Fundamental Concepts of Children's Literature Research: Literary and Sociological Approaches

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Fundamental Concepts of Children's Literature Research : Literary and Sociological Approaches Children's Literature and Culture Ewers, Hans-Heino. Taylor & Francis Routledge 0415800196 9780415800198 9780203877524 English Children's literature--Social aspects, Children's literature-Research. 2009 PN1009.A1E84 2009eb 809/.89282072 Children's literature--Social aspects, Children's literature-Research.

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Page i FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE RESEARCH

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Page ii Children’s Literature and Culture Jack Zipes, Series Editor The Presence of the Past Memory, Heritage, and Childhood in Postwar Britain by Valerie Krips The Case of Peter Rabbit Changing Conditions of Literature for Children by Margaret Mackey The Feminine Subject in Children’s Literature by Christine Wilkie-Stibbs Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction by Robyn McCallum Recycling Red Riding Hood by Sandra Beckett The Poetics of Childhood by Roni Natov Voices of the Other Children’s Literature and the Postcolonial Context edited by Roderick McGillis Narrating Africa George Henty and the Fiction of Empire by Mawuena Kossi Logan Reimagining Shakespeare for Children and Young Adults edited by Naomi J. Miller Representing the Holocaust in Youth Literature by Lydia Kokkola Translating for Children by Riitta Oittinen Beatrix Potter Writing in Code by M. Daphne Kutzer Children’s Films History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory by Ian Wojcik-Andrews Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults edited by Carrie Hintz and Elaine Ostry Transcending Boundaries Writing for a Dual Audience of Children and Adults edited by Sandra L. Beckett The Making of the Modern Child Children’s Literature and Childhood in the Late Eighteenth Century by Andrew O’Malley How Picturebooks Work by Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott Brown Gold Milestones of African American Children’s Picture Books, 1845-2002 by Michelle H. Martin Russell Hoban/Forty Years Essays on His Writing for Children by Alida Allison Apartheid and Racism in South African Children’s Literature by Donnarae MacCann and Amadu Maddy Empire’s Children Empire and Imperialism in Classic British Children’s Books by M. Daphne Kutzer Constructing the Canon of Children’s Literature Beyond Library Walls and Ivory Towers by Anne Lundin Youth of Darkest England Working Class Children at the Heart of Victorian Empire by Troy Boone Ursula K. Leguin Beyond Genre Literature for Children and Adults by Mike Cadden Twice-Told Children’s Tales edited by Betty Greenway Diana Wynne Jones The Fantastic Tradition and Children’s Literature by Farah Mendlesohn Childhood and Children’s Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550-1800 edited by Andrea Immel and Michael Witmore

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Page iii Voracious Children Who Eats Whom in Children’s Literature by Carolyn Daniel National Character in South African Children’s Literature by Elwyn Jenkins Myth, Symbol, and Meaning in Mary Poppins The Governess as Provocateur by Georgia Grilli A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, Vol. 1 & 2 by Penny Brown Once Upon a Time in a Different World Issues and Ideas in African American Children’s Literature By Neal A. Lester The Gothic in Children’s Literature Haunting the Borders Edited by Anna Jackson, Karen Coats, and Roderick McGillis Reading Victorian Schoolrooms Childhood and Education in Nineteenth-Century Fiction by Elizabeth Gargano Soon Come Home to This Island West Indians in British Children’s Literature by Karen Sands-O’Connor Boys in Children’s Literature and Popular Culture Masculinity, Abjection, and the Fictional Child by Annette Wannamaker Into the Closet Cross-dressing and the Gendered Body in Children’s Literature by Victoria Flanagan Russian Children’s Literature and Culture edited by Marina Balina and Larissa Rudova The Outside Child In and Out of the Book Christine Wilkie-Stibbs Representing Africa in Children’s Literature Old and New Ways of Seeing by Vivian Yenika-Agbaw The Fantasy of Family Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature and the Myth of the Domestic Ideal by Liz Thiel From Nursery Rhymes to Nationhood Children’s Literature and the Construction of Canadian Identity By Elizabeth A. Galway The Family in English Children’s Literature Ann Alston Enterprising Youth Social Values and Acculturation in Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Literature Monika Elbert Constructing Adolescence in Fantastic Realism Alison Waller Crossover Fiction Global and Historical Perspectives Sandra L. Beckett The Crossover Novel Contemporary Children’s Fiction and Its Adult Readership Rachel Falconer Shakespeare in Children’s Literature Gender and Cultural Capital Erica Hateley Critical Approaches to Food in Children’s Literature Edited by Kara K. Keeling and Scott T. Pollard Neo-Imperialism in Children’s Literature About Africa A Study of Contemporary Fiction by Yulisa Amadu Maddy and Donnarae MacCann Death, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Adolescent Literature Kathryn James Fundamental Concepts of Children’s Literature Research Literary and Sociological Approaches Hans-Heino Ewers

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Page v FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE RESEARCH Literary and Sociological Approaches HANS-HEINO EWERS Translated from German by William J. McCann NEW YORK AND LONDON

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Page vi First published 2009 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ewers, Hans-Heino. Fundamental concepts of children’s literature research : literary and sociological approaches / by Hans-Heino Ewers. p. cm.—(Children’s literature and culture ; 62) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Children’s literature—Social aspects. 2. Children’s literature— Research. I. Title. PN1009.A1E84 2009 809′.89282072—dc22 2008049257 ISBN 0-203-87752-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10:0-415-80019-6 (hbk) ISBN10:0-203-87752-7 (ebk) ISBN13:978-0-415-80019-8 (hbk) ISBN13:978-0-203-87752-4 (ebk)

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Page vii Contents Series Editor’s Foreword

ix

Introduction

1

Part I: Literary Communication with Children and Young People Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter

1 2 3 4 5

Children’s Literary Communication Different Forms of Children’s Literary Messages Children’s Literature as Literature for Mediators Children’s Literature as Twofold Communication Children’s Literature as Reading Material for Adults

9 17 25 31 43

Part II: Children’s Literary Distribution and Evaluation Systems Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10

Children’s Literary Action Systems The Market for Children’s Books and Media Children’s Books and Media as an Action System in Public Libraries “School Reading” as a Selection and Distribution System The “Children’s Book” Pedagogic Action System

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53 59 65 71 77

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Page viii Chapter 11 The “Children’s Public Literary Forum” Action System Chapter 12 Historical Change in Distribution and Evaluation Systems for Children’s Literature Chapter 13 Children’s Literary Polysystems and Their Providers

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Part III: Semiotics of Children’s and Young Adult Literature Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter

14 15 16 17

Children’s Literary Symbol Systems Fundamental Children’s Literary Norms Children’s Literary Concepts Children’s Literary Discourse

105 111 121 129

Part IV: Children’s Literature as Literature Suitable for Children and Young People Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter

18 19 20 21

Child Suitability: Accommodation and Assimilation Forms of Child Suitability: Forms of Accommodation Child Suitability as a Basis for Textual Analysis External and Internal Suitability

139 147 163 171

Notes Index

177 181

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Page ix Series Editor’s Foreword Dedicated to furthering original research in children’s literature and culture, the Children’s Literature and Culture series includes monographs on individual authors and illustrators, historical examinations of different periods, literary analyses of genres, and comparative studies on literature and the mass media. The series is international in scope and is intended to encourage innovative research in children’s literature with a focus on interdisciplinary methodology. Children’s literature and culture are understood in the broadest sense of the term “children” to encompass the period of childhood up through adolescence. Owing to the fact that the notion of childhood has changed so much since the origination of children’s literature, this Routledge series is particularly concerned with transformations in children’s culture and how those transformations have affected the representation and socialization of children. While the emphasis of the series is on children’s literature, all types of studies that deal with children’s radio, film, television, and art are included in an endeavor to grasp the aesthetics and values of children’s culture. Not only have there been momentous changes in children’s culture in the last fifty years, but there have also been radical shifts in the scholarship that deals with these changes. In this regard, the goal of the Children’s Literature and Culture series is to enhance research in this field and, at the same time, point to new directions that bring together the best scholarly work throughout the world. Jack Zipes

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Page 1 Introduction This study arises from my academic teaching in the Institute for Children’s Literary Research at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main, Germany. It takes into account of numerous suggestions made by Frankfurt students of children’s literary theory, and also many critical remarks from friends and colleagues, for which I am most grateful. Even if it is based on teaching in a German university and the examples chosen are mainly from the German-speaking area, this book is still not simply a study of German or German-language children’s literature. It is rather a matter of basic aspects of this field of literature, which are also found in other countries, as foreign colleagues who have seen my work have confirmed. The positive response from abroad, mainly the Scandinavian countries, but also Israel and the Anglo-American area, has persuaded me to publish my theoretical ideas in English in order to make them internationally available. My ideas on the fundamental principles of children’s literature research were first presented to the public in coherent form in 2000 in a book (since out of print) entitled Literatur für Kinder- und Jugendliche. Eine Einführung in grundlegende Aspekte des Handlungs- und Symbolsystems Kinder- und Jugendliteratur [Literature for Children and Young People: An Introduction to Fundamental Aspects of the Children’s Literary Action and Symbol System] (Ewers 2000a). Since then these ideas, mostly produced in the 1990s (cf. Ewers 1989 and 1994), have been reworked and in many cases fundamentally revised. However, hardly any of this revised material has entered the public sphere, apart from two individual publications (Ewers 2000b und 2004). This monograph presents not all, but nevertheless the most important, results of my recent research into these fundamental theories. The ideas presented in the chapters that follow have arisen not only from academic teaching at a German university, but also from extensive critical involvement with previous and current German-language children’s literary research. An extremely influential role was also played by the Swedish academic Göte Klingberg’s monograph ( Barnlitteraturforskning—En Introduktion

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Page 2 [Children’s Literary Research: An Introduction], 1972, translated into German in 1973 [ Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung. Eine Einführung ]). The theoretical work of the Israeli researcher Zohar Shavit ( The Poetics of Children’s Literature, 1986) was also very important. At the end of each chapter the relevant German-language research literature is listed, although I am aware that most readers of this book will have little or no German. Accordingly, I have eschewed page references and more detailed footnotes. I considered the idea of dealing with the extensive English-language children’s literary theory very attractive, but that would have considerably delayed the appearance of this book. English-speaking readers are therefore requested to find connections with the research literature of their own country for themselves—to think up their own critical apparatus, as it were. This present book, I would emphasize, is not intended to be an introduction to German—or German-language, or even international—children’s literature. Its fundamental character is similar to that of Göte Klingberg’s work, inasmuch as it does not deal with the object itself, but with the way in which the object is investigated, in order to describe and define it. I therefore also hesitate to describe this study as a theory or even a poetics of children’s literature. A possible definition of what might be understood as a theory of children’s literature is provided in Chapter 16 of this book. However, the chapter is not about developing my own theory, but about the conceivable classification of possible children’s literary theories—and mainly those for which there is historical evidence. Developing such a classification scheme for children’s literary theories might be regarded as being itself a kind of theory. If this is the case, then one should distinguish between different kinds or types of theory. The normal type of theory attempts to define and describe the relevant object of study in a way that is both adequate and realistic. By contrast, the type of theory practiced in this study confines itself to defining only those general and fundamental qualities of the object that transcend all periods as well as its basic frame of reference, and to fix them terminologically. The German term for working out this kind of theory is ‘Grundlagen-forschung’ (fundamental research). The study by Göte Klingberg mentioned above is characterized by its orientation towards fundamental children’s literary research. The sphere of the themes handled in the present study is, however, smaller: we have omitted on the one hand the research areas of children’s reception of literature, this group’s ‘consumption of literature’ (a concept which has anyway already been demolished) (Klingberg, Chapters 8–10, pp. 129–178) and that of research into readers and literary socialization which would complement this, and on the other hand the research field dealing with ‘children’s literature in school and education’ (Klingberg, Chapter 7, pp. 110–128). This does not mean that these fields should be classified as unimportant: On the contrary, they are of such importance that individual branches of research have been established for them which do not fit under the umbrella of children’s literary research in

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Page 3 the narrower sense, however much they might overlap with it. This is because children and young people tend not to receive only material offered in the field of children’s literature, just as they are confronted in lessons at school with general literature to a considerable extent. Göte Klingberg’s definition of “the object of children’s literary research” is the “interplay between literature and children and young people” (Klingberg 1973, 21; emphasized in the original). We also limit ourselves in respect of this point: this study regards as the object of children’s literary research in its actual sense the interplay, not of all literature, but only of the literature that is aimed at child or youth readers, that is addressed to them. To formulate this in a different way: children’s literary research is devoted to the investigation and definition of what is here called children’s literary communication (see Chapter 1). Nevertheless, one thing that we have in common with Klingberg is that literary theory is here not reduced simply to textual theory, but is understood as communications theory. It is not just a matter of what is communicated (i.e. the messages, the literary works as such) but also of those who are involved in this communication as well as the modes of institutionalization and execution of this special form of literary communication. This study makes use of individual cultural and literary theoretical approaches produced in recent decades, but without going more deeply into their originators and their importance for the history of theory. We have, in the broadest sense, a communications theoretical approach (Part I), which is complemented on the one hand by sociological action theory with a systems-theoretical bent (Part II) and on the other hand by literary semiotics (Parts III and IV). This last is also expanded by considerations of a discourse-theoretical nature (Chapter 17). The explanations concentrate entirely on the theme and/or the object whose basic structures they attempt to work out by means of the flexible application of these theories. Fundamental research is concerned with the basic, elementary structures and characteristics of the relevant object and thus runs the danger of boring—if not tormenting—the reader with the pedantic conceptual dissection of material that is already sufficiently well-known and to some extent even banal. Anyone who is looking for flights of intellectual fancy and a firework display of great names and world-shattering philosophies would be well-advised not to read this relatively dry study. However, anyone who is fed up with the terminological chaos, the conceptual inexactitude, the diffuse distinctions between different objects found in so many academic monographs about children’s literary matters may well find much that is useful in this book. Like Klingberg’s, this study should be understood as a contribution to the development of a more precise terminology for our field. The following statement is still valid and the requirements mentioned still exist: “The terminology of children’s literary research has been badly developed and, more than that, there is often a lack of general agreement on the definitions of the terms that are used. It is therefore an important task for this research

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Page 4 to achieve unanimity about terminology. This means setting up a series of concepts with precisely formulated definitions” (Klingberg 1973, 12). This does not mean that we wish to flood children’s literary research with masses of new technical terms (the ones suggested here are in most cases not that new anyway). Technical terminology does not have to be used constantly and pedantically exactly (except, of course, in such basic works as this one); it is enough if reference is made to them in doubtful situations, in order to make clear exactly what object is being referred to or exactly what aspect is the point at issue. When we say fundamental aspects of children’s literature, we mean essential features and characteristics of the object which precede attempts to separate it into book and literary genres, and are accordingly of an importance that transcends the limitations of genre. At the same time it is a matter of essential features and characteristics that have typified the object over a relatively long period of time historically, and are therefore not typical of or specific to any individual period, but have a validity that transcends the limitations of periodization. The terms we develop are therefore suitable for the theoretical treatment of both the children’s literature of our own time and that of past historical periods. The historical frame of reference that underlies our work stretches from the 18th century to the present day, but many of the terms should also be of use when dealing with earlier periods of the development of children’s literature. The changes in the structures of children’s literary communication that are a result of the rapid development of the media in our time and which are only gradually being revealed—one might think of the direct marketing possibilities opened by the Internet—are only occasionally mentioned; this theme must await treatment in a study of its own. I would not presume to suggest that I have here developed the fundamental tenets of a children’s literary theory which, if not for all, would at least be applicable to most societies or cultures. This study is not based on any comparative research, which would justify such a claim. It may well be the case that the basic framework of children’s literary communication described here is mainly to be found in the countries of the so-called first world. The dependence of so many basic distinguishing features of children’s literature on specific images of childhood and youth, which are totally culture-specific might well support this. However this may be, I would hope to find nonGerman readers who will continually test the ideas in this book for their transferability and will measure them against their own children’s literary circumstances. This is especially important for the second part, which deals with children’s literary action systems, which are presented using the form they take in a specific national culture as an example. Even if we actually discuss specifically German characteristics in them, these sections are intended as a pattern for the analysis of literary action systems, which could also be applied to other countries and cultures, no matter how different the results might then be.

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Page 5 References Ewers, H.-H. (1989)’Vorüberlegungen zu einer Theorie der Kinderliteratur. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag’, in Conrady, P. (ed.) Literatur-Erwerb. Kinder lesen Texte und Bilder , Frankfurt/Main: dipa-Verlag, ( = Jugend und Medien Vol. 16), 61–69. ——(1994) ‘Theorie der Kinderliteratur zwischen Systemtheorie und Poetologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Zohar Shavit und Maria Lypp’, in Ewers, H.-H., Lehnert, G. and O’Sullivan, E. (eds) Kinderliteratur im interkulturellen Prozeß, Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 16–26. ——(2000a) Literatur für Kinder- und Jugendliche. Eine Einführung in grundlegende Aspekte des Handlungs- und Symbolsystems ‘Kinder- und Jugendliteratur’, München: Fink (UTB 2124). ——(2000b)’Kinder- und Jugendliteratur ›zwischen Pädagogik und Dichtung‹. Über die Fragwürdigkeit einer angeblichen Schicksalsfrage’, in Ewers, H.-H., Nassen, U., Richter, K. and Steinlein, R. (eds) Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung 1999/2000 , Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 98–114. ——(2004) ‘Skizze einer Theorie Kinder- und jugendliterarischer Handlungssysteme’, in Institut für Jugendbuchforschung der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität/Frankfurt am Main und der Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin), Kinder- und Jugendbuch-abteilung (ed.) Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung 2003/2004 , Frankfurt a. Main: Lang, 13–26. Klingberg, G. (1973) Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung. Eine Einführung , Wien, Köln, Graz: Böhlau. Shavit, Z. (1986) Poetics of Children’s Literature, Athens, Georgia and London: The University of Georgia Press.

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Page 7 Part I Literary Communication with Children and Young People

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Page 9 Chapter One Children’s Literary Communication If we ask what the subject matter of children’s and young people’s literary studies is, the answer might well be: all literary communication in which children and young people are the addressees. We will therefore reserve the term ‘children’s literary communication’—meaning literary communication to children—for this subsection of all literary communication. This will then be the first category to be explained in this introductory study. As far as the concept of communication is concerned, inclusive definitions are provided by general communication studies (cf. Schulz 2002) and cultural semiotics (cf. Posner 2003). We will delve no further here into the question of what distinguishes literary communication from other forms of communication, such as scientific communication or everyday communication. Let us at this point just mention, however, that in the context of this study the word ‘literary’ is not confined to fiction, but also always includes factual and informational literary communication. With this broad conception of the term ‘literary’ we are continuing a tradition that has long predominated in this field: experts in children’s and young people’s literature have from the very beginning always regarded non- fiction as falling within their purview. Children’s literary communication as a special case within literary communication In order to distinguish between children’s and young people’s literature and other forms of literary communication, we must begin with the basic categories of communication theory, those of sender, message, and receiver. Communications are targeted, i.e. the messages they transmit are aimed at one or more target groups. These latter are called the addressees, meaning those among the receivers “whom the sender wishes to believe that s/he is trying to

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Page 10 reach them with his/her utterance” (Posner 2003, 41). The establishment of these target group(s) is one element of communication, which can be defined as the process of addressing. This process is performed by the addresser. The addressee(s) can be named in, or their names can be attached to, the message, which then demonstrates this process of addressing. This category of addressing can therefore sometimes describe a process (to address), on other occasions a quality of the message (being addressed). The fact that children and young people are among the receivers of a literary message is, from the viewpoint presented here, not an adequate reason to call this ‘children’s literary communication’. We can only talk of it in this way when the message(s) they receive are actually messages addressed to children and young people. To set children’s literary communication in motion is the business of the addresser; this occurs by means of the act of addressing a literary message to children and young people. It is produced by all the participants in an act of literary communication who are capable of or have the authority to undertake the act of addressing, which in this case means: to declare that the group constituted by children and young people are the intended direct recipients of this literary message. Of course, the receivers of a literary message need not be exclusively the addressees, the group that is targeted or spoken to. There are always other receivers as well who are not among the addressees of the message and of whom the sender has, as a rule, no knowledge. In face-to-face communication this would be unthinkable; in such a situation the sender of the message can ensure that it does not reach the wrong ears. With literary communication, however, we are dealing with written communication, which represents an “extended speech situation”. The two elements of a normal “speech situation”, the production of a message by a speaker and its reception by a hearer, are now separated. They become spatially and temporally separate “incomplete speech situations”, which are no longer connected by means of personal contact, but only through the medium of the message stored in the form of writing (Ehlich 1983, 38). As a result we have the increasing independence of the “handing down of the text [ … ] from the persons who are handing it down” and their intentions concerning the receiver (ibid., 39). In other words, we are faced with the possibility that the message will be appropriated by unforeseen receivers. Children and young people are obviously among the unintended receivers of many literary messages: To a certain extent they tend to receive literary messages that are not addressed to them. For instance, young people are among the passionate fans of Terry Pratchett or Stephen King, whose works are certainly not addressed to young people. This means, however, that children and young people are not just involved in children’s and young people’s literary communication in the sense defined above, but also in other forms of literary communication. It is therefore sensible to separate children’s literary communication from the generality of literary communication involving

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Page 11 children when we are defining terminology. The latter would include all forms of literary communication in which children and young people are involved as the receivers of literary messages. Although after these introductory remarks we intend to limit children’s and young people’s literary studies to the investigation of children’s literary communication, not all literary communication involving children and young people is part of its remit. Looking at all of these different forms in their entirety would in our view be the responsibility of other disciplines, such as reception theory or the theory of reading or readers wherever the latter two are concerned with children and young people. These disciplines overlap with children’s and young people’s literary studies at the point where they are concerned with the reception by children and young people of all the literary messages that are addressed to children and young people. The pattern of children’s literary communication The sender can stand in various different relationships with the literary message s/he is sending, resulting in a need to distinguish between different types of sender. We may be dealing with senders who are communicating a message for the first time; they are then at the same time the producers, the originators of the message. Other senders are passing on messages, which they have not produced themselves, but have received from other senders (we then call them ‘resenders’). They are thus feeding messages into a communication process for a second or later time. In doing this, they can behave in different ways: They may pass the message on in unaltered form, but they could also send the message on only after they have altered it in some way. A fourth type of sender is defined by his/her place in the course of the communication: this is the resender who chooses different paths for resending, who can decide, which transmission channel the message is fed into. Apart from the first, all other sender types are receivers of a literary message before they become active as senders. In our view, literary communication can only be adequately captured by a communication model that starts from the premise of such a graduated set of modes of sending literary messages. A message like this, before it lands with a receiver who does not send it on but simply receives it, runs through a number of intermediary stations where it is received and passed on. In the present context it is important to realize that all the senders involved in a particular literary communication process can at the same time function as addressers. The originator and first sender of a literary message can provide this with a particular address. In such a case, all subsequent senders have two courses of action open to them: They can respect the address that has already been attached to the message and allow it to form part of the resent message, thus avoiding, as (re)sender, becoming active as an addresser. But they also have the opportunity to provide an address of their own choice. They can

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Page 12 limit a pre-existing act of addressing or expand it by means of adding further addressees, or even replace it with a totally different address. In terms of the definition provided here, we can talk of children’s literary communication from the very moment it is decided to address a particular literary message to children and young people. This can happen at the very beginning, but it can also happen later, at any one of the many intermediate stages of literary communication. We are therefore dealing with different patterns of children’s literary communication, which can be defined in terms of which type of sender brings children and young people into play as addressees in any given case. One initial scenario might be that we have senders who address a literary message to children and young people without having produced it themselves, but simply readdress it—though without any change—thus extending the scope of the address. In the form in which the sender received it, the literary message showed no signs of being addressed to children and young people: It is only by means of the act of resending that it is additionally aimed at this originally unintended group of receivers. Let us take a sender—a parent, librarian, teacher or educator—who regards novels like Hermann Hesse’s Beneath the Wheel (1906), Carson McCullers’ Frankie (1946), J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951) or Günter Grass’ novella Cat and Mouse (1961), as suitable reading matter for young people, and puts this idea into practice, whether it be by means of giving the books as gifts or by personal recommendation, or on a more general level by publication, including public book discussions and reading lists etc. In individual cases a lasting consensus can be produced: Parts of what is generally available as literary material can in this way be marked as being suitable reading matter for children and young people, without having been originally intended for this target group and even without being produced as a separate publication tailored to that group. This pattern of children’s literary communication can be designated here as ‘recommended reading for children and young people’. A second scenario is somewhat similar at first: Here too a literary message is not created but simply passed on unchanged, having its address expanded to include children and young people. However, this change in the group addressed does not just occur as a reading recommendation, as the resenders are able to produce the work as an independent publication. They have the opportunity to feed the chosen literary message into a channel of transmission that is aimed specifically at the target group of children and young people. An example of such a channel might be children’s and young people’s periodicals, whose publishers have always printed lyric poetry, prose, and dramatic works of general literature unchanged in their publications and thus in a certain sense brought them retrospectively into the sphere of children’s literary communication. As we can see here, it is not just individual literary messages, but also channels of transmission or organs of publication as such that can be provided with an address. As well as children’s and young people’s periodicals we could also mention almanacs, book series, programs on radio and

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Page 13 television or Internet home pages, which are targeted at children and young people. This pattern of children’s literary communication will be defined here as ‘children’s-only publishing’. The third pattern we will mention here has as addresser a sender who has not produced the message, but simply received it. This sender also adds children and young people to the previous addressees as a target group. However, s/he only regards such an extension of the groups addressed as justifiable if s/ he modifies the literary message s/he has received. Modifications of received literary messages can be very different in extent, and thus we must ask ourselves from what point onward we can speak of a ‘new’ literary message. However we will here only consider those cases where the sender describes her/ his own message explicitly as the modification of a previously received message. To put it in terms of literary theory, the sender insists on being, not the author or imitator, but simply the reworker of another’s original work. In this particular form of children’s literary communication we are dealing with the phenomenon of ‘children’s editing’ of works of general literature. Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s travels or Baron Münchhausen might be included in such a list, books, which are by no means presented to children in their original form, but rather as re-worked texts. With the fourth pattern to be dealt with here, it is the act of addressing the literary message to children and young people that is the starting point of the literary communication. In this case it is the originator and first sender of the literary message her/himself who functions as addresser and determines that children and young people are the group at which the message is targeted. An author decides to enter into literary communication with children and young people and generates a message, which is aimed from the outset at this target group. Here the message is in its original form already addressed to children and young people. The author also expects that the original act of addressing will be respected by all other senders concerned with further transmission, and that her/his message will be fed into a channel that leads to the desired receivers. We will define this form here as ‘original children’s writing’. In many ways researchers into children’s and young people’s literature tend to regard the last-mentioned form of children’s and young people’s literary communication as their actual object of investigation and to neglect the other forms or even to ignore them. We cannot accept this. Of course the fourth pattern of children’s literary communication described above takes on the form of a complete literary communication parallel to general literary and other forms of literary communication: It is here that it has most set itself apart as a form of independent literary communication. On the other hand, the other forms present a kind of serial communication, which is linked to other forms of literary communication within which it is less a matter of original production than of secondary utilization. This description should not be understood as an implicit value judgement, just as we are not implying here that every form of children’s literary communication is necessarily striving for complete

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Page 14 Table 1.1 Communicative Patterns of Children’s Literary Communication Function I II III IV Production and Writing and first first sending of sending of a literary the literary work for children and/or message young people Reworking of Reworking of a work of the literary general literature for message with a children and/or young view to a new people addressee Passing on the Publication of a work of general Publication of a reworking Publication of a work of literary message literature as a children’s/ young for children/young people children’s/young by means of people’s book or in a children’s/ of a work of general people’s literature in a feeding it into a young people’s periodical literature in a children’s/ children’s/ young channel of young people’s book or a people’s book or a transmission children’s/ young people’s children’s/ young periodical people’s periodical Passing on the Recommending Recommending the publication Recommending the Recommending an literary message a work of of a children’s/ young people’s reworking of a work of original work of in the form of a general (unaltered) version of a work of general literature for children’s/ young reading literature as general literature as suitable children and young people people’s literature as recommendationsuitable reading reading material for children as suitable reading materialsuitable reading matter for and young people (children’s for children and young material for children children and only publishing) people (children’s editing) and young people young people (children’s writing) Reception of the Reception of the work by a reader who is a child or young person message by a receiver differentiation: In the eyes of many critics it is precisely such a degree of separation that is the problem. Independently of such value judgements, the study of children’s and young people’s literature should always, as well as dealing with original children’s

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Page 15 literary communication, deal with the question of what general literary messages are treated as suitable reading material for children and young people, and which of them are not just recommended for reading but are also published specifically for children and young people. References Ehlich, K. (1983) ‘Text und sprachliches Handeln. Die Entstehung von Texten aus dem Bedürfnis nach Überlieferung’, in Assmann, A. and J. and Hardmeier, C. (eds) Schrift und Gedächtnis. Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation, München: W. Fink, 24–43. Posner, R. (2003) ‘Kultursemiotik’, in Nünning, A. and V. (eds) Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften, Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 39–72. Schulz, W. (2002) ‘Kommunikationsprozess’, in Noelle-Neumann, E, Schulz, W. and Wilke, J. (eds.) Fischerlexikon Publizistik Massenkommunikation , updated ed., Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 153–182.

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Page 17 Chapter Two Different Forms of Children’s Literary Messages This section is devoted to differentiating between and defining the various forms taken by children’s and young people’s literary messages. To do this we will no longer use categories taken from communication studies, but rather textual studies, and then book and media studies. We will refer to literary messages as ‘texts’ or ‘works’, as a ‘range of literature’ or occasionally also as ‘titles’. The aim of classifying literary works according to various different criteria is to create groups or corpora of texts. A corpus can be created as a result of individual personal preference, as in lists of favorite books; but it can also enjoy intersubjective recognition and be handed down from generation to generation—just think of canons of opera, of theatre or of film classics etc. Text corpora of this kind are among the more or less permanent elements of cultural, and academic or scientific life, and we will in this chapter be referring mainly to such culturally established corpora. We will first consider corpora that have been created by theoreticians in the field of children’s and young people’s literature with the aim of establishing the boundaries of this field of investigation. Even if it is probably impossible to capture any one corpus in its entirety, looking at the way it is constituted may still be useful. Works intended as reading for children and young people The totality of the messages included in the literary communication of an epoch will here be designated the ‘range of literature available (in that epoch)’. One section of this total range is represented by the messages that form children’s and young people’s literary communication. These messages have one common distinguishing feature: They have all been addressed (either from the outset or retrospectively) to children and young people. One term for the totality of

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Page 18 works thus addressed has been established in German-speaking children’s and young people’s literary research, and we would not wish to ignore it, even if it occasionally gives rise to misunderstandings. The term ‘intentional children’s literature’ (Brüggemann 1966, 21f; Brüggemann/Ewers 1982, 3f; Eckhardt 1987, 29; Ewers 1995; Ewers 1996; Ewers 2000, 17f) is applied to the totality of texts or works that are aimed at children and young people as addressees. The corpus thus created includes the whole range of literature or reading material that is intended for children and young people, no matter where it comes from or what addressees it was originally aimed at. The actual character of the corpus under discussion here becomes, we think, much clearer if, instead of ‘intentional children’s literature’, we talk of material intended for children’s and young people’s reading1 (hereafter for convenience ‘intended children’s reading’). We would like to establish this term for the text corpus under discussion as a parallel to the one deriving from the German research tradition. In order to exclude school reading material from the corpus of intentional children’s literature or intended children’s reading, we need one further criterion for inclusion in that corpus. The texts that make up this corpus should only include reading material that children and young people—also, mainly or exclusively—read in their leisure time, i.e. outside school instruction and not as an accompaniment to it, and more or less voluntarily. Where the early historical phases of the development of children’s literature are concerned, this criterion for inclusion or exclusion may well be very difficult to apply. When nearly all reading matter was of a mainly didactic nature and, at the same time, it was almost impossible to talk of a distinct schooling system, we can hardly distinguish between reading situations that were connected with school or leisure activity. What Children and Young People Actually Read Another possible way of creating a corpus would be to include in the group the whole range of literary material that is actually received by children. This corpus would include all the literary works that have actually been read by children and young people. In German-speaking children’s literature research the term ‘Kinder- und Jugendlektüre’ (children’s and young people’s reading: Brüggemann 1966, 21; Klingberg 1973, 25: “all the literature consumed by children and young people”; Scherf 1975, 151; Doderer 1977, 161; Ewers 2000, 16f) has been used to describe that portion of the range of literature available that has actually been consumed by children and young people. We would like to diverge from this research tradition and our own previous suggestions by no longer restricting the meaning of the term children’s reading to what children actually read. In the previous section we spoke of intended children’s reading. To distinguish the corpus we are here discussing from this, we need an extra term: We suggest that the literature that children consume in reality should

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Page 19 be called ‘actual children’s reading’. In this way we would bring the definitions of the two corpora discussed so far into line with each other: instead of ‘intentional children’s literature’ applied to the one and ‘children’s reading’ to the other, we would now have a pair of concepts (which are also more user-friendly): ‘intended’ and ‘actual children’s reading’. School reading material should also be excluded from the second corpus, which would then only include all the texts or works that are actually read by children outside school instruction and unconnected with it. The Relationship between Intended and Actual Children’s Reading Children and young people do actually read the majority of the reading material that is presented to them. In almost all periods the literature that is offered is also read to a considerable extent. Thus intended and actual children’s reading are largely identical: Children’s and young people’s actual consumption of literature corresponds largely with what is expected. In some marginal areas, however, there is a yawning gap between them. This makes it necessary for us to set up three further text corpora: in the first, and most extensive, corpus we find all the texts that are both targeted at children and young people and actually received by them to a very great extent. Since the term we ourselves coined for this corpus in another context (Ewers 2000, 18f) is no longer available to us, we suggest using ‘successful reading offerings’. The second corpus would include all those works which, although admittedly addressed to children, are not actually accepted and read by the intended receivers. Here we would use the term ‘ unsuccessful reading offerings’. The third corpus comprises works which show no sign of being addressed to children and young people, but are nevertheless consumed by this group of readers. We could here speak of unexpected consumption of literature or as ‘unintended actual reading’ by children and young people. This may largely escape attention, and could then be defined as ‘ hidden children’s reading’. This latter could of course be accepted, in which case we can talk of ‘tolerated children’s reading’. Nevertheless history provides us with numerous cases in which the unintended consumption of literature by children and young people was not only not tolerated, but was actively forbidden and combated. We suggest the term ‘forbidden children’s reading’ for this. Primarily Children’s Literature A further corpus is made up of all the texts or works which, on their first appearance (their first publication) were demonstrably addressed to children and young people. In these cases the decision to direct one’s literary work to children and young people may come at the beginning or the end of

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Page 20 the creative process, occasionally even during negotiations with one’s publisher (as in the case of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer). The decisive factor is that when it first appears the work is designated for children and young people and has no previous publishing history that might indicate otherwise. This corpus also has a term describing it in German-speaking children’s literary research: ‘spezifischen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur’ (specific children’s literature: Doderer 1977, 162; Brüggemann/Ewers 1982, 4f; Eckhardt 1987, 31; Ewers 2000, 22f). We would like to suggest an alternative term for this text corpus as well: instead of ‘specific’ it should be called ‘primarily children’s literature’. All works that belong to the corpus of primarily (= specific) children’s literature also belong to the corpus of intended children’s reading (or intentional children’s literature), since we are here also dealing with a literary offering that is intended for children and young people as readers. Nevertheless, the corpus of intended children’s reading is more extensive and includes more texts than just those primarily aimed at children, which therefore form one of its subgroups. In everyday academic language, however, it has become acceptable to use the corresponding specific term directly for all the works that belong to this sub-group, and to use the broader term only for the remaining subgroups. As a result, what was originally a hierarchical terminological relationship has been replaced by a pair of concepts that describe alternatives that are seen as being on the same level, so that the question is sometimes asked, whether we are dealing with intentional or specific children’s literature. In both cases, however, we are dealing with intentional children’s literature that in one of the cases is in the form of specific children’s literature. However, we should not object to this usage in practice, as long as we keep the actual relationships between the concepts in mind. The terms ‘intentional’ and ‘specific’ children’s literature are ultimately relatively unhelpful, and they have not generally been used with any exactitude even within the sphere of children’s literary theory, and outside this sphere they have not always been understood. To take just one significant example from literature in German: Ballads and poems by Ernst Moritz Arndt, Friedrich Rückert, Ludwig Uhland, Adalbert v. Chamisso, Eduard Mörike and many others later appeared in countless almanacs, anthologies and periodicals for children and young people without originally having been addressed to children and young people. Until recently these works had to be included with intentional children’s literature, which all too often met with misunderstanding and rejection outside the field of children’s literary theory. If one were to say instead that by appearing in these organs these lyrical texts became part of the stock of intended children’s reading, then no one would object. Again, outsiders will also immediately understand what is meant by literary works that were originally intended for children and young people, whereas one has always has and had to explain what is meant by specific children’s literature. We regard the terms we have suggested as being more

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Page 21 meaningful, and this should lead to correct usage within our own discipline and a better understanding on the part of our sister-disciplines. Children’s and Young People’s Books and Periodicals Up to this point we have focussed on literary messages in the form in which they are produced and received, that is, as literary texts or works. Between these two stages of literary communication, there is the stage of transmission or, in other words, distribution. Special channels of transmission are brought into play in this process, for which we will borrow the terms used in media studies, namely the medium of publication or distribution. We could group literary texts according to which channels are used to transmit them. We would then have a corpus of, for example, all the texts which have been distributed using the book as medium of publication.2 Another corpus would contain all the works that were distributed in spoken form on CDs or as audiobooks etc. In this section, however, we will no longer be concerned with corpora of texts or works. From the moment they enter a channel of literary transmission, works become publications or media products3. In this way novels, for example, can be published in book form, but also in newspapers or periodicals: We are then dealing with the novel as book or the novel as serial. It is possible to address not only literary texts or works but also publications or media products as such to children and young people. When a book publication is addressed to children and young people, we have a children’s book, when we have a corresponding periodical publication we have a children’s magazine, and if an audiobook is aimed at this target group we have a children’s audiobook. For all publications aimed at children and young people we will reserve the term ‘children’s media’. The term is admittedly ambiguous, and therefore we must additionally point out that we do not mean the media that children and young people actually use, but rather those that are aimed at this target group. To make this difference absolutely clear we would distinguish between intended and actual children’s media. A further terminological ambiguity connected with children’s media is the fact that this can refer to both individual publications or individual media productions and also various publication and distribution media. With the children’s book or the children’s magazine we are looking at specific forms of the general publication and distribution media ‘book’ and ‘periodical’ aimed at specific addressees. They have a specific character in terms of material, printing technique, layout, format, design, typesetting and illustration, all of which have their own history. Among the most striking hallmarks of the publication and distribution medium ‘children’s book’ are the illustrations and, from the 19th century onwards, the attractive ornamentation of the cover or the dust jacket. The category ‘children’s book’ has numerous subforms, some of which are also found in other kinds of books, while some are

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Page 22 original productions by this sector (e.g. activity books, first reading books). These original sub-forms are, as a rule, aimed at usage situations which are only met with in the sphere of children’s and youth culture. Among the sub-forms of the children’s book we have, for example, ABC books, activity books, picture books, first reading books, primers, children’s almanacs, children’s anthologies, children’s atlases, children’s craft books, children’s Bibles, children’s pictorial broadsheets, children’s encyclopaedias, children’s prayer books, children’s annuals, children’s calendars, children’s dictionaries, children’s non-fiction, concertina leaflets, reading books, painting books, game books, books for reading aloud, reversible books etc. There are also numerous types of picture book: stand-up books, pop-up books, photograph books, board books, activity books, pull-out books, etc. In the case of books or periodicals published exclusively for children and young people, we could talk of ‘purely children’s books or periodicals’. The latter can be published either independently or as supplements in other publications. Among the publications that are meant for children and young people as well (as adults) we could include housebooks or family books, annuals, calendars, anthologies published seasonally or for festivals like Christmas, family magazines, and also newspapers and periodicals with children’s pages. Another criterion for the creation of children’s book corpora is provided by the age of the addressees; we suggest using the term ‘age-specific corpora’. The normal age-group divisions for children in the German-speaking area use a period of two years: (2 years and older, 4 years and older, 6 years and older, 8 years and older, 10 years and older), and the same is often true of books for young people (12 and older, 14 and older, 16 and older). Sometimes the age-groups are defined in terms of the educational institution the child is likely to be attending at that age (kindergarten, pre-school, primary school, etc). The age-group is often combined with the gender of the addressees, which is particularly the case for books and magazines aimed at girls. On the other hand, categories like boys’ books or magazines have long fallen into disuse in the German-speaking area. The terms used to define these corpora are variable, although in individual cases the name of the type of book often implies an age or gender group: picture book (= for children at kindergarten and pre-school), early reading books (= for children of primary-school), domestic instruction manuals and cosmetic advice books (for girls) etc. The determination of the addressee, including the closer definition of gender and age group, can take place initially at the level of the literary work—either within the text in the form of an apostrophe to the reader by the author, or in a foreword, or in the titling, though in this last case this is, as a rule, done in the sub-title. In such cases, the assignment of the addressee which is already present on the textual level is repeated in the layout of the publication and/or distribution medium, which are also directed towards the addressee. In the field of children’s books and periodicals, however, some works have also been adopted which were not originally targeted at children and young people. These are not just shorter

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Page 23 works—poems, songs, ballads, anecdotes, fairy tales, short stories, one-act plays etc.—of the kind that are mainly found in children’s anthologies and magazines: There are also longer ‘complete’ works which have been produced as children’s editions. In all these cases the fact that the addressees are children or young people, particular age groups, boys or girls, is a matter only for the publication or distribution medium. We have designated this characteristic form of children’s literary communication ‘children’s only publishing’ in the previous chapter. When scholars are dealing with the theory of children’s literature, there is all too often—at least in the Germanspeaking countries—a confusion of categories taken from textual theory and book or media theory, which are then used as synonyms. Thus even today ‘children’s book’ and ‘children’s literature’ are occasionally used synonymously, and children’s literary theory equated with children’s book research. This unfortunate state of affairs is to a certain extent the result of history: In the earliest period children’s media, above all children’s books and children’s periodicals, were the main focus of attention. Long before we had the development and establishment of a primarily children’s literature, the production of children’s books and periodicals flourished, though they were partly filled indiscriminately with anything that was available in the general literature of the time. There was differentiation at the level of the publication and distribution media before this happened at the literary level. Children’s books and periodicals were already successful on the market at a time when it was not possible to talk of an independent children’s literature. This historically pioneering role of the publication and distribution media has also been inscribed in the terminology of the subjects involved. References Brüggemann, T. (1977) ‘Literaturtheoretische Grundlagen des Kinder- und Jugendschrifttums (1966)’, in Bernstorff, E. G. (ed.) Aspekte der erzählenden Jugendliteratur, Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag, 14–34. ——and Ewers, H.-H. (1982) Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Von 1750–1800 , Stuttgart: Metzler. Doderer, K. (1977), [dictionary entry] ‘Kinder- und Jugendliteratur’, in Doderer, K. (ed.) Lexikon der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, Vol. 2, Weinheim and Basel: Beltz, 162–165. Eckhardt, J. (1987) Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (Erträge der Forschung), Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft. Ewers, H.-H. (1995) ‘›Kinder- und Jugendliteratur‹—Entwurf eines Lexikonartikels’[draft of a dictionary entry], in Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung 1994/95, Stuttgart: Metzler, 13–24. ——(1996) ‘Kinder- und Jugendliteratur’, in Ricklefs, U. (ed.) Fischer Lexikon Literatur, Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Vol. 2, 842–877. ——(2000) Literatur für Kinder und Jugendliche. Eine Einführung , München: Fink. Klingberg, G. (1973) Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung. Eine Einführung , Wien, Köln and Graz: Böhlau. Scherf, W. (1975) ‘Von der Schwierigkeit, die Geschichte der Kinderliteratur zu schreiben’, in Drews, J. (ed.) Zum Kinderbuch, Frankfurt a. Main: Insel, 148–168.

