Like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat owes a debt to blackface minstrelsy. In my “Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: Exploring Dr. Seuss’s Racial Imagination” (in the new issue of Children’s Literature), I explore the implications of this fact.  Here’s the opening paragraph: In 1955, Dr. Seuss and William Spaulding–director of
Like his mentor Ruth Krauss’s fictive children, Maurice Sendak’s are emotionally liberated people. That’s one of the points I make in my brief (5-page!) essay “Wild Things, I Think I Love You: Maurice Sendak, Ruth Krauss, and Childhood,” which appeared in PMLA 129.1 (January 2014). In a belated recognition of the second anniversary of Maurice
Children’s literature distills experience into concise, often pithy nuggets of wisdom. When you happen upon one such pearl, it often feels as if – for just that moment – the author (and not the narrator or character) is talking directly to you. From time to time, I gather a few such quotations in my irregularly
“I think a lot of people choose their professions out of fear….. But I’ve found that the opposite is true. If you choose something you love, you can become a master of it.” – Kadir Nelson, Kansas State University, 12 Apr. 2014 As an admirer of Kadir Nelson’s work, I was thrilled to meet him
Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books? – Walter Dean Myers, “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?” too often today’s books remain blind to the everyday reality of thousands of children. Children of color remain outside the boundaries
Every March 2nd, Americans celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. Ted Geisel) by reading his work… and by sharing words he neither wrote nor said. I understand why. Seuss could be pithy. He’s far from the only aphoristic writer to be credited with phrases he didn’t coin. Mark Twain, Ghandi, Groucho Marx, and many
Scholars of Children’s Literature, Young Adult Literature, Children’s Culture! Â Attention! Here are some calls for papers, for the 2015 Modern Language Association, held from January 8 to 11, 2015, in Vancouver, British Columbia. All are sponsored or co-sponsored by the MLA’s Children’s Literature Division. Send in a proposal to one of the organizers! Â Come to
Welcome to another installment in my ongoing list of the Best Books for Young Readers. Admittedly, any such list will reflect the list-maker’s (in this case, my) idiosyncracies. But, since people often ask me about great books for small humans, I’ve been creating the “ideal” library for my nearly three-year-old niece, Emily, and writing about
With thanks to Craig Svonkin for assembling the children’s literature panels list and Charles Hatfield for assembling the comics panels list, here’s a list of panel sessions on either children’s literature or comics/graphic novels at the Modern Language Association Conference in Chicago, 9-12 January 2014.  Is there anything missing here?  Drop me a line, and I’ll
Time again for the Mock Caldecott Awards, at which we convene not to mock Caldecott-winners, but to predict what the winners will be. This year, we’re of course predicting the 2014 awards, which will be announced next month. A big thanks to Kansas State University’s Children’s and Adolescent Literature Community (especially Allison Kuehne and Melissa Hammond)