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SDSU Children's Literature Program
Children's Literature Circle Newsletter Spring 2000

English and Comparative Literature's Children's Literature Circle Goes International!
News and Information about China, Ireland, Mexico, France, and San Diego State

CONTENTS:

• Two SDSU Children's Literature Scholars Invited to Speak in Beijing
  
• The 1990s: Children's Literature in the English and Comparative Literature Department
  
• Reflections of an Outsider: Some Thoughts after a Finished Semester
  
• Children's Literature in Ireland
  
• "From My Bookshelf": 25 Books Every Children's Literature Scholar Should Start With
  
• New Children's Literature Bookshelf in Love Library Grows to 200 Books
  
• A Letter of Protest to Scholastic's School Program
  
• La Comtesse de Segur: French Children's Authors
  
• Selected Recent Faculty Activities
  
• R.S.V.P.: SDSU Children's Literature Our Next Decade
  
• El Vagon Literario
  

Two SDSU Children's Literature Scholars Invited to Speak in Beijing

Associate Professor Alida Allison and Stockholm University's Professor Maria Nikolajeva, who is lecturing at SDSU this year and next, have been invited by Hebei Children's Publishing House (China's largest children's press) to speak about children's literature in Beijing in May. Spearheaded by Mrs. Zhang Xingtan, owner and publisher, Hebei Publishing has begun translating and publishing works by international Hans Christian Andersen award-winners. The Andersen award is the most prestigious in children's literature, given for a lifetime's contribution by the International Board of Books for Youth (IBBY). The five American recipients are Katherine Paterson, Scott O'Dell, Maurice Sendak, Meindert deJong, and Virginia Hamilton. Dr. Allison will address the celebration inaugurating the series by introducing the American authors' works; notably, the American award winners are also recipients of one or the other of the USA's major awards for children's literature, the Newbery and Caldecott medals. Dr.Nikolajeva will speak about the five Scandanavian recipients. SDSU is thus home to both the American and the Scandanavian scholars invited to speak to the ambassadors, UN officials, People's Daily, and CCTV reporters, scholars, students, businesspeople, writers, and Chinese officials also attending Hebei Press' 3-day symposium.

Initial print runs by Hebei Children's Publishing House are 1,000,000 copies, sold in bookstores to a population with increasing capital and a history of investment in child development. Hebei's new series is expected to introduce Western children's literature to millions of Chinese children.

In addition, Drs. Allison and Nikolajeva have been invited to Beijing Normal University. In several formats, they will address undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty about contemporary children's literature. Both professors will be interviewing Chinese authors and scholars of children's literature.

Dr. Nikolajeva's recent book From Mythic to Linear: Time in Chidren's Literature and Dr. Allison's forthcoming Russell Hoban/Forty Years: Essays on His Writings for Children are publications in Garland's Children's Literature and Culture series; the general editor is Jack Zipes. Dr. Nikolajeva and SDSU's Undergraduate Dean Carole Scott's forthcoming Garland book is Picturebook Dynamics.

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The 1990s: Children's Literature in the English and Comparative Literature Department

Ten years ago, the department offered around 10 classes a semester in children's literature. In Fall 1999, 23 sections were offered. For the growth and excellence of its curriculum and the activities of its faculty, SDSU's children's literature community is well known.

Nearly 1000 students a year now study children's literature in the department. Most are Liberal Studies students, future elementary school teachers, who are enrolled in the 6-unit combination course English 306A & W, Children's Literature and Composition. In this well-established, unique tandem course, students study children's literature as an academic subject and also fulfill their upper division writing requirement in the 306W composition component.

The department has developed its 500-level courses intended mainly for majors to include Literature for Children, Adolescence in Literature, and the newest course to be approved, Special Topics in Children's Literature.

Meanwhile, Special Topics classes within the American and British curricular areas have included Adventure Narratives of Youth and Regionalism in American Children's Literature. Graduate courses are regularly offered, such as The European Children's Novel.

The decade saw the retirement of two highly respected scholar/teachers, Peter Neumeyer and Lois Kuznets. Current full-time faculty are Jerry Griswold, Alida Allison, and June Cummins. From 1999 to 2001, the department welcomes full-time lecturer Louise Saldanha, teaching children's literature at SDSU while completing her dissertation from the University of Calgary. The children's literature curricular area continues to be greatly enriched by its part-time faculty: Toni Rowden, Roberta Stagnaro, Evelyn Butler, Mary Galbraith, Steven Potts, Cassie Doerfling, Maggie Jaffe, and Alison Kirkpatrick.

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Reflections of an Outsider:
Some Thoughts after a Finished Semester
By Maria Nikolajeva, Stockholm University and Abo Akademi, Finland
Visiting Lecturer, SDSU, 1999-2001

At the beginning of the Fall 1999 semester, my first teaching at SDSU, I showed a colleague my Children's Literature syllabus for a friendly approval.

"You are very brave," she said.

"Why do you say that?"

"You included The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."

With an outsider's naivete, I paid no attention to her comment. Now I know better. I was very brave without suspecting it.

I had of course heard about controversies concerning Huckleberry Finn. I have used them in my lectures as examples of anachronistic approaches to literature, alongside absurd accusations against 19th-century girls' books for being conservative in their views of women. But how can you expect Louisa M. Alcott to be more progressive in her view on women than she really is, that is--exceedingly daring for her own time? And how can you expect Huck Finn to express politically correct views on ethnic diversity in a novel written well over hundred years ago and taking place some forty years prior to that?