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Page 25 Chapter Three Children’s Literature as Literature for Mediators Until now we have only mentioned a single addressee, children and young people, as the target group. However, this does not completely answer the question of the way children’s literature is addressed. We would like to propose the thesis that children’s literature is in the majority of cases also directed at a specific group of adults. Although this circle of adults is by no means homogeneous, consisting as it does of a large number of status and occupational groups, we will define it here as the mediator circle (Bogdal 1995). In this chapter we will first characterize the role of mediators in children’s literature and define their various communicative functions. We will then investigate how such twofold communication takes place, and what characteristics a literary message must have if it is to speak to adult mediators as well as children and young people. Mediation as a neutral communicative function In the first chapter the accepted model of literary communication was expanded to include the role of the resender of the literary message. The mediator is initially no more than a resender of this kind. Resenders perform, as we have demonstrated, various different functions: They could redirect a literary message that was not originally aimed at children and young people to this group, or feed it into a channel that was targeted at them. In such a case resenders are acting as mediators, in as much as they, in general terms, are bringing the literary message to a circle of receivers whom they regard as suitable for the reception of that message. Guiding literary communication in this way also makes sense even when literary messages are already addressed to children and young people, since the latter are by no means homogeneous in their reading interests and preferences: Consequently a choice must be made among the

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Page 26 material directed at this target group if one wishes to provide different specific groups of child or youth readers with suitable reading material. Not every resender of a literary message is necessarily a mediator, but only those who redirect the message to a specific group of receivers. Literary mediators build a bridge between the two sides: the supply of literature available on the one side and the demands of the readers on the other. To do this job properly mediators must be familiar with both: They must have a clear idea of what literature is available, and of all the preferences and interests of the readers to whom they wish to redirect the literary messages. As a result, their task is defined from two directions: They look for suitable receivers for particular literary offerings and simultaneously look for suitable reading matter for particular groups of readers. This could also be described in the following way: Mediators make a pre-selection for a specific group of readers with whom they are familiar from among the range of literature available which is, after all, so broad that a total overview is difficult. The role of the literary mediator is not indispensable, as literary communication can in principle function without a mediator. Potential receivers or readers can seek information about what is on offer directly from the senders or producers and make their own choice totally independently. This does not mean that the literary message thus chosen does not pass though several stages before arriving at the receiver; nevertheless, everyone who had a hand in the process has acted as a resender and not a mediator: They pass on a message that the receiver has chosen independently in advance. There may, however, be reader groups who, for whatever reason, are not in a position to find suitable literary material for themselves. Among these groups there may be those who are not capable of doing this simply on the grounds of particular circumstances—for example, insufficient information or a lack of education— but who could basically learn how to do so. With children and young people, on the other hand, we have a group of receivers who for obvious reasons are not in a position to take part in literary communication without the help of mediators. This dependence on the support of mediators is most pronounced in the case of the youngest age groups —small children, kindergarten children, pre-school and primary schoolchildren—whereas it decreases in the case of older children and young people. As beginners in matters of literary communication, children, and to some extent young people as well, do not yet (or only at a very rudimentary level) have the cognitive, social and cultural competences required in order to adopt the role of independent literary consumers acting only in accordance with their own discretion. Thus it is possible to conclude that in children’s literary communication the role of the mediator is an indispensable component, without which it cannot take place. Unlike the literary communication that takes place between adults, literary communication with children—and to some extent also with young people—in principle requires mediation, i.e. is dependent on mediators.

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Page 27 Mediation as an interventive communicative function This does not, however, exhaust the mediators’ possible fields of action. They do not have to restrict themselves to directing the literature available at any particular time to the places where there is a demand for it, or to keep an eye out for literature that will suit a particular receiver group. They can have their own ideas about what qualities the range of literature that they should pass on to a specific receiver group should have. Can the target group decode and/ or understand it? Does it offer them sufficiently useful, educative, interesting or entertaining material? Will it provide them with aesthetic pleasure, artistic enjoyment within the bounds of what is permissible and proper? Mediators can therefore approach the suppliers of literary material with their own ideas about the nature and characteristics of literary works. In the case of the mediators of children’s literature this means ideas of what the range of reading material available to children should be like. Using these ideas mediators can produce a catalogue of criteria with whose aid they can judge the material that is available in the field of children’s literature. Mediators can also approach the demand side with their own predetermined ideas in terms of reading interests, preferred reading material, and also reading habits and practices. They can judge individual reading requirements (for example, the desire for reading material that is simply exciting) to be questionable, or particular reading practices (such as uncontrolled, excessive reading) to be harmful. It is quite possible that both the range of literature available and the demand on the part of the readers fail to coincide with the mediator’s conception of what literature and literary reception should actually be. Of course it is possible for mediators to accept these divergences totally and to keep their own ideas to themselves, but they can also decide to impose this conception. The mediators’ role offers them the opportunity to do so: They can refuse to pass on any literature that does not fit in with their own concept of literature to the group of readers for whom they are responsible. They do not allow works of this kind any role in their activity as mediators. They can also ignore recognizable reading interests that they do not approve of and refuse to look for suitable material or ignore clearly available material. In both these cases they are making their selections in terms of their own criteria and not on behalf of their reader groups. They can undertake this pre-selection tacitly, in which case the readers do not discover what titles have been excluded and for what reasons. They can fail to tell their reader group that any choice has been made at all, thus giving them the false impression that they are receiving an unfiltered supply of material. If this is done, however, one cannot exclude the possibility that individuals among the reader groups will find other ways to get hold of the titles that the mediators have tacitly excluded because they do not fit in with their idea of literature. To avoid the possibility of these titles being read, mediators could reveal what titles have been excluded as a result of these

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Page 28 judgements by collecting and publishing a list of all the titles that were felt to be unacceptable and which readers are advised to avoid. Negative lists of this kind are indubitably one method by which mediators can impose their own concept of literature; they also make it possible for members of the reader groups to approach the mediators’ preselection critically in the light of this information. All this makes it obvious that we can speak of two types of mediators—a ‘neutral mediator’ and a ‘mediator who makes decisions, influences and intervenes’ in a formative way—although there are many different levels between the two extremes. It also seems sensible to distinguish between professional and non-professional mediators. The former have been involved in this activity over a long period of time as their main or secondary occupation, and have often received specific training for the purpose, while the latter are only occasionally confronted with the tasks involved. It is clear that professional mediators have far greater opportunity to influence the literary communication they are professionally involved in, although the position, the status and the influence of mediators are of different kinds, depending on the literary area concerned. The more the role of the mediator is an indispensable element in one of the specific areas of literature, the more the mediator becomes a gatekeeper. The more mediators in a literary field tend towards being the type who wishes to select and influence, the more they function as gatekeepers of the resulting literary communication. The twofold nature of children’s literary messages: official and unofficial addressees Because the competence necessary for action develops only gradually on the receiver side, we have literary communication that is inevitably dependent on mediation; in this literary field opportunities for circumventing the mediators are limited. The mediators have exploited their powerful position in order to force through their concepts of children’s literature and children’s and young people’s reading behavior: They have tried to suppress all resistance on both the supply and the demand side. Such actions have not been able to change the fact that children of all eras have desired to be free to choose their own reading, a fact of which the mediators have been well aware. At the same time we can observe that they have yielded only grudgingly, if at all, to this desire for independence, this wish of children, and also young people and young adults, to be allowed to act as an autonomous audience, even down to the present day. The adult mediators tend to hold fast to their influential role in children’s literary communication even more than is absolutely necessary. Let us here pursue the question of the effects of this key position—in other words, this communicative power position—of mediators on the supply side. The senders of children’s literary messages are compelled to

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Page 29 come to terms with the mediators in advance; they have to signal that the literary message largely fulfills the criteria which the mediators have established in their position of gatekeepers of children’s literary communication. Only after overcoming this hurdle do they have any prospect that the message will reach its target group. This basic characteristic of children’s literary communication has had a deleterious effect on the messages it transmits. It has made children’s literature two-faced, has given it a duplicitous character, caused it to become a double message: a message for children, and at the same time a message for the mediators of children’s literature. Children’s literature needs to have a basically twofold character, in that it also has always to be ‘mediators’ literature’ (in the sense of literature for mediators). Indeed, in terms of the time sequence of literary communication, children’s literature must first prove itself as literature for mediators: Originators and senders must first present their message before these intermediate authorities, because it is only the latter’s acceptance of it that opens the access to the actual addressees. If they disregard or even rebuff the mediators they are in danger of not reaching the child and youth readers at all; they run the risk that the mediators will erect an impenetrable barrier between them and their intended receivers (Ewers 1990, 16). In terms of time, therefore, the adult mediators can be seen as the first receivers of children’s literary messages; it is only their agreement that makes it possible for children’s literary communication to succeed. Its basically twofold nature as literature for children and young people and as literature for mediators has been evident to different degrees at various periods in the development of this literary genre. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries communication with the (professional and nonprofessional) mediators takes place with the same openness with which it takes place with the children and young people addressed. As well as children and young people, adult mediators—parents, educators, tutors, schoolteachers, clerics—are regarded as the official addressees of children’s literature. There is hardly a children’s book of this period in which these latter are not directly addressed. It is a cultural given that children’s literature always consists of two interwoven strands of communication —not least because children’s and young people’s reading of books is regarded in principle as reading that is induced, taught, encouraged, controlled and monitored by adult mediators. If we look at the 20th century, we see that only children and young people are said to be the official addressees of children’s literature. However, the adult mediators have by no means resigned, they have simply moved from the visible center stage to the concealment of the wings, where they continue to exercise their gate-keeping function. Even today, the originators and senders of a children’s literary message must direct it to the adult mediators first; they simply do it in a discreet and subliminal way. In other words, they are still required to treat them as unofficial addressees of their

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Page 30 messages. No hint of this preceding communication between sender and mediator is allowed to appear in the subsequent communication with the child and youth receivers: The latter are expected to regard themselves as the exclusive addressees. References Bogdal, K.-M. (1995) ‘Akteuere literarischer Kommunikation’, in Fohrmann, J. and Müller, H. (eds) Literaturwissenschaft, München: Fink, 273–296. Ewers, H.-H. (1990) ‘Das doppelsinnige Kinderbuch. Erwachsene als Mitleser und als Leser von Kinderliteratur’, in Grenz, D. (ed.) Kinderliteratur—Literatur auch für Erwachsene? Zum Verhältnis von Kinder- und Erwachsenenliteratur , München: Fink, 15–24.

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Page 31 Chapter Four Children’s Literature as Twofold Communication How can one get a clear idea of the functioning of literary communication that consists of two intertwined strands of communication aimed at differing target groups? In the case of literary messages we are always dealing with utterances, which have more than one strand, in other words with a multiplicity of signals, even with several distinct signal fields. Thus there are three possible ways in which twofold literary communication can take place: (1) each of the two partial communications makes use of a signal field reserved for it alone; (2) they make use of the same signal field, within which they each rely partly on the same individual signals and partly on separate ones; (3) they make individual use of separate signal fields (case 1), but also make mutual use of individual signal fields. The twofold communication that is an essential element of children’s literature has historically taken a multiplicity of forms. In this chapter we can only mention a few selected constellations. The Paratextual Signal Field of Children’s Literary Messages In literary communication there are always a number of other signals that are transmitted together with the literary text in the narrower sense—the poem, story, novel, play etc. If one defines the text as the core of the literary message, then it is obvious that the other signals should be defined as incidental signals. Gérard Genette suggested that all these signals be defined as ‘para-text’. This he then divides into two sub-categories: The ‘peritext’ includes all the verbal signals that are ‘in the zone of the text’, that are directly contiguous with the text (title, foreword, chapter epigraphs, notes, other marginalia, etc), as well as the non-verbal signals contained by the media product that transports the text (font, typesetting, layout, illustration, binding and jacket/

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Page 32 dust-cover). The ‘epitext’ contains all the signals that, at least originally, are situated outside the text and are transmitted as an accompaniment to its publication (Genette 1989, 10, 12). Where the originator of the paratextual signals is concerned, Genette distinguishes between the ‘authorial paratext’ deriving from the author (or editor or reviser), the ‘publisher’s paratext’ and the ‘allographic paratext’ deriving from a third party (ibid., 16). The question of who the originator is is, however, less relevant in our context than the classification of the signals in terms of their ‘spatial position’ (ibid., 12). It is one of the characteristic features of the paratextual sphere that it is composed of a large number of clearly distinct signal fields and therefore we frequently meet with the first of the aforementioned ways of achieving twofold communication, that is, the use of separate individual signal fields. In many of the paratext’s signal fields communication is made only with the mediators, in others exclusively with the children and young people who are the addressees. This may be clearly marked—perhaps by a direct address to the relevant target group. It can also be clear from the kind of information transmitted which receiver group is being targeted in each case. Finally, the language register and style chosen can make it clear who is the addressee in each case. If there are no such explicit markings, the relevant receiver group can work out from the content and/or the style which spheres of the paratext are aimed at them. This does not exclude the existence of signal fields in the paratext which are used by both partial communications together. In this chapter we will examine selected signal fields in the peritext from the perspective of twofold communication. The preliminary matter (where we are usually dealing with the publisher’s paratext) is divided by Genette into title, subtitle, and indication of genre (ibid., 60); from the perspective of children’s literature it seems sensible to add the indication of the addressees and directions for use to this concept of preliminary matter. The different signal fields connected with the preliminary matter have in historical terms been made use of by both partial communication areas, and here it is only content and style that decide, which of the two partial communications is to be allocated to which signal field. Der Kinderfreund. Ein Lesebuch zum Gebrauch in Landschulen (The Children’s Friend. A Reader for Use in Country Schools) is the title of the well-known work by Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow that appeared in 1776; the title probably played a role in both partial communications, while the indication of genre and the directions for use more likely present us with an exclusive understanding between the sender and adult mediators. Robinson der Jüngere, zur angenehmen und nützlichen Unterhaltung für Kinder (Robinson the Younger, for the Pleasant and Useful Entertainment of Children) is the title of Joachim Heinrich Campe’s 1779/80 reworking of Robinson Crusoe; here we could assume that the whole of the preliminary matter (title, directions for use and indication of addressees) was important to both partial communications, although the mention of usefulness was likely

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Page 33 to have been more intended as a signal for adult mediators. The same could be said of the following works published by Campe in 1783: Theophron [= title], oder der erfahrne Rathgeber für die unerfahrne Jugend (or the Experienced Advisor for Inexperienced Youth) [= subtitle]. Ein Vermächtniß für seine gewesenen Pflegesöhne, und für alle erwachsnere junge Leute, welche Gebrauch davon machen wollen (A Legacy to his Former Fostersons and to All More Mature Young People who Wish to Make Use of it) [= indication of genre and addressees, directions for use]. Where the preliminary matter consists simply of the indication of genre (which often contains implicit directions for use), as in the case of the Moralisches Elementarbuch (translation published as: Elements of Morality) by Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (1782/83), it appears to be more directed towards understanding between sender and adult mediator. This seems to be the dominant function of the preliminary matter in the 18th and 19th centuries, which is connected not least with the fact that many children’s books did not reach the hands of the actual addressees, but were meant to be read aloud or more or less freely rendered by adult mediators. No history of the role of preliminary matter in children’s literature has yet been undertaken. Looking at the late 20th century, however, we recognize a far-reaching change: the preliminary matter functions mainly, if not exclusively, as a signal in the communication between sender and child or youth addressee: Wir pfeifen auf den Gurkenkönig. Wolfgang Hogelmann erzählt die Wahrheit, ohne auf die Deutschlehrergliederung zu verzichten. Ein Kinderroman (published in translation as: The Cucumber King [= title]: A Story with a Beginning, a Middle, and an End, in Which Wolfgang Hogelmann Tells the Whole Truth. [=subtitle] A Novel for Children) [= indication of genre with implicit indication of addressee] (Christine Nöstlinger, 1972); Das war der Hirbel (That was Hirbel). [= title] Wie Hirbel ins Heim kam, warum er anders ist als andere und ob ihm zu helfen ist (How Hirbel Came to the Home, Why He’s Different from Other People and if He Can be Helped). [= subtitle] (Peter Härtling, 1973). Recently a certain degree of conformity with general literary practice has begun to establish itself: an author like Kirsten Boie shows a preference for titles alone: Paule ist ein Glücksgriff (Paule is a Lucky Find), 1985; Ich ganz cool (And I’m, Like, Totally Cool, 1992). If there are any indications of genre, then they are likely to be nothing more than ‘short story’ or ‘novel’ ( Bitterschokolade. Roman [Bitter Chocolate. A Novel], Mirjam Pressler, 1980). Until well into the 19th century binding was not the publisher’s concern (Wittmann 1999, 262, 316). With the rise of publishers’ bindings a new paratextual signal field, which has gained great importance in children’s literary communication opened up: what we mean here is the hard cover, which Genette assigns to the publisher’s peritext, since it is not usually designed by the author, but by the publisher (ibid., 29ff; in terms of French book culture Genette does not talk of the binding but rather the cover, which is merely attached to the spine of the book. What we are actually concerned with is the outside front cover (in Genette cover page 1), the outside back cover (in Genette cover

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Page 34 page 4) as well as the spine of the book or the binding. Another paratextual signal field may be the jacket with the (outside front) jacket page 1, the (inside) jacket pages two and three, the (outside back) jacket page 4, the spine of the jacket and the front and rear flaps. The paratextual signal fields discussed here have been consistently used by both types of children’s literary partial communication, and where binding or jacket design are concerned we observe a quality that is striking in terms of book history. Since the middle of the 19th century children’s books have sought to attract the attention of their child and youth readers with particularly spectacular binding designs. Initially there were the use of striking and attractive external illustration and very meticulous design of first the front cover of the binding, and then the front of the jacket. The first impression made by the external layout of a book is of greater importance for child and youth readers than for the adult reader, which is why this signal area of paratextual communication was used for the senders’ communication with child and youth addressees from very early on. Professional mediators today are well aware that cover design is mainly intended to speak to young readers and to motivate them to read the book, which is why they (the mediators) are prepared to accept so many of these inducements. Indicators for adult mediators are admittedly found even today on the front and back covers of children’s books: Here we will only mention awards and prizes, which for children are usually of no importance. We can see that the back cover (or the back page of the jacket) is still, as long as it is not empty, a field for exclusive communication with adult mediators—by printing, for example, recommendations by authorities of note or extracts from positive reviews. The same is true of the jacket flaps, which occasionally even today contain texts aimed exclusively at adult mediators. Texts on the jacket flaps can contain material such as information about the author’s, editor’s or reviser’s life and work, which is officially targeted at children and young people. For a long time the relevant age bands have been placed on the back cover (occasionally in the form of dots: from 6 upwards = 1 dot; 8 upwards = 2 dots; 10 upwards = 3 dots; 12 upwards = 4 dots). After we have, taking the preliminary matter as a starting point, looked at the (verbal and non-verbal) publisher’s peritext contained in the binding and the jacket, we shall now discuss a third, no less important, form of the peritext —the foreword (preface) and afterword. This signal field has also been used by both types of children’s literary partial communication. Forewords or afterwords directed at children and young people have been quite normal from the very early days of the printed book, the majority of them aimed at older children and young people. Johann Friedrich Oest begins his book of sexual advice Höchstnöthige Belehrung und Warnung für Jünglinge und Knaben, die schon zu einigem Nachdenken gewöhnt sind (Most Necessary Instruction and Warning for Youths and Boys Who are Already Used to Contemplation, 1787) with a preface titled “An den Jüngling, dem dies

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Page 35 Buch durch Zufall in die Hände geräth” (To the Youth into Whose Hands This Book May Perchance Fall). Let us mention just two examples from among the large number of forewords and afterwords addressed to children: Heinrich Scharrelmann closes his 1903 collection of stories Aus Heimat und Kindheit und glücklicher Zeit (From Home and Childhood and Happy Times) with an ‘afterword’ for children, which says, among other things, “If you were with me now and we could go for a walk together, then I could take you to all the places where my stories took place”. Das fremde Kind (The Strange Child), the collection of fairy tales by poets, edited in 1949 by Annemarie Herleth, opens with a preface to children: “How delightful it is, dear children, that the great German poets did not always just write for adults, but also sometimes for you”. Occasionally there is a preface addressed to children as well as one intended for adult mediators. Campe’s Theophron of 1783 opens with a preface by the father to the youthful addressees: “My dear children”. The “Vorbericht” (foreword) that follows then turns to the adult mediator: “Those who know me will be aware [ … ]” (Ewers 1996, 121ff, 124ff). In the 5th part of his collection of travel writing, the foreword addressed to adult mediators is followed by a preface “To the Young Readers”, who are addressed as “My young friends” (ibid., 115ff). Historically, however, foreword and afterword must have furthered understanding between the sender and the adult mediator. Their function was to convince the latter that the work in question fulfils the—whether old traditional or progressive—norms of children’s literary theory and can be passed on without any reservations. In the 18th and early 19th centuries there is hardly a single children’s book of any significance that does not demonstrate its credentials with a statement for adults that reveals both its intentions and the modes of representation that have been chosen. In these cases, forewords and afterwords for adults include methodological instructions, which occasionally expand into regular treatises—as in, for example, Salzmann’s previously mentioned Elements of Morality of 1783/85, which refers on the title page to the 26-page “Anleitung zum nüzlichen Gebrauch desselben” (Instructions for the Profitable Use of the Same). Forewords and afterwords addressed to adults are also—and this lasts well into the 20th century—the locus of programmatic discussion about children’s literature (Rank 1997). We will give just two outstanding examples of this: Campe’s well-known “Vorbericht” (Preface) to his successful novel Robinson der Jüngere (Robinson the Younger) and August Corrodi’s largely unknown but no less important foreword to the second edition of Simrock’s Deutsches Kinderbuch (German Children’s Book), one of the great 19th-century collections of children’s rhymes. Both are overshadowed by the Brothers Grimm’s prefaces to the various editions of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Grimm’s Fairy Tales), which contain poetological deliberations of a very high standard. The example of Corrodi’s foreword shows that the allographic foreword is represented in the sphere of children’s literature as well as the authorial foreword. Another example of the former is Gustav

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Page 36 Schwab’s foreword to Friedrich Güll’s 1836 lyric anthology Kinderheimath (Children at Home). Let us now turn our attention to selected manifestations of the epitext. The authorial epitext includes, for example, the author’s (editor’s/reviser’s/translator’s) attitude to a particular publication as expressed in conversations or interviews, or in writing in articles, letters etc. Within children’s literary communication the authorial epitext can serve to promote both understanding with adult mediators and communication with child/youth readers. Where the former are concerned, we would think of conversations or interviews with authors in (adult) media such as specialist journals or newspapers, of lectures and readings by authors, of reports from the writer’s desk and autobiographical material etc. A very effective forum for authorial epitextual communication with child and youth readers is provided by authors’ readings in schools, libraries, literature centers, youth centers, and other establishments, and increasingly by programs for children and young people on radio and television, which often give authors the chance to express themselves. The publisher’s epitext includes all the informational and advertising material connected with the publication of the book: the program announcements sent to booksellers, reviewers and critics, the blurbs sent with reading or review copies, special prospectuses for particular authors or books, posters, shop window decoration, advertisements in the Börsenblatt (The Bookseller [UK], Bookselling this Week [US]), in magazines specializing in children’s literature, in general and children’s and young people’s magazines, advertising spots on radio and television, advertising by means of merchandising etc. In most cases it is obvious, which signal fields in the publisher’ epitext are directed at adult mediators and which at child or youth readers. The Textual Signal Field of the Children’s Literary Message The core field of the literary message is the literary work, which is, as well as the numerous paratextual signal fields, a further signal field of the literary message, although for reasons of scale it is clearly much more important. Here only the second possible mode of realizing twofold literary communication can come into play: The two partial communications here use one and the same signal field. To read children’s literary works in general as a manifestation of twofold literary communication requires us to seek for not one but two implied readers in them. For Link, the implied reader denotes “that reading consciousness whose competence can be equated with the strategies and characteristics of the text” and thus corresponds “precisely with their originator, the abstract author” (Link 1976, 23). For Kahrmann/ Reiß/Schluchter, too, it is a matter of a “correlative to the abstract author” and “the implicit projection of the intended reception of the text as a whole” (Kahrmann et al. 1986, 52). Because in terms of this definition there can

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Page 37 only be one implied reader, it does not seem to us to be appropriate for the modeling of twofold literary communication of the kind we find in the case of children’s literature—and, moreover, in numerous other cases as well. We modify the current definition of the implied reader to suggest that this term no longer refers exclusively to “the point of integration of all signals aimed at the level of the addressee in the text” (ibid.; our emphasis); when thinking of an implied reader we should also think of the point of integration of only a specific part of the text’s signals, a “reading consciousness whose competence can be equated with” only a part of “the text’s strategies and characteristics” (Link 1976, 23). With regard to this latter one could talk of the implied reader of only one particular level or dimension of the text. In the case of unitary literary communication the implied reader represents the receiver of the entire message, who is inscribed in the text; in the case of twofold literary communication the two implied readers represent the receivers inscribed in the text, each one receiving a different dimension of the message. It therefore seems appropriate to distinguish terminologically between the “abstract reader” (Link 1976, 23) and/or the “abstract addressee” (Kahrmann et al. 1986, 52) and the “implied reader”. Only the abstract reader should be regarded as the counterpart of the abstract author. In the case of unitary literary communication the implied reader may well normally overlap with the abstract reader. In the case of twofold literary communication, however, at least one implied reader is omitted when considering the abstract reader. It is our thesis that a children’s literary work generally has two implied readers, the child/youth receiver and the adult mediator, and that we are therefore dealing with implied readers neither of whom can actually be equated with the abstract reader. Children’s literature therefore lacks a reader’s role inscribed throughout the text, which would match the abstract author; such a role could only be that of an accomplice in his twofold communicative game. This, however, should remain concealed not just from child and youth readers, but often—in terms of its entire extent— from adult mediators as well. It is true that we often come across cases of total openness and honesty towards adult mediators on the part of the author, but these are far outweighed by cases where they are not given the whole truth, unless the author and the publisher had done this deliberately from the very beginning. With (professional) children’s literature mediators we are dealing with a relatively predictable type of reader, who has specific, and usually also clearly articulated expectations, which are discussed in the relevant subject or professional fora. These expectations may relate to, for example, the ending of the work (which should not turn out negatively, or in any case at least remain open), the presence of an educative intention or specific themes, which should be taken up or avoided. Their evaluation of the children’s literary message will normally be restricted to the question of whether these precise expectations are fulfilled. If the message contains nothing unacceptable in this respect, the mediators are prepared to pass it on. Their attention is then

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Page 38 probably concentrated solely on some specific signals, while they are only partially aware of others. The originators and senders of a children’s literary message adapt themselves to this in such a way that they take care to ensure that the relevant signals are present: They lard the message more or less consciously with signals that are intended to appeal to mediators. Children’s and young people’s reception of the text is often no less selective: While they are doing this, this group of receivers may well pay particularly close attention to signals that have already been evaluated by adult mediators; they may also, however, find aspects of the work, which the mediators did not think worthy of attention important. The originators and senders of children’s literary messages try to provide them with signals aimed at attracting child and youth readers—often in the hope that they will not be noticed by mediators. Thus in the textual signal field of children’s literary messages we are dealing with three signal categories: as well as the signals aimed attracting mediators and those that are there for child and youth receivers, there are all the signals that are meaningful to both receiver groups. We suggest that these last should be called interference signals in terms of twofold children’s literary communication. Of course, none of these signal categories are marked as such in the text: an interpretative reading is required to identify signals as signals attractive to mediators or those aimed at the actual target group. When we do this, an immanent interpretation will have little success; the work should, rather, be related to the relevant historical communication situation. This presupposes an acquaintance with the expectations of the particular period where both the various groups of mediators and the child and youth readers are concerned. Tensions and shifts between partial children’s literary communications The fact that children’s literary communication represents the linking of two partial communications makes it a process that is full of inner tensions. The necessity of being the servant of two masters occasionally demands bizarre contortions on the part of children’s literature. In periods when the expectations of the mediators deviate sharply from those of the primary addressees it is by no means simple for children’s literature to provide the signals necessary to attract both sides; the price paid for this can often be seen in gaps in the logic of the plot, the description of the characters or the assessment of behavior. Thus many young people’s novels produce completely unmotivated U-turns—for example at the end, as in Henny Koch’s Papas Junge (Daddy’s Boy, 1900), just as in Marliese Arold’s Voll der Wahn. Verena steht auf Ecstasy (Totally Deluded. Verena’s Mad about Ecstasy, 1997)— simply because now at the latest adult mediators must be given a signal that prevents them from declaring outright war on the book. The tensions between the two partial

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Page 39 communications in children’s literature can also reveal themselves in contradictions, even complete discrepancies between the text and the paratext. The understanding with the adult mediator can be shown not only openly but also partly to the exclusion of the child and youth reader in the paratextual signal area. The first thing many mediators receive may very well be paratextual signals: program announcements and blurbs, preliminary material, binding, jacket texts aimed specifically at mediators, and then finally the foreword that is also specifically for them and sometimes other documents and material belonging to the authors’ and publishers’ epitext. The paratext plays a considerable, if not the decisive, role in convincing mediators of the suitability of a text in terms of children’s literary criteria. However, it often turns out that these paratextual promises are not kept by the text itself. Admittedly, this can result from the author’s inability to put into practice the lofty intentions announced in the preliminary material, cover text, and foreword. In certain periods of the development of children’s literature we can, however, see a regular strategy at work here: The adult mediators are supposed to be lulled into a false sense of security by means of paratextual signals to keep them from reading the text more closely, so that at the textual level communication with the child or youth reader can take place with as little disturbance as possible. Thus many a 19th-century children’s book, which was presented as extremely useful and instructive is revealed on closer investigation to be captivating and entertaining reading matter, which would not have received the mediators’ blessing without this deceptive packaging. Nevertheless the reverse case is also conceivable: sometimes it is precisely the textual signal field that satisfies the mediators, while the child readers feel themselves more strongly attracted by a paratextual sphere. Many 19th-century anthologies of fables, which merely contained the learned fables of the 18th century, may well only have attracted some of its child recipients thanks to their new illustrations. Many current drug novels for young readers appear in terms of their layout to be something trendy from the youth culture scene; in the text, however, they often present a traditional admonitory story in which, in addition, youth culture is dragged through the mud. We mentioned above that at first the adult mediator possessed the status of an official addressee in terms of children’s literature, but in the later course of development became an unofficial addressee. We are now in a position to describe this change in the position of this partial communication with the adult mediator as a change in signal field. As far as the textual signal field is concerned, communication with the adult mediator was always subliminal: Apart from a few exceptions, the mediator remains the implied reader of children’s literary texts, although this is nowhere explicitly stated. The only place where change can have occurred is therefore in the paratextual signal fields. What is probably the most obvious change is the disappearance of the foreword or afterword addressed exclusively to adult mediators. Of course there are exceptions to this: we could think of the

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Page 40 numerous afterwords written by Hans Joachim Gelberg for the Jahrbücher der Kinderliteratur (Children’s Literature Yearbook, 1971ff), which reflect the development of children’s literature. But here we simply have the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule. (Forewords and afterwords for child or youth readers have, on the other hand, survived: cf. e.g. the “Afterword for Children” in Peter Härtling’s Das war der Hirbel (That was Hirbel)). Moreover we hardly ever find cover or jacket texts aimed exclusively at adult mediators, and signals addressed solely to mediators have also disappeared from the design of title and binding. This affects a signal field that we have called, based on Genette, the author’s and publisher’s peritext, which historically represented the central field of explicit communication with adult mediators. This field is now dominated by signals, which are explicitly aimed solely at children and young people and which address adult mediators only indirectly (and mediators hardly expect to be addressed in these fields any longer). These signal fields are—as already mentioned—left open for partial communication with children and young people. Explicit communication with adult mediators has at present been removed more or less entirely from the children’s book as such and moved into its external sphere, in other words: it has retreated to the area of the author’s and publisher’s epitext. In this way the degree to which it is open to public scrutiny has also changed. As long as explicit communication with adult mediators made use of the peritext it was visible on the market and generally available; all purchasers of children’s books were, as it were, supplied with it and could take part in it as much as they wished. With its retreat into the epitextual sphere it has left the generally available space of the children’s book market and retired into the various more or less closed expert public spheres (for booksellers, librarians, schools, educationists). As a consequence, those sections of the adult mediators who have no access to these expert fora are, within children’s literary communication, no longer addressed explicitly, but only implicitly. We are here talking about nonprofessional mediators, mainly about parents, who are still supposed to approve the titles concerned as children’s reading matter, but are no longer included in discussion about children’s literature. This is matched by the fact that epitextual communication structures in the sphere of children’s literature are geared mainly for professional mediators— booksellers, librarians, educationists, and teachers. The fact that adult mediators have lost their status as official addressees and become the unofficial addressees of children’s literature means in reality that they are, on the generally available level of children’s literary communication, no longer addressed explicitly but only implicitly, and that any explicit understanding with them comes about to a large extent only in the background, i.e. under the auspices of the relevant expert fora, where it goes almost without saying that this understanding is restricted to professional mediators. Here we could definitely say that partial children’s literary communication is made partly invisible, though it has by no means been done away with.

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Page 41 References Ewers, H.-H. and Weinmann, A. (eds) (1996) ‘Sammlung von Vorreden von Joachim Heinrich Campe zu seinen Kinder- und Jugendschriften’, in Erfahrung schrieb’s und reicht’s der Jugend. Joachim Heinrich Campe als Kinder- und Jugendschriftsteller. Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—PK; Ausstellungskataloge NF 17), 72–134. Genette, G. (1992) Paratexte. Das Buch vom Beiwerk des Buches [1989], Frankfurt a. M. and New York: Campus, Studienausgabe. [ Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation ]; translated by Jane E. Lewin ; foreword by Richard Macksey. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Kahrmann, C., Reiß, G. and Schluchter, M. (1986) Erzähltextanalyse. Eine Einführung , new revised Königstein/Ts.: Athenäum. Link, H. (1976) Rezeptionsforschung. Eine Einführung in Methoden und Probleme , Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln and Mainz: Kohlhammer (Urban-Taschenbücher 215). Rank, B. (1997) ‘Belehrung über das Lesen. Zur Bedeutung von Vor- und Nachworten in der Kinderliteratur’, in Rank, B. and Rosebrock, C. (ed.) Kinderliteratur, literarische Sozialisation und Schule, Weinheim: Deutscher Studienverlag, 29–54. Wittmann, R. (1999) Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, 2nd ed., München: Beck.

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Page 43 Chapter Five Children’s Literature as Reading Material for Adults As can be seen from what we have written so far, adults are also essentially among the readers of children’s literature, although this does not mean that it should be described as reading material for adults. Adults are, to the extent that we have demonstrated, involved in children’s literature not as the actual receivers and readers but rather only as mediators, who filter or pass on, and are therefore addressed only in terms of this function. The children’s literary message is not presented to them as reading material, which is also suitable for adults, but exclusively as appropriate reading material for the target group ‘children and young people’. Adult mediators read the message in the consciousness that they are not among the group that are meant to be the actual receivers, and consequently will not apply the criteria they would regard as acceptable for adult reading material to these messages. A children’s literary text should not present itself to adult mediators in a way that primarily satisfies their reading requirements: mediators should not demand this of it, and as a rule they do not expect it. They should be mainly interested in whether the text they have before them corresponds with their own basic idea of what is suitable children’s reading. If this is the case, they are ready to recommend it or to pass it on directly to children and young people even if it has little appeal for the mediators themselves. It therefore makes a difference for the originator and the sender of a literary message, whether they approach an adult as an (actual) reader or as a mediator. We suggest that the special way mediators receive children’s literary messages should be called co-reading and that we should generally characterize mediators as adult ‘co-readers of children’s literature’ (Ewers 1990, 16, 1990a, 80). This would make the second implied reader (that is, the adult implied reader) of children’s literary works the text-internal representation of the mediator, derived from the

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Page 44 totality of the signals addressed primarily to him, whom we might more precisely define as the ‘implied co-reader’. Multiple Addresses Independently of this we also come across—in all periods and to a considerable extent—the involvement of adults in children’s literary communication not as mediators but as actual receivers and readers. Children’s literature represents, though obviously to a different extent, adult reading material too. An extension of the model we have so far developed for children’s literary communication thus becomes unavoidable: Children’s literature that simultaneously functions as intended adult reading consists not just of the combination of two communications (that with the adult mediators and that with the child and youth receivers): In this case a third communication is added— that with adult readers. Only when adults enter the scene as additional actual readers can children’s literature be seen as a literature with multiple addresses, a literature aimed at several reader groups.1 At almost all periods, non-fiction literature and non-fiction books for children and young people have often been offered to certain groups of adults as well. These multiple addresses are mostly expressed in the preliminary matter, as shown by the following 18th-century examples. “Young people” are often addressed simultaneously with the lower urban and rural classes: C. G. Steinbeck’s Der aufrichtige Kalendermann (The Honest Calendar-Man, 1792) is supposed to be “For Young People and the Common Townsman and peasant”. In other cases, young people are coupled with the less educated classes: Felix Waser’s Unterredungen über einige wichtige Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion (Conversations about some Important Truths of Natural Religion, 1782), between a father and his child, are intended “for the instruction of the unlettered and young people”. Several works of instruction for older young people is also directed at adults—such as J. G. Trimolt’s Merkwürdige Beispiele zur Kenntniß der Seelenkräfte der Thiere für die erwachsenere Jugend und wißbegierige Liebhaber der Thiere gesammelt (Noteworthy Examples Showing the Mental Powers of Animals for Older Young People and Animal Lovers Desirous of Knowledge, 1799). Children are often put together with women: in 1779 J. A. Weber published Fragmente von der Physik für Frauenzimmer und Kinder (Fragments about Physics for Ladies and Children), and then in 1782 Fragmente von der Heydnischen Götterlehre für Frauenzimmer, Maler und Kinder (Fragments about Pagan Mythology for Ladies, Painters and Children). Non-fiction for girls often also has multiple addresses: in 1798 Johann Ludwig Ewald published Die Kunst ein gutes Mädchen, eine gute Gattin, Mutter und Hausfrau zu werden. Ein Handbuch für erwachsene Töchter, Gattinnen und Mütter (The Art of Being a Good Girl, a Good Wife, Mother and Housewife). Similarly in 1794 Catharina von Hesse produced Etwas für

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Page 45 meine Deutsche Schwestern, [ … ] zur Belehrung für Mädchen, Gattinnen und Mütter (Something for my German Sisters, [ … ] for the Instruction of Girls, Wives and Mothers). We find similar double addresses in the field of fiction: an anonymous book of tales published in 1772 is “composed in Rhyme for the delight and pastime of dear young people and the respectable lady”. Numerous women’s novels are also directed at older girls, which is admittedly expressed less often in the title than in the foreword, in the cases where it is not regarded as completely obvious: Die neue Clarissa, eine wahrhafte Geschichte (The New Clarissa, A True Story; Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont, 1778); Evelina oder eines jungen Frauenzimmers Eintritt in die Welt (Evelina, or The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World; Francis Burney, 1779) or Julchen Grünthal. Eine Pensionsgeschichte (Julchen Grünthal. A Boarding-School Story; Friederike Helene Unger, 1784). In cases where the address to girls comes after that to women, being recognizably the second element, we suggest calling this women’s literature with multiple addressees (i.e. addressed to girls as well). Otherwise we could talk of children’s literature with multiple addressees when another address to specific adult target groups is added to the primary address to children and young people. When numerous narratives are given the subtitle “Für Jugend und Volk” (For Youth and Folk) from the mid-19th century onwards, then in our view we are dealing with children’s literature with multiple addressees; we consider the new ‘folk literature’ of this period to be largely a re-evaluation of modern children’s literature with its romantic and middle class re-orientation. Monosemic and Bisemic (Children’s) literature with multiple addresses can take several different forms. We would like to conclude by mentioning three of these forms, which have been of no little importance in the history of children’s literature. The first case is that where a multiply addressed work of children’s literature has one and the same message for its various target groups, that is, adults as well as children and young people—in the expectation that the different receivers will derive the same meaning from the message. This means, however, that the receivers may well differ in age or gender, and also in sociological respects, but that as receivers of the message they are on the same level. No matter how different their position in life, as readers of this work there is no essential difference between them. Considering the examples mentioned above, one could say that, in terms of their knowledge of mythology, “children”, “painters,” and “women” are not different in essence, because all of them could be regarded as beginners in this field. In terms of their poetic and literary competence, “youth” and “folk” are on the same level, no matter how different they may be in other respects.

