Reflecting on Children's Literature

Before taking this class, children’s books were collecting dust on my bookshelf at home, a distant part of my life that were only called to my attention during moments of nostalgia. Now, I look at children’s books quite differently than I did before, and they are always on my radar as more than fond memories of my childhood, but rather as important representations of our society and crucial tools for educative liberation and reform. Throughout this class, we have investigated the many elements of children’s literature in which we need to be concerned, primarily, content, interpretation, and access. From our discussions and readings, I have taken notice of the severe lack of representation in the content of our children’s book. In addition to representation, something most concerning to me was the use of stereotypes to portray characters and lifestyles of people of different races and genders. One particularly useful aspect of the class came when we explored pedagogical options that could work to engage critically with books like these in a classroom setting. Learning how to use outside texts and sources as well as critical discussion topics helped me to see ways in which we can use these close-minded texts as learning tools.
Studying banned books led me to understand just how sensitive our society can be, and the ways in which subjects can quickly become taboo and controversial. This discussion proved to me even more than before the difficulty of introducing alternative texts into our children’s lives. Furthermore, through our community observation investigation, I was taken aback by the lack of availability of children’s stories presenting diverse subjects and characters. Our discussion and analysis of our observations only served to emphasize to me the difficulty of creating a population of liberating children’s books and the many structural obstacles we must confront in order to do so, especially overcoming corporate interests. One important lesson I learned was that one of the most important goals in making alternative children’s texts more accessible is to create a public demand for them. In conclusion, children’s literature has become, to me, a social issue, and teaching strategies for critical literacy is a key aspect of education reform, in my opinion. I hope to continue to keep the ideas and lessons I’ve learned in this class with me as I continue to study education and education policy in the future.