Children's Literature is not Baby Formula

Children's Literature is not Baby Formula is currently the title of my dissertation-- we'll see if I want to keep this title and if I'm allowed to keep this title, but as I'm reading about people's views of popular culture, I'm realizing that not only is pop culture considered less than high culture, it's considered to be culture in its simplest form--already broken down so it's easy to digest. Sort of like baby formula.

The argument that some (I realize I need to figure out who all the somes are) make is that popular culture is what is left over after high culture has decided what it wants to claim. But it can't be that simple. I keep thinking of the old proverb-- what is popular is not always right and what is right is not always popular-- but, sometimes it is. Sometimes something that is well done can be appreciated as well.

Stuart Hall argues that people need to be more discriminating in their views of culture. That not all high culture is good, while not all popular culture is bad. I think this is really important when it comes to thinking about Children's Literature. There seem to be 2 schools of thought when it comes to children's literature-- those who think all children's literature is a pre-digested form of literature-- that none of it is as good as high culture literature, and those who think that there are high culture children's books and popular culture children's books. In reality, I think I fall in the second category--but I want to challenge myself, and others, to think beyond the 2 divisions of high culture and popular culture. Because, I see well-done popular books getting bypassed in the high culture division, and that drives me crazy. The most obvious example of this is Harry Potter. Because the Harry Potter books are so popular, they don't seem to get nominated for some book awards that they might deserve. On behalf of the librarians who make those decisions, I understand why-- the librarians hope to bring to attention well done books that might not get the attention they deserve, and Harry Potter already gets his fair share of attention. But, Rowling also deserves some credit for her style of writing. Although, it's not the book awards that jump out at me the most with the Potter series, it's the films. The fourth Potter film was nominated for several Oscars-- of which it won none, and not because it didn't deserve to win, but because Oscars seem to go only to films that are not popular. The Potter books sometimes seem like an overdone example, but because of their popularity, they are one that people understand.

There are some children's and young adult books that are better than others. But, it doesn't take a Newberry award to determine that, just as it doesn't take a Pulitzer or Nobel prize in literature to determine if an adult fiction book is of the highest quality.

I don't want to turn my dissertation into an argument that says Children's Literature is a true form of literature. But I also don't want to give in to the idea that what is good isn't' popular and what is popular isn't good.