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Page 46 Because in this case the various groups of addressees differ from each other only in external respects, but not as readers of this work, there is no need for specific signals to be created within the work for any of the individual groups. Consequently, texts of this kind, that is, those with multiple addresses, contain—apart from the implied coreader—only one implied (actual) reader, who must admittedly be structured so generally and transparently that none of the addressee groups feel excluded. The (implied) reader role inscribed in the text cannot thus be a child or youth-reader role as this would put the adult readers off. We would probably find this kind of multiple addressing mainly in the sphere of non-fiction, which only defines its reader groups in terms of their level of knowledge and education. We could also include fiction intended as children’s or folk literature. We would call this ‘monosemic multiply addressed children’s literature’ as long as the primary addressees are children and young people. Things are different with what is probably the best-known case of multiply addressed children’s literature in the German-speaking area: in the Brothers Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales. This multiple addressing is clear in the very title: the tales are aimed at children as well as all others (older and old) who belong to the (entire) home. When the first volume appeared in 1812 there were doubts about whether children would understand some of the stories. In a letter to Achim von Arnim, Jacob Grimm counters these objections: “What we possess of revealed and traditional lore and rules will be accepted by both old and young, and what the latter do not understand their minds will slide over until they have learned it [ … ].” “That is why we tell children about God and the Devil long before they can understand anything about them” (quoted from Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der Romantik, Stuttgart 1984, 565). Thus the authors do not just speak of two groups of addressees as actual receivers, (“old” and “young”) but also imply that both receivers understand the text in different ways, so that the two addressee groups would differ not only in terms of age, but also as readers of the text. Whereas the entire meaning of the message would be clear to the “old”, many things would remain incomprehensible to the child readers, and yet the nature of the Tales was such that the child receivers could slide over what they did not understand. The signals, which were not aimed at them were of such a nature that they escaped the notice of children or could be passed over without detracting from the children’s reading experience. A work of children’s literature can therefore exceed the child’s comprehension, but must nevertheless contain something for child readers. In other words, it must be inscribed with children’s reading if children are to be among its readers. Such a work consequently contains two implied (actual) readers, although one of them, the implied child reader does not have all the qualities required of the abstract reader, while the implied adult reader tends to coincide with the abstract reader (Link 1976). In this case there are also different reader roles corresponding to the different (in terms of extra-literary criteria)

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Page 47 addressee groups, and these are prepared for on the text-internal level by the development of two different implied (actual) readers. Multiply addressed children’s literature of this kind does not mediate a simple, monosemic message, but rather a two-fold, bisemic one, which admittedly can only be deciphered as such by adult receivers. We suggest that this should be called ‘bisemic multiply addressed children’s literature’. In the 18th and early 19th centuries literary “Märchen” (Folk or Fairy Tales) were among the most prominent embodiments of this kind of children’s literature (Ewers 1986, 1990a, 20f). The literary tales of people like Wieland or Musäus, and then Tieck, Brentano, Contessa, Fouqué, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Mörike or Andersen were largely—as can be seen from obvious paratextual signals - aimed simultaneously at adults and children, but offered both groups different reading. Child (and partly also youth) readers were provided with reading in which the strange and often adventurous narrative with its magical happenings and miraculous strokes of fortune stood at the center. Adult readers, on the other hand, shared in the ironic play of the narrator—sometimes humorous, sometimes sentimentally moving—which opened up a second level behind the seemingly simple tale, revealing a deeper, esoteric message. We define signals which indicate an esoteric message in the text as ‘signal stimuli aimed at adults’. Child readers took no, or hardly any, notice of this second level because their attention was claimed by the narrative level, the exoteric side of the tale. An indispensable prerequisite for this form of multiply addressed children’s literature was a certain degree of balance in the levels of meaning: The play of background irony could not be taken so far that only fragments and debris remained of the narrative tale. Instead, the tales provided enough space for exoteric child reading, only occasionally allowing the sometimes humorous or ironic, sometimes melancholy background meaning to shine through. As a rule the multiple addressing of a work is expressed in unambiguous signals in the paratext (title, sub-title, foreword, jacket text etc.), and there are also occasional clues to this in the text. A narrator may, for example, address a double—both child and adult—readership. Whether we are dealing with a monosemic or a bisemic message in a literary text is by contrast a question of the reader’s interpretation. Of course, here too certain textual signals play a key role—let us just mention the irony signals—but these are far less unambiguous than the signals in the paratext (and sometimes the text itself), which indicate that it is multiply addressed. Multiple addressing and bisemy on the part of the textual elements of the literary message are two different things, which are by no means linked to each other. We have already established that mono semic literary messages can be multiply addressed. The question now arises whether the reverse can take place, so that bisemic literary messages can have a single address. In such a case we would admittedly be leaving the sphere of multiply addressed children’s literature, though not that of children’s literature, which also offers adult reading.

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Page 48 What could incite the originators and senders of a bisemic children’s literary message not to use a twofold address appropriate to their twofold message? This could be one of the games of concealment that are frequently found in literary life. It could also be one of the tactics used when smuggling ideas past possible censorship: For example, children’s books with concealed political ideas attempt to evade possible censorship by seeming to have no addressees but children. This can also occur out of tact towards the child readers, who should not have it brought to their notice by means of external evidence in the mode of addressing that messages for other readers are being transported by the literary medium that is supposed to be for them. The senders are then prepared to accept that under these conditions the esoteric message may not reach its intended adult receivers. In fact there are probably numerous children’s literary works which contain messages for adults as well, which in other words are appropriate for adult reading, without this being realized by a broader audience. There is often only a limited circle of experts and enthusiasts who are aware of their double meaning. There are a number of canonical children’s literary works whose bisemic message is uncontested: As one example we could quote E.T.A. Hoffmann’s children’s tales Nußknacker und Mausekönig (Nutcracker and Mouse King) and Das fremde Kind (The Mysterious Child). These appeared in 1816 and 1817 respectively in the two-volume illustrated collection Kinder-Mährchen (Children’s Tales), to which Contessa and Fouqué each also contributed two items. The children’s book is simply addressed; in the paratext, at any rate, there is no indication that tales for adult readers— and not only those by Hoffmann—contain a different message from that directed at child readers. E.T.A. Hoffmann quite soon abandoned some of the many concealment games connected with this collection of children’s tales, which appeared anonymously: At the beginning of 1819 the two volumes of the Serapions-Brüder (The Serapion Brethren) appeared, sub-titled “Gesammelte Erzählungen und Mährchen” (Collected Stories and Tales). In this publication these two tales are told in an adult story-telling exchange and therefore now marked as adult reading as well. Afterwards, the company of Serapion Brethren discusses the tales that have been told both as suitable or unsuitable reading material for children and as ironic and profound works, which have a meaning of their own for adults. Of course not every children’s literary work that has a double meaning, even though it may not have a twofold address, has such a publishing history. We therefore consider it sensible to provide this case with a category of its own; we suggest that it should simply be called ‘bisemic children’s literature’, meaning literary work that is meant both for children and young people and adults, though outwardly seeming to be intended for children and young people alone. What began with Hoffmann’s children’s tales has been repeated in a whole series of children’s literary works, whose double meaning was discovered by a wider public. We will just name Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures

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Page 49 in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1872). In such cases there are generally two strands of publication of the works, which are put on the market in one version for children and young people and another for adults. This provides the external circumstances, which allow these works to play a role in two different literary action systems. Their status is then no longer unambiguous, but ambivalent (Shavit 1986). Works of such ambivalent status sometimes have two totally separate and independent reception and interpretation histories, in the sphere of children’s literature and that of general literature. The Brothers Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen are a good example of this, as are the literary tales from Wieland to Andersen and Theodor Storm of which a good proportion are assigned twofold addresses. Generally, however, the general literary transmission and processing of these works ignores their children’s literary aspects. References Beckett, S. (ed.) (1999) Writing for a Dual Audience of Children and Adults, New York: Garland. ——(2008) Crossover Fiction. Global and Historical Perspectives, New York: Routledge. Blume, S. (2005) Texte ohne Grenzen für Leser jeden Alters. Zur Neustrukturierung des Jugendliteraturbegriffs in der literarischen Postmoderne, Freiburg: Rombach. Ewers, H.-H. (1986) ‘Die Kinderliteratur—eine Lektüre auch für Erwachsene? Überlegungen zur allgemeinliterarischen Bedeutung der bürgerlichen Kinderliteratur seit dem ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert’, in Wirkendes Wort 36, No. 6, 467–482. ——(1990) ‘Das doppelsinnige Kinderbuch. Erwachsene als Mitleser und als Leser von Kinderliteratur’, in Grenz, D. (ed.) Kinderliteratur—Literatur auch für Erwachsene? Zum Verhältnis von Kinder- und Erwachsenenliteratur , München: Fink, 15–24. ——(1990a) ‘Die Grenzen literarischer Kinder- und Jugendbuchkritik’, in Zwischen allen Stühlen. Zur Situation der Kinder- und Jugendliteraturkritik, Tutzing (= Tutzinger Studien 2/1990), 75–91. Grenz, D. (ed.) (1990) Kinderliteratur—Literatur auch für Erwachsene? Zum Verhältnis von Kinder- und Erwachsenenliteratur , München: Fink. Falconer, R. (2008) The Crossover Novel. Contemporary Children’s Fiction and Its Adult Readership , New York: Routledge. Kahrmann, C., Reiß, G. and Schluchter, M. (1986) Erzähltextanalyse. Eine Einführung , revised ed., Königstein/Ts.: Athenäum. Link, H. (1976) Rezeptionsforschung. Eine Einführung in Methoden und Probleme , Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln and Mainz: Kohlhammer (Urban-Taschenbücher 215). Shavit, Z. (1986) ‘The Ambivalent Status of Texts’, in Shavit, Z. Poetics of Children’s Literature, Athens, Georgia and London: The University of Georgia Press, 63–92.

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Page 51 Part II Children’s Literary Distribution and Evaluation Systems

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Page 53 Chapter Six Children’s Literary Action Systems In Part II we will investigate how children’s literary communication is actually organized and carried out. Since this varies from country to country in ways that—while they are not radically different—nevertheless differ in individual respects, it can only be done in the form of a case study. In this chapter I will describe the situation in (West) Germany as it developed after the end of the Second World War. Numerous different social institutions are entrusted with bringing about children’s literary communication—private and state enterprises, private and state associations, organizations and institutions. A large number of relevant studies are focused on presenting and describing these institutions (Dahrendorf 1976; Haas 1984; Heidtmann 1995; Wenke 2000). However, for our current purposes it would not be suitable to attempt an analysis in terms of institutional sociology: in order to fully understand the details of how children’s literary communication is carried out in practice, we should not start with the institutions, but should rather investigate their activities. What is needed in the first place is a theory applicable to all the activities and actions that further the performance of children’s literary communication. Asking, which institutions perform the particular activities would only be the second step. In the first part of this book we focused on a theoretical abstraction in dealing with children’s literary communication. However, we hardly ever come across particular individual forms of this literary communication, which can be very different in nature. The communicative functions we have depicted—sender, resender, mediator, official and unofficial addressee—also represent abstractions; in reality these functions are performed by very different actors and professional groups. In order to keep these two levels of theory clearly separate, I would like to suggest another way of understanding the second of them. Literary communication can also be described in a way that is based on the production, distribution, and acquisition or consumption of a consumer good. This consumer good can be seen partly as the messages themselves, which have been encoded as literature or multi-media, and partly as the media items in which

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Page 54 these messages are stored. When we consider the previously mentioned activities which further literary communication, we can see that they are related to either literary or multi-media works (illustrated texts, graphic stories, comics or films) or media products (books, periodicals, cassettes, CDs, videos, DVDs etc.)—and in particular to those whose intended consumers are (also or exclusively) children and young people. In specific terms we are dealing here with the production, distribution, acquisition, consumption, evaluation, censorship, selection, elimination, storage, or archiving of texts or media products of this kind.1 One of the main advantages of this new mode of understanding is the fact that it is much closer to the way the actors themselves describe their activities. Individual actions and action systems Individual actions are always linked to previous and subsequent actions. They turn out to be links in a chain of actions, in which they mostly have a fixed place and fulfill a specific, indispensable function. In certain circumstances chains of actions can be described as ‘action systems’. One of these conditions is that the series of individual actions are connected in such a way that they form a stable chain of actions. Thus there must be one of these actions that can be described as the ‘initial function’ and another we can describe as the ‘final function’: These mark the limits of the system in terms of functions. A further condition is that all the actions should be related to one and the same object, which they produce, distribute and consume. I suggest that we call this ‘the object of the system’. The production of the object of the system takes place using materials that are taken from the environment, just as the object itself can also form the material out of which other systems make their objects. Thus an action system does not only need a stable internal structure: It must also have a regulated relationship with its environment. As well as actions of the first order that are directly connected with the object, actions of the second order, which are dependent on the actions of the first order and whose aim is to examine the former actions and coordinate them, are also indispensable. One might call these second-order actions ‘reflexive’ or ‘integrative functions’. Finally, an action system must have a ‘system goal’—this definition reflects its meaning or function within a comprehensive process. Children’s literary communication can follow several paths: the sending of children’s literary messages can be performed by the church or the state, or by private institutions and enterprises, such as foundations, printers, toy manufacturers or book publishers. They can be distributed by means of church or state institutions, the free book trade, public libraries, kindergartens and schools, literature centers or other cultural institutions. Thus it seems sensible to take as our starting point the idea that there are numerous children’s literary action systems. As a rule the individual action systems do not cover all the stages of children’s literary communication: Most often they mostly only further the performance of some sections of it, occasionally only a single section. This means therefore, that it has to run through several systems.

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Page 55 Different types of action systems It is generally a sign of well-developed literary relations that the individual phases of literary communication are carried out by relatively independent action systems (Faulstich 1986). Thus we come across systems, which are concerned with the generation of literary messages and their storage on various types of media. Other action systems deal with the distribution of the literary messages that are stored on specific types of media. Then there are action systems, which organize the evaluation of literary messages and in some instances make selections among them, as well as systems, which deal with the reception and deciphering of messages, the acquisition and decoding of what is communicated. It is therefore clear that we should start from the premise, not just of the fact that there are numerous literary action systems, but that there are different types of system. We would therefore include in the definition of each individual system type all the literary action systems, which serve the performance of one and the same basic communicative function, which, in other words, have one and the same basic system goal. However, when setting up a typology of literary action systems, I prefer to base myself not on a mode of understanding deriving from communication theory, but one that derives from action theory. To do this we must reformulate the basic communicative functions in terms of action theory; that is, they must be ‘translated’ into modes of action connected with consumer goods. Where the goal of the system is concerned we would then be talking not of a basic communicative function, but of a ‘comprehensive active function’. The types of action corresponding to the basic communicative functions—those of encoding, sending, resending, mediating, storage, as well as receiving and decoding—are defined as productive, distributive, evaluative, archival, and consumption actions. If we differentiate between system types in accordance with comprehensive active functions, we end up with the distinction between ‘production systems’, ‘distribution systems’, ‘evaluation systems’, ‘archival systems’, and ‘consumption systems’. Evaluation systems can be socially recognized and authorized as such, but can also operate more or less tacitly. It therefore seems appropriate to distinguish between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial evaluation systems’. If evaluation systems possess the legally authorized power to remove individual items of communication and the media they are contained in from circulation, we can speak of ‘(preventive) censorship systems’. The development of a system typology of this kind does not mean to say that the various types of system can be met with in reality in their pure form. On the contrary, we often have to deal with action systems that consist of a combination of two system types. A particularly characteristic combination is the linking of the ‘distribution’ and ‘evaluation’ functions within one and the same system, which is generally the case in library action systems. Often the production systems also turn out to be usually-unofficial—evaluation systems at the same time, to the extent that they include extensive selective actions.

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Page 56 Internal structure of the action systems We mentioned above that within an action system the individual actions must be linked to form a stable chain of actions. We can deduce general rules for the nature of this linkage, deriving from the specific character of the individual actions, which are not uniform but different in kind. My initial premise is that every action system, independently of whether it is, in terms of its comprehensive active function, a production, distribution, evaluation, archival or consumption system, includes in its interior structure more or less all basic types of action. All action systems consist at least of individual productive, distributive and consumption actions, which as a rule appear in this order. These productive actions produce the system object using various materials that are taken from other systems. If productive actions form the initial function of an action system, then the consumption actions represent its final elements. With the latter we are dealing with the action of purchasing or otherwise acquiring the object of the system and using it, as a result of which it is removed from the system. The distributive functions are situated between production and consumption. The location of evaluative and archival actions, which are of a facultative nature, is just as variable as those of integrative actions, actions of the second order. In these last functions the system reflects its own action structures and in this way ensures a certain homogeneity of the actions of all concerned, i.e. an orientation on more or less uniform rules of action. The integrative function is usually performed by a public forum specific to the system, usually in publication media, but sometimes also by institutions. An overview of children’s literary action systems What follows here is an attempt to name individual action systems where children’s literature is either the object of the system or functions as the material from which the system’s object is formed (Ewers 2004). We are aiming at a first hypothetical differentiation between separate children’s literary action systems; it still needs further confirmation and to be made more precise by means of a whole series of special investigations. We go more deeply into the individual action systems in the chapters that follow. The point of reference of the differentiation between action systems is, as already remarked at the beginning of Part II, the situation that came about in Germany after World War Two. The headings for the individual systems are based on the system types defined previously. Read from left to right, the table reflects the temporal course of children’s literary communication. This is, however, not true of the central part headed ‘distribution’ and ‘evaluation systems’: The order in which they appear should not be understood as a temporal sequence. Only ‘official’ evaluation systems are included. Action systems, which are composed of a combination of two system types appear twice in the table—once as distribution systems, then as evaluation systems (other cases do not occur).

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Page 57 Finally, the table does not claim to have named all children’s literary systems; for example, archival systems have not been considered. Table 6.1 Children’s Literary Action Systems Production Systems Distribution Systems Official Evaluation Systems Acquisition Systems Production of children’s Public library ‘children’s bookChildren’s leisure reading literary texts and media’ evaluation (on their own) systems Children’s literary Children’s book Public library State censorship system/ Family reception of translation market ‘children’s book and federal examination centers (children’s) literature and media’ distribution (children’s) media systems Illustration of picture Children’s Denominational ‘children’s Non-family (collective) books and children’s media market book and media’ evaluation reception of children’s books systems literature (peer group, freetime organizations, etc) Editing and publishing Pedagogic ‘children’s book School treatment of children’s books and and media’ evaluation (children’s) literature media system (Youth Writing Criticism) Production of children’s DenominationalDenominational Other children’s literary media (audio books, children’s book library ‘children’s evaluation and DVDs, computer and media book and media’ recommendation systems games, etc.) market distribution systems (lists of ‘best’ books, awards etc.) Support of authors, ‘School reading’ Evaluation system: children’s Adult appropriation of illustrators and media distribution system literary criticism/ children’s children’s literature producers (prizes, literature public forum (including academic bursaries, subsidies) treatment) ‘School reading’ evaluation system

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Page 58 References Dahrendorf, M. (1976) ‘Jugendiliteratur im gesellschaftlichen, literarischen und pädagogischen Bezugsdeld’, in Haas, G. (ed.) Kinder- und jugendliteratur. Zur Typologie und Funktion einer Gattung , Stuttgart: Reclam, 21-60. Ewers, H.-H. (2004) ‘Skizze einer Theorie Kinder- und jugendliterarischer Handlungssysteme’, in Institut für Jugendbuchforschung der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität/Frankfurt am Main und der Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin), Kinder- und Jugendbuchabteilung (ed.) Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung 2003/2004 , Frankfurt a. Main: Lang, 13–26. Gansel, C. (1995) ‘Systemtheorie und Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung’, in Ewers, H.-H., Nassen, U., Richter, K. and Steinlein, R. (eds) Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung 1994/95, Stuttgart, Weimer: Metzler, 25-42. Faulstich, W. (1986) ‘Systemtheorie des Literaturbetriebs: Ansätze’, in Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 62, 125–133; 63, 164–169. Haas, G. (1984) ‘Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: Fakten – Institutionen – Zeitschriften und Titelverzeichnisse – Preise’, in Haas, G. (ed.) Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Ein Handbuch , Stuttgart: Reclam, 11-22. Heidtmann, H. (1995) ‘Der Kinder- und Jugendbuchmarkt’, in Dahrendorf, M. (ed.) Kinderund Jugendliteratur: Material, Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 8-16. Wenke, G. (2000) ‘Kinder- und Jugendliteratur-Markt in deutschland’, in Lange, G. (ed.) Taschenbuch der Kinderund Jugendliteratur, Hohengehren: Schneider, 889-900.

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Page 59 Chapter Seven The Market for Children’s Books and Media With this action system we are dealing primarily with a distribution system; unofficially, evaluations are admittedly also carried out in some individual functional positions. The objects of the system are children’s media items or children’s media products (cf. Chapter 2)—mainly children’s books, though in recent years we also have sound media like children’s records, (audio) cassettes, CDs and CD-ROMs, as well as visual media like children’s videocassettes and DVDs (Bamberger 1975; Heidtmann 1995; Klingberg 1973; Koch 1997; Schütz 2005; Uhlig 1999; Voit 1977; Wenke 2000). The productive action function within this action system is performed by the producers of the children’s media products. In this chapter we will concentrate on children’s books and their producers, that is, primarily book publishers. Other action systems, that is, the various production systems, are responsible for the production of children’s media products as such. For the action system we are discussing here the ‘finished’ children’s media products are the material taken from the environment; they only become objects of the system when they are released for trade and brought onto the market in a specific number of copies, in other words take the form of a retrievable supply. In this action system the publishers do not appear as producers but only as suppliers, i.e. only in terms of their program, advertising, press, and sales departments. Productive Action Functions Publishers can appear as suppliers of children’s media products in various different ways: We come across publishing companies who—for whatever

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Page 60 reason—only occasionally put children’s books on the market. We are then dealing with publishers who admittedly publish children’s books with a certain degree of continuity, but only look on them as a marginal business area. I suggest we should call them ‘occasional suppliers of children’s books’. This kind of children’s book production is often connected with a publisher’s cultivation of an individual children’s writer who has given the publishing rights to his/her work to the company concerned for some reason or other. A German example of this would be the publisher Friedrich Andreas Perthes in Gotha, who published children’s books by the fable writer and lyric poet Wilhelm Hey (1789–1854), and later those of Johanna Spyri (1827–1901). We may also be dealing with a continuous and more or less broad selection of children’s books, which is, nevertheless, only one of the company’s many business areas and does not represent its flagship publication area. Here we can obviously speak of a ‘program area’ consisting of children’s books. Examples of this from West Germany would be the children’s book program “Beltz & Gelberg” founded in 1971 within the publishing company Beltz Verlag in Weinheim, the children’s book program of the Hanser Verlag in Munich (est. 1993) and that of Frankfurt’s Fischer Verlag (Fischer Schatzinsel, est. 1994). We also find children’s book programs in paperback publishers (e.g. Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag/dtv-junior, est. 1971; Rowohlt Taschenbuchverlag/rororo rotfuchs, est. 1972). Finally we find a publisher, which concentrates more or less exclusively on supplying children’s books. This does not exclude the occasional publication of other types of book, nor the cultivation of other program areas (such as study aids and advice to parents), as long as these are of secondary importance for the company’s image. Only this last type should be described as ‘(actual) children’s book publishers’. From a historical perspective, publishers have not been the only suppliers of children’s books (Wittmann 1999). Other branches of industry have also been involved in marketing them: first and foremost the printing industry (especially where the production of paper products, pictures, postcards, wall calendars, cut-out sheets, stencils, gift articles etc. is concerned) and the game and toy industry. This kind of incidental marketing of children’s books has often been of merely local and regional significance. In individual cases children’s book publishers have developed out of these activities. We can still occasionally find the involvement of other branches of industry in children’s book marketing. The Munich publishing company arsEdition is involved in the “areas of children’s books, gift books, and has a paper goods store and boutique” (avj 2002, 10f). The Ravensburg book publishing company Otto Maier is now, together with the Ravensburger game publishers, one of the daughter enterprises of the Ravensburger AG, which was founded in 1883 as a book and game publishing company by the bookseller Otto Maier (ibid., 116f).

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Page 61 Distributive Action Functions The action system that is the children’s book and media market has many distributive functions. The publishers’ sales representatives and the intermediate book trade (wholesalers) act in the space between the publishers and the retail book trade. In Germany there is no intermediate book trade that specializes in children’s book and media. The same is true of the annual Book Fairs in Germany (in fall in Frankfurt am Main and recently in Leipzig in the spring) although they do at least have a special section for “Children’s Books”; we could call this ‘intra-institutional separation’. At the international level a spring book fair specializing in children’s books has been established in Bologna. Similar conditions prevail at the level of the retail book trade: Here, too, we cannot speak of a specific and separate book trade for children’s books that would cover this whole field. Of course there are a considerable number of independent children’s bookstores, particularly in major cities, but their existence does not alter the fact that children’s books are essentially sold by the general book trade. At the intra-institutional level we find a general separation: The majority of bookstores have a children’s book section, although only the larger stores can afford to have staff specializing in children’s books. Apart from the retail book trade we have, as another channel for the children’s book trade, book clubs, which sometimes have their own shops and sometimes sell by mail order. We should also mention bookselling that is a supplementary activity: books sold in department stores, supermarket chains, newspaper outlets, in the stationery, paper and gift trade, in game and toy stores, in craft and hobby stores, and recently in furniture stores as well. Consumption Action Functions The final link in this chain of action is the acquirer or purchaser of children’s books, who ‘consumes’ the object, that is, removes it from the children’s book market system. Purchasers do not have to be the (end)users: they can put the children’s media thus acquired into other systems (e.g. the library system). Here we only concern ourselves with this particular function in the action system to the extent that it is embodied in an end user who removes the object from circulation and puts it to its ultimate use. In Germany, this function is only rarely performed by the reader group that is primarily targeted, namely children and young people. It is really only children’s paperbacks that come within their budget, and these are mainly chosen and bought by older children and young people. The large majority of hardback children’s books are bought by adults, that is, by people who do not see themselves as the actual readers of these books: in terms of communication theory, not the receivers of the message, but simply its resenders. Adult purchasers have different ways of reaching their purchase

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Page 62 decisions: They can delegate the choice to an expert (the bookseller); they also be led by a wish previously expressed by the intended child or youth reader; in both cases they act in terms of communication theory as neutral mediators (cf. Chapter 2). However, they can also make the effort to reach their own judgement and make the choice accordingly; they are then acting as interventive mediators (cf. Chapter 3). If we inquire about the reasons for purchasing hardback children’s books, it becomes clear that they are mainly meant as ‘gift books’. Christmas has, since the early 19th century, been the main occasion for making these gifts— and to such an extent that at certain periods children’s books could be regarded mainly as Christmas seasonal goods and thus only came onto the market in quantities worth mentioning at that season. Next to Christmas there is the Easter festival, which has admittedly always been less of an occasion for book giving. Other important occasions when books are given include First Communion and Confirmation among Catholics, Confirmation among Protestants, Bar or Bat Mitzvah among Jews, and formerly in Communist countries like East Germany the “Jugendweihe” (Youth Consecration—a secular equivalent to Confirmation). Name days (Saints say), and even more birthdays also play an important role, with not only parents and relations but also kindergarten or school friends making gifts of books. Evaluative Action Functions In certain functional positions the action system “Children’s Book and Media Market” performs evaluations, which makes it necessary for us here to speak not just of a distribution system, but also of an evaluation system. The range of children’s media put on the market by publishers is based on prior evaluative selection. Next we should mention the publishers’ sales representatives, who, when dealing with the retail book trade, enthusiastically and aggressively promote individual books from their publishers’ programs which appeal to them, while neglecting some others. Their counterpart is the bookseller, or the member of staff responsible for the children’s book section, who has to make a choice from among the broad range of books available. Obviously every retail selection of children’s books and media reflects the specific nature of the clientele (neutral mediation). However, it also reflects the booksellers’ expert staff’s concepts of children’s literature (interventive mediation). Another channel, which should not be underestimated when considering the evaluation and choice of children’s books and media, is the adult purchasers, who may well also bring their own ideas into play. The assessments listed above—all of them cases of interventive mediation—are not made public as such and therefore do not have any authority; they can only be understood from their actual results, the choices that are made in each case.

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Page 63 Integrative Action Functions The integrative function of this action system is performed by public expert fora. These include the publicity work carried out by the individual publishing houses, which is targeted on the one hand at the booksellers—with halfyearly program announcements or advertisements in trade journals for example—and on the other directly at the buying public—with book prospectuses, catalogs, or advertisements in public newspapers and magazines. The fora that are specific to the book trade may also be organs published by trade associations and trade journals published by private firms. The most important journal in Germany is the Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel , published by the Börsenverein des deutschen Buchhandels (German Book Trade Association), which regularly publishes material about the field of children’s books (among other things by means of a yearly “children’s book” supplement). Although the Börsenblatt is primarily aimed at people working in the publishing and book-selling professions, the Buchjournal. Themen, Titel, Tips & Trends (Book Journal. Themes, Tips and Trends), also published by Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, is a magazine for customers, which is distributed directly to the buying public by booksellers. One professional journal is Buchreport , published by Harenberg Kommunikation Verlags- und Medien GmbH & Co.KG, while buch aktuell (Books Today) is published by the same organization for the general public. The “book and media magazine” Hits für Kids, founded at the beginning of the 1990s, is presented as a customer magazine specializing in children’s books, and calling itself a “magazine produced by the book and publishing trade”. Since 1998 the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft von Jugendbuchverlagen (avj)” (Children’s Book Publishers’ Working Group) has published a selective list of children’s books under its own auspices, entitled Bücherbox. Neue Kinder- und Jugendbücher (The Book Box. New Children’s Books) and aimed at “workers in the book trade” among others. Talking about the children’s book and media market as an action system does not mean to say that we are dealing with a separate, independent book and media market. Children’s books and media today are still goods that are predominantly sold by the general book trade, whose hallmark is a broad spectrum of material on offer. Thus, with the children’s book market we are dealing with a segment of the general book market. Nevertheless we do find different degrees of separation at the individual levels of this action system. The greatest degree of institutional separation seems to be that at the level of the suppliers: Since the 1950s in the Federal German Republic, and also in Austria and Switzerland, and in the GDR, specialist children’s book publishers as well as individual children’s book programs by other publishers have set the tone. There is nothing else like this separation of functions on the part of the publishers in other areas of the functions of this action system. Specialist children’s bookstores are in numerical terms the exception, as are customer magazines specializing in children’s books.

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< previous page Page 64 Table 7.1 System Type of System Aim of System Materials taken from the environment Object of System Productive Functions and Those Responsible for Them Distributive Functions and Those Responsible for Them

Consumption Functions and Those Responsible for Them Integrative Functions and Those Responsiblefor Them

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Children’s Book and Media Market Distribution system and (unofficial) evaluation system Distribution and marketing of children’s media products Children’s books and media as finished products Children’s media products offered on the market and intended for sale Assembling a range of goods for sale/ a ‘program’ by book publishers, media production companies and partially also printers and toy manufacturers Distribution of the media products • by publishers’ sales representatives • by intermediate book trade (wholesale distributors) • at book fairs • by book clubs • by the retail book trade Purchase of the children’s books and media products by adults or by children and young people Agreement/understanding reached • in publishers’ and booksellers’ trade associations • in trade and public periodicals

References avj—Arbeitsgemeinschaft von Jugendbuchverlagen e.V. (ed.) (2002) Kinderbuchverlage von A bis Z, 5th ed., München: avj. Bamberger, R. (1975) ‘Produktion, Distribution und Rezeption auf dem Gebiet des Jugendbuchs’, in Bamberger, R. Jugendschriftenkunde , Wien and München: Jugend & Volk, 159–177. Heidtmann, H. (1995) ‘Der Kinder- und Jugendbuchmarkt’, in Dahrendorf, M. (ed.) Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: Material, Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 8–16. Klingberg, G. (1973) ‘Herausgabe, Vermittlung und Verbreitung von Literatur’, in Klingberg, G. Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung. Eine Einführung , Wien, Köln and Graz: Böhlau, 100–109. Koch, H.-A. (1997) ‘Buch, Buchhandel’, in Koch, H.-A. Neuere deutsche Literaturwissenschaft. Eine Einführung für Anfänger, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 119–154. Schütz, E. (2005) Das BuchMarktBuch. Der Literaturbetrieb in Grundbegriffen , Reinbek: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag. Uhlig, C. (1999) ‘Buchhandel’, in Franzmann, B. (ed.) Handbuch Lesen, München: Saur, 356–394. Voit, F. (1977) ‘Das Medium Buch. Zur funktionalen Bedeutung von Verlag, Buchhandel und Kritik in der literarischen Kommunikation’, in Brackert, H. and Lämmert, E. (eds) Funk-Kolleg Literatur, Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Vol. 1, 114–126. Wenke, G. (2000) ‘Kinder- und Jugendliteratur-Markt in Deutschland’, in Lange, G. (ed.) Taschenbuch der Kinderund Jugendliteratur, Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren, 889–900. Wittmann, R. (1999) Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, 2nd ed., München: Beck.

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Page 65 Chapter Eight Children’s Books and Media as an Action System in Public Libraries We can talk of an action system of this nature wherever a public library system has been established. This means a library system that is no longer connected with religious groups, is not connected with any political or ideological movement, and is not, like academic libraries, linked with any research or educational establishment (college of higher education, university, academy, research institute, etc.) Public libraries further “primarily, general information, general political and professional education and also entertainment”; they make “their books available to everyone without any restriction” (Hacker 1976, 13). Libraries of this kind are provided entirely by public bodies (communes, states, the federal government).1 Productive functions I: evaluation systems within the library The action system under discussion is based on the combination of two types of system: a distribution system and an evaluation system. The material taken from the environment by the library action system is children’s media products on offer on the market, mainly children’s books, and more recently also children’s audiocassettes, CDs, CDROMs, video cassettes, and DVDs. Like every other action system, the library system produces its own object: it produces library media units from the media products acquired on the market. By this we understand books and other media units selected, recorded/catalogued, and classified. It would therefore be necessary to distinguish between the range of children’s books and media available on the market, and the range of children’s books and media available in the library. In this action system the individual functions are only partially separated

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Page 66 institutionally, so that we are often dealing with the purely intra-institutional separation of tasks. In its first productive function the library system can be seen to be an evaluation system: It inspects and evaluates the range of specific children’s media available on the market—on the basis of publishers’ prospectuses and inspection copies, both offered and requested. This inspection can take place at a local level in individual libraries: In larger libraries we find individual posts or even whole departments—called in German “Lektorat” (Reader’s Department)—devoted to this process. Evaluation and selection can, however, also be delegated to central organizations. In Germany the “Einkaufszentrale für Bibliotheken GmbH (ekz)” (Library Purchasing Centre inc.), headquartered in Reutlingen, is responsible for doing this for public libraries.2 With the aid of its own editorial and reading staff and with co-operation from numerous librarians and lectors (readers) in the individual libraries this centre does more than simply inspecting and evaluating the books and media on offer: it also makes concrete suggestions about what should be acquired. The results are published in information periodicals which consist entirely, or to a large extent, of short reviews.3 The central evaluation of the supply of books and media should in no way be seen as binding; it is always possible for the individual libraries to ignore individual recommendations. In certain cases the evaluations produced by the library system are not confined to media units, but also refer to children’s literary works, on occasions when it is a matter of editions of children’s literary works that are already in the library system—especially when it is a matter of acquiring replacement copies. In these cases it is clear that behind the individual media products chosen we have a more or less established corpus of children’s literature that is sanctioned by the library system. As well as these review services there are professional journals for librarians, mainly published by professional associations, which deal with questions of the development and mediation of children’s literature. Here we will only mention BuB—Buch und Bibliothek. Medien, Kommunikation, Kultur. Fachzeitschrift des Vereins der Bibliothekare und Assistenten e.V . (BuB Book and Library. Media, Communication, Culture. Professional Journal of the Association of Librarians and Library Assistants). Professional journals like this, as well as training courses and professional conferences, are the medium of public communication among librarians in which problems of choosing children’s literature are one of the major subjects. The function of purchasing or acquiring children’s books and media, together with the inspection and evaluation of what is available on the market and the recommendations for acquisition connected with these latter, is performed within the public library action system in a manner that is costly in terms of personnel and institutional resources. With this completely system-internal procedure the action system has extensive autonomy with regard to building up holdings of children’s literature. The inspection and

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Page 67 evaluation of the supply of children’s literature performed by the public library action system in Germany is, in terms of its breadth, its methodological homogeneity and its continuity, unequalled at present. The editorial staff of the purchase centers and the lectors and librarians of the public libraries form a relatively large expert circle of great competence. Even if the public is only partially aware of the work done by the public library system in evaluating children’s books, they are still seen as possessing a certain degree of authority. The largely autonomous evaluation system of the libraries is generally recognized as having the legitimate power to pass judgement on children’s literature. Productive functions II: the creation of library media units The individual libraries are the (primary) addressees of the professional librarianship journals, thus forming as consumers the final link in the evaluation system within the library system. At the same time, however, they are the actors in the next two productive functions within the library action system. Although only assessments and suggestions for purchase have so far been produced, the next step is the acquisition of the titles that have been regarded as suitable. Public libraries tend to buy books and other media from the local retail book trade in a way that is no different from other book-buyers. The second step is to process the books thus acquired for use in the library, i.e. they must be catalogued (in terms of form and content), classified and sometimes newly prepared for use (library bindings etc). It is possible for the libraries to delegate these two functions to a central organization as well. In fact the centralized library agencies can also act as purchase centers which—like the intermediary (wholesale) book trade—order the books directly from the publishers and store them, sometimes in large quantities, ready to be distributed on request to the individual libraries, thus dealing in one step with the processes of cataloguing, categorization, and library binding. The processing and classification (in terms of form and content) of the selected media units carried out by the library action system is no less worthy of note. There is already some classification of the range of available children’s literature at the level of the retail book trade; however, this is usually restricted to a division into picture books, narrative/literary texts and non-fiction, as well as separating the works in these classes into three or four age ranges. Library classification goes a great deal further: It introduces further specifications based on addressee group (e.g. girls’ books), and divides books into groups based on content, theme, motifs, and sometimes also literary genre. This completes the productive functions of the library system—when they are carried out, the production of the object of the system is complete.

