Children’s Literature and Culture

222 Pages·2007·1.03 MB·English

by  Harry Edwin Eiss

Children’s Literature and Culture

Children’s Literature and Culture

Edited by

Harry Edwin Eiss

CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PUBLISHING
Children’s Literature and Culture, edited by Harry Edwin Eiss

This book first published 2007 by

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2007 by Harry Edwin Eiss and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN 1-84718-172-4; ISBN 13: 9781847181725
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction...........................................................................................................1
Harry Edwin Eiss

Chapter One........................................................................................................12
Broken Windmills
Harry Edwin Eiss

Chapter Two........................................................................................................44
Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Sims: From Board Games
to Video Games and Back
Sally Sugarman

Chapter Three......................................................................................................53
Just a Fairy, His Wits, and Maybe a Touch of Magic: Magic, Technology,
and Self-Reliance in Contemporary Fantasy Fiction
Amie A. Doughty

Chapter Four.......................................................................................................77
A History: Children’s Literature in China
Jerry Loving

Chapter Five......................................................................................................126
The Female Young Adult World That Alloy Built: Clique, Gossip Girl,
The A-List
Joyce Litton

Chapter Six........................................................................................................147
Surfing the Series: A Rhizomic Reading of Series Fiction
Jane Newland

Chapter Seven...................................................................................................157
Marvelous Moments in Monet’s Garden: Art in Children’s Culture
Lotte Larson Meyer
vi Table of Contents

Chapter Eight....................................................................................................201
Jean Craighead George’s Alaskan Children’s Books: Love And Survival
Joel Rudinger

Contributors......................................................................................................214
INTRODUCTION
HARRY EDWIN EISS

The first essay in this collection focuses on Donna Williams, Joanna
Greenberg, Temple Grandin and other children whose unusual minds raise
questions that take us deep into the mysteries of all of human existence. They
do not fit the category of “normal,” yet just what it is that makes them unique
eludes us. Over the last century psychology, neurology and related fields have
made amazing discoveries, pushing back the boundaries of ignorance but
important enigmas remain as yet unsolved, some would say never to be solved.
Perhaps that is the ultimate truth, that the highest truths are precisely those
that cannot be reduced to explanation.
Nadia was born to Ukrainian émigré parents in Nottingham, England, Oct.
24, 1967, the second of three children. The other two children had a normal,
bilingual language development. Nadia, however, was nearly mute. Lorna
Selfe began working with Nadia, when Nadia was 6 ½, and found her lethargic,
impassive, clumsy, poorly coordinated, and slow in her movements. She had
almost no vocabulary at all.
However, at the age of 3 ½ Nadia, contrary to everything else about her, had
begun drawing at an extraordinary level, demonstrating not only a manual
dexterity far beyond her years, but an artistry and expressive ability beyond
most adults. (1)
In observing her, Lorna Selfe found that Nadia drew with a small ball point
pin held in a practiced, controlled manner, contrasting the clumsy manner other
children her age held such writing implements, placed her eyes very close to the
paper (though she had no sight problems), drew swiftly and confidently, able to
stop lines assuredly at the exact intersections despite her speed, quickly
executed her work and then stopped abruptly. She had no interest in color, drew
from memory, and often changed the perspective and size of the original
picture, greatly improving the dynamism through an amazing use of perspective,
foreshadowing, and the illusion of movement. Because of this, it is generally
hard to even know what the original picture or source of the drawing was. Her
most common subject matter was horses and men riding horses. However, other
animals, human figures, and even trains also appeared.
2 Introduction

