Talk:Children's literature/Archive 3

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Why were my links removed?

I added the following links to the page which were removed by user User:Heligoland without explanation. These links all provide a useful perspective. The African link in particular helps to give the article a more balanced worldwide view. Do other contributors agree that these links are worthy of inclusion?

Just a quick note, since it seems I am being portrayed as Mr Nasty at the moment, I'd just like to say the links were removed in accordance with WP:NOT - Wikipedia is not a place for mere collections of External Links. Wikipedia has something in the region of 7,500 external links added every day and there is a need to rationalize external links, no matter how relevant. There is a need for a small number of precise, useful websites, and with important subjects such as this, a need to refrain from adding multiple links even though they may be relevant. A link to the Open Directory Project (dmoz) linking into the relevant category or categories is a more sensible suggestion for a subject where there can be dozens if not hundreds of links that could arguably be described as relevant.
Whilst I do understand the frustration Dahliarose feels at my removal of external links, there does need to be a line drawn, otherwise tomorrow, another edits could easily come along, add another 6 websites, argue that they are relevant and nothing would be done. If this were to continue, after a month you could easily have an External Links section a couple of hundred external links long, and with a subject like this, all linking to useful and relevant sites. Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 13:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject

Is there any interest here in a WikiProject for the family of articles comprising children's and young adult literature coverage? I've made a proposal for a WikiProject, and I encourage people to view my proposal, edit it if they like, and sign up. It would be great to put an organised effort into rethinking these pages. Wikipedia:Wikiproject/List_of_proposed_projects#Children.27s_Literature --Deborah-jl Talk 06:11, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

The Fountainhead

I've cut out The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand from the list. She stated herself (in The Romantic Manifesto and elsewhere) that the novel was not intended to be didactic. There are no fantasy elements and no adventure in the literal sense. LaszloWalrus 09:22, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Trends in Children's Literature

All. How about on the main page some kind of section on trends in children's literature. There may be a number of trends. Some of which I am aware are:

  1. the increased sexualization of children's literature,
  2. the increased sexualization of the children's literature nominated and chosen for awards, and
  3. the creation of recommended lists of books that are "not the most literary" but have highly sexualized content.

Now some know that I have a certain interest in having "safe libraries," but I'm setting that aside here. Here I am raising the legitimate issue of whether to add a section on trends in children's literature to a wiki page about children's literature. And now, to ensure this proposed section does not contain my POV, I hereby provide several very mainstream sources for trends in children's literature. And note that while some of the links in this list may point to my web site, for the real wiki page these sources should be direct links to the articles, not links from my group's site at SafeLibraries.org.

  1. Judging a Book by Its Cover: Publishing Trends in Young Adult Literature, Cat Yampbell, The Lion and the Unicorn; Sep 2005; 29:3; Children's Module, The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp348-372, at p350-351:
"As more and more edgy fiction is being published, the books are dealing with issues that hadn't been dealt with before: oral sex, male rape, incest. There seem to be no boundaries any more." .... Young Adult Literature has broken nearly every boundary of acceptable subject matter in trying to address real-life problems and intrigue teen readers.
  1. Young Adult Fiction: Wild Things, by Naomi Wolf, The New York Times, 12 Mar. 2006.
Yet if [a] parent opened one, he or she might be in for a surprise. .... [S]ex saturates the "Gossip Girl" books.... This is not the frank sexual exploration found in a Judy Blume novel, but teenage sexuality via Juicy Couture, blasé and entirely commodified. .... The problem is a value system in which meanness rules, parents check out, conformity is everything and stressed-out adult values are presumed to be meaningful to teenagers. .... Sex and shopping take their places on a barren stage, as though, even for teenagers, these are the only dramas left.
  1. Laura Miller, "Why Teachers Love Depressing Books," The New York Times Book Review, August 22, 2004 p12(L) col 01
Adults, she suspects, secretly resent the sheltered, enchanted world children inhabit and under the pretext of preparing them for life's inevitable difficulties, want to rub their noses in traumas they may never actually experience and often aren't yet able to comprehend. All the better to turn them into miniature grown-ups, little troupers girded to face a world where they have no one to count on but themselves. .... Daniel Handler, author of the best-selling Lemony Snicket series, told me recently in an interview, results from a "wrong-headed belief that the more misery there is, the more quality there is, that the most lurid, unvarnished stories are closest to the truth."
  1. Rebecca Hagelin, "Taking Back Our Homes," April 2006.
Gossip Girls .... recurring themes are incest and graphic sex among children. .... a list of those recommended by the American Library Association for ages 12-14. Good teachers, well-meaning teachers, hand out such lists at the end of every school year.... sexual encounter between fourth graders. .... a 14-year-old boy who describes, in detail, watching his first homosexual encounter. .... get to page four for the first of many uses of the term "motherf---in." .... sometimes when Susie is upstairs being a good little girl reading her book, her mind is being filled with rot.