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Page 68 Distributive and consumption functions The distributive functions of this system are concentrated on making the range of children’s media available in the library and in actively promoting its use. This is done in reading rooms, on (open) shelves, where child and youth library users can see the material available and borrow it. At this point we should also mention special events like book or media exhibitions, book-tables or book-agreements, special lists and themed leaflets, reading evenings, authors’ readings, minor theatre performances, library publicity work etc. The final, consumption function of the library action system is performed by the library user/borrower. As on the book-market, there can be a difference between borrower and intended reader, as, for example, when adults borrow children’s reading matter. While the difference between the role of purchaser and reader is normal at the level of the book trade, this is much more the exception at the level of the library action system. The principle of public free lending (or lending for a nominal sum) does not only have the social function of removing the barrier to access represented by the price of the book: It is also the precondition for the child and youth readers to have more direct access to the material available for loan. In the most literal sense the act of borrowing a book is less demanding than that of buying a book: Since it can be done without any demands being made on capital, it is independent of the parents’ liquid assets or the children’s or young people’s actual pocket money, and is freed from any connection with ritualized occasions for gift-giving (birthday, Christmas etc.). Finally, since it is a cost-neutral action, it is subject to less control on the part of adults, which is reinforced by the fact that it is only connected with temporary possession of the book. Book borrowing can be integrated without great effort into children’s or young people’s everyday lives and because of the way it is done can be related to their actual motivation for reading (and their actual reading speed), as well as being relatively easy to keep from the attention of adults. Nevertheless, children’s and young people’s opportunities for more direct access to this material meet with barriers of another kind, since it is only access to a pre-selected, controlled, more or less strictly censored range of books or media items. Child—even more—youth readers are more or less clearly aware that they cannot satisfy some of their desires for reading material (particularly that regarded as unacceptable) within the public library system. The lower level of parental control over what books children and young people borrow is counteracted by the fact that it takes place under the supervision of the library staff, which is often felt to be restrictive. Since libraries are a public space, borrowing a book is an act which takes place in public and is subject to social control. The greater space for maneuvering that is allowed to children and young people in comparison with the purchase of books can be ruined by rigid library control practices.

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Page 69 On the other hand, it is still possible for the libraries to respect this free space. The public library system, more than the book-trade, has the opportunity to enter a compact with child and youth readers by offering them reading experiences which their home environment might not have allowed so easily. Talking about a public library action system called ‘children’s books’ does not mean that we are dealing with an institutionally independent library system specializing exclusively in children’s books and media. The public library system caters for several groups of readers, of which one is that of child and youth readers, and seeks to satisfy their needs and requirements in different ways: In the case of child and youth readers this means establishing separate children’s book and media sections and consequently also dedicated children’s book and media acquisition sections (Belten 1977; Franzmann 1999; Ruppelt 1999). Public library systems in major cities, which today are made up of library systems with a central library and several branch libraries (Hacker 1976, 25), have various different organizational forms: there can be children’s sections in the central library and all the branches, but one also finds a separate and independent children’s library side-by-side with a central library without a children’s section. Table 8.1 System Public Library System “Children’s Books and Media” System Type Distribution system and (recognized) evaluation system System Goals Collecting and making available a selected range of books and media for borrowing by children and young people Material Taken From the Specific children’s media products offered on the market Environment Object of the System Library media units for children and young people Productive Functions and Those • central or local viewing and selection of what is available on the market by Responsible for Them selection committees and acquisition sections • acquisition of books and media by individual libraries • central or local cataloguing and classification of the media products Distributive Functions and Those • Making children’s books and other media available in reading rooms and on Responsible for Them the shelves of individual libraries • Special events (exhibitions, readings etc.) Consumer Functionsand Those Books and media borrowed by adult or child/youth libraryusers Responsiblefor Them Integrative Functions and Those Agreement reached by means of librarians’ associations as well as in Responsiblefor Them discussion organs and professional periodicals

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Page 70 References Betten, L. (1977) ‘Kinder- und Jugendbibliothek’, in Doderer, K. (ed.) Lexikon der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, Vol. 2, Weinheim and Basel: Beltz, 158–160. Franzmann, B. (1999) ‘Institutionen der Literaturvermittlung und Leseförderung’, in Franzmann, B. et al. (eds) Handbuch Lesen, München: Saur, 519–535. Hacker, R. in collaboration with Popst, H. (1976) Bibliothekarisches Grundwissen , 3rd ed., München: Verlag. Dokumentation. Ruppelt, G. (1999) ‘Bibliotheken’, in Franzmann, B. et al. (eds) Handbuch Lesen, München: Saur, 394–431.

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Page 71 Chapter Nine “School Reading” as a Selection and Distribution System At present in Germany kindergartens and schools are relatively important organizations for spreading (children’s) literature, as many youngsters are first confronted with picture books, children’s books, and adult books by these institutions. Kindergarten and school are not merely distributive organizations, however, but also the site of a specific mode of the appropriation and reception of children’s and adult literature: They are, in other words, systems of literary consumption. In kindergartens children look at picture books, hear stories read aloud, listen to audiocassettes etc. In primary and secondary schools literary texts are read, read aloud or given out to be read at home and then discussed in class. For reasons of space, I will confine myself in this section to schools, and also only consider them in terms of their function as a selection and distribution system for literary works and media products. It is the responsibility of educational theory in the field of (children’s) literature to deal with the appropriation of (children’s) literary works in school, in other words with the school as a system of literary consumption (Dahrendorf 1995; Haas 1998). In the present context, we are not interested in school books in the narrower sense, those which deal with individual subjects and age-groups, but only in the titles that are handed out additionally to pupils, or which they have to acquire for themselves, in connection with what is being taught in class. We have already described these titles as “school reading” in Chapter 2 and distinguished them from intended children’s reading (or intentional children’s literature) inasmuch as the latter is leisure reading. While this is normally voluntary, school reading is compulsory in character.

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Page 72 Productive functions: selection procedures specific to the system The school action system connected with the choice and allocation of school reading (Bertlein 1979) is a combination of two types of system (selection and distribution).While the library action system is concerned with making a selection from among children’s media products offered on the market, the “school reading” action system is linked to another source of material—to texts and literary works as such. When such material is used, the question of respecting copyright arises. In the case of “free” texts (things like folk rhymes and nursery rhymes, folk tales and legends etc.) as with those where the authors’ rights have expired (mainly in the case of “classic” texts), they can be used in schools without any cost being involved; where texts protected by copyright are concerned, license fees or fees for use have to be paid. A further difference from the library action system is the reservoir from which the books regarded as potential school reading are taken: The library action system is bound by pre-existing limitations, in that it makes its choices essentially from the market segment “children’s books and media”; in this way it accepts limitations set beforehand by others—mainly by producers and publishers—on what children and young people are supposed to receive and then sets up its own limitations within these pre-existing ones. When choosing texts for school reading—which is usually done by teachers and those who train them, sometimes also by education authorities—no pre-existing limitations are accepted. The point of reference is the virtual cosmos of all the texts and literary works that have been passed down. The choice is thus made regardless of any previous addressing to anyone whatsoever. The right to decide what readers or what class a text or literary work is suitable for is claimed by the action system itself, without any influence from other, external classification systems. The books that appear on the market as children’s books are not necessarily suitable as school reading in the eyes of the powers that rule the choice of potential school reading. There was a time when teachers believed that they were more likely to find what they wanted in other literary sectors, such as folk literature or national classics. Occasionally they even felt a certain degree of mistrust where the market segment “children’s literature” was concerned, which could even go as far as having serious reservations. In Germany it was only from the mid-20th century onwards that children’s books—in spite of all the achievements made since the turn of the century—had a more realistic chance of being adopted as school reading. How far texts from the field of children’s literature have any chance of succeeding as school reading generally depends on the predominant concept of literary education among education authorities and teachers. As a rule, even today, general literary texts are not at a disadvantage in this selection procedure any more than primarily children’s literature (Chapter 2) is per se at an advantage.

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Page 73 Distributive functions Because the school reading distribution system acquires not media products in general, but texts, it must, after making its choices, ensure that they are published in a form suitable for schools. Here we find two modes of publication, no matter whether they are general or children’s literary texts. Short literary forms (poems, fables, anecdotes, epigrams etc.) or shorter types of text (fairy tales, stories, short stories, one-act plays etc.) or extracts from longer types of text (novellas, novels, plays etc.) are anthologized in (school) readers, while longer types of texts (complete texts) are produced in more or less abridged form in specific school editions, which often contain an appendix for teaching use. Readers and school editions (like textbooks, books of exercises, teachers’ handbooks and all other publications for school use) are published by educational publishers, which in Germany form a publishing sector separate from the children’s book publishers. If one asks what actual proportion of children’s literary works are found in school reading, then we must distinguish between not only different eras, but also different types of schools. Looking at current primary school readers in Germany, we see that texts from the field of primarily children’s literature form the great majority, so that school reading at this level consists mainly of primarily children’s literature. The same is true of the complete texts read in the final classes of the primary stage and in the fifth to tenth grades, which are mainly primarily children’s novels. Numerous educational publishers have reacted to this by adopting children’s stories and novels that are popular in schools in their school edition or complete text lists. In many cases schools no longer work with school editions but with the original editions of children’s literary works. Children’s book publishers have reacted to this tend by producing ‘class sets’, as they are called. Schools are thus breaking with the principle of regarding only material produced by educational publishers as acceptable (and in these cases they acquire not merely texts but rather media units and therefore come close to the acquisition methods of the library system). By providing class sets children’s book publishers are invading the field traditionally ruled by the educational publishers and are competing with school editions in particular. Similar things are happening at the level of educational aids: More and more children’s book publishers are producing teaching suggestions and materials for the children’s books they publish, so that the boundaries between the areas of responsibility of children’s book and educational publishers are becoming blurred. There are similarities, in fact genuine overlaps, between the school action system and that of the public library system in the form of an institution that, although it is not found everywhere, is nevertheless cultivated in numerous German schools: the school library (Schleusener 1979). In that the literature that is to be read as an accompaniment to work in class is to be found here (including dictionaries and other reference works, further reading material

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Page 74 for specific subjects, etc.) it can be seen as part of the action system connected with school reading—with the defined function of “making school reading in the broadest sense available for borrowing by pupils”. As a rule the range of books available in school libraries is not restricted simply to material connected with class work, but also includes books offered for freely chosen leisure reading by the pupils—among which there are an increasing number of children’s books. In the present audiovisual media age they are seen by schools and educational authorities as a means of stimulating and encouraging private reading. With such an increased range of offerings and such a broad spectrum of functions the school library is now on the same level as the public library system, which means that we can see the school library system as an extension, an expansion of the public library system into the specific area of the school. In some individual communes this is reflected at the institutional level: in these cases, school libraries are run, not by the school, but as a branch of the local public library. Table 9.1 System “School Reading” Action System System Type Distribution and (recognized) evaluation system System Goal Collecting and making available a range of texts and media for use as school reading Material Taken from the Environment Texts and literary works, recordings, films, etc. including works from the field of primarily children’s literature Object of the System Literary texts, recordings, films chosen as suitable school reading Productive Functions and Those • Choice of the works by committees composed of teachers and Responsible for Them representatives of education authorities • Official approval, including inclusion in teaching plans and official lists of recommendations Distributive Functions and Those • (some) Publication by educational publishers Responsible for Them • Direct sales or sales by the general book trade • Availability as class sets or as sets for borrowing from the school library • Purchase by pupils Consumption Functions and Those • Reception and discussion in class Responsible for Them • Reception as reading outside class, but connected with class work Integrative Functions and Those • Agreement in official publications and professional periodicals Responsible for Them • And at professional conferences and further training sessions

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Page 75 References Bertlein, H. (1979) ‘Schullektüre’, in Doderer, K. (ed.) Lexikon der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, Vol. 3, Weinheim and Basel: Beltz, 319–321. Dahrendorf, M. (1995) ‘Handlungsort Schule’, in Dahrendorf, M. (ed.) Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: Material , Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 21–28. Haas, G. (1998) ‘Kinder- und Jugendliteratur im Unterricht’, in Lange, G., Neumann, K. and Ziesenis, W. (eds) Taschenbuch des Deutschunterrichts , Vol. 2, Literaturdidaktik, 6th completely revised ed., Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren, 721–737. Schleusener, K. (1979) ‘Schulbibliothek’, in Doderer, K. Lexikon der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, Vol. 3, Weinheim and Basel: Beltz, 314–317.

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Page 77 Chapter Ten The “children’s book” Pedagogic Action System The action system we are discussing here has suffered a considerable decline in importance in Germany in recent decades—indeed, it can be found, if at all, only in an atrophied form. Nevertheless, from the historical perspective, it has been of great importance: In Germany it molded the whole children’s literary action field for a broad span of time. For this reason I will devote myself in this chapter not to the present, but to the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the period when this action system was at its most flourishing. The most important actors in this action system—which was purely an evaluation system—were the teachers, not tied to any particular religious denomination, who had always felt themselves to be responsible not just for teaching privately or in schools, but also for the children’s development outside school. In other words, they regarded themselves not just as teachers in school, but as educators, as pedagogues in the broadest sense. One aspect of this was that they saw themselves as responsible for children’s and young people’s leisure reading, which they thought they ought to guide and monitor. From the middle of the 19th century onwards it was mainly teachers in the lower schools, and particularly primary schools, who were active in this evaluation system.1 Historical Excursus All reading material was said to exercise an educational influence on child and young readers, “youth writing,” according to Heinrich Wolgast, acts “always, and under all circumstances as an educational medium” and therefore should be “without exception viewed from the perspective of its conscious educational effect” (Wolgast 1910, 18). Based on this premise,

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Page 78 educators felt themselves obliged to evaluate leisure reading as well as school reading from an educational viewpoint, i.e. to classify it as educationally useful or harmful. Thus we can speak of a pedagogic evaluation system for two reasons: Firstly, the people applying it were professional educators and secondly the assessment was mainly carried out from an educational viewpoint. The books evaluated in this way could be defined as ‘pedagogically sanctioned (positively or negatively) children’s literature’. This (self-assumed) responsibility for children’s (extra-curricular) reading could, naturally, been seen most clearly among the most prevalent type of teacher among the upper classes, where the total overlap between educator and teacher was obvious. In the 18th century tutors or governesses were concerned not just with the classroom reading but also with the leisure reading of their pupils. Here private teachers were not merely responsible for the choice of the reading material: They were also concerned to ensure that these reading recommendations were observed. Beyond their narrow sphere of influence many private teachers were active as educational critics of children’s literature, and sometimes even as children’s literary theorists, in that they also published articles in the field. This responsibility of the pedagogues for children’s (non-school) reading led to the formation of an expert forum within which discourse related to children’s reading took place. The main purpose of this discourse was to promote agreement between pedagogues about basic questions of children’s reading, but was also partly directed at a lay public—principally parents—to make them to a certain degree part of the thinking about their children’s reading. Schoolteachers lost the ability to directly influence the leisure reading of children and young people with the establishment of universal (compulsory) education (no matter what authority was responsible for this), though it still remained possible for private tutors to do so. Even though their sphere of influence was considerably extended by this development—they were now no longer dealing with small groups of learners, but rather with larger school classes—teachers in their role as pedagogues were now limited to using indirect methods, to creating pre-conditions and frameworks for leisure reading that could be regarded as educationally positive. As a reaction to the undeniable fact that what children and young people actually read was more and more conditioned by what was put on the market by the private publishing trade in an ‘uncontrolled’ manner, teachers set up their own system for inspecting what was available as specifically children’s books and media using pedagogic criteria during the 19th century. This evaluation system, like the library action system, is concerned with the market segment “children’s books” (called at the time “children’s writing”), and can thus be distinguished from the ‘school reading’ action system. Initially the pedagogic evaluation system relied on the efforts of individual (sometimes also denominationally-linked) teachers who, after

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Page 79 inspecting what was available on the market, made a selection and published this in the form of “Wegweiser” (guides) or “Ratgeber” (advisors).2 The children’s book market was, however, already expanding at such a rate that it could hardly be inspected by a single person.3 The job of inspecting and assessing what was on the market became more and more a matter for educational associations which formed committees or commissions for the purpose, the results of which were published in lists or catalogues of their selections. In 1851 the “Gesellige Lehrerverein” (Teachers’ Friendly Society) in Berlin produced a Christmas catalogue (Köster 1927, 401). In 1858 the “Allgemeiner schweizerischer Lehrerverein” (Swiss General Teachers’ Association) set up a commission for the purpose whose first list appeared in 1862 in the Schweizerische Lehrerzeitung (Swiss Teachers’ Journal) which then became in 1870 the regular Mitteilungen über Jugendschriften (Youth Writing News) (ibid., 404). In 1864 the “Pädagogische Verein” (Pedagogic Association) in Berlin produced a Kritisches Jugendschriftenverzeichnis (Critical List of Youth Writing), two further numbers of which appeared in 1865 und 1867 (ibid., 401). Until the 1890s pedagogic children’s book criticism (called at the time “Youth Writing Criticism”) was largely produced by local teachers’ associations and their committees; it was only in 1893 that they joined together in a kind of umbrella organization, the “Vereinigte Deutsche Prüfungsausschüsse für Jugendschriften” (United German Youth Writing Assessment Committees), which very soon showed a rapid increase in membership: (1893 = 12; 1900 = 21; 1910 = 114; 1920 = 128; 1932 = 276) (Azegami 1996, 15). The aims of the “Vereinigte Deutsche Prüfungsausschüsse” were, according to their constitution, “ 1. to combine, empower and make fruitful all those efforts directed towards the spreading of good and the repression of bad or inferior works for young people and 2. the development and spreading of proper uniform principles for judging them” (quoted from Azegami 1996, 19). The critical journal of the Vereinigte Prüfungsausschüsse was the Jugendschriften-Warte (Youth Writing Watchtower), appearing monthly from August 1893, in which (especially at Christmas) “[selected] lists of youth writings which can be recommended” as well as numerous special lists were published (Azegami 1996, 11f). Apart from these, the journal contained a large number of theoretical contributions and reports of personal experience, as a result of which it developed to become the leading journal for the educational and theoretical discourse about children’s literature in Germany. Productive and distributive functions The pedagogic system for the evaluation of children’s books and media revealed here in terms of its historical genesis shows a structural similarity

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Page 80 with the library-internal evaluation system. Both actions systems are concerned with the range of children’s books and/or media available on the market; both use publisher’s prospectuses and review or inspection copies. In this as in the other case we have evaluation committees or accession departments which produce (positive or negative) assessments. In both systems the act of selection is carried out largely autonomously, using a refined mechanism which firstly safeguards unified principles of evaluation and secondly ensures that the relevant professionals play a major role in the process. This, however, is as far as the similarity goes: The library evaluation system demonstrates only the first productive function of an action system that is not just an evaluation but also simultaneously a distribution system. The library evaluation system serves as the basis for the purchase of children’s literature and media with the aim of building up a corresponding stock of books and media in public libraries; only then is the production of the system’s object completed. The pedagogic “children’s book” action system, which is purely an evaluation system, produces by contrast nothing but evaluations. The production of the system’s object is completed with the (positive or negative) evaluation undertaken from an educational perspective. The work of the distributive functions of this system consists in making these evaluations public, spreading them and, in particular, making sure that they reach the receivers for whom they were undertaken. Assessing, for example, the spring or fall offering of children’s books and media on the market can take the form of a list of (positive or negative) selections or as a brochure with short reviews. It can be performed within the framework of a regular review service (in a periodical or as a loose-leaf collection) or be distributed by means of lectures and book presentations. The forms taken by the publication and distribution of pedagogic assessments are—especially between the different periods—extremely diverse. Consumption functions Among the receivers of the evaluations, in other words those who perform the consumption functions of this system, we find on the one hand actors in other children’s literary distributions systems, such as teachers, librarians, educators, youth workers etc., and on the other hand adult purchasers of children’s books and media, such as parents, relations, godparents etc. The consumer role in this system is confined to the utilization of advice, the acceptance of (positive or negative) recommendations concerning individual titles. From the consumers’ point of view the pedagogic “children’s book” evaluation system represents a recommendation system, since they often talk not of selection but of recommendation lists.

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Page 81 A pure evaluation system ends with the acceptance of the recommendation by the person who has required advice. Whether the consumer actually follows the recommendation is decided outside the pedagogic “children’s book” action system. The recommendation that is made can only be carried out in other action systems. The person seeking advice can only pursue the recommendation in another role—that of the purchaser or borrower of children’s books and media, for example. The pedagogic evaluation system is intended to have an effect on other action systems and must therefore of necessity come into conflict with the internal logic of those systems. Differing advice from a bookseller may conflict with the pedagogic advice. In the case of borrowing, it is possible that the library stocks do not contain what is required, or that there is similarly conflicting advice from librarians. Those who act within pure evaluation systems therefore all too often feel a certain degree of impotence. Thus it is not surprising that the actors in such evaluation systems, in this case the teachers, search for ways to exert direct influence. One of these attempts—admittedly now of only historical interest—consists in undertaking the production of children’s books oneself. Individual teachers, but also local youth writing committees produced— particularly in the years around 1900—anthologies of children’s rhymes and poetry, collections of fairy tales, stories, animal stories, even whole series of children’s books and booklets compiled, printed and published by themselves, and often sold at cost price, thus circumventing the book trade. In a reaction to this circumvention of the children’s book and media market by these products, individual publishers decided to integrate the titles or series created by individual youth writing commissions into their own programs. At times the influence of pedagogic criticism in Germany was so great that it proved to be profitable for numerous children’s book publishers to use praise from the pedagogic sector as advertising material. Individual publishers went a step further and sought to bind the leading lights of pedagogic criticism to them by tempting them with offers of editing or advising on whole series. It was always a considerable advantage for children’s publishers to have a clergyman, teacher, school head or university scholar of repute as an author or editor. The influence exerted by the pedagogic sector on the production of children’s literature cannot be overestimated from a historical perspective. The assessments of children’s literature produced first by the pedagogic class, then later by teachers’ associations and their evaluation committees influenced purchasing behavior to such a degree, thanks to the authority granted to them by almost all levels of society, that very few publishers could produce books without reference to them. It was therefore in the publishers’ business interest to adapt their own production to the evaluative principles prevalent at any particular time, or even more: to recruit a considerable proportion of their authors from the profession that was so powerful in the children’s literature discourse.

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Page 82 Table 10.1 System System Type System Goal

The Pedagogic “Children’s Book” Action System (recognized) Evaluation system Evaluation of the range of children’s books and media available on the market from a pedagogic perspective. Material Taken From the Publishers’ announcements, review/inspection copies of children’s books and Environment media Object of the System (positive and negative) Evaluation of children’s books and media in the form of recommendations and warnings Productive Functions and Those • Evaluation and selection/exclusion by individual pedagogues or evaluation Responsible for Them committees • Composing (short) reviews Distributive Functions and Those • Compilation and distribution of recommendation/negative lists, guides and Responsible for Them outlines • Lectures, book exhibitions etc Consumption Functions and Acceptance of recommendations/warnings by professional mediators in other Those Responsible for Them distribution systems and by parents and other role models Integrative Functions and Those • Agreement in professional periodicals in the field of children’s literature Responsible for Them • Professional conferences, training sessions etc. References Azegami, T. (1996) Die Jugendschriftenwarte. Von ihrer Gründung bis zu den Anfängen des ‘Dritten Reiches’ unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Kinder- und Jugendliterarturbewertung und -beurteilung, Frankfurt a. M. et al.: Lang. Dolle-Weinkauff, B. and Ewers, H-H. (eds) (1996) Theorien der Jugendlektüre. Beiträge zur Kinder- und Jugendliteraturkritik seit Heinrich Wolgast , Weinheim and München: Juventa. Köster, H. L. (1971) ‘Kritik der Jugendschrift’, in: Köster, H. L., Geschichte der deutschen Jugendliteratur in Monographien [1927], 4th ed., Braunschweig et al.: Westermann; reprint, 2nd ed., München-Pullach: Verlag Dokumentation, 385–471. Wilkending, G. (1997) ‘Kritik der Jugendlektüre. Von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Herausbildung der Hamburger Jugendschriftenbewegung’, in Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung 1996/97, Stuttgart: Metzler, 38–68. Wolgast, H. (1910) Das Elend unserer Jugendliteratur. Ein Beitrag zur künstlerischen Erziehung der Jugend , 4th ed., Hamburg: Selbstverlag; Leipzig: Wunderlich.

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Page 83 Chapter Eleven The “children’s public literary forum” Action System In Germany the public forum for children’s literature only reached its full development and began to have an influence worth mentioning in the second half of the 20th century. Here we are dealing with what is in historical terms the latest children’s literary action system. The central focus of this action system is the presentation, evaluation, discussion, and classification of what is available on the children’s literary market as found in the printed and non-printed media aimed at the general public. We are therefore discussing the general area of children’s literary and media criticism as found in daily or weekly newspapers, in general cultural periodicals, in magazines, parents’, women’s and other publications (produced for the general public or specific population groups), as well as in various radio and television programs. There are also other public fora dealing with children’s literature: readings (outside schools), book presentations, and exhibitions and also the increasing area of public recognition (literary lists, bestseller lists, literary prizes, and other distinctions). Once more we will have to limit ourselves to describing merely the bare outlines of the action system. The public literary sphere’s view of itself In this case we are also dealing with an evaluation system of the kind that we already know from the area of libraries and the pedagogic action system. General children’s literary and media criticism also takes as its material from the environment publishers’ announcements of all kinds and review or inspection copies of children’s books and media. However, there is one significant difference: Even if we, in concrete terms, are dealing with the same material, nevertheless this material is defined differently by the literary public forum in one respect, namely in terms of its authorship. Although the library system and the pedagogic action system see their object as being the media units

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Page 84 produced by publishers and other producers, the public literary sphere has felt since its beginnings in the 18th century that it is dealing more or less exclusively with utterances or other things produced by authors—poets, literati, essayists etc.—and graphic artists. It understands itself as taking, not media products, but works of literature or art as its material. The public literary sphere sees in books and other media primarily the works of an author or illustrator and considers texts and images to be autonomous utterances by the writer or artist. Publishers and producers of other media are represented at best marginally in the discourse of the public literary sphere; they appear to a large extent as carrying out the will, as merely an organ for fulfilling the instructions of the author or artist, and thus are seen as being of negligible importance. The public literary sphere ignores the commercially mediated nature of every literary or artistic utterance to a large extent in order to make the author or artist and their work into an absolute. Even though this may be described as illusory when considering the actual relations of production, this mode of regulating the discourse has led to an actual enhancement and strengthening of the position of the author/artist. The appearance of directness produced by this discourse devalued the mediated nature of literary artistic production to such an extent that in individual cases, which were then regarded as prototypical, it could be totally ignored. The actors in the public literary sphere—journalists, editors, reviewers, lawyers, cultural officials etc.—claim for their part that they do not approach the author or artist and their work from a specific point of view. They do not judge the work with a view to its qualities as an article for sale—which is different in the case of the different location and customer circles of each bookstore—or its suitability for the library or its educational value. Beyond the perspective of the book trade, the library system, the educational system and any other special perspectives (including those of an ideological or religious nature) the actors in the public literary sphere declare themselves to be representatives of the general reading public. Of course they do form a class of specialists, and can be regarded to a certain extent as experts, but this specialization—at least in their view—represents merely a perfecting of the role of the general reader (which is expressed in the paradoxical description of the critic as “professional reader”). As professional general readers they can create an ideal role, which the reader who is otherwise professionally engaged would only be able to fulfill to a limited extent. Thus the only difference between critic and reader is this one of degree, since they are otherwise on an equal level in principle. This is because, on the level of the public literary sphere, readers like critics approach the author or artist and their work not from a special but from a general perspective. When private individuals come together to form the reading public they have—or at least ideally should have—stepped back from their specific professional modes of seeing and approached the level of the “normal human being”. If we add the fact that the role of the author or artist is also regarded as the ideal form of a normal human role, that of the original, creative individual, then it is possible to understand why the relationship

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Page 85 between author/artist, critic, and reader created in the public literary sphere has been defined as an understanding reached through the medium of literature between people who are in principle equal in status (Habermas 1962). The literary critic as liberal mediator The role of the literary critic makes it necessary to add to what was said in Chapter 3 about the role of the mediator, since we are dealing with a distinct individual development of this communicative function, which was not mentioned there. The literary critic is obviously also one of the interventive mediators, but differs from this role as described in Chapter 3 just as s/he differs from the role(s) of mediator in the individual action systems described so far. We have come across (official and recognized) interventive mediators in three of these action systems: In the public library action system and in the “school reading” action system, the children’s media offered on the market or the totality of (literary) texts that have been passed down are evaluated in a manner that leads to a selection process. In these action systems the end users are not confronted with everything available on the market or the entire literary tradition, but only with a selection from what is on offer that has been made without including them; the recipients have, from the very beginning, only limited opportunity to make decisions. In the pedagogic “children’s book” action system evaluation also takes place, resulting in selection and filtering of the material. In this system this selection only has the status of a recommendation, which still has to be acted upon; negative assessments, however, are always connected with a requirement to ignore the material concerned, in other words, not to buy the children’s media in question. By contrast, we are dealing in the case of literary critics with a type of mediator who does indeed make evaluations, but does not use these in order to make a selection, a filtering of what is on offer. In the ideal case literary critics do not pre-select, nor do they give recommendations or warnings. They reveal to the reader no more and no less than their personal evaluation of the relevant literary work. Whether readers agree with the critics’ assessment or not is up to them. For this reason all expressions or statements that seem to make suggestions or recommendations are frowned upon, as are those that seem to warn readers off; readers would consider them intrusive and feel that their space for decision had been limited. The difference from other types of mediator is particularly clear in the case of negative judgements and warnings: No matter how little critics feel a book is worth reading, they will leave the decision to the reader and judge only for themselves. Instead of advising that the book should not be read, they will instead encourage readers to make up their own minds. In terms of communication theory, literary critics do not wish to be gatekeepers of literary communication, but simply add their judgement to the literary message without preventing it from being passed on. They respect the freedom of all those who take part in literary communication— not just that of the receiver, but also that of the sender, which is why I suggest that one should describe the critic as a ‘liberal mediator’.

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Page 86 This is not the place to pursue the question of whether and to what extent the presentation, evaluation, discussion and classification of what is offered in the field of children’s literature found in today’s daily and weekly newspapers (and their literary supplements), various popular magazines and radio or television programs ( Zwischen allen Stühlen , 1990; Ewers 1993) take the (ideal) principles of the public literary sphere as demonstrated above into account, or if they remain tied to the patterns of recommendation, which have proved to be typical of other children’s literary action systems. The same question could be asked in respect of children’s literary prizes and awards given to children’s book authors and illustrators, which, either in terms of their constitution or their actual setup, can sometimes be more committed to the principles of the public literary sphere or more firmly based on the recommendation practices of the library action system or the pedagogic action system ( Der Deutsche Jugendliteraturpreis, 1984). The former is far more likely to be the case when the jury members are prepared to open their decisions to general (and often controversial) discussion (and therefore see the award itself as a means of stimulating discourse and understanding). The latter set-up would then be found when the prizes and awards are more or less exclusively given the function of aids to orientation and selection in actual practice. Children’s literary prizes and awards to the authors and illustrators of children’s books should therefore not automatically be regarded as part of the public children’s literary forum and its modes of action. The public literary sphere for adults and for children and young people The public children’s literary forum differs from the general public literary sphere in terms of who performs the final function: With some exceptions its audience does not include the primary addressees of this literature, that is, children and young people. We are dealing with a discourse about children’s literature that takes place more or less exclusively among adults In actual fact the audience for the public children’s literary forum consists on the one hand of all those adults who have something to do with children and young people and have such an interest in their reading that they feel the need for orientation, discussion, and agreement on the subject. On the other hand it is made up of adults who, either professionally or voluntarily on other levels are concerned with the production, distribution and consumption of children’s literature and have an interest in forming part, not just of the public fora specific to their own systems, but also in a general public forum of relevance to their subject. In this case the latter are not being addressed as publishers, publishers’ readers, booksellers, librarians or educationists, but simply as adult readers of children’s literature. The fact that the primary addressees play no part in it has given rise to efforts to set up a public literary sphere where children and young people are the actors in addition to the public children’s literary forum. Such a public forum would

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Page 87 include: book reviews and discussions written by children and young people, lists of ‘best’ books compiled by children and young people, prizes and distinctions awarded by children and young people, exhibitions organized by children and young people etc. Far from this idea being problematic, it has in fact been one of the problematic aspects of the children’s literary sphere of action in the past and the present that a—this is my own suggested term—public literary sphere of children and young people was not established long ago, a forum in which adults would only be present in the role of helpers. Nevertheless, I would regard it as problematic to combine these with one another or to play them off against each other. Why should adults who are interested in children’s literature be prevented from discussing the subject within the framework of a public forum? What can be said against making it possible for children to discuss the media that are interesting to them independently of adults? Combining both these fora would in my view benefit neither party. Individual child or youth members in juries consisting otherwise of a majority of adult experts can all too easily function as tokenism. Do both public fora necessarily reach a unanimous opinion about the children’s media products on offer? On the contrary, it seems to be in the nature of the matter that they have different views, and both should have the unrestricted opportunity to express these views without expressing false reservations. Table 11.1 System Public children’s literary forum as literary and media criticism System Type (recognized) Evaluation system System Goal Public presentation, discussion and evaluation of children’s media products offered on the market Materials Taken from the Publishers’ announcements, review copies of children’s books and media, Environment other material about authors, illustrators etc. Object of the System (positive or negative) Evaluation of children’s media products by providing a forum for discussion Productive Functions and Those • Selecting the works to be reviewed Responsible for Them • Evaluating the work and composing a review for a newspaper or periodical or a contribution to a radio or TV program Distributive Functions and Those Publishing the review in a newspaper or magazine or broadcasting it on Responsible for Them radio or TV Consumption Functions and Those Reception of the critics’ statements by the adult public with a view to Responsible for Them forming their own opinions Integrative Functions and Those Discourse in fora and professional conferences, training sessions etc. Responsible for Them

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Page 88 References Der Deutsche Jugendliteraturpreis 1956–1983. Ausschreibungen, Begründungen, Laudationes, Kriterien (1984) München: Arbeitskreis für Jugendliteratur. Ewers, H.-H. (1993) ‘Zwischen Literaturanspruch und Leserbezug. Zum Normen- und Stilwandel der Kinder- und Jugendliteraturkritik seit den 70er Jahren’, in: Tausend und ein Buch. Das österreichische Magazin für Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, No. 4, 4–14. Habermas, J. (1969) Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft [1963], 4th ed., Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand (also as Suhrkamp Taschenbuch stw 891). Zwischen allen Stühlen. Zur Situation der Kinder- und Jugendliteraturkritik (1990) Tutzing (= Tutzinger Studien 2/1990).

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Page 89 Chapter Twelve Historical Change in Distribution and Evaluation Systems for Children’s Literature The children’s literary sphere of action that has prevailed in Germany for a number of decades includes a multiplicity of distribution, evaluation, and recommendation systems, of which we can only discuss a selection in this work. A further striking characteristic of the situation in Germany is that the most important distribution, evaluation, and recommendation systems have for some time been secular in character and therefore not committed to any religious denomination or any other kind of ideological movement. Historically this sector of literary life has by no means always had such a variety of systems available, just as the religious, political, or ideological neutrality of the main mediation systems—after a brief initial flourish in the late 18th century, the age of the Enlightenment—only gained permanent acceptance in the second half of the 19th century. The “children’s book market” action system, which can be found as a relatively independent market sector from the 18th century onward and which has expanded in the present to become the “children’s book and media market”, should be seen as the basic distribution system. Parallel with this development, denominational groups continued to produce and distribute children’s books (though in much lesser volume in the course of time) partly in the form of a separate children’s book market (with its own publishing houses and intermediate and retail booksellers), partly in the form of book clubs, and partly with its own library distribution and evaluation system, the last of which can still be found even today. This denominational system has still hardly been researched at all.

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Page 90 Book market and independent evaluation The (secular) children’s book and media market includes, as mentioned previously, not just a distribution system, but also a selection and evaluation system. The evaluations performed within this system are, however, unofficial in character, they receive no general cultural recognition no matter how much the advice of a bookseller may be trusted or the reputation of a children’s book publisher may be relied on in individual cases. As a rule the decisions made by publishers or retail booksellers are not regarded as having any normative meaning; the children’s book and media market does not have any authority, which would empower it to apply any (positive or negative) sanctions. In other words, it has not been granted any power to create or influence the canon: It can merely produce best sellers, or long-selling books, but not classics in the strictest sense. The basic reason for social reservations about the evaluations performed by the (children’s) book market is, in my opinion, the fact that in this distribution system—at least in countries with a free market economy—we are dealing with the profit-orientated production of goods. The decisions reached in this sphere are therefore broadly suspected of not being based on objective criteria but on business interests. With the quantitative expansion of children’s book production the need therefore arose for an assessment of what was offered on the market by an independent, socially recognized authority. So, historically, we see first of all the appearance of pure evaluation systems independent of the market, which make (positive or negative) distinctions. In Germany, the Age of the Enlightenment was the first historical highpoint in this respect; at the same time, it was in this period that the first efforts were made to establish a purely secular evaluation system independent of any denominational concerns. (Positively) sanctioned and “commercial” children’s literature A comparative examination of the various children’s literary distribution and evaluation systems reveals a basic difference, which makes it necessary to add to what was said in Chapter 2 about the different forms of children’s literary messages. We are dealing on the one hand with children’s media products, in terms of communication theory with children’s literary messages, which have been judged positive by a socially recognized evaluation system, and on the other with media products (messages) for the same target group, which are marketed without any such seal of approval. In both cases we are dealing with intended children’s reading (previously termed intentional children’s literature) which is, however, only authorized as such in one of these cases. I would like to suggest that we describe the totality of the literary messages that have been classed as suitable, valuable or harmless for children and young people

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Page 91 by socially recognized evaluation systems as ‘positively sanctioned children’s literature’. Such a classification can take different forms, from inclusion in lists of recommendations or of the ‘best’ books, through being honored with prizes of various kinds up to inclusion in the canon, to mention just some of the possibilities. In opposition to these we have all the children’s literary messages that have been put in circulation without any recognition or authorization independent of the market. Here we could speak of some as ‘unsanctioned’ and others as negatively sanctioned children’s literature. The former are items that have not yet been noticed—or have even been totally ignored—by the recognized evaluation systems. The latter are items that have been inspected and ‘tested’ but negatively classified as worthless, dubious or even harmful. In markets that are linked with religious or ideological groups there cannot be any unsanctioned or negatively sanctioned media items. In these cases we have preventative censorship; every item requires prior permission to print (imprimatur) from the religious or ideological authority and as a result only those items that are positively sanctioned appear on the market. The existence of negatively sanctioned children’s literature is the expression of a conflict of values between different children’s literary action systems: the values and criteria actually used for evaluation by the providers—publishers, printers, games producers, booksellers and traveling salesmen, none of whom are committed to a religious, political or ideological system—run counter to those of the socially recognized evaluation authorities in such cases. Here we are often dealing with the production of children’s books and media in a way that deliberately ignores the official guidelines. The higher the sales figures for book and media products of this kind, the greater the displeasure of the official authorities. In such situations the official evaluation authorities often tend to dismiss this unacceptable material as a whole, calling it “commercial children’s literature” and thus suggesting that the private suppliers are only interested in making a profit. If one does wish to use this term in any way, it does need further definition: Since even in the case of positively sanctioned children’s literature we are dealing with commercial matters, we should regard the non- or negatively sanctioned material as purely commercial children’s literature. The first attempts at a history of children’s literature were produced, at least in Germany, by the proponents of recognized evaluation systems, in actual fact by the protagonists of the pedagogic action system (Chapter 10). This historical writing derives directly from the business of judging the material available on the (free) market, which is then applied to the past—i.e. extended to the material available in previous periods. Historical writing that satisfies modern standards should not make itself merely the servant of transmitting official evaluation criteria. It should rather try to take the position of an independent observer, in view of the conflict between the various children’s literary action systems. Such external observation is capable

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Page 92 of seeing the tendency to inertia characteristic of official evaluation authorities, which often inhibits inevitable changes in children’s literature. By contrast, commercial providers are often forced to adapt quickly to the changing expectations and requirements of particular consumer groups in the interest of business success. The (free) market may also, however, yield to the requirements of consumer groups who are averse to innovation. Independently of this, the market does, at least partially, provide a seismograph for measuring social change and should thus be regarded in terms of historical writing as a major factor in innovation. Decline and recovery of secular evaluation systems Evaluation systems can, on the one hand, offer advice, express recommendations, and on the other, by revealing the reasons underlying these evaluations, encourage the formation of people’s own opinions and thus come closer to the principles of the public literary forum. The children’s literary evaluation systems of the late 18th century were indeed primarily meant to provide advice and help in making choices; nevertheless they also, because of their argumentative style, intruded into the sphere of the public literary forum, which at this period still overlapped with the pedagogic public forum. In the course of the 19th century children’s literature ceased to be a subject of discussion in the public literary forum. The fact that there was initially no broader expansion of the children’s literary distribution and evaluation system at the beginning of the 19th century—if fact there was more of a decline—can be traced back mainly to the loss of status that this sphere of literature had suffered. From its extremely favorable position in the late 18th century, children’s literature sank in the eyes of the educational and literary elite to being a purely commercial element of the book market with little literary or educational value. As a result there was no stable, secular children’s literary evaluation system in Germany in the mid 19th century: The field was once more dominated by denominational evaluation authorities. The secular school system that was being established in Germany at this time was based on placing a wide-ranging taboo on contemporary children’s books, which in the view of numerous pedagogic authorities should not even form part of children’s and young people’s leisure reading. It took more than a century, until between the mid and late 20th century, before the school system once more became a distribution medium for children’s books (cf. Chapter 9). Admittedly children’s books were still valued by the religious denominations, as they were later by some ideological or political camps—even if this was only as a compliant medium of ideological propaganda, as a kind of ideal “tendentious writing”, which only served to lower the children’s book even more in the eyes of leading educationists and literary people.