The drawings demonstrate some complex aspects that many adults are unable
to achieve: geometric perspective, even a sense of lines creating a horizon, and
distant clouds, a difficult angle or view, a sense of motion, as if the horse and
rider are coming right off the page, attention to details, even the buttons on the
shirt, and, for better or worse, a strange squirrel and grotesque head on the side
of the horse.
Nadia had a normal pregnancy and birth experience, and there was nothing
during her pre and postnatal periods to suggest any potential problems or special
abilities. However, her development was slow, and her mother said that she was
different than other babies. She was unresponsive, lethargic, and had poor
muscle tone.
There was no trouble with breast or bottle-feeding and she was weaned at six
months without any problems. Her first words appeared at nine months, the
standard mama, dada, grandma, goodnight, and so on. She stood with support at
one year, but did not walk alone until two years. Her speech did not improve,
and her single words came less and less frequently. She had a bad attack of
measles at age two, and began to withdraw from the family. She also became
increasingly difficult to control and heedless of danger. At age three, she was
left in the care of her grandmother for three months while her mother was in the
hospital dealing with breast cancer, and the grandmother did not give her much
attention. She was overjoyed when her mother returned. At this time, the
mother was able to spend a great deal of time with her, and her drawings began
to appear, impressive from the beginning.
At 4 ½ the local General Practitioner advised special education, and she was
put into a Day Special School for the Severely Sub Normal. The headmistress
there found her slow and passive, though at times destructive and having
uncontrollable attacks of screaming. These occasional attacks, however, were
not enough to warrant special care, and she was able to enter one of their normal
classes, and was not given special training. While she was there, both the
headmistress and the teachers noticed her exceptional drawing abilities.
Her language skills remained undeveloped, a vocabulary of less than ten
words. However, she did show interest in and some abilities at various
perceptual toys and puzzles. Her general passive behavior continued, as did her
occasional temper tantrums.
At the age of 5 years and 3 months a Senior Clinical Psychologist visited
with her and found her something of an enigma, concluding his report by saying
“Her language skills are severely retarded and in addition she shows a number
of unusual features that indicate full psychiatric assessment.” A month later this
thorough examination was done at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great
Ormond St., London, and concluded with a similar expression of confusion:
“Our speech therapist though that her features were somewhat autistic and
Children's Literature and Culture 3
although she could not put any specific label to Nadia’s behaviour she was
impressed by her exceptional drawing skills and felt that she required extensive
language stimulation.”
Tests done by the Child Development Research Unit, Nottingham University
when Nadia was 6 ½ showed only slight improvements. They found her still
generally inattentive and non-responsive, slow at dressing and prone to putting
on her clothes inside out and backward. Her language skills showed very little
development, though she had gone from being so unresponsive that she was
thought perhaps deaf to now demonstrating a slight interest in music and being
able to sing parts of melodies. Still, the one thing that jumped out was her
extraordinary drawing ability.
Curiously, by the time Nadia had reached the age of seven, she had begun
to lose her extraordinary artistic abilities, and reverted more and more to an
average child’s style and ability. She slowly improved her language and social
skills, though they remained far behind the normal child of her age.
Elizabeth Newson described Nadia at age nine:
Nadia is coping well with simple number work, and her number concepts 1-10
are well-established. She can manage simple addition and subtraction, and has
begun working with money. She is making progress with reading and writing:
she can now orally construct simple sentences to describe pictures that she
draws, and will then copy-write them, and read them back with understanding.
Sadly, Nadia seldom draws spontaneously now, although from time to time one
of her horses appears on a steamed-up window! If asked, however, she will
draw: particularly, portraits of the 30 or so adults and children in the school.
These portraits may or may not be posed (though she gives little attention to the
sitter), and they are recognizable likenesses; in her most productive period,
between six and seven, she drew only two portraits from life, and those barely
recognizable. In style, Nadia’s portraits are much more economical than her
earlier drawing, with much less detail; often they have a Thurberesque quality.
Occasionally, Nadia has produced at home a drawing that shows traces of her
original interests. . . . The fact that Nadia at eight and nine can produce
recognizable drawings of the people around her still makes her talent a
remarkable one for her age: but one would not longer say that it is unbelievable.
Is this a tragedy? For us, who love to be astonished, maybe. For Nadia, perhaps
it is enough to have been a marvelous child. If the partial loss of her gift is the
price that must be paid for language—even just enough language to bring her
into some kind of community of discourse with her small protected world—we
must, I think, be prepared to pay that price on Nadia’s behalf. (pp. 130-131)
This study of Nadia is especially valuable and intriguing because Lorna Self
gives a careful and well-researched consideration of the numerous possible
explanations by experts in the corresponding fields, including neurology, and