limits her critique to 
children’s literature criticism, this dividedness over basic definitions naturally has the same 
implications for children’s literature itself. Hazy elements inevitably entail an unclear 
compound. On the one hand, this is not beneficial to a serious discussion of the subject. On 
the other hand, the absence of a single, universally applicable definition does not only express 
the contradictoriness, but also the flexibility of children’s literature.
In his pioneering work Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life
17
, 
Darton defines books for children according to their benefit for the child. Like Hunt, he 
stresses spontaneous pleasure and not education as their aim.
18
From Darton’s claim it can be 
deduced that the custom was then – and is for the most part still today - to consider all those 
young persons as children who have not yet completed their formative education.
The modern day children’s literature critic Hunt picks up this thread. He too sets in at 
this specific point by emphasising the priority of play versus work. According to him, reading 
must be enjoyable, voluntary and unconstrained. Therefore, at the heart of this approach at a 
definition of children’s literature stand recreational books, read out of interest outside any 
school curriculum.
For Ewers, readership is defined by textual features: He approaches the definition of 
children’s literature from the angle of the text itself. On the basis of commonalities of such 
texts he distinguishes firstly between literature children have to read at school and literature 
they read voluntarily. Secondly, he then distinguishes this voluntary literature further, 
separating it into intentional, non-intentional, non-accepted, sanctioned, non-sanctioned 
literature for children as well as specific literature for children. Consequently, Ewers claims 
17
F.J. Harvey Darton. Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life. Cambridge et al.: Cambridge 
University Press, 1982.
3
[1932] 
18
Compare Darton, Children’s Books in England, p. 1.

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that children’s literature research and criticism is not based on a single, but on the above-
mentioned several, overlapping corpora.
19
For the definition of the readership the role of the publisher should not be 
underestimated, either.
On the whole, it is not just the author’s, but also the publisher’s 
judgement that decides what is or will be children’s literature. It can make a serious 
difference for the reception of a work whether the publisher has put it on the children’s or the 
adults’ list.  
In her definition of children’s literature, Ang highlights the thematic aspect. Combined 
with the social function of the initiation of new full members into society, literature for 
children consciously and deliberately offers engaging topics for a crucial and insecure period 
in the lives of the readers. Thus, it may serve as a guide to the strived-for self-enlightenment, 
the process of creating one’s own identity.
20
The functions of children’s literature are mainly socialisation and education, paired 
with the playful discovery of the environment and its operational composition. In addition, 
values and points of view, i.e. traditions of the society, are either passed on uncommented or 
scrutinised critically. Today, enculturation is still one of the main concerns and purposes of 
children’s literature. The more modern the text, the more critical and open for new views it 
will be. 
Children’s literature is often defined by stylistic features. By contrasting children’s 
books and books for adults and looking for divergences in style, form, vocabulary, themes, 
age of the hero(es), narrative modes etc., one tries to differentiate between children’s 
literature and adult literature. More often than not this results in the apparent lack of literary 
quality of children’s books compared to those for adults. According to Saxby, differences 
between books for children and those for adults can be marked by a list of indicators. These 
differences do not simply consist of the ideology conveyed. In children’s books, “child 
protagonists are the rule”, conventions of the genre are observed, the story told is embedded 
19
Hans-Heino Ewers. Literatur für Kinder und Jugendliche: Eine Einführung. München: Fink, 2000, pp. 15-30. 
Whereas most of Ewers terms are self-explanatory, specific literature for children is defined to comprise all 
those texts which have been specifically written for children. Nodelman claims that “children’s literature is 
whatever literature children happen to read”. Perry Nodelman. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s