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Page 93 The fact that the children’s book market mushroomed in spite of the contempt of the elite, and at the same time the success of religious and later politically patriotic, even chauvinistic tendentious literature (which caused some concern and was often of little or no literary value) for children and young people, may well have been the reasons why a new secular evaluation system came into being. We are here referring to what was called “Jugendschriftenkritik” (Youth Writing Criticism), largely in the hands of the primary school teachers (Köster 1971). The increasing influence of this new evaluation system put pressure on some providers of children’s books to adapt to the new evaluation criteria. Educational youth writing criticism succeeded to a large extent in creating renewed cultural respect for children’s literature and children’s books (cf. Dolle-Weinkauff/Ewers 1996; Wilkending 1997). It was admittedly no part of their intention to make children’s literary criticism part of the public literary forum once more. Those who were part of the youth writing criticism movement regarded themselves rather as authorities and experts with the aim of steering the consumption of children’s literature by means of (positive and negative) recommendations. Pluralization of the evaluation systems At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries a pluralization at the level of distribution systems came into being. The establishment of the public library system at this time, which brought a new distribution system for children’s books onto the scene, and one which had very broad coverage, had a lasting effect. In terms of the opportunities that the child/youth readers—the actual target group—had for direct access, the public library system proved to be superior to the book market; it is therefore unsurprising that it soon overtook the children’s book market where supplying children and young people with books on a daily basis was concerned. Since the public library system is also a recognized evaluation system, its appearance led to pluralization on the level of secular evaluation systems as well. Next to the pedagogic evaluation system, the library evaluation system became a further socially accepted system, which admittedly bowed to the evaluation criteria of pedagogic youth writing criticism for some time and only gradually developed its own criteria. In the course of the 20th century the duplication of both the distribution and evaluation systems for children’s literature that had begun with the rise of the public library system continued. With the gradual re-acceptance of children’s books within the “school reading” action system (see Chapter 9), not only a supplementary distribution system, but also a further evaluation system came into existence. The available children’s literature was from now on examined in three ways: for its educational quality, for whether it could be used in libraries, and for whether it could be made use of in schools.

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Page 94 The space outside library and school was soon no longer dominated by the pedagogic evaluation and recommendation system alone. Looking at the second half of the 20th century in Germany, we can speak of a truly rapid duplication of evaluation and recommendation services for children’s books and media, which were often linked with the award of prizes. Political organizations, associations, foundations, trades unions, federal and state authorities, communes, academies, and media organizations nowadays produce so many awards (often limited in terms of their scope) and brochures or lists of recommendations that it is hardly possible to maintain an overview of what is on offer (Meyer 1983). At the same time children’s books and media have once more become the subject of discussion in the public literary forum (see Chapter 11). Current children’s literary criticism in the various print media as well as on radio and television is now highly regarded. To some extent it still possesses the character of a purely recommendatory system. Nevertheless, with its growth in importance it is also exerting an influence on other evaluation systems, which are making more and more attempts to achieve the non-patronizing, liberal mode of mediation that has always been characteristic of the public literary forum. References Dolle-Weinkauff, B. and Ewers, H.-H. (eds) (1996) Theorien der Jugendlektüre. Beiträge zur Kinder- und Jugendliteraturkritik seit Heinrich Wolgast , Weinheim and München: Juventa. Köster, H. L. (1971) ‘Kritik der Jugendschrift’, in Köster, H. L. Geschichte der deutschen Jugendliteratur in Monographien [1927], 4th ed., Braunschweig et al.: Westermann; reprint, 2nd ed. München-Pullach: Verlag Dokumentation, 385–471. Meyer, F. (1983) ‘Organisierte und institutionalisierte Förderung von Kinderliteratur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, in Kinderliteratur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland , München: Arbeitskreis für Jugendliteratur, 114– 120. Wilkending, G. (1997) ‘Kritik der Jugendlektüre. Von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Herausbildung der Hamburger Jugendschriftenbewegung’, in Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung 1996/97, Stuttgart: Metzler, 38–68.

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Page 95 Chapter Thirteen Children’s Literary Polysystems and their Providers Even if we have only discussed distribution and evaluation systems in the preceding chapters, we may nevertheless assume that all children’s literary action systems—and therefore the production and consumption systems that have not been discussed—do in terms of action dovetail with one another. In other words they form a chain of spheres of action—a chain that at certain points can clearly branch out, that is, have several strands. In spite of the way that they mesh at the action level, the individual systems have considerable independence. The degree to which they become independent sometimes leads to their losing sight of the overall structure into which they are embedded. The outward orientation of the individual action systems tends to be confined to the preceding spheres and those with which there is direct linkage. The overall structure is always there—independently of whether this is perceived at the level of the individual systems as such. The action systems serve to further the performance of various stages of children’s literary communication (see Chapter 1), whether they are aware of this or not. However, the less the overall structure is perceived at the level of the individual systems, the more likely the children’s literary communication performed by them is to be subject to interference, and the greater the number of communicative failures. Amalgamation of children’s literary action systems into a polysystem It is therefore not surprising that the individual systems—clearly with different degrees of intensity—make the effort to establish a level at which they can mutually establish clear agreement about the general context. At this level they attempt to reach an agreement about the basic characteristics and the basic meaning and goal of the children’s literary communication with whose performance they have been entrusted. At the same time they determine the

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Page 96 range within which divergent ideas can be tolerated. The individual systems join with one another by committing themselves to an overarching action logic and at the same time promise to bring their own inner action logics into agreement with this, or to co-ordinate them with it. In other words, they form a second-degree system, a kind of ‘polysystem’ (Even-Zohar 1990; Shavit 1986). Such a combination guarantees a certain degree of internal agreement as well as action that is uniform and mutually co-ordinated. In this way the individual systems can be certain that in different locations and in different ways they are all serving the same cause. For the (official and unofficial) evaluation authorities this co-ordination means that they can be guided by comparable, if not exactly uniform, evaluation criteria. In this way the pedagogic (see Chapter 10) and the public library action system (see Chapter 8) in Germany, for example, were for a long time very close in terms of the principles on which they based their evaluation; in parallel with this a large number of publishers and booksellers used similar criteria. The agreement that is aimed at can also be much more open: It then regulates the breadth allowed within the polysystem for permissible, that is tolerated, controversial viewpoints. In this way in Germany since the 19th century positions orientated towards the principles of the Enlightenment have stood in opposition to those committed to the Romantic conception of childhood and poetry. The field of lyric poetry, literature for reading aloud, and children’s stories is left to these latter, while the former are granted the responsibility for material that is factual and morally educative. In this way viewpoints that are actually mutually exclusive can be integrated into an overarching scheme of action. Because what we understand here as a polysystem is not an objectively given overall situation but only a conscious attempt to establish coordination and agreement between individual systems, it is quite conceivable that some individual action systems do not wish to take part in such processes of co-ordination and agreement and consequently are not (do not wish to be) part of any children’s literary polysystem. This is particularly true of consumption action systems: Numerous social areas, such as perhaps the area of pre-school and school, or various youth organizations can make use of the general supply of children’s literature in a way that diverges considerably from the relevant children’s literary polysystem’s basic understanding of the nature of the system’s object. It is one of the particular characteristics of all (mass-) media communication that the receiver/end-user can totally ignore the intentions of the producers, distributors and mediators. With respect to consumption action systems one would therefore have to decide on a case-by-case basis if they can be regarded as a constitutive part of the dominant children’s literary polysystem at any given time. The boundaries of any children’s literary polysystem would then have to be drawn differently for each historical situation. The table in Chapter 6 only offers an overview and classification of children’s literary action systems but does not depict an existing children’s literary polysystem. It is not only the boundaries of a children’s literary polysystem that should be decided in historical terms; we should also use history to decide the question of whether within a society at any given point in time one can assume the existence

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Page 97 of only one or of several children’s literary polysystems. The reasons for the existence of several polysystems can be of different kinds: It may be conditioned by the fact that multilingualism is a factor in a given country: The boundaries between the polysystems would then coincide with the linguistic boundaries. The existence of a pronounced regionalism could also be the cause: The poly-systems would then coincide with the relatively autonomous cultural regions in that country. One cause that is frequently met with is a pronounced social or religious pilarization of society: the boundaries of the children’s literary polysystems would then coincide with those of the strata or classes, or the different denominations. One could also conceive of one or more religious polysystems existing side by side with a secular children’s literary polysystem (Ewers 2004). In the first two cases, multilingualism and regionalism, it is always possible that an agreement in principle about the nature of children’s literary communication may prevail in the two parallel children’s literary polysystems; the reasons for the existence of more than one polysystem are in these cases external in nature. In the third case, denominational or social pilarization, this is initially no different, but here the external factors—the pilarization in both cases—may well have an effect on the content of their basic positions. Class-specific or denominational (or secular) polysystems are mostly based on different conceptions of the basic characteristics and goals of children’s literary communication. Dominant function of individual action systems But how is unanimity about the overall aim of their actions created among different children’s literary action systems, a unity, moreover, that is so stable that the individual systems grow together to form a single polysystem? What authorities generate the common principles of action and evaluation, the integrative norms? One conceivable way of creating such unanimity would be for one of the children’s literary action systems to reach a dominant position so that it would then be able to make other action systems accept its own view of children’s literary communication, its own principles of action and evaluation. This can be done the hard way by taking on the form of a regular imposition that none of the other individual systems dare to resist. But it is also possible that the dominant action system possesses such authority that other systems willingly submit to it. In both cases one of the individual action systems is regarded as having an overarching, norm-generating function; in other words it is exercising an integrative (dominant) function. This does not exclude the fact that special viewpoints are accepted within the other individual systems and that shifts may occur as a result; these shifts, however should not be so wide-ranging that the basic consensus and their affiliation to the overall system come into question. Evaluation systems (whether pure evaluation systems, or ones that are integrated into a distribution system) are the most suitable for exercising such a function: For example, a strongly positioned public library system could do this. In Germany at the end of the 19th and in the early 20th centuries the (secular) pedagogic evaluation system of “‘Youth Writing Criticism” rooted in the “Youth

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Page 98 Writing Movement” (see Chapter 10) may well have exercised such an integrative function. This (pure) evaluation system, which was for some time the only secular evaluation authority of more than regional importance confronting the commercial book market and the denominational suppliers of literature, was regarded as the authority responsible for the development of children’s literary norms even at a period when rival evaluation systems were coming into being. In a purely organizational sense the pedagogic ‘children’s book and media’ action system exists even today; there are still teachers’ associations devoted to evaluating what is offered on the market even though this evaluation system has lost its former dominant function. Today it is more the public library system and the children’s public literary sphere with their various levels and authorities that are regarded as being responsible for evaluating children’s literature as leisure reading (see Chapter 11). The general children’s public literary sphere If we observe the current state of the children’s literary sphere of action in Germany, then we are met by an astounding fact: The norm-generating and integrative function has not moved to another individual system. The dominant role, which was once played by the pedagogic action system has not been taken over by either the intralibrary evaluation system or the public children’s literary forum, no matter how great the prestige now enjoyed by both of them. Many people certainly expected (and hoped) that public children’s literary criticism would gain overall control of this literary field, even if this would have meant conformity with the adult literary field in which the public literary sphere and the literary criticism practiced within it had come to be the norm-generating authority—at least in respect of contemporary literary developments. There are several reasons why conformity with the general literary field did not come about: Within the German public literary sphere children’s literary criticism has admittedly come to be accepted, but is mainly treated as a marginal area, which often has to take a back seat or is misused as a testing ground for beginners. Thus we often find relatively unprofessional occasional criticism, which enjoys no authority in the eyes of the experts in the other individual systems. On the part of the traditional children’s literary evaluation and distribution systems there has so far been little readiness to accept the children’s public literary sphere as a new external authority where children’s literature is concerned. While in general literary affairs the authority of the literary critics is not contested by the book trade, the library system or in schools, the staff members of these institutions who deal with children’s literature regard themselves as being more competent: In fact they feel themselves to be the real experts. The historical change suggested here has brought the children’s literary system to a stage where there is no longer any unambiguously fixed and universally recognized center. This makes the question of the cohesion of the individual children’s literary systems even more urgent. There are indications, which suggest that one should talk of a new kind of mechanism uniting the

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Page 99 individual systems into a polysystem in Germany, and to some extent in Switzerland and Austria as well. Unanimity where the objects of the various children’s literary action systems are concerned can also in principle be negotiated between the individual action systems within the expert public forum. For this we need special journals and institutions, which I would like to designate the ‘overarching’ or ‘general children’s expert public literary sphere’. Journals of this kind are, for example, professional journals to which those who perform the functions in all individual children’s literary systems turn in principle: That is, they are addressed to experts in children’s literature from the book-trade, the library system, the fields of social education and schools as well as those from the public sphere, literary supplements, radio and television organizations. An overarching expert public forum of this kind can also find support in associations and organizations whose goal is to bring together children’s literary experts from several individual systems. On this level one might also think of umbrella organizations to which the professional organizations of the individual systems belong as members. We cannot, however, regard this overarching expert public forum as an authority, which itself produces discourse. Evaluation and action principles continue to be developed by those who perform the functions within the individual systems. In recent decades academics at training colleges and universities have played an increasing part in this process as producers of theory. Where discourse is concerned, the general expert public forum functions solely as a forum for discussion, into which theories and evaluation criteria are brought as suggestions for discussion and become the object of the experts’ critical considerations. In other words it represents the level at which it is decided which of the principles of judgement and action presented to it will be accepted as integrative guidelines. With the establishment of the overarching expert public forum, a children’s literary polysystem no longer arises from the dominance of one individual system to which it has granted the power to produce uniformity. Unanimity is now constituted in a discursive mode in which every individual system can in principle take part. The benefits of producing agreement in this discursive way are obvious. The disadvantage is that the agreements thus produced are all too often ambiguous, unclear, fuzzy and, not least, extremely fragile. An overarching expert public forum is definitely less likely than authorized individual authorities to succeed in holding the centrifugal forces within individual children’s literary systems in check. Achieving acceptance of common orientations has always proved difficult in the field of children’s literature; this is even more the case when the only tool available for the purpose is the material published by a fragile and relatively powerless general expert public forum. The fragility of the children’s literary expert public forum results not least from the weakness of its publications: in Germany there is a certain degree of fragmentation with several professional journals—each with very low print runs—competing with one another and thus reaching only individual ‘camps’ within the expert forum. Nor—like the children’s literary criticism published in the literary supplements—do they

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Page 100 have the necessary authority in all individual fields. The published media of the general children’s literary public expert forum are able, as it seems, to fulfill their designated function of integrating discourse only imperfectly. The less the authority possessed by the overarching publications and institutions, the less the member associations are interested in overall collaboration, the weaker the general children’s literary public expert forum proves to be and the less the degree of unanimity in the field of children’s literature. Seen as a whole at the level of action systems, current children’s literature seems to be a multi-stranded field with relatively weak centralization. As a result the general image of this branch of literature in Germany ends up being comparatively diffuse: We are now dealing with literature, which is sanctioned in very many ways, although none of the individual sanction systems stands out so much that it could rise to being a dominant mode of labeling the object. Table 13.1 System General Children’s Literary Expert Public Forum System Type Second-order system related to individual systems System Goal Uniting the individual children’s literary action systems to form a polysystem; formulation and implementation of basic consensus Materials Taken from the • Basic external expectations of children’s literary communication Environment • Analysis and reflection undertaken within the individual systems Object of the System • A general children’s literary discourse that is accepted as authoritative by all individual systems; • Overarching representation of interests, also actions and campaigns Productive Functions and • Production of information, development of theses, exchange of ideas and Those Responsible for discussions at conferences and congresses aimed at developing positions Them • Formulating and rationalizing overarching areas of interest, design and preparation or overarching actions and campaigns Distributive Functions and • Distribution of the basic consensus worked out above in professional journals and Those Responsible for other publications, at in-service training sessions etc. Them • Representation of overarching interests, carrying out actions and campaigns Consumption Functions • Acceptance and implementation of the basic consensus worked out above by the and Those Responsible for individual systems Them • Perception of this basic consensus by external public fora • Paying attention to individual interests by the relevant external authorities, putting the aims of the actions and campaigns into practice by the relevant social forces addressed Integrative Functions and • Preparation of reports about activities and accountability Those Responsible for • Monitoring of the activities at meetings of members or their representatives Them

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Page 101 References Even-Zohar, I. (1990) ‘Polysystem Theory’, in Even-Zohar, I. Polysystem Studies. Poetics Today , Vol. 11, No. 1, 9– 94. Ewers, H.-H. (2004) ‘Skizze einer Theorie Kinder- und jugendliterarischer Handlungssysteme’, in Institut für Jugendbuchforschung der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität/Frankfurt am Main und der Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin), Kinder- und Jugendbuchabteilung (ed.) Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung 2003/2004 , Frankfurt a. M.: Lang, 13–26. Shavit, Z. (1986) Poetics of Children’s Literature, Athens, Georgia and London: The University of Georgia Press.

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Page 103 Part III Semiotics of Children’s and Young Adult Literature

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Page 105 Chapter Fourteen Children’s Literary Symbol Systems The outline of children’s literary theory presented in this study took children’s literary communication as its starting point (see Chapter 1), and went on to address the communicative functions or roles connected with this in more detail (see Chapters 2–5). Using this as a basis, it would now have been possible to pursue our presentation in either of two directions: in a way that demonstrates how children’s literary communication is put into practice in one particular country and what forces and institutions are concerned with this. It would also have been possible to pursue another direction, that is, to investigate what symbols and signs are used in this form of communication. I decided to begin with the former and discussed—using (West)Germany as an example—the way in which children’s literary communication takes the form of a complex system of action roles and modes of behavior (see Chapters 6– 13). In the sections that follow, I shall take the latter path: I shall deal with basic aspects of the system of symbols used in children’s literary communication or, more exactly, used in the encoding of its messages. Literary symbol systems and their storage and representation media Literary communication, in spite of its infinite possibilities, is restricted in many ways. Firstly, it is dependent on physical factors as well as the state of development of recording, reporting and, above all, communications technology. Since it does not take place in a vacuum, literary communication must also conform with the pattern that society has provided for it. Next to these physical and technical modes of determination we have another sphere—the pragmatic and institutional. A third form of restriction is literary communication’s dependence on one or more codes, by which we mean specific types or categories of

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Page 106 signs or symbols. Every message that is to be communicated to others must be transposed into a series of signs or symbols belonging to a specific code, and in so doing is subject to the basic character of the chosen code, and to its possibilities of representation. Only what is codable is communicable, but every code is restricted in its representational possibilities (Eco 1985; Schaff 1973). Literature can be seen as such a category of signs or symbols; its material is provided by language, which undergoes a secondary semiotization when used for literature, that is, it is used as a sign for a second time. Anyone who wishes to encode a message as literature, just like anyone who wishes to decode a literary message, must be familiar with the properties of the literary code. They must know and master the individual signs and symbols of this code, and be aware of their syntactic valencies. The knowledge that is thus presupposed is not simply an unstructured collection of signs and rules for their combination: The elements of this knowledge are, rather, connected with one another in such a way that we must allow that this knowledge has the character of a system. Every code, every category of symbol consists of a list of signs, that is a number of signifiers, a number of signifieds and the rules by which they can be assigned to each other, in other words, a “system of signifier-signified-assignations” (Posner 2003, 53), as well as rules controlling the linking of these signs to make longer chains of signs. For this “system of sign conventions” (ibid.) we will reserve the term ‘symbol system’. The system of sign conventions characteristic of the category ‘literature’ would then be defined as the ‘literary symbol system’. By this we mean a mentally or ontologically stored repertoire of literary signs or symbols (e.g. characters, character types, stereotypical actions and conflicts, patterns of social relationships, psychological states, natural scenery, and other motifs) and a similarly stored register of literary rules and regularities (such as the creation of characters, plot structure, the creation of tension; the creation of narrative perspective, single or multi-strandedness; the creation of rhythm, versification and rhyme technique; act and scene division, the arrangement of monolog or dialog, to name but a few), which everyone who wishes to encode messages as literature or who wishes to decode literary messages has to be able to access. The less a category of sign is part of a culture’s everyday means of communication, the more it is simply a matter for professionals or experts, the less widespread is the knowledge of its system of symbols and rules. The less often use is made of a code, the more it is applied only in special situations, the less its register of signs is stored mentally. As a rule the signs of a code together with the relevant rules for their combination can be stored nonmentally: In such cases they are codified, that is, fixed in writing and archived in more or less accessible form. The storage media in question may be reference works, dictionaries or manuals that can be consulted at need. Where the distribution and frequency of use of ‘literature’ as a category of signs is concerned, it is impossible to make any unitary statement. We are dealing with a complex and non-uniform category of symbols; thus we come across both popular and

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Page 107 elitist literary material, the latter of which is limited in distribution. Where specific short literary forms, such as riddles, jokes, anecdotes, legends or fairytales are concerned, we can assume that the relevant symbols and rules are stored in the minds of an extremely broad range of social and other circles, and in fact are part of everyone’s basic communicative equipment. The rules of construction or architectonic forms of less widespread literary forms are, on the other hand, likely to be largely codified, that is, systematically recorded and formulated in the relevant works of instruction. This is not just true of early periods of literary history, which were committed to what one might call normative poetics. In later periods of development large sections of the literary symbol system are also found fixed in a non-mental way. Yet here one would not necessarily speak of codification: In the poetics of earlier periods, regulations were formulated, which everyone who wished to take part in literary communication had to accept. Today the rules applied are more likely to be discovered and conceptually fixed retrospectively, without any linked assertion of universal validity. Among the current storage media of the literary symbol system we find poetry manuals, rhyming dictionaries, textbooks dealing with stanza form, literary style manuals, textbooks of narratology or genre theory, dictionaries of motifs, symbols, and literary content and many others. In all these storage media belonging to the literary symbol system, it is less a matter of norms being established than of dominant conventions being recorded. In practice, however, this makes little difference: The actors in the field of literary communication can always acquire the necessary knowledge of the rules from these storage media. Whether this means that they are bowing to accepted norms or merely following conventions is of secondary importance for the success of literary communication. The literary system’s non-mental storage media that were previously mentioned are probably mainly used by professional actors in the field of literary communication. The majority of those connected manage without regularly consulting these storage media and yet have a competence in dealing with the rules that is more than adequate. There must therefore be an alternative way of acquiring and refreshing knowledge of literary symbols and rules. In my view, this results from the (continual) reception of individual literary works. Exemplary works as representative media in the literary symbol system Literary works—in terms of communication theory, messages in the literary code—are not themselves part of the literary symbol system, but are produced by the application of this system of signs. They are based on a selection both of individual symbols and of rules of construction, and simultaneously on the actualization or application of the selected symbols and rules. In

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Page 108 comparison with the literary symbol system, the individual literary work represents both a ‘minus’ and a ‘plus’: It does indeed only contain a selection of symbols, but nevertheless these have taken on concrete form, they have become representational reality. Every literary work is, of course, based on the application of only a limited number of rules, but still these rules have been executed, implemented, made tangible as a concrete literary utterance in this very work. In every literary work, therefore, segments of the literary symbol system have been made tangible and visible and can be experienced in a more or less ‘pure’ form. Those who take part in literary communication have been aware of this; they have even made this clear by elevating individual works—those of as ‘pure’ a character as possible—to the status of models. Yet even the model work is not part of the symbol system, nor does it represent one of that system’s storage media. In this respect I would like to define it as a marked ‘medium of representation’ of the literary symbol system, that is, a medium that is characterized as such. Nevertheless, it is only a segment of the literary symbol system that can be seen in model works. The most frequent way in which this marking is done is by designating particular works as the models of their genre; this can also be done with styles or literary trends, which are presented in one single or in a small number of model works. In the days of normative poetics the marking of particular works as literary models was culturally unquestioned; as well as works of poetics one had collections of models, anthologies of model literary works. One could see from individual works, which had been accepted as exemplary what it was that made an ode, a sonnet, a madrigal, a canzone etc. Even with the decline of normative poetics the acquisition of the literary symbol system by means of the reception of individual works loses none of its importance. The range of the works that are in question here is now, however, only vaguely defined, just as the representative nature of a work—whether of a genre or a literary trend—can only be seen and accepted retrospectively, without ever being totally unquestioned. In general the element of rule acquisition is less at the centre of attention when reading model works than was previously the case with the study of exemplary texts: We are now dealing more with an ephemeral process, which is often not noticed as such. In both cases it is true that the literary symbol system is acquired without this being made explicit. Symbols and rules are directly stored as schemata, resulting in an automatized schematic knowledge, which can always be updated but at the same time cannot at all—or only partly—explain itself. Children’s literary symbol systems As literary communication diverges into separate special forms—such as children’s literature, for example (see Chapter 1)—one would expect a certain

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Page 109 pluralization to emerge at the level of the literary symbol system. Thus I assume that one or even several literary symbol systems have separated off specifically for the encoding of children’s literary messages. We here understand the term ‘children’s literary symbol system’ to mean a system of literary signs which, within the framework of children’s literary communication, is used for the encoding or decoding of messages. We do not intend to exclude certain possible cases by using this definition, which is derived purely pragmatically. If we talk from the outset of the children’s literary symbol system and the elevated literary symbol system as two different systems of signs and rules, then we exclude as a conceivable case the idea that the same literary symbols and combinatory rules can be used in children’s literary communication and elevated literary communication between adults. If one and the same literary symbol system were used, then distinctions between the two forms of literary communication would still be conceivable in semiotic respects. The actualization of one and the same literary symbols and combinatory rules always results in a certain amount of leeway within which elevated literary and children’s literary communication can clearly differentiate themselves from one another semiotically—that is, as different ways of applying the same signs and combinatory rules. The differences between the signs and combinatory rules used in both forms of literary communication can also, however, be so fundamental that it seems more sensible to talk here of the application of fundamentally different literary symbols and combinatory rules. In my view both cases occur in the history of children’s literature. In terms of the definition offered here, which was based purely on pragmatic considerations, a children’s literary symbol system is used in both cases. In one case the symbol system used in the children’s literary communication in question does not fundamentally differ from the literary code used in elevated literary communication between adults. In the other case the children’s literary code presents us with its own literary sign system, which is totally different from the one used in elevated literature. To speak of the existence of a children’s literary symbol system in this case alone would in my eyes represent an unjustified (and possibly also normative) advance judgement. No one dealing with children’s literature should regard it in advance as an ‘other’ literature (or expect it to be precisely that). Of course there are forms of children’s literature, which can appropriately be characterized in this way. But there are also sufficient examples to justify talking of children’s literature as not being fundamentally different from general or elevated literature. Seen historically, children’s literature was for some time not original literature but simply what the mediators selected from among the general range of literature available. Thus it is understandable that the first attempts at codifying children’s literary symbol systems were undertaken by the children’s literary representatives of the various evaluation and selection systems. Children’s literary symbol systems were only rarely fixed as rule systems for the encoding

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Page 110 of messages, for the production of literary works; they mostly occurred in the form of rule systems for the later decoding and evaluation of encoded literary messages. They were put down on paper and archived in the form of evaluation principles and decision criteria, which were primarily compiled for the use of the various groups of mediators. The effects of the historical circumstances that gave rise to this can still be felt today. Attempts to develop an aesthetics of production have not been successful to any significant degree in the field of children’s literary theory: The theoretical ideas concerned revolve even today around evaluation principles and decision criteria for the practice of mediating literature. References Eco, U. (1985) Einführung in die Semiotik [1972], 5th ed., München: Fink. [A theory of semiotics. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1976] Posner, R. (2003) ‘Kultursemiotik’, in Nünning, A. and Nünning, V. (eds) Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften, Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 39–72. Schaff, A. (1973) Einführung in die Semantik , Reinbek: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag.

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Page 111 Chapter Fifteen Fundamental Children’s Literary Norms Like every symbol system, the literary symbol system does not consist merely of a structured list of signs and rules for the combining of those signs into larger chains of signs. It also contains numerous rules of application, prescriptive statements and regulations concerning the use of the code depending on certain communicative contexts, which in other words regulate the use of the literary code in the various possible literary communication situations. It is generally thought that pragmatics is a matter of the rules, which deal with the relationships between signs and their users. Thus we should add literary pragmatics to literary semiotics as an additional area of interest. One possible communication situation is represented by literary communication with children and young people, and thus ‘children’s literary pragmatics’ would deal with the rules valid here for the use of the literary code. These rules can produce effects that are far-reaching to different degrees: They may simply be a modified application of the generally accepted register of literary symbols and the corresponding combinatory rules, but it is also conceivable that they prescribe the application of other registers of literary symbols and combinatory rules—of a kind that are not (or are no longer) in use in general literary contexts. Children’s literary pragmatics We have already looked at some rules of children’s literary pragmatics without, however, characterizing them as such. In the chapter on children’s literary communication we discussed the—more or less tacit—rules about the modes of addressing the various addressee groups. For example, which sign field—the paratextual or the textual— should the accompanying messages for the adult mediators be placed in? Should they be addressed explicitly or

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Page 112 subliminally? The complete set of rules defining how the various addressee groups should be addressed, what channels of transmission should be reserved for each of them, forms an important part of children’s literary pragmatics. Other pragmatic rules concern the relationships between the primary addressees and the characteristics of the message to be mediated. Should the message have different characteristics in the case of children’s literary communication—e.g. should it be aimed more at the transmission of knowledge and therefore be coded differently (in more detail, with more redundancy)? A third group of pragmatic rules concerns the question of what relationship the message and the signs and combinatory rules used to encode it should have to the primary addressees ability to decode, that is, children’s and young people’s competence in terms of reception. A final group of pragmatic rules that we should mention here determines what parts of the symbol register of general literature and what combinatory rules it is possible to use in children’s literary communication. In this chapter I will restrict myself to the discussion of some of the fundamental pragmatic rules of children’s literary communication. The specific characteristics of the messages mediated in children’s literary communication arise from the addressee groups targeted in this communication: children and young people on the one side and adult mediators on the other. There are therefore rules and conventions of literary pragmatics that are responsible for the fundamental character of children’s literature. Here I will only deal in more detail with those pragmatic rules, which the producers, mediators, and critics taking part in children’s literary communication are firstly aware of, and secondly regard as obligatory: In other words those that have the character of an explicit children’s literary norm. Fixed historical forms of fundamental qualities of children’s literature Most people probably have some ideas about the fundamental character of children’s literature. These may be totally individual and original ideas, but we are normally dealing with views that spring from a general level of expectation, however that may be created. Most of these fundamental ideas about children’s literature do not provide a true reflection of the conventions that actually prevail in this literary communication field: There is always a certain tension between them. The reason for this is that, with these ideas, we are mainly dealing with normative definitions, with prescriptive regulations. History confirms this: Fundamental features of the symbol category “children’s literature” were established deductively by the experts responsible for this, that is derived from general (religious or secular) convictions and more specifically from their views of the nature of education, their image of children and young people, from general (literary

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Page 113 and) aesthetic principles etc. I would like to categorize the results of such deductions, where they concern some fundamental features of the symbol category “children’s literature” as ‘fundamental children’s literary norms’. From the 18th century onwards (and sometimes even before then) we encounter, in forewords and separate articles, a large number of demands that acceptable children’s literature and indeed all legitimate reading material for children and young people must fulfil. We are faced with proclamations of a simply incalculable plethora of different (more or less fundamental) children’s literary norms. When we now turn to some of the children’s literary norms that can be met with historically, it is not a matter of testing the validity of their reasoning or analyzing their (mostly universal) claims to authority. These proclamations interest us because they are effective, historically fixed definitions of fundamental qualities of the symbol category ‘children’s literature’, which—for varying lengths of time—became an essential part of the children’s literary symbol system. It would only make sense to concern ourselves with their claims to normative authority if we too were trying to develop and justify children’s literary norms. Here, however, we are simply trying to develop a scheme that will allow us to describe and classify the norms that actually historically existed. Considering the abundance of children’s literary norms in history, we shall here select only those which prevailed for longer periods of time. Our focus will be on the period from the 18th century to the present day, although some individual norms probably appeared earlier. We also deal with norms, which were more or less continuously in force in Germany from the late 18th—some only from the early 19th—century. In so doing we must keep in mind that these long-accepted norms were differently articulated and terminologically defined in the individual periods. In choosing these long-accepted children’s literary norms we are by no means intending—if not in a deductive, then in an inductive manner—to arrive at extra-historical ‘essential characteristics’ of the symbol category ‘children’s literature’. The chosen norms are not intended to be proclaimed as anthropological constants: We are dealing with no more and no less than historically existing and long-lasting definitions, with prescriptions, which survived for a long time. Children’s literature as didactic literature This norm states that one of the central responsibilities of children’s literature is to mediate knowledge and values to its child and youth readers: mainly knowledge and values that are educationally relevant, which in the view of the period concerned should be mediated to the developing minds of these readers in the course of their enculturation. The description of the norm chosen here follows Göte Klingberg, who understands the term “didactic

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Page 114 intention” to mean the intention “to mediate knowledge and inculcate moral attitudes” (Klingberg 1973, 79). This definition derives from the content level and consists of two components. Children’s literature should first of all serve the intellectual development of children and young people, their acquisition of knowledge. Depending on the curriculum of the period in question this can be theological, scientific, geographical, technological, mythological, anthropological, historical or sociological. Children’s literature always fulfils this norm where it appears in the form of textbooks or non-fiction. With the development of the compulsory school system and the accompanying dissociation of school reading and children’s (leisure) reading, children’s literature is to some extent relieved of the burden of mediating knowledge: It develops more and more the character of a supplementary aid to the intellectual education, which it is now the schools’ responsibility to mediate. The commitment to mediating knowledge does still, however, extend to the field of children’s literary fiction, although here the mediation of knowledge usually has the status of a supplementary intention, a secondary goal. According to the second component of this norm, children’s literature should mediate values and thus serve religious and moral education (if not both, then at least the latter). This can be a matter of both fundamental (religious and moral) values and of concrete norms or even instructions for individual spheres of action. The values and norms can be concerned with the relationship of individuals to the highest being or beings, to their fellow human beings and to themselves (religious, social and moral values and norms). One should also add the sphere of training in manners and behavior. Unlike the field of intellectual education, children’s literature was not noticeably freed of its responsibilities in the field of inculcating moral values and good behavior by the establishment of the compulsory school system. Teaching manners and moral education remained to a large extent the responsibility of the family— and therefore also of children’s reading as leisure reading. The methodology of the literary mediation of values underwent a fundamental change: At the beginning we have rote learning of commandments and prohibitions, rules of behavior and other regulations taken from the relevant text books and factual books (catechisms, moral tracts, books of manners, parental instructions etc.) When this change in methodology is complete, we have moral and behavioral education, which makes use almost exclusively of “fine literature” (as exemplary moral writing in the broadest sense). Further educational goals Let us at this point mention in addition some further educational children’s literary norms that can be found in history: Firstly, norms, which wish to see children’s literature pressed into the service of limited educational goals. We

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Page 115 will then go on to look at the promotion of comprehensive educational goals intended to be fulfilled by children’s literature. • Children’s literature was seen as a means of rhetorical education, with a major role being given to school drama. In Germany this children’s literary norm prevailed from the beginning of the modern period to the mid 18th century. • We should also mention the use made of children’s literature within the framework of the initial teaching of reading and in the extension and stabilization of reading competence. This functionalization is most visible with the primer and the reader, although since the 19th century these have become increasingly rare among the categories of books read in children’s free time. • Children’s literature has always to a certain extent performed de facto a number of enculturating functions. However, it is only recently that people have been consciously aware of these and partly even raised them to the level of a norm. Children’s literature brings about the “mediation of common schemata for the perception of reality” and therefore encourages the readers’ “awareness of the world”, their sense of reality; it helps to develop the imaginative and emotional life as well as the “self-perception” of its addressees by means of the “range of emotional empathy” it contains (Hurrelmann 1998, 49). • Use has been made of children’s literature for purposes of the acquisition of literature or literary education (Lypp 1988; Ewers 1997). It is said to contain “no matter how implicitly, a kind of curriculum for the acquisition of literary and reading competences, a range of reading material arranged according to levels of difficulty in terms of, for example, the understanding of decontextualized language and literature in every respect, of poetic conventions, of genre-specific modes of representation, forms of indirect speech etc.” (Hurrelmann 1998, 49f). • Finally children’s literature has been claimed for educational projects, which are not aimed at fostering individual abilities and competences, but are meant to affect the person as a whole. This might be called the encouragement of the balanced development of all sides of the individual, of the harmonious collaboration of all their powers, of a balanced inner being etc. In this case the early 19th century uses the German term “Gemütsbildung” (formation of the soul or spirit), which is greatly encouraged—if not made possible solely—by the enjoyment of fine art and literature. Later, people spoke of finding or forming oneself, finding or constructing one’s identity—all processes, which could be set in motion by children’s literature. We suggest that all norms, which require of children’s literature some kind of suitability for narrower or broader upbringing or educational goals (cf. Ewers 2000, 104f), should be included under the overarching norm ‘children’s

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Page 116 literature as educational literature’. Göte Klingberg speaks of children’s literature as having a “pedagogic intention” or as being “the function of an educational ideal” (Klingberg 1973, 79). One should keep in mind, however, that not all the norms subsumed under this heading also prevailed for ‘a long time’. By contrast, in the norm ‘children’s literature as didactic literature, as the medium of the acquisition of knowledge and the mediation of values’, we have not only a long-accepted but also the oldest definition of its characteristics (Ladenthin 1998 and 2000; Spinner 1994). Children’s literature as literature suitable for children and young people In terms of this norm the messages transmitted by children’s literature should be ‘suited’ to their child or youth receivers. This corresponds roughly to the traditional rhetorical demand for “external appropriateness of what is said”. In the creation of the message attention can be paid to the relevant linguistic capability of the child and youth receivers, to their intellectual capacity, to their understanding, to their general state of knowledge and wealth of experience, and finally also to their ability to decode messages. One should also take into account the predilections and particular interests of children and young people. Concern for the target group need not necessarily include all the above-mentioned factors. Children’s literature can confine itself to being suitable to the current linguistic, cognitive and literary competence of the readers without also catering for their likes and interests. Concern for the receivers and their individual capabilities has to be inscribed in the arrangement of the message, that is, it must find expression in specific features and characteristics of the text. A text is defined as suitable for children and young people if it contains sufficient features that are regarded as suitable for them. One can imagine features that would be considered suitable for children and young people at all levels of the text and the paratext aimed at them: thus one could speak of the ‘child suitability’ of the layout and illustrations, the language, the style, the narrative mode, the characters, the motifs and of the themes of a literary message, to name but a few of the possibilities (see Part IV of this study). The norm developed in the previous section is indubitably the older. In almost all cultures children’s literature first appears as plain (i.e. to a large extent subject only to this norm) didactic literature, which for a long time did not seem problematic (Shavit 1986, 133ff). With the emergence of the norm of child suitability we have the beginning of the process of the self-assertion of children’s literature, which is now given the specific responsibility of mediating between the need to mediate knowledge and values on the one hand and the capabilities and needs of children and young people on the other. At the same time people begin reflecting on the nature of children’s literature, which

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Page 117 is now no longer perceived as a self-explanatory, relatively natural process but as a challenge, which it is by no means easy to meet. Children’s literature as a fully adequate form of literature This norm is based on the expectation that children’s literature will make use of the general stylistic forms and literary genres of its time, that it will as far as possible respect the aesthetic principles and (elevated) literary conventions then prevailing. Children’s literature should, in other words, correspond to its age’s concept of literature and therefore demonstrate that it is itself real literature. In terms of communication theory this means that to encode the messages contained in children’s literary communication one must not use a special literary symbol system, but rather that prevailing in the general literature of the time. At the end of the 19th century the youth writing critic Heinrich Wolgast epitomized this literary norm in an extremely effective formula: “Anyone who wishes to swim must enter the water, and young people cannot extract any enjoyment from works of literary art if none are presented to them”. One should only let young people “enjoy real works of literature [ … ]. Youth writing in literary form must be a work of art” (Wolgast 1910, 23f). In most cases this norm is put forward in opposition to a prevailing practice, that is, to the habitual children’s literary practices of its age. One could reduce these prevailing practices to one common denominator: In them the question of the stylistic forms and literary genres to be used is decided on a case-by-case basis—i.e. functionally. Other children’s literary norms are foregrounded, such as a commitment to mediating knowledge and values, or the responsibility for child suitability, and thus the stylistic forms and literary genres, which best promote these aims are preferred. De facto there is no norm or strict prescription in children’s literary practice concerning the stylistic direction to be followed; instead the maxim is that one should use whichever literary forms and principles of construction are most suitable at any given time. If this leads to divergence from the prevailing concept of literature, this is regarded as unproblematic. Whether children’s literature is real literature seems to be a secondary consideration; what is decisive is that children’s literature should fulfill the other goals intended for it. In general terms it is hardly possible to say what other fundamental children’s literary norms that of ‘children’s literature as a fully adequate form of literature’ is compatible with: This depends on the general concept of literature in use at any given time. In eras when literature is generally seen as a medium of value mediation, of moral education, children’s literature will be totally compatible with the didactic norm and so be regarded as a fully adequate form of literature. This must largely have been the case in the 18th century. In Germany in the last third of that century, however, some literary trends freed themselves from the functional direction of literature towards

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Page 118 moral didacticism and brought other literary norms into play: literature as “expressive poetry” as “the poetry of experience”; literature as revealing the interior spirit or as the expression of the soul; literature as a paradigm of reconciliation (between the individual forces within the spirit, between Man and Nature, within human society) to name only some of the literary concepts of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Individually these new concepts of literature also struck a chord in the field of children’s literature—even as early as the late 18th century. Nevertheless, the validity of the norm ‘children’s literature as didactic literature’ remained unshaken. Even the influential Romantic movement at the beginning of the 19th century only succeeded in doing this to a limited extent. Following the Classical and Romantic periods a concept of literature became established in Germany at the level of high culture, which largely tabooed the use of literature for purposes of moral education. In this situation, children’s literature, if it wished to be accepted as real literature, would now have had to retreat from any moral or didactic intentions on its part. But it was only at the end of the 19th century that a leading children’s literary critic, in the person of the above-mentioned Heinrich Wolgast, blasted the use of children’s literature for purposes of knowledge acquisition and the inculcation of values as an illegitimate pedagogic takeover: “Literature can and must not be a means of promoting knowledge and morality. It is debased when it is placed in the power of alien forces” (Wolgast 1910, 21). Of course, we cannot really talk of a dichotomy in principle between literature and education even in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was by no means all, but only some educational instrumentalizations of literature that were deprecated by the representatives of high culture, no matter how much its apparently purely aesthetic character was emphasized (cf. Ewers 2000, 108f). Even Heinrich Wolgast, no matter how much he rejected morally didactic intentions, still held fast to the idea of the educational effect of literature where it was directed at the development of the whole personality. Children’s literature as the revival of folk literature With the last of the four children’s literary norms we are here dealing with, it is also a matter of committing children’s literature to a particular stylistic form, a particular concept of literature. Admittedly, the focal point is no longer the prevailing concept of literature, but a mode of literary practice that is situated in the past—and not the recent or relatively recent past, but a distant past, which it is difficult to grasp because it preceded all written culture. The poetic genres, which are presumed to originate from these early periods, from the early stages of human—or a people’s—development have been included under the definition “nature poetry” or “folk poetry” or “folk literature” since the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This fourth norm suggests

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Page 119 that children’s literature should not be based on the ‘modern’ concepts of literature at any given period, but should take as its ideal folk poetry, which is completely unmodern—archaic, in fact. Children’s literature should stand in opposition to the culture surrounding it; it should in the midst of modern times represent a revival of folk poetry and make use of old traditional genres—folk songs, proverbs, folk tales, sagas, legends, farces, animal epics, Punch and Judy shows etc. This children’s literary norm may be put into practice in various ways: the revival of folk literature may be a way of describing its rediscovery as children’s reading. The surviving relics of this old—even primitive—literature are to be placed in the hands of children and young people as reading matter by means of special children’s and youth editions. The best-known example of this way of implementing the norm ‘children’s literature as the revival of folk literature’ is the Brothers Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales, 1812/15; 2nd ed. 1819). The norm can, however, also be implemented by producing children’s literature of the same type as or modeled on the old folk literature. Here revival means the more or less faithful literary imitation of the original folk literature, which is then available as a modern equivalent, almost a facsimile. From the historical point of view we are dealing with the most recent of the children’s literary norms selected here: It had occasional supporters in the late 18th century, but only established itself on a broader basis in the course of the 19th century following the late Romantic period. Since then it has continuously found champions to uphold it. The decision to base the norms of children’s literature on the rules prevailing in primitive “folk literature” rather than those of current (elevated) literature is usually explained by the nature of children and even partly of young people, which is said to be pre-modern—even archaic. The supporters of this norm are nevertheless aware that the child and youth readers of our day have, under the influence of modern education, been largely alienated from the ‘true’ nature of children and young people. In view of these segments of the target group, children’s literature conceived as a revival of folk literature does not fulfill the norm of child suitability. It is not only that it is anachronistic in literary respects: It is unfamiliar and alien to broad swathes of the child and youth readership. It is intended to have an educational effect in the sense that it may be able to influence those segments of the young readership who have been ‘miseducated’ in this modernistic way so that they find their way back to their ‘true’ nature. References Ewers, H.-H. (1997) ‘Kinderliteratur, Literaturerwerb und literarische Bildung’, in Rank, B. and Rosebrock, C. (eds) Kinderliteratur, literarische Sozialisation und Schule, Weinheim: Dt. Studien Verlag, 55–74.

