Why are people afraid of multicultural children’s books? To answer that question, I look back to the roots of American censorship — which, as you doubtless know, has been enjoying a renaissance lately. My piece makes its debut today in Geschichte der Gegenwart, a Swiss publication the title of which means History of the Present. That’s
Call for Papers: Nostalgia in and for Children’s Literature CFP for a guaranteed session sponsored by the MLA Forum on Children’s and Young Adult Literature. To be held at the 2024 MLA in Philadelphia, January 4-7, 2024 Nostalgia is a transideological phenomenon. Its politics depend upon the direction of its longing. There’s the restorative variety that
Head on over to the Washington Post for “Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books,” in which I point out that It is possible to cancel a culture. There were once more than 300 indigenous languages spoken in the United States. Only about 175 of those languages remain today. Colonization, genocide, forced
The objects of your nostalgic longing may disappoint you, if you are willing to look at them openly and honestly. If you read, create, or write about children’s literature, today – the 114th birthday of Theodor Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) – would be a good time to admit this to yourself. OK, the time for
We tend to imagine the self as an unbroken whole, but it might better be described as plural, a series of selves that, though temporally contiguous (and often overlapping) are not always the “same” self. That’s one of the conclusions suggested by Robert Krulwich in “Who Am I?,” a Radiolab podcast from 2007. It is
Kansas State University’s “K-State First” asked me to talk to undergraduates about Ernest Cline‘s Ready Player One (2011), this year’s “First Book,” at a “Beyond the Classroom” event. So, this past Tuesday (Oct. 1st), I did. In case it may be of interest to others, I’m posting my (admittedly somewhat hastily assembled) talk here, along
