Perry Nodelman. the Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature
Perry Nodelman. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins up, 2008. $35 paper; $43.95 cloth. The Hidden Child: Defining Children's Literature is a definitive discussion of the field and genre of children's literature. Anyone who has studied children's literature or has a professional interest in any of the related fields that deal with this complex subject knows that attempts to define what one is dealing with are central and continual and yet answers remain curiously elusive and unsatisfactory as they require seemingly endless qualification and reconsideration. This factor explains the length and circuitous nature of Nodelman's book and its necessary density in many parts. Trying to define children's literature is how we all start out in the field; The Hidden Adult is a testament to the wide ranging and ongoing nature of such work in Nodelman's case, the culmination of nearly four decades of prolific scholarly work. Beverly Lyon Clark's statement that "The Hidden Adult is arguably his magnum opus" neatly sums up the significance and authority of Nodelman's latest critical contribution. While Nodelman strives to be as clear and accessible as possible, his Pleasures of Children's Literature is the better starting place for the uninitiated. The Hidden Adult's primary audience is those familiar with or working in the field, as such a discussion demands: it is thorough and comprehensive, particularly the third chapter in which Nodelman engages the major debates and their related concerns that have brought us to the current moment in children's literature studies. He situates his exhaustive discussion within the broader theoretical context of literary studies and production, drawing on well over four hundred sources and focusing on aspects he argues shape both the field and the genre, which are informed by a matrix of adult social forces forever jostling to maintain some control over the other, the child. The wide ranging discussion throughout the book is helpfully signposted with subheadings and frequent reminders of the point(s) being presented or brought forward from an earlier section. Nodelman approaches his formidable topic in an original and effective fashion over four chapters. In the first, "Six Texts," he works through close readings of Maria Edgeworth's "The Purple Jar" (1801) Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) Hugh Lofting's (unexpurgated) Dr Dolittle (1920) Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins (1950) Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day (1962) and Virginia Hamilton's Plain City (1993) a project that uncovers the common ground these divergent texts share. Nodelman notes that "texts identified as 'children's literature' [are] included in this category by virtue of what the category implies, not so much about the category itself as about its intended audience," which makes it a "highly unusual" category (3) Tough the involvement of adults in all aspects of children's literature is in plain view, it is amazing how easily adults themselves lose sight of this basic critical factor in the production and reception of "children's" books (read books for children) Nodelman's aim is to expose the hidden adult at every turn along with such inevitable ironies as the "second, hidden text," which he calls a "shadow text" (8) that "say[s] less than it hints at" (9) yet which can result in child readers "understanding] more than is actually said" (9) In this first chapter, the fundamental issues, revisited throughout the book, of binary opposition, of ambivalence, of the doubleness of home and away, and of variation are established all of these hinge on the opposition of child and adult without which there would be no such thing as children's literature. The forty five shared characteristics examined are helpfully listed in point form at the end and then reformulated in paragraph form at the end of chapter 3. Chapter 2, the shortest of the four (forty five pages) "[e]xplor[es] [a]ssumptions" and embarks on the central argument that children's literature is a genre.