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Page 120 ——(2000) ‘Kinder- und Jugendliteratur ›zwischen Pädagogik und Dichtung‹. Über die Fragwürdigkeit einer angeblichen Schicksalsfrage’, in Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung 1999/2000 , Stuttgart: Metzler, 98–114. Hurrelmann, B. (1998) ‘Kinderliteratur—Sozialisationsliteratur?’, in Richter, K. and Hurrelmann, B. (eds) Kinderliteratur im Unterricht. Theorien und Modelle zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur im didaktischen Kontext , Weinheim and München: Juventa, 45–60. Klingberg, G. (1973) Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung. Eine Einführung , Wien, Köln and Graz: Böhlau. Ladenthin, V. (1998) ‘Erziehung durchs Kinderbuch?’, in Zeitschrift für Didaktik der Philosophie und Ethik 20, No. 3, 163–172. ——(2000) ‘Kinder- und Jugendbücher: Poetik und Autorität’, in Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung 1999/2000 , Stuttgart: Metzler, 86–98. Lypp, M. (1988) ‘Literarische Bildung durch Kinderliteratur’, in Conrady, P. (ed.) LiteraturErwerb, Frankfurt a. M.: dipa, 70–79. Shavit, Z. (1986) Poetics of Children’s Literature, Athens, Georgia and London: The University of Georgia Press. Spinner, K. H. (1994) ‘Die Dialektik des Pädagogischen in der Geschichte der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur’, in Rank, B. (ed.) Erfahrungen mit Phantasie. Analysen zur Kinderliteratur und didaktische Entwürfe , Hohengehren: Burgbücherei Schneider, 14–24. Wolgast, H. (1910) Das Elend unserer Jugendliteratur. Ein Beitrag zur künstlerischen Erziehung der Jugend , 4th ed., Hamburg: Selbstverlag; Leipzig: Wunderlich.

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Page 121 Chapter Sixteen Children’s Literary Concepts The four children’s literary norms discussed in the previous chapter are not rival, mutually exclusive definitions of children’s literature. On the contrary, they can be combined with one another. There are admittedly some limitations where the last two norms are concerned: Children’s literature (or a children’s literary trend) cannot simultaneously orientate itself in toto on the relevant modern period’s concept of literature and archaic folk literature (but possibly in one segment on the former, and in an other segment on the latter). Again, children’s literature (or a children’s literary trend), which measures itself by contemporary (elevated) literature or archaic folk literature, cannot at the same time indulge in a functional concept of literature. These incompatibilities result from the fact that the third and fourth children’s literary norms, as well as the functional conception of literature that is incompatible with them, relate to the same aspect of children’s literature. Classification of the fundamental children’s literary norms In all other cases, however, the fundamental children’s literary norms contain definitions of different aspects or qualities of children’s literature, which is why they can be combined with one another. The referential aspect of the third and fourth norms has already been mentioned: what is important with these two is the relevant choice of stylistic form and literary genre (in terms of communication theory, the literary symbol system to be used in each case). By contrast, the first fundamental norm—children’s literature as didactic literature—like all the other educational norms we have mentioned, is concerned with establishing the aims and objectives of children’s literature, while the second norm—children’s literature as literature that is

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Page 122 suitable for children—is based on regulating the reader–text relationship. This produces the first scheme for the classification of children’s literary norms: They can be distinguished by the particular aspect of the work that they are intended to regulate prescriptively, by their aims and objectives, the reader-text relationship and the type of literature. Children’s literary norms that contradict one another have often been classified as oppositional pairs. We have already mentioned one of these oppositional pairs: the third and fourth norms—the definition of children’s literature as fully adequate literature or as a revival of folk literature—were placed in opposition to the functional conception of literature. Pure entertainment as the goal of children’s literature is generally regarded as being in an oppositional relationship to all educational children’s literary norms. Like the functional conception of literature, the element of entertainment in children’s literature is very rarely thematized, let alone raised to the level of an indispensable quality of children’s literature. It is often dismissed as a trivial, irrelevant, accidental quality of children’s literature, which is only reluctantly discussed (Dettmar 2002; Ewers 2002). A mode of organization and representation, which is concerned solely with the object or theme in question has been seen as being in opposition to the norm of child suitability: Here the idea is simply the pursuit of “immanent suitability”, which is, however, not normal practice in the field of children’s literature (Ueding 1990). Table 16.1 Classification of Children’s Literary Norms. Aspect of the Object Children’s Literary Norm Oppositional Norm Being Considered Objectives set Children’s literature Children’s literature as pure – as a medium of the mediation of knowledge and entertainment values (didactic literature) – as a means of rhetorical education – as a medium of the acquisition of literature and literary education – as a means of promoting reading – as a medium of aesthetic education – as a medium of personality or identity formation Relationship to Children’s literature as literature suitable for children, Children’s literature solely as literature Addressee as literature which is ‘externally suitable’ with ‘immanent suitability’ Type or Concept of Children’s literature Children’s literature as functional Literature – as otally adequate form of literature (‘real’ literature) literature – as evival of folk literature

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Page 123 From norms to concepts In the history of children’s literature we meet with normative statements, which attempt to define not just its individual characteristics but also its fundamental character, its most important distinguishing features and its central functions within the overall complex. I would like in these cases to speak of ‘children’s literary concepts’. Historically they have always been presented as ‘definitions of the essence’ of children’s literature. Concepts of this kind consist as a rule of a combination of several normative definitions, although a mere listing of indispensable attributes does not make a children’s literary concept. In my view we can only talk of a concept when the individual norms have been tested to see if they are consistent with each other and have been given specific weightings and placed in a hierarchical order. It is only when this sort of weighting of the individual norms has not been simply produced de facto, but made explicit and based on (scientific) evidence, that we can talk of ‘children’s literary theory’. What has been said about norms is also true of children’s literary concepts: We are always dealing with historical definitions, and so it would be wrong to work towards an eternal, universal concept of children’s literature. In my view we should not even assume that there are concepts of children’s literature whose validity has lasted beyond the period of their creation, as has been shown to be possible with some children’s literary norms. It therefore makes no sense at this point to present examples of individual historically evidenced children’s literary theories. Instead, I would like to begin from the children’s literary norms we have dealt with here and produce an overview of all the possible combinations and hierarchies into which these norms can be organized. The result would be a schematic presentation of the possible children’s literary concepts, to the extent that they make use of the norms developed here. In terms of structure, each of these concepts consists of a choice of three fundamental children’s literary norms placed in a hierarchical order: One of the three chosen norms would be given a position of priority, which would have to be complied with in all circumstances. A further norm would have the status of an admittedly indispensable but nevertheless secondary definition. This norm, too, would have to be complied with—but only to the extent that the norm with priority was not transgressed. Finally, the remaining norm would have subordinate status, and would be complied with as far as possible within the limited scope remaining to it. It would, as it were, almost have the status of an accidental quality of children’s literature. To create a broader level of validity for this scheme of children’ literary concepts, I would like to modify the basic premise in one respect: We will not base the scheme on a single educative children’s literary norm but leave open a functional space for all norms of this kind. Thus I replace the norm ‘children’s literature as didactic literature’ with the general formulation ‘children’s literature as educative literature’. We should therefore realize that wherever

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Page 124 ‘educative’ or ‘educative function’ appear they should be substituted with one or more actual educative children’s literary norms. At its first level, the scheme distinguishes between concepts according to which children’s literature should primarily be educative literature (= priority of the relevant educational goal) and those for which it should be first and foremost suitable for children (= priority of external suitability), in order to contrast them with concepts according to which children’s literature should in the first place be a fully adequate representation of its period’s (elevated) literature (= priority of its literary nature) or a revival of folk literature (= priority of its ‘folk’ character). At a second level these four types of concept each split into two different positions—depending on which of the remaining norms is given the rank of secondary definition of children’s literature. This then automatically determines, which of the norms is given the subordinate place in the particular type of concept. With regard to the third position we would like to include a further divergence: We consider it sensible to speak of adherence to the third or fourth children’s literary norm only if it has primary or at least secondary priority. In all other cases we have, in our view, a functional conception of literature. We continuously meet with works of children’s literature, which fulfill several fundamental children’s literary norms in such a way that one cannot discern any hierarchical ordering of the norms. Works like this meet with approval on the part of children’s literary critics and theorists of all shades of opinion, although they each nevertheless tend to pick out the characteristic that seems to them to be the primary quality of children’s literature. Should we not, then, proclaim the equal fulfillment of the educative, the child-suitable and the literary or folk literary norms as the children’s literary ideal and eschew any hierarchy of norms (and, in the case of such works, emphatically praise not one but all aspects)? In my experience the history of children’s literature proves that such works are relatively rare occurrences; the vast majority are far from such balanced fulfillment of all the norms, and it is precisely these retrograde titles, which force critics and theorists to adopt a position. In actual fact the profile of the various children’s literary positions becomes clearer mainly in critical involvement with children’s literary titles that are more one-sided and partly also considered problematic. The way critics and mediators act in the case of a title that has little or no educative value depends on their own, more or less consciously adopted, hierarchy of norms. Those who regard educative value as the highest priority will criticize it mercilessly. We often come across a choice of genre that is exclusively based on consideration for the child or youth reader, implying a divergence from the prevailing (elevated) literary conventions. A critic for whom the literary character of children’s literature (in accordance with the third norm) is of the greatest importance will find it difficult to accept such decisions (such as, perhaps, using a genre that has long been outdated in the general literary world).

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Page 125 Table 16.2 Schematic Representation of Possible Children’s Literary Concepts. Primary I. Educative function II. External suitability (child suitability) definition of children’s literature Secondary External suitability Literary or ‘folk’ character Educative function Literary or ‘folk’ character definition of children’s literature Subordinate Functional conception of External suitability Functional conception of Educative function (accidental) literature literature definition of children’s literature Children’s CL as educative literature CL as educative literature CL as literature suitable CL as literature suitable literary suitable for children, orientated on elevated or for children with an for children orientated on concept in conceived as functional folk literature with educative character, elevated or folk literature reality literature adaptation to the reader asconceived as functional with a subordinate subordinate factor literature educative function Primary III. (Elevated) literary character IV. Folk literary character definition of children’s literature Secondary Educative function External suitability Educative function External suitability definition of children’s literature Subordinate External suitability Educative function External suitability Educative function (accidental) definition of children’s literature Description CL as fully adequate CL as fully adequate CL as revival of folk CL as revival of folk of the literary form with literary form suitable for literature with educative literature suitable for children’s educative character and children and with character and children and with literary adaptation to the reader subordinate educative adaptation to the reader subordinate educative concept as subordinate factor function as subordinate factor function

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Page 126 Concept-dependent corpora Children’s literary concepts, however conscious and elaborate they may be or have been, have formed and form the basis of compilations of works, which I would like to define as ‘concept-dependent corpora’. The corpora discussed in the second chapter of this study (in terms of communication theory, forms of children’s literary messages) were only distinguished in terms of their external communicative role; text-related perspectives relating to form and content were totally excluded. The category ‘intended children’s reading’ (or intentional children’s literature), for example, included all the texts, which were regarded in a specific period as suitable children’s reading —no matter for what text-related considerations of form and content. One could imagine societies in which the range of accepted children’s reading was entirely based on one single concept. As a rule, though, one would probably find several alternative concepts, resulting in the fact that the whole spectrum of intended children’s reading is made up of several (children’s) literary movements and trends: in other words, of several conceptdependent corpora. As a result, the proponents of individual concepts will never accept the totality of what is published as suitable children’s reading, but only a segment of this—that segment, which corresponds to the hierarchy of norms established within their own concept. They then describe this segment as ‘real’ or ‘genuine’ children’s literature while the remaining segments are disparaged as ‘false’ or ‘spurious’ children’s literature. The corpora differ not just in respect of their size but also in terms of their internal composition. The corpus of intended children’s reading presents an extremely heterogeneous range of material. By contrast, concept-dependent corpora contain groups of titles of relatively great homogeneity because the works collected in such a corpus have similar textual features. The corpora dealt with in the second chapter of this study are all—as we mentioned there— of recent date and have been developed under the aegis of the children’s literary research of the last few decades. Concept-dependent corpora—alternatively, normatively defined children’s literature—are, by contrast, as old and as multifarious as the subject itself. The role of children’s literary concepts in the children’s literary action systems A large number of actors participate in the production, distribution and mediation of children’s literature, as we have demonstrated in the second section of this book. Each individual one of them is confronted with a specific role, depending in each case on the individual system and the actual function in question. The structuring of these roles is, however, not fixed to such an extent that there is no more “room for individual structuring

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Page 127 and combinations, which could be determined by subjective factors” (Heydebrand/Winko 1996, 93). This is all the more true the more it is a matter of actual individual decisions–decisions, perhaps, about whether this or that title should be published, stocked, accepted or purchased. In these cases individuals can give free rein to their own attitudes and value judgements; here they can demonstrate their own fundamental principles. By “principles” we mean a “pattern of thought that is not situation-depen-dent” (ibid., 53), “an individual’s acquired, central and relatively permanent ‘preference-model’ which gives rise to and guides their actions” (ibid., 50). Their own conception of children’s literature is indubitably one of the core elements of the principles of the actors in the children’s literary action system. Even those who only fleetingly come into contact with this action system—as the occasional purchaser of a children’s book, for example—at least have some prior idea of what it is that constitutes children’s literature. No matter what actors are concerned, in every case their own ideas about the fundamental characteristics of children’s literary communication will guide their actual judgements and selections. It is possible to classify the (pre-)conceptions of children’s literature found in these actors from several perspectives —for example, the degree to which they are explicit and thought-out (cf. on this point also: Heydebrand/Winko 1996, Ch. I, 1.4 and 1.5). However, the question that is of particular interest here is whether, within the individual action systems, ideas have developed or are still developing which are specific to those fields. For each individual actor, fundamental conceptions of children’s literature are likely to have been molded to a certain extent by personal biography. However, precisely in the case of those professionally involved with children’s literature, these biographical influences will have been overlaid by their theoretical involvement with the subject during their bookselling, librarianship or social education training or their academic teacher training. The majority of professional mediators are therefore likely to be proponents of the view of children’s literature prevailing in their professional field and the training establishments connected with it. There have been very few targeted investigations of implicit and explicit concepts of literature in the German-speaking areas, yet we are probably right in assuming that every group of mediators will tend to have their own “preference model”. For non-professional mediators (parents, relatives, godparents etc), on the other hand, biographical and social (class-specific) influences are likely to play a greater role. References Dettmar, U. (2002) ‘Docere—delectare—movere. Zum Stellenwert der Unterhaltung in Poetik und Praxis kinderliterarischer Aufklärung’, in Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung 2001/2002 , Stuttgart: Metzler, 15–33.

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Page 128 Ewers, H.-H. (2002) ‘Soll die Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der Unterhaltung dienen? Versuch, eine alte Streitfrage der Literaturpädagogik zu schlichten’, in Ewers, H.-H. (ed.) Lesen zwischen neuen Medien und Pop-Kultur. Kinder- und Jugendliteratur im Zeitalter multimedialen Entertainments , Weinheim and München: Juventa, 33–50. Heydebrand, R. von and Winko, S. (1996) Einführung in die Wertung von Literatur. Systematik—Geschichte— Legitimation, Paderborn et al.: Schöningh (= UTB 1953). Ueding, G. (1990) ‘Literatur mit beschränkter Haftung? Über die Misere der Kinder- und Jugendbuchkritik’, in Scharioth, B. and Schmidt, J. (eds) Zwischen allen Stühlen: zur Situation der Kinder und Jugendbuchkritik . Tutzing: Evang. Akad., 17-31.

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Page 129 Chapter Seventeen Children’s Literary Discourse Divergent views or ideas about one and the same thing can co-exist peacefully, especially when they apply to different fields. There is always, however, a tendency to bring disagreement into the open, to start a conflict of opinions with the aim of finally coming to a unanimous view of the thing or matter concerned. It is thanks to discourse theory that various attempts have been made to work out the internal dynamic of the collective knowledge that exists about something and the rivalries between different theoretical systems. Discourses are produced by systems which “control the production of knowledge”; and it is conceivable that “within one discourse [ … ] different theories can co-exist and compete” (Titzmann 1991, 407). So far we have defined children’s literary norms and concepts in terms of communication theory as central elements of the children’s literary code. From the perspective of discourse theory, we are dealing with a central branch of any specific period’s children’s literary discourse when we investigate the explicit children’s literary norms and concepts met with in that period. Children’s literature as the subject of a rational discourse Discourses are limiting, in that they pre-form the perception of any given subject, that is, allow some aspects to be open to discourse while tabooing others. In modern societies, however, discourses no longer have a monolithic character: They generally contain several discursive forms of a thing or subject which compete with each other, call each other mutually into question and thus create a certain degree of instability. For Anthony Giddens this is connected with the “reflexivity of the modern”: Reason undermines not only the “claims of tradition” but also itself when it is “conceived in the sense of the acquisition of irrefutably certain knowledge”. Where modernity is concerned, “equating knowledge with certainty has proved to be a misunderstanding” (Giddens 1996,

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Page 130 55). At the same time, modernity also dictates the way in which discursive conflicts should be regulated: Differences between views on one and the same thing should only be expressed in terms of argumentation. Ideally, the view which brings the better arguments to bear should win. Within modernity rivalry over theories about a subject should be fought out on rational lines. Though it is here very much a matter of an ideal, children’s literary discourse has also shown a tendency towards rationalization since the 18th century. This gives certain of the groups involved in it an advantageous position: groups which are professionally specialized in rationalized argumentation. This mainly means the emergence in the 18th century—particularly from among theologians—of the professional class comprising philosophers and educationalists, who undermined the religious foundations of children’s literary norms with the aid of modern rational anthropology and developmental psychology. Members of this class—often themselves educated as theologians— acquire, as children’s literary mediators, critics, publishers, revisers and authors, considerable influence over all those who control de facto the production and distribution of children’s books (church institutions, publishers, printers, booksellers etc). Down to the present day educators, teachers, seminar leaders, lecturers, and professors (mainly of education, later also of primary school and literary didactics and of librarianship) have played a decisive role in the formulation and establishment of children’s literary norms and concepts (cf. what was said about the pedagogic action system in Chapter 2). A second professional class which is equally mainly concerned with the persuasiveness of arguments, that of literary critics and scholars, remains in terms of its influence far behind the educationalists, only gaining in importance in the course of the 20th century (cf. what was said about the action system ‘children’s public literary forum’ in Chapter 11). Other methods of settling conflicts The argumentative methods of both the educationalists and the literary critics and scholars are normally used to work out their own logical position, to find a consistency that is immanent in children’s literature by focusing, for example, on its genuinely educative or literary and aesthetic qualities. In opposition to this we find a mode of argumentation that sees in children’s literature primarily a medium for the distribution of general (world) views, thus making children’s literary discourse subordinate to an external discourse concerned with world-views. The evaluations that take place within it no longer follow its own immanent logic but rather distinctions derived from this external system. Discursive conflicts are then not settled within children’s literary discourse, but on another level of discourse: The views that are compatible with certain external views are given preference. This could mean the doctrines of a particular religion, the social ethics of a specific class, political

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Page 131 ideas like patriotism, nationalism, republicanism and Zionism, to name but some of the possibilities. We are now meeting with a category of children’s literary norms that has not yet been mentioned, whose common factor is that they regard children’s literature as a medium for the transference of general world-views, as being primarily denominational, bourgeois, proletarian, patriotic, socialist or Zionist (etc.) literature. I would like to include all these norms under the term ‘children’s literature as literature promoting a (religious, social or political) world view’, so that we see this as a specific branch of the norm ‘children’s literature as didactic literature, as literature mediating knowledge and values’. In the case of modern educationalists, and literary critics and scholars, we are dealing with rival theories that are internal to the discourse. With the proponents of differing world views the decision between rival children’s literary concepts is shifted to the level of a general discourse of world views: The view of children’s literature which is based on (what is assumed to be) the correct world view is the one that will triumph. The less the battle of world-views runs on rational lines, the more we are dealing with ideological exhibition fights which normally lead to the ideologizing of children’s literature as well. I would like to mention a third method of settling discursive conflicts: This takes place within the system, but lacks any of the features of coming to a rational understanding. We are looking at a common practice that consists of the conversion of active power into discursive power. This mode of settling discursive conflicts can be practiced by all those actors in the children’s literary distribution and evaluation systems who have a gate-keeper function, in other words have the power to interrupt children’s literary communication before it has been completed. The mediators active in the various areas of the children’s literary action system can compel people to respect their own position by permanently allowing only those children’s literary items which are acceptable to them to pass through the system, thus forcing those producers who are dependent on the success of children’s literary communication to submit to their personal discursive preferences. These mediators need no rational arguments to assert their position: they can create discursive facts simply by their actions. In modern societies mediators are also expected to support their actions rationally, so that we are here dealing with what is more of an extreme case of mediatory action. Nevertheless, in the history of children’s literature individual mediator groups endued with the power to act have again and again brought about or ensured the perpetuation of discursive situations which could no longer be supported rationally. The author as an ordering category in literary discourse The section of the children’s literary symbol system dealt with in this chapter contains—as does the children’s literary discourse of any period—rules for

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Page 132 the ordering and organization of the object field—we could call them ordering categories. These ordering categories —like children’s literary norms and concepts themselves—do not simply reflect what is already in existence: To a certain extent they mold and form the object itself, which would be something different if other ordering categories, norms and concepts were imposed on it. With these ordering categories we will confine ourselves to the question of whether and to what extent the author has risen to be an ordering category in children’s literary discourse. Michel Foucault pointed out that with the category ‘author’ we are also—if not mainly—concerned with an ordering element and at the same time a power dispositive in (literary) discourse (Foucault 1988). On the German side this was taken up and developed further by Heinrich Bosse (Bosse 1981a, 1981b). From the perspective of discourse theory the ‘author’ represents an “ordering power which can govern the practice of speaking and writing” (Bosse 1981a, 120). Texts are produced by a vast number of individuals who nevertheless do not rise to the status of ‘author’. Modern authorship only comes into existence as a result of the discursive interplay between the producers and the authorities in the field of literary tradition: The producer of a text only becomes an author when the thing produced is designated ‘his/ her œuvre’ and treated as such by the authorities in the field of literary discourse. In this way the author is present in two ways: firstly, within the literary discourse as an ordering element. “Under an author(‘s name) the texts, which are, rightly or wrongly, attributed to him, are collected. They are his life’s work.” (ibid., 120). This is what a “œuvre” does: “It organizes discourse, it marks the boundary between what is one’s own and what is alien” (ibid., 121). Secondly, the author is localized behind the literary discourse as the originator of an œuvre and at the same time as the actual or merely alleged source of the singularity of that work. In our present context the deciding factor is not that the category ‘author’ represents an organizing principle in literary discourse, but that it has become the dominant ordering principle which subordinates or even eliminates other organizing principles. What does the elevation of the category ‘author’ to the main ordering principle in literary life mean in reality? Even today, in the sphere of elevated literature, we tend to perceive every new literary release primarily as the new work of an author; it is only at a secondary level that we see in it an interesting version of a theme of general interest or a surprising variation on a traditional genre. Literature that is in the canon is usually preserved and handed down in the form of the complete works of an author. The most prominent mode of publication is the author’s complete works, although we could also add the “Collected Works” as an edition containing a broad and representative selection from the entire œuvre. It is not individual works that enter the canon, but entire authorial œuvres: when people talk about classics they do not mean individual titles but authors’ names.

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Page 133 The author’s weak position In the field of children’s literature no comparable development has taken place. Here we should distinguish between two factors: firstly, the importance of the category ‘author’ as an organizing principle and, secondly, its position in the hierarchy compared with other ordering elements. Differences become obvious in respect of the first factor: If we look at the field of children’s literature as a whole, we observe that the category ‘author’ is of comparatively little importance even as a simple ordering principle. Even today we are dealing with a literary area in which the title and the individual work are normally still better known than their author, whose name is often familiar only to experts in the field. Pinocchio or Pippi Longstocking, for example, are regarded primarily as classic works of children’s literature; it is only secondarily that they are seen as part of the œuvre of Carlo Collodi and Astrid Lindgren respectively. Within the professional children’s literary discourse, by contrast, the category of the author as ordering principle has largely been established. The question here is whether the author is not only one of many but the primary discursive ordering factor. Historically the children’s literary sector has also been a testing ground for author profiling. From the 18th century onwards individual children’s writers in Germany have continually attempted—and with some success— to provide their work with an unmistakable hallmark in order to bind purchasers and readers to them. From the very beginning there have been attempts on the part of the critics, too, to include individual authors in the canon. However, the attempt to make this field one in which the discourse was primarily governed by the ordering category ‘author’ was unsuccessful. It is therefore no accident that editions of collected works are not the usual practice in the field of children’s literature. Editions of complete or even collected works of the kind that we know in Germany in the case of people like Campe, Christoph von Schmid or Karl May, and more recently Peter Härtling and Christine Nöstlinger, are comparatively rare. It is therefore also no accident that ‘children’s classic’ means not an author’s name but rather an individual title. It is not an author’s œuvre that enters the canon, but rather individual works—sometimes only a single work, and as a result the author’s name may even be forgotten. Right down to the present day there have been no lists of recommendations or selections ordered primarily by authors’ names. One of the reasons for the continuing low position of the ordering category ‘author’ in the hierarchy of children’s literary discourse is connected with an aspect of authorship that has not yet been explained. Authorship is not constituted simply by the production of an œuvre, but also by separation from all those who write without creating an œuvre. The role of children’s literary author, established in Germany by writers like Joachim Heinrich Campe, Christian Felix Weiße, Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow and Christian Gotthilf Salzmann in the late 18th century, appears to have had too little

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Page 134 intimidatory force and not to have had enough of a prohibitive effect. Even at that time vast numbers of writers felt themselves to have a vocation as children’s authors. As a contemporary critic profusely laments: “But the well-earned applause that their works elicited tempted an incalculable swarm of scribblers to emerge, who fell on the new field like hungry locusts, feeling themselves to have as much of a vocation to write [ … ] for children as those men. [ … ] Undergraduates and doctoral students, keepers of German and Latin schools, future educators and non-educators, in short, everyone that has hands healthy enough to write or to copy produces booklets for the dear children [ … ]” (Gedike 1787, 6). The Jeremiad, still unsilenced since that day, sounds as follows in the mid-19th century: “How many throng up unsummoned every day to proffer their services to youth, as if anyone who can write a sentence without mistakes is immediately capable of guiding and educating others by their writings” (Hopf 1861, 5). In the middle of the 20th century Kästner takes up the refrain: “Almost all our children’s books are written by non-writers. [ … ] Only ten per cent are or were ‘trained’ writers. [ … ] Ninety per cent dilettantes—that’s a bit too much!” (Kästner 1965, 556). In the field of children’s literature the ‘real’ writers to all appearances have too little intimidatory power. As a result, they perceive themselves to be threatened with drowning in the sea of dilettantes and occasional authors. The mediators’ strong position A further reason may be that for quite some time the authorial role had little in common with that of the ‘original’ author where children’s literature was concerned. For a long time, children’s literature was nothing but a selection from the range of traditional and contemporary ‘general’ literature available. This choice was made with a view to a specific addressee or a specific goal, and so it is only logical that the texts thus chosen were sorted not by their authors but by their target readership or their intended purpose respectively. Within this categorization the category ‘author’ is admittedly respected today, but still not applied as a central ordering category. The children’s writer, one might say, creates works, but not an œuvre. Children’s literature is still ordered and sorted, administered and mediated not primarily as authorial literature but as literature for a specific target group or a particular use, or on a particular theme. If one understands the hierarchy of ordering categories as a reflection of power relationships, then we see that children’s literature continues as a field of literary activity that is mainly in the power of its mediators. Children’s literature can continue to be consumed without necessarily needing to be “furnished with the ‘author’ as a function”. A children’s literary text is still not asked “who wrote it, when, under what circumstances, or according to what design” (Foucault 1988, 19), but rather what addressee group or what

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Page 135 purpose it is intended for. The history of children’s literary discourse is, to put it more pointedly, also a history of the suppression of the author’s position. The name of a children’s literary author as a guarantee of quality, as a seal of approval in the eyes of the public, excludes mediators, might even tend to make them superfluous, which they are understandably unhappy about. Successful authors are therefore always suspect in the mediators’ eyes—especially if they begin to develop their own ideas of what children’s literature and children’s reading ought to be. That this has rarely happened can be seen as further evidence of how weak the authorial position is in this literary field. The development of norms and the authority to produce guidelines are always firmly in the hands of the mediators and those who train them. In Germany at least there has probably hardly been a single children’s literary theory—ancient or modern—in which the author’s ideas and intentions have received any attention worth mentioning. References Bosse, H. (1981a) ‘Autorisieren. Ein Essay über Entwicklungen heute und seit dem 18. Jahrhundert’, in Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 42, 120–133. Bosse, H. (1981b) Autorschaft ist Werkherrschaft. Über die Entstehung des Urheberrechts aus dem Geist der Goethezeit , Paderborn: Schöningh (= UTB 1147). Foucault, M. (1988) ‘Was ist ein Autor?’, in: Foucault, M. Schriften zur Literatur [1969], Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 7–31. [Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” Trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Ed. Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977, 124–127] Gedike, F. (1787) Einige Gedanken über Schulbücher und Kinderschriften, Berlin: Unger. Giddens, A. (1996) Konsequenzen der Moderne, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. [The Consequences of Modernity. Oxford: Polity Press 1990] Hopf, G. W. (1861) Mittheilungen über Jugendschriften an Aeltern und Lehrer, 4th ed., Nürnberg: J. L. Schmid. Kästner, E. (1965) ‘Wer schreibt eigentlich die Kinderbücher?’ in Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 5, Gemischte Beiträge . 3rd ed., Köln and Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 556–557. Titzmann, M. (1991) ‘Skizze einer integrativen Literaturgeschichte und ihres Ortes in einer Systematik der Literaturwissenschaft’, in Titzmann, M. (ed.) Modelle des literarischen Strukturwandels, Tübingen: Niemeyer 1991, 395-438.