What do you all say? --SafeLibraries 00:50, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

And what about "street lit," "gansta lit," and "authentic lit"? You know a lot of communities now are facing this -- kids getting sexually inappropriate books because it's "authentic" and "they are going to learn about anal rape anyway, where better then in a learning environment." Point being this is definitely of general interest. --SafeLibraries 00:56, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

What about responses to this trend, other than the article presented above, like Parents Against Bad Books in Schools or PABBIS? --SafeLibraries 01:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Another trend might be authors blogging. Like AS IF! Authors Support Intellectual Freedom. There's a positive trend. --SafeLibraries 03:50, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Globalization

The article seems to describe only English-language (or well-known translated) stories, omitting such non-English classics as Kornel Makuszyński (Koziołek Matołek, (Polish)), Julian Tuwim and Jan Brzechwa (Polish poetry for children), Henryk Sienkiewicz (In Desert and Wilderness*, Polish), Zbigniew Nienacki (Pan Samochodzik*, Polish), Alfred Szklarski (Tomek Wilmowski*, Polish), Tove Jansson (Moomins*, (Finnish)), Kir Bulychev (Alice, Girl from the Future*, Russian), Michael Ende (The Neverending Story, German) or Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking, (Swedish)), just to name a few examples. This needs to be addressed. PS. Through English, I find the ommissions of Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden), Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), A. A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh), Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables), J. R. R. Tolkien (The Hobbit*) or Jules Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea*) glaring as well. Yes, aruably, some of them may classify more as Young adult literature then children's (I marked those with an asterix), but the fact remain that this is very English-centric and even so, rather incomplete.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  16:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Great Contributions to Children's Literature

This list is completely unbalanced. The last two authors are still living. They might be well known in America but certainly from an English perspective their contribution is limited. What's happened to all the greats such as Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carroll, C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, etc?) This article should perhaps just have a simple listing of children's authors, perhaps divided into categories. It is not the role of an encyclopedia to make subjective judgments about who has made a great contribution. Perhaps there should be separate lists for English, American, French, German, authors, etc. subdivided into living and dead. The contribution of children's authors who concentrate mainly on books for pre-school children has also been completely ignored (eg, the Ahlbergs, Mick Inkpen, Jill Murphy, de Brunhoff's Babar books, Rod Campbell). Dahliarose 11:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion of external links

I have removed these links from the main page. In view of the comments from user Heligoland if we are only going to have a restricted number of links then they will need to be carefully chosen. I don't see the relevance of including links about writing books for children on a page about children's literature. The children's story hour link seems somewhat trivial.

I proposed some further links in the External links section above but so far there has not been any discussion on the subject so I am copying them below. I would suggest that some of these links should be included in preference to the three links above.

Dahliarose 10:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

These two links have been added to the page, neither of which seem to be particularly noteworthy. I've included them here just in case anyone thinks there is a particular case for including them.

Dahliarose 00:12, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

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