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Page 137 Part IV Children’s Literature as Literature Suitable for Children and Young People

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Page 139 Chapter Eighteen Child Suitability: Accommodation and Assimilation In the history of modern children’s literature from the late 18th century onwards one of the norms described in Chapter 16 has played a special role: the norm that requires children’s reading material to be fashioned to suit its intended receivers. In some of the children’s literary concepts developed in Chapter 17 this fashioning of the message to suit its receivers was even the primary norm. In concepts of this kind the child suitability of children’s literature is elevated to become the central requirement of children’s literature. Thus Göte Klingberg, for example, thinks that “all literature produced for children and young people must, in one way or another, be adapted to its consumers since we would not otherwise be dealing with literature produced specifically for young children” (Klingberg 1973, 92). Even if this needs some qualification, the fact remains that suiting the message to the receiver remains one of the most prominent topics of interest in the field of past and present children’s literary theory. Whenever people have begun to think about children’s reading they have paid attention to this factor. As an example, let us quote some passages from John Locke’s Thoughts Concerning Education (1693). Locke writes: “I mention reasoning with children; and yet I cannot but think that the true way of dealing with them”—the right method of both everyday and literary communication, we would add. “But when I talk of reasoning, I do not intend any other but such as is suited to the child’s capacity and apprehension. No body can think a boy of three or seven years old should be argu’d with as a grown man. Long discourses, and philosophical reasonings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children” (Locke 1692, section 81). One must, we read a little later, consider “their age, temper, and inclination. [ … ] The reasons that move them must be obvious, and level to their thoughts. [ … ] But of all the ways whereby children are to be

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Page 140 instructed, and their manners formed, the plainest, easiest, and most efficacious, is, to set before their eyes the examples of those things you would have them do, or avoid [ … ].” (ibid., sections 81, 82) From a historical viewpoint the norm of child suitability can be seen to vary in two ways: Firstly, it can be imbued with different value, as it can be regarded as the highest and most important, but also as a secondary quality of children’s literature (see Chapter 17). Secondly, it can be determined in different content-related ways: The question of what forms the child suitability of a literary message may be answered differently in different eras and by different movements. In some cases the answers are both general and undetailed, while in others they are concerned with detailed features of the literary messages and the way in which they are mediated. In this process the points of reference may be individual works (the child suitability of Alice in Wonderland or Winnie the Pooh, say), but also literary genres (the child suitability of the fairy tale or the fable, for example) or finally the entire range of texts that are regarded as suitable children’s reading. Forms of mediation may also be described as more or less child-suitable (the way something is read aloud, how reading is encouraged or the book presented). In this section we shall investigate what the content of the norm of child suitability can be, but leave out the modes of mediation and restrict ourselves to the child suitability of children’s literary messages. In this part of the study, too, we have no intention of developing normative definitions. Nor are we intending to provide a historical overview of the ideas about child suitability typical of individual periods or movements, proceeding instead as in the chapter on children’s literary concepts: There too we did not give a summary history, but rather an ordering scheme with the aid of which the children’s literary concepts met with historically could be classified and compared with one another (See Chapter 16). Here too we are working on the development of a classification scheme for the purposes of recording and categorizing (historical and current) statements about the child suitability of literary messages and some individual aspects of them. This results—as with the ordering scheme for concepts—in a certain degree of surplus: Thanks to their inner logic, schemes of this kind occasionally reveal possible ways of thinking and conceptual scope, which historically have not yet—or only partially—been made use of. It would thus be perfectly justifiable, looking at this section, to talk of a scheme for classifying the conceivable qualities of the child-suitable features of literary works. Child suitability as a concept of relation and as a historical variable Child suitability is a concept of relation with two positions, in that it describes a relationship between two defined sides: A children’s literary message is related to the presumptive child and youth readers and described as

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Page 141 appropriate or suitable (in negative cases as inappropriate, unsuitable). The message and some of its individual features are tested firstly in terms of the decoding ability of the readers: Do they correspond to the readers’ linguistic, cognitive, and literary competence? Can the target reader decipher the text, and extract and understand the message contained in it? One might subsume this aspect of child suitability under the term ‘text comprehensibility’ suggested by Norbert Groeben (Groeben 1982, 148f) meaning the presence of “complete or at least partial equality between the ability to process (on the reader’s side) and the processing demands (made by the text)” (ibid., 160). A text may also be measured in terms of the interests and likings or needs of its readers. Child or youth readers may be interested in specific real-world fields, in individual fields of knowledge, in specific motives, content, themes and problems. Their needs may be linked to specific patterns of identification, to security, empowerment and recognition, to escape, exoticism and adventure etc. Children’s literary texts which, over and above the consideration of their ability to comprehend, also accommodate certain interests of children and young people and further pay attention to their needs and attempt to fulfill them, as well as meeting their literary preferences (for variety and brightness, comedy, nonsense or scurrility, excitement, thrills, fear or even horror), have a certain level of attraction for child and youth readers. They arouse their curiosity and their longings. Those aspects of child suitability, which are connected with the child and youth readers’ interests, preferences and needs could be classified under the term ‘textual attractiveness’. Whether a children’s literary text is child suitable can be determined empirically—by observing its reception by children and young people. This is why those who write for children and young people like to use reading to a child or youth audience to test the child suitability of unpublished works. But in most cases the method of direct observation of a work’s reception cannot be used. The texts are then measured against the ideas and images that the producers (editors, authors, illustrators) as well as critics and mediators have of the intended receivers. In these circumstances a work counts as childsuitable if it conforms with the (adult) producer or mediator’s conception of childhood and adolescence. To distinguish it from the empirical method one could here speak of ‘hypothetical child-suitability’. The conception of childhood and adolescence used in these contexts may well be the condensation of numerous contacts with the target group; in other words, it may be an image that is based on broad experience, close to reality and free of illusion. However, every conception of childhood and adolescence is probably considerably influenced by people’s own childhood and adolescence. Further determinants to consider would be the general views of childhood and adolescence at any given period. It would definitely be difficult for any one person to keep the empirical, the biographical and the ideological components of their own conception of childhood and youth separate. This reveals a certain vagueness in the criteria for child suitability: Sometimes it

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Page 142 is expressed in totally empirical terms, on other occasions it can be anchored more in (conscious or unconscious) biographical or general principles. Literature that is called child-suitable can vary in its closeness to its target group. The historical variability in views about the child suitability of children’s literary messages is explained by the fact that the views of childhood and adolescence on which they are based are themselves subject to historical change. It is, however, not just the opinions, concepts, and theories about childhood and adolescence that are subject to change, but also the real phenomena of ‘childhood’ and ‘adolescence’. More recent research into childhood and adolescence has shown that it is not possible to talk of an a-historical construction of the ages of childhood and youth, of childhood and adolescence as an anthropological constant. On the contrary, some of the essential features of childhood and youth are cultural productions and should thus be regarded as historical variables (Ariès 1960; deMause 1974; Becchi and Julia 1998). Accordingly, it is impossible to reach an atemporal definition of what should be accepted as child-suitable. It is therefore only possible to talk sensibly of child suitability within specific historical periods, within the limits of major eras of social development, for example. Ideas about child suitability are of even more limited validity when they can be clearly seen to be of an ideological nature. For example, what was considered to be child-suitable by the leading powers in the late 18th century was already being described as totally unsuitable for children and young people by some movements in the early 19th century. The criticism that is usually heard in such historical periods—that the preceding period had no understanding of child and youth readers—can be explained by the mostly unconscious hypostatization of people’s own individual image of childhood and adolescence into an anthropological norm. Adaptation, Assimilation, Accommodation In Germany in the 18th century (if not earlier) what is said about child suitability is already connected with the idea of “condescension” to the child reader. This gesture has nothing to do with the graceful bow of a ruler to his subjects: it is more that an adult kneels down to be on the same level as the child addressee and to communicate face to face. Words like “condescension”, “stooping” or “adaptation” found their way into the vocabulary of Germanspeaking children’s literary theory and encouraged the widespread belief that all child suitability was the result of such condescension. This view does not allow for the possibility that parts of the range of literature available at any period could be accessible to child and youth readers without having undergone some transformation. In this case no condescension would be necessary. I would like to suggest a contradictory thesis, namely that child suitability does not always have to be the result of alteration but can be a quality of some of the general literature that is available. This is not always per se

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Page 143 unsuitable for children and young people. It therefore seems appropriate to distinguish child suitability conceptually from “condescension”, “stooping” or “adaptation”. I would like to suggest that from now on we should use the term ‘accommodation’ to describe the process of adapting literary works for a specific readership.1 Developmental psychology links the complementary process of assimilation with accommodation. This is how this process is described by Jean Piaget: “In its beginnings, assimilation is essentially the utilisation of the external environment by the subject to nourish his hereditary or acquired schemata. Accomodation (!) is the complementary adaptation of the subject to new environmental factors” (Groeben 1982, 154)2. In children’s literary theory the literary message was historically always taken as the starting point; it was a matter of how it was adapted or how it could actively be adapted to specific reader groups. If we take over this pair of concepts for the purposes of children’s literary theory it therefore seems appropriate to place not the child and youth receivers but the literary message, the literary texts in the subject position. The child and youth readership would then be in the object position, in other words, defined as (new) environmental factors. The adaptation of the message (as occupying the subject position) to the receiver (as environment) would then be defined as accommodation. The gradual adjustment of the receivers (as environment) to the generally prevailing literary conventions (as occupying the subject position), the more closely their decoding abilities approach the ‘normal’ demands of literary texts, could then be subsumed in the category of assimilation. The concept of ‘accommodation’ is ambiguous, in that it can refer to both an action, an operation and a quality, a characteristic. As an operation, accommodation consists of the following individual steps: (1) A ‘normal’ literary message is directed to child/youth readers and recognized as unsuitable for them. (2) To make the message suitable for the receivers the decision is made to modify the message (instead, for example, of looking for new receivers); the alteration of the original message results in a new message. (3) The new message is regarded as suitable for the receivers and sent. The operation of accommodation is aimed at the creation of child suitability in every case where it does not previously exist; it is superfluous when the first step shows that the message is already child-suitable. If we use accommodation as a category to describe one or more features of a literary message—as, for example, in judgements like: The simple sentence structure, the narrative mode, the motifs chosen for a children’s literary message always represent accommodation—then we have not just established that the message is child-suitable. We have also identified a kind of child suitability produced by modification based on a divergence from other literary modes. When it is used as a definition of characteristics, accommodation means not all but only one specific class of child-suitable textual characteristics—those that are the result of diverging from the literary procedures regarded as ‘normal’.

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Page 144 Child-suitable elements that are not the results of such modification should therefore not be described as accommodation. The category of child suitability dealt with in the previous section was described as a concept of relation with two positions, whereas with the concept of accommodation—used not as the description of a process but as a mode of categorizing characteristics—we have a concept of relation with three positions: a textual characteristic identified as accommodation (1) is placed in a twofold relationship, firstly in relation to the addressee (2), in which it is seen to be child-suitable, and secondly to an initial textual situation, a form of literary normality (3), in relation to which it is seen as divergent. The second point of reference contained in the category of accommodation has so far been defined in different ways. When describing accommodation as an operation we defined an initial, original literary message as our point of reference. The case on which this is based is the revision of an adult literary work for children and young people, that is, the children’s literary adaptation of a work of adult literature. Examples of this would be the many reworkings of Daniel Defoe’s novel The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner (1719) for children and young people. If we accept that all the adaptors were working on producing a completely child-suitable version of the novel, then by comparing the original and the adaptation one can easily work out the different kinds of child suitability. With the features and elements that remain unchanged we have child-suitable qualities that were already present in the original work. It seems likely that no work of adult literature will have been adapted as children’s literature if it did not contain what (in the eyes of the relevant period) were regarded as marked childsuitable features. Of course, divergences from the original can have been made for very different reasons. However, all the changes, which have recognizably been made in view of the new addressees, which aim at the creation of child suitability where it was not present in the original work, could be described as accommodation. Wherever works have been composed specifically for children and young people, where we are looking at primarily children’s literature (see Chapter 2), we cannot produce any adult literary original for purposes of comparison. In this case the point of reference would be the system of literary rules and symbols normally used in adult literary communication at any given period (see Chapter 14). When composing a message aimed from its inception at children and young people, authors would, as it were, go through the symbols and rules available for use in normal literary communication and then use the ones they regarded as child-suitable without altering them. Rules and symbols, which it did not seem to be possible to use within the framework of children’s literary communication would be either omitted or modified. Thus to discover whether the child suitability of a work of primarily children’s literature derives from accommodation we have to go via the literary symbol system. Would a specific conflict—a father–son or mother–daughter

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Page 145 conflict—be presented in a different way in a work of adult literature, would they use different rules from those used in a work regarded as child-suitable? If this were not the case, then we would have a form of child suitability that was not at the same time a form of accommodation. Göte Klingberg has already suggested that we proceed in this way: In a comparative investigation of “samples taken from texts of relatively similar type” the divergences from the general literary symbol system, which had been made in view of the child and youth readers were clearly visible (Klingberg 1973, 93f). References Ariès, P. (1960) L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien régime, Paris: Plan. Becchi, E., and Julia, D. (eds) (1998) Histoire de l’enfance en occident, Vol. 2, Paris: Seuil. deMause, L. (1974) The History of Childhood, New York: The Psychohistory Press. Groeben, N. (1982) Leserpsychologie: Textverständnis—Textverständlichkeit , Münster: Aschendorff. Klingberg, G. (1973) Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung. Eine Einführung , Wien, Köln and Graz: Böhlau. Locke, John: Source Thoughts Concerning Education. London: A. and J. Churchill 1693. Maier, K. E. (1976) ‘Das Prinzip des Kindgemäßen und das Kinderbuch’, in Schaller, H. (ed.) Umstrittene Jugendliteratur, Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 118–142.

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Page 147 Chapter Nineteen Forms of Child Suitability: Forms of Accommodation The characteristic ‘child suitability’ can be established by means of a large number of elements in a work. It may, according to the German children’s literary researcher Theodor Brüggemann, “be inscribed in the overall structure of the book”. “We must therefore consider the choice of material, its internal organization and the linguistic and stylistic framework, which is most closely connected with this, as well as the overall appearance of the book with its layout, typeface, illustration etc.” (Brüggemann 1977, 27). Malte Dahrendorf, another German Scholar, writes: “Adaptation is inscribed in the linguistic form (simplicity and liveliness), the plot and the structure of the book, which produce the suspense that is so important psychologically, in the theme, the material and the content, which children must be able to understand, grasp and empathize with” (Dahrendorf 1967, 393). These suggestions were followed up by Klingberg and transformed into a systematic categorization of different forms of child suitability (Klingberg 1973, 92f). The classificatory scheme that follows is based on this preparatory work. The method it uses to classify the many forms of child suitability follows the distinction between different levels of a literary work that is normal in literary theory. We first look at the forms of child suitability that are imaginable at the individual levels; it is only in our second step that we ask in what circumstances some of these manifestations of child suitability can also be regarded as accommodation, as a divergence from adult or elevated literary conventions. Child-suitable encoding: code-related accommodation The relevant target group can come into consideration as early as the stage at which the categories of signs to be used in encoding the message are selected.

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Page 148 To achieve a child-suitable encoding of the message it may seem to an author (or a publisher) insufficient to do so simply linguistically. In such cases they tend to use a further code—for example a visual or musical code—which children may be more able to handle.1 In fact, when encoding children’s literary messages two categories of signs are often used: Since Johann Amos Comenius’ Orbis sensualium pictus (1658) it has been customary to use a combination of language and image in presenting material in non-fiction aimed at children. Narrative literature for children was also provided with illustrations at an early stage, although right down to the 18th century this was not unusual in the field of adult literature either. The more the use of illustration declined in the adult sphere, the more it became a distinguishing feature of children’s books. From this time onwards it was legitimate to speak of ‘coderelated accommodation’. With the lavish illustration of children’s books, which was more extensive the younger the addressees were, the visual pleasure, the desire of children (and to some extent young people as well) for pictures that were as colorful as possible was catered to. Child suitability in the paratextual field: paratextual accommodation As a rule the paratext should already be of a child-suitable character: At least, this is what was expected from the point in history when books and periodicals were meant to come into the hands of children and young people themselves. The paratext is only of interest in this context to the extent that it furthers the partial communication with the child and youth receivers. I have dealt with this section of the paratext in Chapter 4, mentioning some of the possible forms of child suitability to be found there, so that here only some short suggestions are necessary. For example, one could examine the child suitability of the choice of title. If this does prove to be directed at the child and youth readers, one could then ask if this diverges from the general literary conventions regarding choice of title at that period. For example, in the 19th century girls’ books with titles like Backfischchens Leiden und Freuden (The Joys and Sorrows of a Teenager ), Der Trotzkopf (Stubborn as a Mule), Papas Junge (Daddy’s Boy) or Irrwisch (Little Rascal) contrast significantly with those in the elevated literary sphere, which show a higher degree of individualization of the protagonist ( Madame Bovary [by Gustave Flaubert], Grete Minde , Frau Jenny Treibel or Effi Briest [by Theodor Fontane]). If this kind of deviation from general or elevated literary conventions turns out not to be an accidental or isolated case, then we could speak of ‘paratextual accommodation’. In a similar way, one could investigate the chapter headings or the foreword and afterword for children and young people, although their very presence might indicate paratextual accommodation in cases where chapter headings or forewords and afterwords are not general literary practice.

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Page 149 Where the publisher’s paratext is concerned, one should mention the binding or the dust jacket, whose (mostly illustrated) design was from the very beginning directed at children and youth readers. We are here probably dealing with a striking example of paratextual accommodation: From the very beginning children’s books tried to distinguish themselves from adult books by their design. The same is probably true of the blurb, which is also part of the design, as well as all other texts and symbols on the cover. The last items of the publisher’s peritext to be mentioned are the choices of binding material and type of paper (washable plastic or card for small children’s picture books, different types of paper for text and illustrations etc) as well as the typography (font and font size, justified or unjustified text, spacing etc) all of which occur with the presumed reader in mind and therefore count as specific characteristics of children’s books. Linguistic child suitability: Linguistic accommodation Anyone who works in the field of children’s literature constantly comes across the phenomenon that the means of linguistic expression employed by the author are subject to limitations out of consideration for the linguistic ability and competence of the age group being addressed. These limitations may be in morphology (avoidance of the passive, perhaps; sparing use of certain kinds of words like, for example, adjectives), syntax (sentence length; more paratactic than hypotactic sentence constructions), forms of speech (avoidance of, for example, indirect speech or free indirect speech) and finally semantics (orientation towards the limited vocabulary of certain age groups; avoidance of foreign words and technical jargon). One of Klingberg’s own investigations discovered the following linguistic limitations in texts for children and young people: “a) Use of shorter sentences, b) limited use of difficult and abstract words, c) a greater number of verbs, d) a smaller number of nouns, e) limited use of imagery” (ibid., 97). Where these results indicate a previously determined limitation of the linguistic repertoire based on consideration of the linguistic competence of the target readership we are dealing with ‘linguistic child suitability’, or with ‘linguistic accommodation’ if this diverges from normal linguistic usage in similar contexts at a general literary level. At a general literary level, however, use has been made at all periods of simple or laconic modes of speech or writing, which in linguistic respects are often child-suitable in themselves; in these cases no linguistic accommodation is necessary. Stylistic aspects of child suitability: stylistic accommodation Even though the dividing line may be difficult to discern in many cases, it still seems sensible to us to distinguish between linguistic and stylistic child

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Page 150 suitability—and correspondingly between linguistic and stylistic accommodation. This last category is found, as already mentioned, in Klingberg’s work (“stilwählende Adaption” [adaptation by choice of style]—Klingberg 1973, 96f), but the examples presented there seem in our estimation to be cases of linguistic child suitability or linguistic accommodation. Linguistic and stylistic child suitability or accommodation are in fact connected with the same linguistic phenomena (although on the stylistic level the sound and rhythm of language can play a greater role). Whereas linguistic child suitability or accommodation refers to the primary structuring of everyday language according to the rules of a given language, stylistic child suitability or accommodation begins with a secondary, artistic molding of everyday language. Stylized speech or writing can be recognized as such because of its regular divergences from the conventions of everyday language: by contrast, the particularity of any given style can only be seen by comparison with other literary styles. Even if the state of research in this field in Germany could be called more or less desolate, it is still possible to say that specific styles typical of children’s literature have frequently been distinguished. Given the lack of a better term one could talk of ‘children’s literary genre styles’, because these styles are not found over the whole range of children’s literature but only in some of its genre areas. One of the prerequisites for describing a literary (genre) style as child-suitable might well be that a style of this kind should not affect the comprehensibility of a given work to such an extent that it is difficult or even impossible for children or young people to read it. This negative definition should also mark a boundary drawn for authorial styles in children’s literature if they wish to claim to be child-suitable. The works of Erich Kästner and Astrid Lindgren show that it is also possible to find developed authorial styles within the field of children’s literature. If one asks for positive criteria, one often meets the view that a child-suitable style is marked by a certain degree of proximity to communication styles used in everyday situations—not exclusively, but also by the relevant target group itself. Children’s literary genre styles have frequently made extensive use of certain oral narrative styles, colloquial modes of speech and everyday conversational style. This does not, however, mean that styles, which differ markedly from everyday communication styles cannot also be called child-suitable. Artificial styles can be conventionalized in children’s literature to such a degree that even the target group feels them to be an appropriate style for literary communication. This would be the case, for example, with the archaizing folk-tale style developed by the Brothers Grimm. This shows that child suitability is not just a matter of developmental psychology and the phenomenology of children’s and young people’s experience of the world, but can also be a convention that is totally cultural. Childsuitable styles used in practice in children’s literature represent, as long as they are not also found in adult literature, an extension or modification of the general literary repertoire of styles and could then also be described as ‘stylistic accommodation’.

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Page 151 Literary styles are commonly said to have a mimetic function if they express the inner feelings, fundamental attitudes and a definite mind-set of the speaker; are, in fact, the manifestation of an entire world view. In this sense a specific “childlike tone” was created in the very early stages—and later a juvenile style of speaking—as the literary mimesis of a stance or attitude specific to children or young people. In his collection Fritzchens Lieder (Little Frederic’s Songs) (1781), Christian Adolf Overbeck “wished to try and see how close I could get to the childlike tone”. “Here speaks, if I have done it well, a real child” (Overbeck 1781, Foreword). Even before that August Rode had made the following claim for the child characters in his children’s plays: “They speak nothing but the language of their hearts; never that dull language that they have retained in their memories from the equally tasteless and useless moral sermons of their carers” (Rode 1776, VI). In both cases the stylization of the language of the child characters is adopted as the medium of expressing a child’s way of thinking. However, if children’s style of speaking is consistently followed, this can make the text difficult to understand, as everyday experience teaches us: stories narrated by children of kindergarten age can normally only be understood by adults. It is therefore not surprising that the mimesis of children’s style is not only found in adult literature from the very beginning, but that for a long time it is more consistently followed in adult literature than in the literature addressed to children. Inspired by the demand, first expressed around 1900, for “poetry straight from the child” the mimetic childlike tone also advanced step by step in children’s literature, not just in the speech of the child characters but also in the entire (lyric or narrative) text. In the course of the 20th century similar things also happen at the level of novels explicitly aimed at young people. By now mimetic children’s styles (moderate, without interfering with understandability) as well as mimetic styles—both in narrative and in the utterances of characters— based on young people’s usage are among the stylistic expectations of the target group, which is why they can be described as child-suitable styles. Since comparable adult literature is not very different in this respect one cannot really speak of stylistic accommodation here. We should not fail to mention that individual critics have always had reservations about adapting even literary style to the various target groups. Their mistrust is directed firstly at the use of emphatically everyday language in the creation of children’s literary works, and secondly at the escalating use of a mimetic children’s style, in other words a ‘childish’ mode of speech, and also the adoption of—usually very ephemeral—young people’s language, which is often very slangy in character. They suggest that when choosing mimetic children’s styles the required authenticity is hard to achieve; at the very least the danger of going off the stylistic rails is very great when using young people’s language. For other critics, children’s literature, by the choice of such child-suitable styles, takes every opportunity to affect young readers’ sense of style. In such cases it is felt that children’s literature should be used

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Page 152 for literary education of a kind that is based on contemporary elevated literature. For a third group of critics children’s literature, like adult literature, should be authorial literature (see Chapter 17) and therefore provide space for authorial styles, which should not, however, seriously interfere with the work’s comprehensibility. Child suitability in formal/structural respects; formal/structural accommodation This category is also found in Klingberg’s study (“formwählende Adaption” (adaptation by choice of form); Klingberg 1973, 95f), although I would not include all the phenomena quoted there under this heading. The point of reference is now the totality of the formal and structural aspects of a text wherever they extend beyond the limits of the sentence (literary modes of representation and structural forms). In the case of the lyric this means, for example, rhyme schemes, meter, stanza form, and the length of the poem. In the case of narrative texts this means, for example, the structure of plot (one-stranded or many-stranded, main and subsidiary plots, the temporal extension of the plot, suspense, adumbration techniques, the way the plot is set in motion, happy ending or open ending etc) and the cast of characters (How many? Can we keep them all in view? Individual or collective hero? etc) are all elements related to the target readers. We could also add the plot’s modes of representation (chronological, retrospective, discontinuous, montage). With narrative texts in particular one would think of the proportions in which the representation of action is combined with descriptive or discursive passages (the degree to which action is emphasized), or narrative is combined with the utterances of the characters (narrative versus dialog novel). Then we might consider the frequency with which various techniques of presenting dialog are used (verbatim internal and external speech, indirect speech, free indirect speech, train of thought). Finally we should consider the choice of narrative perspective or narrative situation (first or third person narrative, authorial or personal narrative). The question of the techniques of imagery or symbolism used, of processes used to present insincere, ironic or sarcastic utterances etc is equally interesting in the case of lyric, narrative and dramatic texts. Although this is far from being a complete or systematic list, it suffices to demonstrate what aspects of a literary work contribute to formal or structural child suitability. The point of reference on the part of the intended readers is first of all their level of understanding: How should a children’s literary message, which is always a relatively long utterance or a whole consisting of numerous parts, be structured so that the intended receiver can receive and process it? As well their limited understanding, their attention span and ability to concentrate are also taken into consideration, since these are often relatively weak

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Page 153 in younger readers. The message must be structured in such a way that its carefully calculated surprise effects and build-ups of tension do not just keep attention alive, but actually intensify it. Formal and structural elements are therefore to a large extent responsible not just for the comprehensibility, but also for the attractiveness of a children’s literary text. In numerous cases formal or structural child suitability is of such a kind that more sparing use is made of general literary techniques of representation and structural forms: In actual fact stories for children and young people are as a rule shorter than comparable adult literary products, have a less complicated plot and a less confusing cast of characters in which the interface between good and evil is more clearly delineated, have a lower proportion of descriptive or discursive passages, etc. Where comparable phenomena are not found in general literature, we may envisage formal or structural accommodation as occurring in this reduced use of the general literary repertoire. It would also be there if certain literary techniques, which are of more marginal importance in general literature play a central role from a children’s literary perspective, as might be the case with the creation of suspense. We should also speak of formal or structural accommodation when literary techniques that have long fallen from use in general literature continue to be used in children’s literature; a good example of this would be certain modes of addressing and including the reader. Here we see that children’s literary accommodation may result in, not just a reduction, but also an expansion of the formal repertoire of the literature of a given period. From a historical viewpoint the majority of such cases represent an extension backwards in time, since they mostly concern literary techniques that have long since been out of use and overtaken by literary evolution. Child suitability in terms of genre choice or variation: genre-related accommodation We can group together the decisions that can be made in terms of literary representational techniques and structural forms with regard to the intended reader. They then refer to more or less firmly established combinations, which automatically result when one of their elements is targeted. Combinations like this are generally restricted to the spheres of individual genres and lead to more or less succinctly determined children’s literary variants of general literary genres. I suggest that we should here talk of ‘children’s literary genre variants’ and understand them to be the result of ‘genre-related accommodation’. Thus the nursery rhyme develops as a variant of the folk song. The epic genre of the story becomes the children’s story; the novel becomes the children’s novel. With the choice of a relevant children’s literary genre variant, structure-related or form-related child suitability is more or less guaranteed from the viewpoint of modern children’s literature.

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Page 154 This is also true of children’s literary genres that no longer have a general literary counterpart: I would like to term them ‘purely children’s literary genres’. Here one might include, for example, early reading stories, (authentic and inauthentic) animal stories or picture stories. The use of genres of this kind demonstrates, inasmuch as it results from consideration of the target group, a mode of accommodation of the general literary repertoire of genres. From a diachronic perspective most purely children’s literary genres are what one might call ‘degraded’ genres, which are now only in use in the field of children’s literature. The child suitability of a genre can only be partly dealt with in this section. It certainly depends on the fact that a genre of this kind can be grasped and processed by child and youth readers in terms of its formal and structural characteristics. It also, however, depends to a no less decisive degree upon whether a genre’s characteristic motifs and themes are attractive to the target group. Even if this latter is not mentioned until the next section we would like even here to define the child suitability of a genre as a matter of form and content together. Accordingly, a child-suitable genre must on the one hand correspond in terms of its structure to the ability of children and young people to process it, and on the other be attractive to the target group in terms of its motifs and themes. Child suitability in terms of material, content and theme: material-related and content-related accommodation The categories considered in this section are very close to one another and it is occasionally difficult to distinguish between them. For the category content-related child suitability I once more follow Klingberg (Klingberg 1973, 94f). Material is generally understood to mean happenings, individual actions or series of actions together with the relevant characters (whether invented or taken from any source whatever) which precede the creation of a literary work or can subsequently be extracted from it. Authors (editors, revisers etc) can also be led by the criterion of child suitability in their choice of material. Material that is regarded as child-suitable should be familiar and strange at the same time. The general consensus is that children are normally unable to grasp material that is entirely strange to them, whereas they do not feel particularly drawn to material that is totally familiar to them. The points of reference for the intended readers are their level of knowledge, their experience of life, their likings and interests, wishes and desires, fantasies, and dreams of the future. As a factor emphasizing the idea of familiarity, the world in which children and young people live was proclaimed, in the late 18th century, the ideal child-suitable material, and child or adolescent characters were promoted as the ideal characters. For very young readers, their own world is not so very familiar, but instead still full of strange situations

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Page 155 and exotic realms. Is this not precisely why it provides fascinating material for them? For somewhat older readers, on the other hand, their own world may already have lost all its strangeness, which makes it less attractive to them. For readers who are a bit older than that, the everyday world may once again have become the scene of penetrating problems, thus producing material which totally engages them. This brief sketch may be enough to make it clear that there is no material that is child-suitable per se. However, there are still probably some categories of material that are used mainly or even exclusively in the field of children’s literature and are hardly or not at all (or no longer) found in adult literature. In this case one could talk of ‘purely children’s literary material’ or categories of material. Nevertheless one should not overemphasize the independence of children’s literature in respect of material. If we look at important genres of children’s literature— the nursery rhyme, the fairy tale, the legend, animal stories, fantasy, horror and ghost stories, science fiction, the Robinsonade, the adventure novel, the western, the travel or expedition novel, the detective novel or thriller, the picaresque novel, the novel of personal development, the girl’s story, the school or teenage novel, then we realize the extent to which children’s literature shares in the general repertoire of literary material. Historically, even where the important material category ‘children’s and young people’s world in modern society’ is concerned, we find that children’s literature is normally in the role of receiver. In the exploration of modern childhood and adolescence together with its crucial experiences, adult literature precedes it historically with the genres of the novels of childhood, personal development, school and adolescence. It is only from the beginning of the 20th century, and increasingly in the 1970s, that children’s literature has, in our view, made a completely original contribution to the development and continuous updating of the field of material encompassed by ‘childhood and adolescence’ (cf. Ewers 2001). Child-suitable content as the result of material-related accommodation Material adopted and adapted in individual literary works is normally defined as content (and motifs). The content of a literary work includes the setting of the action, social relationships, situations, plot, and characters. To a certain degree the material is determined in respect of content before being reworked in a literary work, in the same way that it has its own channels of transmission (collections of material, dictionaries, galleries of characters or heroes, chronicles etc.). The extent to which what is provided by this transmission or tradition of material is regarded as binding differs from period to period. Transferring the material thus provided into individual literary works can sometimes remain true to that material: In this case there will be no, or very few, divergences between material and content. Authors can, however, also use

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Page 156 their material very freely: We then have an unconventional mode of reworking the material, which distorts the tradition. For example, the Brothers Grimm insisted on faithfulness to the material when recording fairy tales and other folk narratives, whereas German romantic poets like Achim von Arnim und Clemens Brentano felt that it was legitimate to play freely with traditional folk and fairy tale material and motifs. In the case of material that is in itself already regarded as child-suitable, faithfulness to the material is no problem— reworking it faithfully into a literary work automatically results in content-related child suitability. By contrast, where other types of material are concerned, the principle of faithfulness to the material has been seriously questioned. In the field of children’s literature the view prevailed that such material generally needed alteration if it was to be included in a literary work addressed to children and young people. If these alterations are based on consideration for the child and youth readers, if in other words they serve the purpose of producing child-suitable content, then we suggest that this should be called material-related accommodation. Alterations of this kind to the material could be made, for example, by suppressing or eliminating some aspects of the material received because it is supposed that they will not be accessible to children and young people or that they will not appeal to them. Contrarily, unimportant elements of the material that has been handed down—for example, sub-plots in which children participate—can be foregrounded because they are thought to be particularly interesting to children and young people. I would like to include all the non-faithful versions of received material, which are supposed to produce content-related child suitability in areas where this is not already there at the level of material in the category of ‘material-related accommodation’ (qua operation). If one uses this term as a way of categorizing qualities, then all the elements of a children’s literary work that are child-suitable as a result of modifying the received material can be termed material-related accommodation. As an example of material accommodation let us mention the way in which heroic roles, which in the traditional material were played by adults, are given to children or young people. Klingberg has already referred to this: “One form of adaptation [ … ] is the way in which an author makes children and young people main characters in the plot to a greater extent than is usual in adult literature” (Klingberg 1973, 95). This can often be seen from the titles: It begins with Robinson the Younger and ends up with The Little Witch , The Little Ghost and The Little Vampire. In genres like the pirate novel, the western, the travel novel or the colonial novel this convention was historically slow to gain ground. Down to the time of Karl May adult hero-figures remained predominant, although from then on they gave way more and more to youthful heroes: Robert der Schiffsjunge (“Robert the Cabin-Boy”, S. Wörishöffer, 1877), Bob der Fallensteller (“Trapper Bob”, Fr. J. Pajeken, 1890) or Peter Moors Fahrt nach Südwest (“Peter Moor’s South-West Voyage”, G. Frenssen, 1906)—these

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Page 157 are the titles from now on. A further example is making animals the characters in a narrative—Klingberg also called attention to this: Authors “can also give animals an important role to play, because they assume that children and young people prefer animals to adults” (ibid.). As soon as content which has been produced by material-related accommodation has become a children’s literary convention, it frees itself as it were from the individual works and becomes material, which in itself shows childsuitable elements. The Western with young protagonists comes into being in the second half of the 19th century as a result of accommodation of the adventure novel in the style of J. Fenimore Cooper and Friedrich Gerstäcker to the expectations of the young readers of its age. The authors of the first wave of ‘youth Westerns’ also change received material and are consciously diverging from the material conventions of an established genre of novel. With their divergent, non-faithful reworking of this material—in other words with their material-related accommodation—they nevertheless create in the short or long term new material traditions on which subsequent generations of authors can build. These later authors are freed of the requirement for the accommodation of material, which lacks childsuitable elements and can concentrate on more or less faithfully reworking (more recent) material that is already considered child-suitable. Applying the category of ‘content-related accommodation’ only makes sense in one special case—when works of adult literature are reworked for children and young people, in other words when we have children’s literary adaptation (see Chapter 18). In the course of such reworkings the content of the initial adult literary text may also be changed. When these changes in respect of content or individual motifs are undertaken in consideration of the child or youth reader they can be termed content-related accommodation. Child suitability in thematic respects Klingberg does not mention the theme of a literary work, or literary themes in general. We nevertheless consider the distinction between content and theme to be as indispensable as that between material and content. Wolfgang Kayser has already pointed out that “works on the same theme” do not necessarily have to have the same content or to demonstrate “external similarity of material” (Kayser 1948, 62). Themes are abstract and intellectual in nature and can therefore be represented or structured in different ways. For example, the theme of ‘being a child in the modern egalitarian (or symmetrical) family’ may be represented in literature not only in the form of a tragicomic (realistic) family novel, but also in the form of a comic or even grotesque animal story. In the former case the theme would be presented directly: the content would have meaning in itself, i.e. it would express the actual message. Content and theme coincide in this case. In the second case we would have

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Page 158 an indirect presentation of the theme: The animal plot would not stand for itself but for something behind. In this case, content and theme are widely separated. Contrarily, works with similar content can deal with completely different themes: A novel about American Indians may have as its theme general human values like courage, determination, robustness, asceticism etc.; but it may also be about dealing with ethnic differences. If the literary works of a particular period continually take up specific themes, one can talk of fundamental literary themes, or the literary themes of a period. Such themes are often inscribed in internal distinctions made within genres. Thus for the novel we may speak of the novel of personal development, the love story, the marriage or family novel or the adventure novel. It seems legitimate to us to take as a starting point constantly recurring (within a specific period) themes of children’s literature as well, in other words with children’s literary themes of a specific period. The decision to take up specific themes in the medium of children’s literature may be made for religious, ideological, educational or existential reasons. It may also (additionally or mainly) be made in consideration of the addressees: In this case one would have chosen child-suitable themes, which are popular with the target group. The points of reference for assessing the child suitability of literary themes are, on the reader’s side—as was already the case with material and content—firstly their knowledge and experience of the world (factors concerned with familiarity) and secondly their likings and interests, wishes and desires, fantasies and dreams of the future (factors concerned with appeal). The tensions between the claims of individual groups of producers and mediators on the one side and the wishes and expectations of the target group on the other seem in some periods to come to a head around the choice of theme. Whereas there is no problem permitting a text to be adjusted to its readers on the level of language, style and form, and although there is even a degree of complaisance about material and content we find a rather more reserved attitude when it comes to the themes of children’s literature. It seems as if adults wish to reserve for themselves the right to make decisions in respect of this question at least. At the very least, the question of fundamental themes arises extremely rarely in the debates about the child suitability of children’s literature. A too far-reaching definition of child-suitable themes could make it very hard—if not impossible—for children’s literature to make use of themes that were disagreeable to the target group. Children’s literature that remained within the boundaries of favorite themes would forego the opportunity to irritate, provoke or shock its readers with the aim of broadening their horizons. We would then have literature that was adjusted to its readers in a more negative way. Supporters of the idea of providing material orientated solely towards popularity are mainly found, according to general opinion, among those whose only aim where children’s literature is concerned is to make money.

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Page 159 One might assume that adult literature and children’s literature drift apart in terms of their fundamental themes precisely to the extent that the corresponding age groups develop away from and become alien to one another. This assumption firstly suggests that children’s literature deals with its target group’s current problems. In the early stages of its development, children’s literature did not deal with its addressees’ present, but rather with their future role as adults (from the recipients’ viewpoint one might here speak of ‘future-based themes’). It was only in the course of the 18th century that childhood and adolescence became a theme (one might here talk of a turn to present-based themes’). Secondly the assumption suggests that adult literature excludes childhood and adolescence with their growing alienation from the adult world from its repertoire of themes. The reverse is the case: The more alien childhood and adolescence became, the more intensively adult literature dealt with them. Since the late 18th century childhood and adolescence could probably be seen as one of the cardinal themes of modern bourgeois literature (cf. Ewers 2001). Since the late 18th century, therefore, we have a common literary theme of the period in both literatures. I would like to go one step further and suggest the hypothesis that where fundamental themes are concerned there is even more common ground between general literature and children’s literature. Themes of the period like modern religiosity, nature, modern individuality, morality and conflict with norms, upbringing and education, (first) love, marriage and family, adventure and finally age and death are also taken up by children’s literature. Of course in individual periods certain themes tend rather to be avoided, just as some themes—such as, for example, first love— are dealt with mainly or exclusively in young people’s literature, whereas other themes are more strongly represented in children’s literature. On the whole one should probably characterize children’s literature and adult literature as literatures, which coincide in their fundamental themes. In our view, differences can only be perceived at a subordinate level: From the perspective of children’s literature it is different aspects of the period’s literary theme that are regarded as meaningful. Where the theme of nature is concerned, for example, the animal world is foregrounded more in children’s literature. The novel about marriage appears in children’s literature as a novel about the parents’ divorce, the effects of this on children being of particular interest. Even age is made a theme in children’s literature—perhaps within the framework of grandparents’ stories from the viewpoint of the grandchildren. The choice of a particular aspect of a fundamental theme may be motivated in many ways, and consideration of the child and youth readers could certainly play a part in this. Nevertheless it does not seem appropriate to me to talk of an alteration or a change in the theme, in other words of thematic accommodation. The fundamental themes as such are retrospective abstractions, since in principle only individual aspects of these themes can basically be comprehended in literary works. We see this as a fundamental feature of the literary reworking

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Page 160 or realization of a theme. If therefore children’s literature on the one hand and general literature on the other approach their period’s theme in different ways and each foregrounds different aspects, we are dealing with different parallel realizations of a theme. This does not exclude the possibility that both literatures can take up one and the same aspect of the literary theme of a period. Child suitability with respect to value judgements Literary works can assess the relationships and modes of behavior depicted in them in terms of values. For example, if a young people’s novel deals with a father–son conflict, then this might be seen in one case as an abnormal phenomenon, the result of a failed upbringing or unacceptable behavior on the part of the father, or in another case as a ‘normal’ conflict or crisis situation that is inevitable in modern adolescence. Other young people’s novels explore various young people’s leisure activities—parties, alcohol, drugs, computer games, for example—and judge these things in ways that are sometimes quite different—as acceptable or at least tolerable or as problematic and unacceptable. In a literary text, value judgements like this may be uttered by the narrator or also by individual— child, youth or adult—characters. Here we ought to ask how far any value judgement on the part of a narrator or character coincides with the viewpoint of what Wayne C. Booth calls the implied author (Booth 1961), and thus how far it agrees with the position adopted by the work as a whole. I would like to suggest that this level should also be included in the discussion of the child suitability of a literary work. It would then be a question of how the value judgements made in a literary work relate to the views and attitudes of the child and youth recipients that it is aimed at. The fundamental value judgements met with in a work would then be considered child-suitable if they concur with the attitudes of the target group. We would like to call this the child suitability of the viewpoint represented in a work—more briefly, ‘child-suitable value judgement’. Authors who are guided in their choice not only of material and content but also theme by the interests and needs of their child and youth readers can always reserve for themselves the right to pass final judgement on the subjects dealt with. They are, of course, writing about things that interest and fascinate children and young people, but insist on mediating their view of the subjects dealt with. One could imagine nevertheless that a work might judge something like young people’s party culture no differently from the young people addressed. Even if the authors’ viewpoints were different, they would not in this case let this influence the work. They would make themselves the (temporary) holders of viewpoints and attitudes that were not their own but those of the addressees of their texts. Authors would, in cases like this, merely be lending their ‘voice’, their literary talent, their skill in formulation and construction to the relevant target group in order to give literary expression to its ways of seeing and thinking. Critics with reservations might here talk

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Page 161 of works, which adopt the views and attitudes of the target group in a totally opportunistic way in order to win their favor. They would also consider it appropriate to doubt the authors’ honesty and sincerity. One could also imagine authors who refrain in their works from passing a final value judgement on the subjects and problems presented there. They would be satisfied with presenting the value judgements and assessments of the characters and leaving any controversies that might arise unresolved. A case one frequently meets with is where the viewpoint of the child or youth protagonist—as first person narrator, or from whose point of view the story is told— prevails without reservation, without the reader receiving the impression that there is an author somewhere in the background. Here we could speak of literature as a children’s or young people’s role play, which means a kind of literature in which children’s or young people’s viewpoints and values are not only uncensored, but also presented without commentary. The final judgement on the subjects and positions presented is left to the reader if the role play is taken to its logical conclusion. Literature without an implied author at the level of value judgements is far less controversial in the field of adult literature than it is in that of children’s literature. Even the modern children’s literature of the late 20th century is very sparing in its use of this kind of role-play writing, which is still felt to be quite radical. Pitiless exploration and uncommented presentation of the actual views, attitudes and emotions of children and young people is still generally Table 19.1 Levels of the Literary Work Forms of Child Suitability Forms of Accommodation to the Reader code choice level child suitable encoding code-related accommodation paratextual level paratextual child suitability paratextual accommodation linguistic level linguistic child suitability linguistic accommodation literary style level stylistic child suitability stylistic accommodation form and structure formal/structural child formal/structural accommodation suitability genre choice and genre child suitability of genre genre-related accommodation variant creation level choice or genre variation material choice level child suitability of material accommodation material/popularity of material content/motif level content-related child content-related accommodation (only in reworkings of suitability/ popularity of adult literary works for children and young people) motifs thematic level thematic child suitability implied author (position child suitability of value adopted in the work) level judgements

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Page 162 regarded as a literary project that is only suitable for adult readers. The general view of this point is that adults know how to judge matters properly, but not children, who must therefore be provided with the correct value judgement. References Booth, W. C. (1961) The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Brüggemann, T. (1977) ‘Literaturtheoretische Grundlagen des Kinder- und Jugendschrifttums (1966)’, in Bernstorff, E. G. (ed.) Aspekte der erzählenden Jugendliteratur, Baltmannsweiler: Schneider-Verlag, 14–34. Dahrendorf, M. (1967) ‘Dichtung und Jugendliteratur. Didaktischer Versuch einer Wesensbestimmung’, in Zeitschrift für Jugendliteratur 7, 385–400. Ewers, H.-H. (2001) ‘Kinderliteratur als Medium der Entdeckung von Kindheit’, in Behnken, I. and Zinnecker, J. (eds) Kinder. Kindheit. Lebensgeschichte. Ein Handbuch , Seelze-Velber: Kallmeyer, 48–62. Kayser, W. (1956) Das Sprachliche Kunstwerk. Eine Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft [1948], 4th ed., Bern: Franke. Klingberg, G. (1973) Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung. Eine Einführung , Wien, Köln and Graz: Böhlau. Overbeck, C. A. (1781) Frizchens Lieder , Hamburg: Bohn. Rode, A. (2001) Kinderschauspiele [1776], Leipzig: Crusius; reprinted in Reiß, G. (ed.): Theater und Musik für Kinder, Frankfurt a. M. et al.: Lang, 50–91.

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Page 163 Chapter Twenty Child Suitability as a Basis for Textual Analysis In the previous chapter we sketched a schematic way of ordering possible forms of child suitability as well as possible forms of the accommodation of the text for child and youth readers. This was intended to be a method of categorizing what has been said historically about the reader suitability of the children’s literature available at any given period, and was also meant to be an instrument for classifying all those elements of children’s literary discourse (see Chapter 17), which are concerned with the text–reader relationship. This does not, however, seem to me to be its only possible use: It could in my view also be understood as a categorizing scheme for textual analysis. In this chapter I will use two examples of analysis to demonstrate to what extent it can be made to serve as a guideline for determining child suitability. For this purpose I will take Otfried Preußler’s story Der kleine Wassermann (1956, The Little Water-Sprite, transl. by Anthea Bell, 1960) and Peter Härtling’s children’s novel Ben liebt Anna (1979; Ben Loves Anna, transl. by J. H. Auerbach, 1990), which have both become children’s classics in Germany. The discussions are in summary form and are not intended to be exhaustive. “Der kleine Wassermann” (1956) by Otfried Preußler • Coding level: In the German first edition (Preußler 1956, 3–126) the story has 124 pages. There are 44 illustrations, a proportion of roughly one illustration for every two and a half pages of text: It is therefore relatively lavishly illustrated. I judge this to be child-suitable encoding,

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Page 164 which is at the same time code-related accommodation: Such lavish illustration is not normal in general literature. • Paratextual field : The story is divided into 21 chapters, and thus average chapter length is 5–6 pages. Taken together with the relatively large font that has been chosen and the fact that all the paragraphs have been kept very short, this shows that the graphic design and the structure of this story are aimed at children beginning to learn to read. Even for old, traditional narrative art such small chapter and paragraph divisions are relatively unusual, so that we can speak here of paratextual accommodation. • Linguistic level : Here we analyze just one chapter of the German original (Chapter 4: “Kreuz und quer durch den Mühlenweiher” [Back and forth through the mill-pond], pp. 22–25). The chapter is divided into 19 paragraphs and consists of 44 sentences. Of these, 16 are simple main clauses, and a further 10 sentences consist of a series of main clauses, which are either linked by ‘and’ or simply separated by commas. If we separate these, we come to a total of 59 sentences. Among these there are only 20 hypotactic sentence structures with more than one element (mainly consisting of main clause and subordinate clause; only in one case of two subordinate clauses). More complex sentence structures therefore only make up a third of the text, two thirds of which consists of simple main clauses or paratactically linked main clause elements. As speech forms we find: narrative text, direct speech (external and—in one case—internal) with ‘s/he said (etc.)’ tags in each case and—for the external speech—with quotation marks. More complex modes of rendering speech and thoughts, such as free indirect speech or inner monolog are avoided. A 6–8-year-old child hearing this would be understretched linguistically, so that the linguistic form of the text is unmistakably aimed at children reading to themselves at the beginner stage. • Formal features: We find what is called the authorial narrative mode: The story of the little water sprite is presented by a narrator who stands outside the narrated world and has an unrestricted view of everything that happens. The narrator remains intangible, in that s/he is not present in person as a character—we experience him/her only through the presentation of the narrative. What is tangible is the specific mode of narrative: The narrative style is reminiscent of an oral narrative situation, and there are numerous features characteristic of oral narrative (oralisms). A striking example of this is the fourth paragraph of the first chapter (at the top of page 4: “Da zog sich der Wassermann …” [The water sprite pulled himself up … ]). Child readers gain the impression that they are confronted with an adult narrator who is speaking to them and drawing them into the narrative. In the mid-20th century this narrative mode is, in terms of literary history, an anachronism, which is used here quite obviously out of consideration for the child recipient. In the 1950s, authorial narrative based on oral style became a children’s literary convention. Choosing it is

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Page 165 accommodation of the normal narrative mode in general literature to the child recipient. • Questions of genre: We are dealing with a fairy tale in the broadest sense, more precisely with a literary folk legend or fairy-tale novella. The author appeals to “the old stories, like the ones one listened to in farmers’ houses when one was a boy”, and is therefore linking himself to a fund of narrative that was presented to him in his own childhood. The genre is also defined by the content: Folk legends or fairy tales contain among other things otherworld beings, nature spirits, spirits of place or the home, who live within or on the margin of the human world. Characters from this world and the other world therefore belong to the same world no matter how antagonistically they may oppose one another. The existence of otherworldly characters, no matter how mysterious they may seem, is in principle not doubted in the folk legend. Preußler’s adaptation of this traditional genre in his work of children’s literature is—at least on the level of the child reader—neither alienating nor ironic and therefore looks anachronistic in the context of general literary history—but only in this context, mark you. The choice of this literary genre together with the avoidance of alienation and irony can be assessed as genre-related accommodation. The contemporary image of childhood suggests that children in the age group addressed here are in a transitional phase between a magical, animistic view of the world and one that is realistic, so that they still receive stories of this kind in a naïve way. • Aspects of material and content: Firstly, the choice of genre also leads to the inclusion of traditional material— which means making magic beings, otherworld beings, nature spirits etc., characters in a narrative. Using this material, which is already regarded as child suitable, partly guarantees the content-related child suitability of the narrative. This all suggests that children particularly like stories about these kinds of magic beings—an assumption that is totally in conformity with the ideology of childhood of that period, where it was felt necessary to guide and mold the child subject. Preußler nevertheless makes changes to the legendary magic figures: He tells children about the childhood of a nature spirit, which we see as taking the child reader into consideration. By describing the little water sprite and his first exploration of the world as well as his first adventures he modifies the traditional material in the sense of trying to get closer to the target group’s experience of the world. This is material-related accommodation. A further example of material-related accommodation is the celebration that is held for the birth of the little water sprite. In the traditional fairy story they forget to invite one of the fairies, who nevertheless appears and utters a curse on the new-born child, the remainder of the narrative being devoted to mitigating the curse’s effects. In Preußler’s story, too, one of the nature spirits is at first missing—the sinister bog-man.

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Page 166 However, he has not been forgotten—he is simply late, and instead of cursing the new-born child he gives him the most important gift—a joyful heart (ibid., 14). A third example: The folk legend tends generally to produce a tragic ending to the conflict between characters from this world and the other world. In Preußler’s story the only hint of this conflict is found in the episode with the mortal man (ibid., 99 ff). Otherwise his story tends to move in the opposite direction: The friendship between the little water sprite and the three mortal boys demonstrates the possibility of understanding and reconciliation. Preußler’s adaptation of traditional narrative material shows a tendency to eliminate doom and tragedy, replacing them with cheerfulness and freedom from care: what was melancholy and frightening becomes idyllic. We can regard this idyllic alteration of traditional material, undertaken with the child recipients in mind, as a further instance of material-related accommodation. • Thematic features : I think that the theme of the story is childhood itself—and, indeed, childhood as it ought to be in the view of a specific (modern) idea of childhood: an area, protected to some extent, where the child is free to explore the world, to play and be adventurous. It is not about the relationship between mortals and nature spirits, as is the case with the traditional folk legends; the idyll of the water sprite is unmistakably the image of an ideal human children’s world as created by reforming educationalists and the Romantics. In this reading Preußler’s story does actually contain a certain mildly ironic deeper meaning, which brings it a bit closer to modernity. However, this will only be seen by the adult reader. It is not revealed to child reader anywhere in the text that something else is actually meant—not in a way that is comprehensible to them. Unlike the 18th- and early 19th-century “Bilddichtung” (metaphoric/allegorical poetry, usually of a moral nature) for children, this text does not reveal itself to the child recipients as being figurative writing. For them the world of the water sprites and the adventures of the little water sprite are not only the content but also the theme of the narrative. Children are not intended to be made aware of what it actually means—at the very most they may vaguely sense it. For them it is the story of a happy childhood— and not the childhood of a human being, but that of a nature spirit. • Implicit value-judgement: Several different value-systems can be discerned in the story—for example, that of the anxious mother, of which the implied author has a low opinion and which, if obeyed would be very restrictive for the little water sprite. The value system of modern adult society is represented by the mortal man and as a result also ruled out. The predominant value system is a child’s concept of the world, which is represented in the story mainly by one of the adult figures—the water-sprite father who has nothing to do but act as his son’s ideal

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Page 167 companion. The story offers us an educational sphere in which the child’s needs are the only thing that counts. “Ben liebt Anna” (1979) by Peter Härtling • Encoding level: This children’s novel (Härtling 1979, 5–77), quoted from the first edition with illustrations by Sophie Brandes, has 61 pages, including the full-page illustrations. The edition used has 12 illustrations, a proportion of one illustration to every 5 pages of text (only half as many illustrations as Preußler). Nevertheless I still see this as childsuitable encoding and at the same time code-related accommodation. • Paratextual level : The novel is divided into 14 chapters, resulting an average chapter length of 4 ½ pages. The font chosen is relatively large. These elements of book design—illustration, chapter division and font size—could, as with Preußler be seen as being adjusted to relatively inexperienced early readers of about 8 years old and could also be regarded as paratextual accommodation. • Linguistic and stylistic level : For the level of sentence structure we do not here analyze an individual chapter. It is very obvious that this narrative also makes use of simple sentence construction (a large number of relatively short main clauses) and that parataxis predominates over hypotaxis. An extreme example of this is the thirteenth paragraph of Chapter 1 (p. 8), where the division into a series of paratactic clauses is emphasized stylistically by an initial “then” that is repeated ten times. The complex sentences, which we estimate as forming about a third of the text, consist almost exclusively of one main and one subordinate clause. The emphatically simple sentence structure can be seen as being aimed at child recipients, and yet it is also the expression of a stylistic intent: The narrative unmistakable follows a laconic short-story style of the kind that we frequently find in general literature. At the level of the representation of speech the author absolutely refuses to make any allowance for the child reader. As forms of speech we find: narrative text, external and internal direct speech, train of thought, and free indirect speech. The most striking formal feature of this children’s novel is the omission of quotation marks to indicate direct speech. “S/ he said” tags are also frequently missing. This makes it difficult for the child reader to recognize external direct speech, and in some cases to assign it to a particular character. The way speech is presented also shows little regard for the child reader where the depiction of the protagonist’s inner life is concerned. This depiction of his inner life is always clear where the author uses the ‘train-of-thought’ form, often opening with a “Ben thought” formula, or in the from of internal direct speech (“I’m not going to talk to them about Anna,” he vowed to himself, “and definitely not with Holger any more.”—ibid., 25). On other occasions

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Page 168 it is often hard to decide whether this is narrative text or free indirect speech, in other words, whether the emotional state of the protagonist is being described or whether this represents the protagonist’s own awareness of that state. At the level of representing speech, therefore, the text shows no consideration for its child readers. It is this in this respect no different in principle (though it may be in degree) from modern narrative technique intended for adults when the depiction of inner states is intended. • Formal aspects: We are confronted with what is called a personal narrative mode, that is, narration that is not objective, but subjective from the point of view of the protagonist. It is only in relatively few places that the narrative demonstrates authorial characteristics (at the beginning of chapters, in sentences that are meant to give a sense of orientation or in the case of summing up). The narrative mode practiced here is no different in principle (though it may be in degree) from modern narrative technique intended for adults. In terms of genre we have—at least as far as the fundamental formal principles are concerned—a modern novel, more precisely a psychological novel of everyday realism with touches of disillusionment (also known as the novel of disillusion), which in general literature is a perfectly normal contemporary form. The only consideration given to the child reader is in the way this pattern is applied (questions of length, limitations at the level of representation and theme). • Aspects of material and content: This novel is about a first deeply emotionally stirring love relationship, beginning among playfellows and schoolmates, between a nine-year-old boy in the fourth grade and a Polish emigrant girl. The protagonist is described in such detail and is so individualized that he cannot be used as a screen for projecting the desires and the egos of the readers; instead, the recipients are required to put themselves in Ben’s place, i.e. to show empathy. However, the readers thus addressed are still confronted with the experiences of a protagonist who is one of them, so that the material and content could be seen as familiar and accessible to its readership. This allows us to speak of material-related and content-related child suitability. Material and content of this kind are very frequently met with in many forms in modern general literature about childhood. These are found largely uncut and unabbreviated in Härtling’s children’s novel, so that we cannot talk of material-related accommodation in this case. As regards the more marginal content or sources of conflict—the problems of outsiders in the school class, the fate of emigrants, the professional world (indicatively enough only) of the fathers, these are part of at least the experience and observation of the target recipients, which should thus make them directly responsive to these themes, while one might not always expect them to be (spontaneously) interested in them.

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Page 169 • Thematic features : It is a basic principle of the genre represented by this book that the things dealt with do not stand for something else, but only for themselves. Thus in this text the levels of content and theme largely coincide. From a thematic perspective, however, the shading that has already been observed on the level of content becomes even clearer: While we can speak of not only the content-related but also the theme-related child suitability of the main theme of love between children without reservation (although we should probably distinguish between boys and girls in this respect), it is less clear whether the other themes would also spontaneously interest the target reader. Nevertheless it is clearly the author’s intention that child readers should think about themes of this kind. The choice of these themes would therefore not be the result of theme-related consideration for the reader but rather of the author’s educational intention. • Implicit value judgements : Subjective personal narration means that the reader experiences everything from the standpoint of what Franz K. Stanzel calls the “reflector figure”, perceives everything in the same way as they do and find that everything is judged subjectively. The reflector figure is the judge of not only perception and experience, but also of values. Where the experience of first love is concerned, Härtling leaves the position, revealed by the narrative perspective, from which the child protagonist makes value judgements, totally untouched. Opposing views (such as those of the other members of his family, which admittedly are quickly changed) are disavowed. Claiming that love is an experience, which is also accessible to children (and can therefore form the subject of children’s literature) is a central element in the demand for equal rights for children (and children’s literature), which is supported by the author’s own statements (in the prefatory remarks, but also elsewhere). In the case of the other content and themes the central value-judgements seem to us to arise from a different position. Here the child protagonist seems largely to lack a personal standpoint. For the problem of outsiders, at least where they arise within a school class, the teacher seems to us to be the decisive authority, as he is in the question of emigrants, although towards the end the father also plays a role in this respect. If the choice of these themes is the result of the author’s educational intentions, then it is only logical that adult characters should appear in the text as the decisive authorities in these matters. Otherwise Ben would have to be seen as a real paragon of virtue, which it would not be possible to reconcile with what is defined as acceptable in a modern, psychologically realistic narrative. This is an example of children’s literature where child suitability predominates and which is conceived from the perspective of the child subject, and which only has educational aims with respect to some individual secondary themes. Because of his different idea of childhood, Härtling certainly seems to feel that

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Page 170 far less accommodation is necessary; compared with Preußler’s narratives, this late-1970s novel diverges considerably less from general literary conventions. References Härtling, P. (1997) Ben liebt Anna. Kinderroman , images by Sophie Brandes, 7th ed., Weinheim and Basel: Beltz & Gelberg. ——(1990) Ben loves Anna, translated from the German by J. H. Auerbach, illustrated by Ellen Weinstein, Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press. Preußler, O. (1956) Der kleine Wassermann , with many illustrations by Winnie Gayler, Stuttgart: Thienemann. ——(1960) The little water-sprite, translated by Anthea Bell, New York: Abelard-Schumann. Stanzel, F. K. (1985) Theorie des Erzählens [1979], 3rd revised ed., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.

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Page 171 Chapter Twenty-One External and Internal Suitability The divergences—of different extent from period to period—between children’s literature and adult literature are not just a matter of accommodation, of modifications of literary conventions out of consideration for the addressees. Children’s literature also uses other literary methods, at least partly because it has to serve different purposes. The most striking of these are the numerous educational aims (see Chapter 15) which elevated literature for adults had in its own view largely dispensed with, but which still continued to be demanded of children’s literature. Anyone who wishes to look at children’s literature with an unbiased eye must, as well as the factor of child suitability, take its functional factors into account. They would have to see children’s literature not just as child-suitable literature, but as literature serving different special purposes in every age. Since the beginning of the 19th century children’s literature has been regarded because of these two qualities (its character as literature which is reader-orientated as well serving specific goals) as aesthetically inferior, in other words, as not being a fully adequate form of literature. This is not the place to expand on the presumed opposition between autonomous and goal-orientated literature, the apparently unbridgeable gap between aesthetics and education (see the relevant discussion in Chapter 15). I will restrict myself to discussing that much disparaged quality: reader suitability. I have adopted a rhetorical term to define the child suitability of a literary work, that is, its external suitability. In rhetorical teaching the external suitability of a speech is designed and planned as part of the dispositio, what is called the “work-external dispositio”. This is understood to be “the ‘planning’ (consilium) of the orator that is directed towards achieving the aim of the speech” (Lausberg 1967, § 46, 2). As a counterpart to the work-external dispositio we have the “work-internal disposition”, which refers to “the choice and ordering of the parts of the work as a whole”, that is, the planning of the “internal disposition” of the speech (ibid., § 49). The case in question, as well as the “speech as

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Page 172 a whole” in which the case is presented, and finally the linguistic and stylistic means used must fit together, suit one another, be in harmony with one another. Here, in contrast to external suitability, one could speak of internal suitability, the suitability of the artistic means for their subject (Ueding 1990, 21). Aesthetic autonomy versus reader-orientation Some theorists have tried to contrast external and internal suitability. With the “autonomization of art” that set in in the late 18th century and the consequent development of a “literary audience” (no longer divided along social, age or gender lines), the “criterion of external suitability” was admittedly not “inoperative” but it was nevertheless “deprived of its decisive effect”. Simultaneously “children’s literature was established as a special field of literary development because it alone remained committed to a specific circle of addressees, so that the criterion of external suitability could also retain its importance and effectiveness in a very specific sense” (Ueding 1990, 21). One would not object to such a description if it did not imply a more or less concealed value judgement—that in an age of aesthetic autonomy literature that was committed to external suitability must of necessity be inferior. Where a specific audience was taken into consideration, limits would be set on the “author’s creative ability”; there would be an inevitable rift between the “internal suitability of the work and its subject” (ibid.). We would like to counter this view by suggesting that external and internal suitability were originally formulated as criteria, which both had to be fulfilled simultaneously. It would therefore be more appropriate to describe the nascent separate development of children’s literature by pointing out that for this type of literature both criteria continued to be valid, whereas “autonomous”, “aesthetic” literature had declared its independence of one of them, that of reader suitability. It is our view that simultaneous fulfillment of both criteria was not actually impossible after 1800. Observing external suitability does not necessarily entail interference with internal suitability, no matter how numerous the works of children’s literature, which seem to be an example of this may be. If one decides to apply a double criterion to children’s literary works—not only external but also internal suitability—this might undermine the argument suggesting that this must in principle result in aesthetic inferiority and that this would be insurmountable. There would then also be no reason to declare works, which are one-sidedly designed for external suitability to be the phenotype of children’s literature. A double criterion Applying a double criterion would mean that with every formal element one would have to consider not only if it can be justified with regard to the child

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Page 173 and youth readers but also to ask if it fits smoothly into the internal structure of the work. It must be possible to justify every element in two ways—i.e. it must be seen to be doubly determined—in such a way that when examining its internal determination one can completely ignore its external determination and vice versa. Simple sentence structure—short main clauses in paratactic series, a small proportion of hypotactic sentence constructions— of the kind met with in both Preußler’s and Härtling’s works can be justified in one respect with regard to the early reader, in which case it would be shown to be a feature of external suitability. However, this type of sentence structure also represents an artistic medium, a conscious stylistic element. Preußler is trying to use it stylistically to represent the comparatively simple language of the storyteller who has an audience of children. Contrarily, Härtling tries to use syntax to get into the interior thinking, perception, and emotional style of his nine-year-old protagonist; anyone who adheres so closely to the perspective of a young boy can only use such a laconic, colloquial style of language, which has no place for complicated sentence structures. In both cases the sentence structure seems to be justified ‘from the inside’ as well. Children’s literary stories and novels often provide information about and explanations of subjects, which would not need any mention in texts written for adults. These points of orientation are regarded as indispensable in consideration of the target readers, so that they could be seen as a component of external suitability. One would also need to examine whether this information fits neatly into the story or novel. Responsibility for mediating this kind of information can easily be entrusted to an authorial narrator, as this is after all one of their inherited functions. With first-person narration or personal third-person narration it is different: In such cases dialog between the characters is often overloaded with background information—with the inevitable consequence that it seems wooden. Background information that is not satisfactorily integrated in terms of composition, and which does not seem to arise plausibly from the conversational situation of the characters, looks ‘planted’. In such cases this is external suitability, but not at the same time internal suitability. Different periods have often disagreed considerably in their perception and positioning of these two criteria. For example, in German children’s literary criticism in the 1950s and early 1960s external suitability became the focus of attention, although even then individual voices insisted that internal artistic consistency should not be neglected because of this (cf. Ewers 1996, 1997). By contrast, for the children’s literary criticism of the 1980s and early 1990s the internal necessity of all the means of representation was of such importance that consequently external suitability declined to become something trivial, something that was desirable but ultimately contingent; certainly not something that was crucial when judging literary value. For this school of criticism a children’s literary text could be regarded as successful if it gave as little impression as possible that it was written for children and young people and adapted to their understanding and imaginative world.

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Page 174 Aesthetic consistency and the literary avant-garde Finally I would like to suggest that we should distinguish between two kinds of internal suitability. The first, which we have been considering so far, is connected with the internal organization of the individual work. But one could also consider suitability in terms of the state of development of contemporary general literature. The point of reference would no longer be the internal organization of individual work, but the state of development of the literary symbol system current at any given period. One would then demand not just internal suitability in terms of the individual work, but also conformity with the level of general literary development. In this case one could distinguish terminologically between the legitimacy of individual elements as either work-immanent or in terms of general literary evolution. Even more than the demand for work-immanent suitability in the sense of aesthetic consistency, the demand for conformity with the relevant state of development of the means of literary expression can make it difficult for children’s literature to fulfill the requirements of reader suitability. At the very least, any hope of making a text suitable for the child recipients threatens to fall by the wayside. One only has to remember the way in which almost all the didactic forms and genres of literature have become anachronistic since the beginning and middle of the 19th century. The practical disappearance of authorial narrative forms from general literature has also been a dilemma for children’s literature. We should not be surprised if the demand for conformity with the level of development of general literature has been totally rejected by some critics, who suggest that children’s literature should be freed of all the requirements of current literary aesthetics. The contemporary state of development of general—particularly elevated—literary modes of expression should not, in their view, be a point of reference for children’s literature. The contrary position suggests that children’s literature should always attempt to conform with both external and the two types of internal suitability. It should be a form of literature that accommodates its child and youth readers as far as possible while at the same time being of high aesthetic quality and preserving literary consistency; also a form of literature that in the broadest sense is part of contemporary literary culture and shares its conventions of taste (in accordance with the children’s literary norm “children’s literature as a fully adequate form of literature”, see Chapter 15). Fulfilling this threefold demand has been easy in some periods, more difficult in others. In the view of those who adopt this position, children’s literature can only be reader-orientated as long as this is compatible with both its artistic demands and its claim to be contemporary in literary terms. References Ewers, H.-H. (1996) ‘Kinderliteraturtheorie der Nachkriegszeit. Progressive Aspekte der Theorie des ,guten Jugendbuchs’ der 50er und 60er Jahre’, in Dolle-Weinkauff, B. and Ewers,

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Page 175 H.-H. (eds) Theorien der Jugendlektüre. Beiträge zur Kinder- und Jugendliteraturkritik seit Heinrich Wolgast , Weinheim and München: Juventa, 165–178. ——(1997) ‘Der österreichische Beitrag zur Theorie des ›guten Jugendbuchs‹. Anmerkungen zur Kinderliteraturtheorie Richard Bambergers’, in Ewers, H.-H. and Seibert, E. (eds) Geschichte der österreichischen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart , Wien: Buchkultur, 146–151. Lausberg, H. (1967) Elemente der literarischen Rhetorik [1963], 3rd ed., München: Max Hueber. Ueding, G. (1990) ‘Literatur mit beschränkter Haftung? Über die Misere der Kinder- und Jugendbuchkritik’, in Scharioth, B. and Schmidt, J. (eds) Zwischen allen Stühlen: zur Situation der Kinder und Jugendbuchkritik . Tutzing: Evang. Akad., 17–31.

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Page 177 Notes Chapter Two 1 The term ‘reading’ can describe both an act or process and an object. In this section we use the term exclusively with the second meaning: what we mean are titles or works that are to be, or have been, read. In everyday colloquial speech this variant meaning occurs in phrases like ‘holiday reading’ and ‘childhood reading’. 2 A suitable term for this corpus might be the one that is current in the German-speaking area outside the academic study of children’s literature, namely ‘Kinder- und Jugendbuchliteratur’ (children’s book literature). However we will avoid using this awkward phrase. 3 In librarianship contexts the term ‘media units’ is also used. Chapter Five 1 Recent research payed much attention to this sort of children’s literature. Scholars talk in this context about all age literature, crossover books, crossover fiction or crossover novels. Vgl. Ewers 1986, Grenz 1990, Beckett 1999 and 2008, Blume 2005, Falconer 2008. Chapter Six 1 Gansel speaks of “literary actions (Handlungen), that is production, mediation, reception, processing”; in another place he talks of “social actions with texts (Gansel 1995, 33, 34). I prefer to talk of actions connected with literary or media products. Chapter Eight 1 The (Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish) public libraries maintained by the churches and religious authorities play a double role in Germany today. On the one hand, they fulfil various functions within the churches (e.g.

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Page 178 making Protestant literature available), but on the other hand see themselves as general libraries open to everyone, so that in some places they can also function as a replacement for normal public libraries. In fulfilling the second role, that is performing a general cultural duty rather than a specific religious or church duty, the public libraries maintained by the churches form a part of the public library action system. 2 For the Catholic libraries the “Borromäusverein e.V.” (Borromaeus Association) headquartered in Bonn (for Bavaria the “St. Michaelsbund” [Association of St Michael, headquartered in Munich]), for the Evangelical Church libraries the “Zentralstelle für Buch- und Büchereiarbeit in Deutschland” (Centre for Book and Library Work in Germany), part of the “Deutscher Verband Evangelischer Büchereien e.V.” (German Association of Evangelical Libraries), headquartered in Göttingen. 3 The ekz’s journal is “BA—Besprechungen, Annotationen. Basisdienst und Mitteilungsblatt der Lektoratskooperation für öffentliche Bibliotheken” (BA—Reviews and Annotations. General Service and Information Sheet of the Cooperative Lectorate for Public Libraries), that of the Borromäusverein and the St. Michaelbund “Buchprofile für die katholische Büchereiarbeit” (Book Profiles for Catholic Library Work), that of the Deutscher Verband Evangelischer Büchereien “Der Evangelische Buchberater. Zeitschrift für Buch- und Büchereiarbeit” (Evangelical Book Advisor. Journal for Book and Library Work). Chapter Ten 1 Let me just mention in passing that representatives of other professions were also to be found among the actors in this evaluation system—country librarians, for example—but they had little effect on the basic character of this sphere of action. 2 Let us name here the Musterung unserer deutschen Jugendliteratur (Review of Our German Youth Literature), 2nd ed., by Dr. A. Detmer, a teacher and later minister in Hamburg; also the Mittheilungen über Jugendschriften an Aeltern und Lehrer nebst gelegentlichen Bemerkungen über Volksschriften (News of Youth Writing for Parents and Teachers, with occasional remarks about popular literature) by the Rector of the Nuremberg Business School, Georg Wilhelm Hopf, which appeared first in 1849, then in an expanded 4th edition in 1861 and a 5th edition in 1875; and the Wegweiser durch die deutschen Volks- und Jugendschriften (Guide to German Popular and Youth Writing, 1852) by Karl Bernhardi, Doctor of Theology and Librarian in Kassel, whose objective was the “encouragement of a Biblical and Christian world-view”, as well as the Centralblatt für deutsche Volks- und Jugendliteratur (Central Journal for German Popular and Youth Literature) which appeared from 1857, edited by H.

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Page 179 Schwerdt, Priest at Neukirchen, described by Hermann Köster as the “first critical journal for youth writing” (Köster 1927, 393). 3 As early as 1852 Bernhardi’s Verzeichnis was produced “in collaboration with many writers for the people and youth”, which became the usual practice for many subsequent guides. Chapter Eighteen 1 In German research in the 1960s the concept of adaptation was used for this. At the beginning of the 1970s Göte Klingberg associated himself with this (Klingberg 1973, 92f; Klingberg’s ideas are presented in Groeben 1982, 161f). In general literary theory adaptation means all modes of revising individual works that transcend the limits of genre or medium—and also, I would like to add, the boundary between adult and children’s literature. Children’s literary theory cannot avoid the use of the category of adaptation in the meaning outlined above. The terminological suggestion made above would result in an ambiguity which could easily be avoided by the choice of another term. 2 This pair of concepts has already been used in German children’s literary research. As a rule this adopted the idea —plausible in terms of developmental psychology—of placing the human individual in the subject position. Thus Karl Ernst Maier defines the process of assimilation as “the adaptation of the object to the subject” which, “transferred to the field of children’s literature”, means “to shape or change a text, or to choose from a number of texts in such a way that it/they correspond to the psychological disposition and the abilities of the reader circle for which they are intended” (Maier 1976, 119). Accommodation is defined by Maier as the reverse process in which the child responds by adapting to the accepted literary conventions. Chapter Nineteen 1 The material that is meant here is discussed by Göte Klingberg under the heading “medienwählende Adaption” (adaptation by choice of media) (Klingberg 1973, 97f). However adaptation by choice of media, or media adaptation is normally understood to mean something different: the adaptation of a work for other media, for example the stage and radio versions, the comic, and the film versions of a novel.

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Page 181 Index Persons A Andersen, Hans Christian 47, 49 Ariès, Philippe 142, 145 Arndt, Ernst Moritz 20 Arnim, Achim von 46, 156 Arold, Marliese 38 Azegami, Taiji 79, 82 B Bamberger, Richard 59, 64 Beaumont, Jeanne-Marie LePrince de 45 Becchi, Egle 142, 145 Beckett, Sandra 49, 177 Behnken, Imbke 162 Bernhardi, Karl 178–179 Bernstorff, Ernst Gottlieb von 162 Bertlein, Hermann 72, 75 Betten, Lioba 69–70 Blume, Svenja 49, 177 Bogdal, Klaus-Michael 30 Boie, Kirsten 33 Booth, Wayne C. 160, 162 Bosse, Heinrich 132, 135 Bouchard, Donald F. 135 Brackert, Helmut 60 Brentano, Clemens 47, 156 Brothers Grimm 35, 46, 49, 119, 150, 155 Brüggemann, Theodor 18, 20, 23, 147, 162 Burney, Francis 45 C Campe, Joachim Heinrich 32–33, 35, 133 Carroll, Lewis 48 Chamisso, Adalbert von 20 Christian Gotthilf, Salzmann 33, 35 Collodi, Carlo 133 Conrady, Peter 120 Contessa, Carl Wilhelm 47–48 Corrodi, August 35 D Dahrendorf, Malte 53, 58, 64, 71, 75, 147, 162 Defoe, Daniel 144 DeMause, Lloyd 142, 145 Detmer, Adolf 178 Dettmar, Ute 122, 127 Doderer, Klaus 18, 20, 23, 70, 75 Dolle-Weinkauff, Bernd 82, 93–94, 174 E Eckhardt, Juliane 18, 20, 23 Eco, Umberto 106, 110 Ehlich, Konrad 15 Even-Zohar, Itamar 96, 101 Ewald, Johann Ludwig 44 Ewers, Hans-Heino 1, 18–20, 23, 29, 30, 35, 41, 43, 49, 56, 58, 82, 86, 88, 93–94, 97, 101, 115, 118–119, 122, 128, 159, 162, 173–175, 177 F Falconer, Rachel 49, 177 Faulstich, Werner 58 Flaubert, Gustave 148 Fontane, Theodor 148 Foucault, Michel 132, 134–135 Fouqué, Friedrich de la Motte 47–48 Franzmann, Bodo 60, 69–70 G Gansel, Carsten 58, 177

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Page 182 Gedike, Friedrich 134–135 Genette, Gérard 31–33, 40–41 Gerstäcker, Friedrich 157 Giddens, Anthony 129, 135 Grass, Günter 12 Grenz, Dagmar 49, 177 Grimm, Jacob 46 Groeben, Norbert 141, 143, 145, 179 Güll, Friedrich 36 Gustav Frenssen 156 H Haas, Gerhard 53, 58, 71, 75 Habermas, Jürgen 85, 88 Hacker, Rupert 65, 69, 70 Härtling, Peter 33, 40, 133, 163, 167, 169, 173 Heidtmann, Horst 53, 58–59, 64 Herleth, Annemarie 35 Hesse, Catharina von 44 Hesse, Hermann 12 Hey, Wilhelm 60 Heydebrand, Renate von 127–128 Hoffmann, E.T.A. 47–48 Hogelmann, Wolfgang 33 Hopf, Georg Wilhelm 134–135, 178 Hurrelmann, Bettina 115, 120 J Julia, Dominique 142, 145 K Kahrmann, Cordula 36–37, 41, 49 Kästner, Erich 134–135, 150 Kayser, Wolfgang 157, 162 King, Stephen 10 Klingberg, Göte 1–4, 18, 23, 59, 64, 114, 116, 120, 139, 145, 147, 149, 150, 152, 156–157, 162, 179 Koch, Hans-Albrecht 59, 64 Koch, Henny 38 Köster, Hermann Leopold 79, 82, 93–94, 179 L Ladenthin, Volker 116, 120 Lämmert, Eberhard 64 Lange, Günter 75 Lausberg, Heinrich 171, 175 Lindgren, Astrid 133, 150 Link, Hannelore 36–37, 41, 49 Locke, John 139, 145 Lypp, Maria 115, 120 M Maier, Karl Ernst 145, 179 Maier, Otto 60 May, Karl 133, 156 McCullers, Carson 12 Meyer, Franz 94 Mörike, Eduard 20, 47 Musäus, Johann Karl August 47 N Nöstlinger, Christine 33 O Overbeck, Christian Adolf 151, 162 P Pajeken, Friedrich Joachim 156 Posner, Roland 9–10, 15, 106, 110 Pratchett, Terry 10 Pressler, Mirjam 33 Preußler, Otfried 163, 165–167, 169–170, 173 R Rank, Bernhard 35, 41, 119–120 Reiß, Gunter 36, 41, 49, 162 Richter, Karin 120 Rochow, Friedrich Eberhard von 32, 133

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Rode, August 151, 162 Rosebrock, Cornelia 119 Rückert, Friedrich 20 Ruppelt, Georg 69–70 S Salinger, Jerome David 12 Salzmann, Christian Gotthilf 133 Schaff, Adam 106, 110 Schaller, Horst 145 Scharrelmann, Heinrich 35 Scherf, Walter 18, 23 Schleusener, Klaus 73, 75 Schluchter, Manfred 36, 41, 49 Schmid, Christoph von 133 Schulz, Winfried 9, 15 Schütz, Erhard 59, 64 Schwab, Gustav 36 Schwerdt, Heinrich 178 Seibert, Ernst 175 Shavit, Zohar 2, 49, 96, 101, 116, 120 Simrock, Karl Joseph 35 Spinner, Kaspar H. 120 Spyri, Johanna 60 Stanzel, Franz K. 169–170

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Page 183 Steinbeck, Christoph Gottlieb 44 Storm, Theodor 49 T Tieck, Ludwig 47 Titzmann, Michael 129, 135 Trimolt, Johann Gottlieb 44 Twain, Mark 20 U Ueding, Gerd 122, 128, 172, 175 Uhland, Ludwig 20 Uhlig, Christian 59–60 V Voit, Friedrich 59, 64 W Waser, Felix 44 Weber, Jakob Andreas 44 Weinmann, Andrea 41 Weiße, Christian Felix 133 Wenke, Gabriele 53, 58–59, 64 Wieland, Christoph Martin 47 Wilkending, Gisela 82, 93–94 Winko, Simone 127–128 Wittmann, Reinhard 33, 60, 64 Wolgast, Heinrich 77, 82, 117–118, 120 Wörishöffer, Sophie 156 Z Zinnecker, Jürgen 162 Subjects A accommodation, 143 code-related 147–148, 161 content-related 154–155, 157, 161 formal/structural 152–153, 161 genre-related 153–154, 161 linguistic 149, 161 material 161 material-related 154–157, 161 paratextual 148–149, 161 stylistic 149–152, 161 action system 54 actual reading, unintended 19 addressee, 9 official 39 unofficial 39 multiple 44 addresser 10–11 addressing 10 adult co-readers of children’s literature 43 mediator 39 reading material 44 afterword 34 archival system 55 assimilation 143 B binding 33 book clubs 61 Book Fairs 61 book trade, intermediate 61 C censorship system, (preventive) 55 child suitability of genre choice or genre variation 153–154, 161 material/popularity of material 154–155, 161 child suitability, content-related 154, 156 formal/structural 152–153, 161 linguistic 149, 161 paratextual 148–149, 161 stylistic 149–152, 161

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child suitable encoding 147–148, 161 children’s and young people’s literary studies 11 children’s audio book 21 children’s book 21

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Page 184 and media action system in public libraries 65–69 children’s book publishers, (actual) 60 children’s books or periodicals, purely 22 children’s editing of works of general literature 13 children’s library 69 children’s literary communication 9–10, 12 genre styles 150 genre variants 153 genres, purely 153–154 norms, fundamental 113 pragmatics 111 symbol system 109 themes of a specific period 158 theory 123 children’s literature as educational literature 116 as literature promoting a (religious, social or political) world view 131 mediator 37 children’s literature, bisemic 48 bisemic multiply addressed 47 monosemic multiply addressed 46 negatively sanctioned 91 pedagogically sanctioned (positively or negatively) 78 positively sanctioned 91 primarily 20 purely commercial 91 unsanctioned 91 children’s magazine 21 children’s media, 21 actual 21 intended 21 children’s public literary sphere action system 83–87 children’s reading, actual 19 forbidden 19 hidden 19 intended 18 tolerated 19 children’s writing, original 13 children’s literary concepts 123 children’s-only publishing 13 child-suitability, hypothetical 141 child-suitable genre 154 themes 158 value judgement 160 communication, written 10 comprehensive active function 55 co-reader, implied 44 co-reading 43 corpora, age-specific 22 concept-dependent 126 D distribution system 55 E epitext 32, 36 esoteric 47 evaluation system, official 55 unofficial 55 exoteric 47 F foreword (preface) 34 function, final 54 initial 54 integrative 54 reflexive 54 G game and toy industry 60

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general children’s expert public literary sphere 99 L library media units for children and young people 67, 69 literary communication involving children 10–11 literary critic as liberal mediator 85–86 M media product 21 mediator 25 mediator who makes decisions, influences and intervenes 28 mediator, literary 26 neutral 28 non-professional 28 professional 28 mediators’ literature 29 medium of publication or distribution 21 messages addressed to children and young people 10

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Page 185 O object of the system 54 occasional suppliers of children’s books 60 overarching children’s expert public literary sphere 99 P paratext 31 peritext 31 preliminary matter 32 printing industry 60 production system 55 program area 60 public children’s literary forum 83–87 public literary sphere 83–85 public literary sphere of children and young people 87 publications 21 publishers’ sales representatives 61 purchaser 61 purely children’s literary material 155 R range of literature available (in that epoch) 17 reader, abstract 37 implied 36 reading offerings, successful 19 unsuccessful 19 receivers, unintended 10 reception theory 11 recommended reading for children and young people 12 resender 11, 25 retail book trade 61 S school reading selection and distribution system 71–74 segment of the general book market 63 sender 11 signal stimuli aimed at adults 47 aimed at children 47 sphere, paratextual 32 suitability, external 171 internal 172 supplementary activity 61 symbol system 106 symbol system, literary 106 system goal 54 system type 55 system, archival 55 censorship, (preventive) 55 consumption 55 distribution 55 evaluation 55 official 55 unofficial 55 production 55 T text comprehensibility 141 textual attractiveness 141 themes, future-based 159 present-based 159 theory of reading or readers 11

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