Anyway, while I can certainly understand--but not share--reactions toward Huckleberry Finn, I have taught Tom Sawyer in Sweden for fifteen years without ever feeling any need to legitimize my choice. For me and my Swedish colleagues, Tom Sawyer is the master text of boys' adventure story, a major classic of children's fiction, as indispensable in a university course in children's literature as Little Women, a master text of girls' books, or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a master text of fantasy. It's a great book to introduce some of the most essential notions of children's literature: the basic plot pattern (home - away - home), the episodic vs. progressive plot, the orphan archetype, the intrusive narrator; not to mention some deeper levels of meaning, involving, for instance, the symbolic death on Jackson's Island. It is also a great book to discuss the depiction of society and the conflict between the child protagonist and the adult world. It's a marvelous example of humor and irony. It's a great book to illustrate the function of food in children's fiction. Thinking of it, I can even imagine it's a very good example of the function of clothes in children's fiction; remember: "they were simply called his 'other clothes'" --and so by that we know the size of his wardrobe. What an excellent opportunity to talk about characterization devices.

How very ethnocentric of me! Me, who always warns students not to be ethnocentric in their judgments. Apparently, you cannot bring your own canon into a classroom in a foreign country.

My English 306 students, future elementary school teachers, felt extremely concerned about Tom Sawyer during classroom discussions and in their final papers. They told me--thank you, guys!--how controversial this book was in the eyes of the school district authorities and how challenging, not to say reckless, it would be for them to choose it for classroom use. Three issues were their main concerns: racism, colloquial language and Tom's behavior setting a bad example for today's well-behaved young Americans. While I can, with some effort, dismiss the last accusation by saying with a smile: "Look, have you never been a child yourself?", and while I cannot judge the degree of offence in what to my foreigner's ears sounds like a fairly proper idiom as compared to many contemporary children's novels, the issue of racism is something that really disturbs me. Great Russian 19th-century novels mostly describe upper-class characters who owned and sometimes ruthlessly exploited serfs; but I cannot remember books being banned from schools on this account. On the contrary, our teachers made of point of discussing the injustices of the past society (albeit mostly in order to praise the virtues of the present one; but that is another story). Isn't American history taught in American schools, with all its, unfortunately, darker sides? And isn't the occurrence of the word "nigger" in the mouth of a Mississippi ragamuffin in the 1840s an excellent opportunity for a teacher to discuss the changing values and attitudes in society? Especially given the fact that these cases of "racism" are so marginal in the novel. I would also suggest that future teachers should learn themselves and teach their students to distinguish between the author's explicit or implicit views and the character's views. If we read a contemporary book about the Holocaust where a Nazi character uses an offensive word about a Jewish prisoner, would we accuse the author of anti-Semitism? Or should we probably, to be on the safe side, pretend that Holocaust never took place, just as slavery in the US never took place if we don't talk about it in the classroom?

My two other rather unexpected teaching experiences concern Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson and The Giver by Lois Lowry, two novels which I regard as the two best works for children published in the US during the last 50 years. I was prepared for the discussion around the theme of death. In fact, I as well prepared for this discussion of "sensitive issues," with lots of good arguments I have been using in my courses in Sweden.

But the joys of teaching include all these wonderful surprises. The students did not object to death as a subject in a children's book. On the contrary, they thought that Bridge to Terabithia was a wonderful book to use in the classroom to talk to children about death (my intention had been to show, just as the author says herself, that this is not "a book about death." Never mind). But they were concerned about the mention of religion. Jess's family owns a Bible and goes to church on Easter Day. In the novel, this is an opportunity to discuss Otherness--or diversity if you prefer--since Leslie's parents are atheists, and she has never been to church. However, a student pointed out in her paper, as a teacher she was not allowed to discuss religion in the classroom without the parents' consent, which means that a whole level of significance in the novel would have to be excluded from classroom discussion. Or maybe the novel could be censored? Let the family go to a market instead of a church- this is what was done in translated children's books in the Soviet Union whenever church visits were mentioned. Only how can a visit to a market inspire the underlying ideas of the novel about life and death, sin and reconciliation? Best not to use it at all then.

Strangely enough, there were no protests against the Christian motifs in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which, I think anyone will admit, are much stronger than in Bridge to Terabithia.

But the argument against The Giver--which by the way most of the students agreed was the best novel in the whole course--made me laugh and cry at the same time. The novel cannot be taught in schools, a student claimed in a paper, because it describes extrasensory perception, which parents may find offensive and inappropriate. The half of me that is laughing says: "Hey, this is a story--this is science fiction!" But the other half sighs with resignation: "Poor kids! Not only are they denied the pleasures of the demonic Harry Potter, but also The Giver is dangerous, and not at all for the reasons I would think subversive."

Once again, I suppose I should not be ethnocentric. And I am very grateful for this lesson. Two years ago or so I contributed to a special issue of the journal Para*doxa on censorship in children's literature. With my background in the former Soviet Union, a country with real censorship where 2,500 writers paid with their lives for their written words during the Great Terror, in my essay I found the practice of removing children's books from libraries or pasting underwear over Mickey's private parts in In the Night Kitchen touchingly innocent. I now admit that I was wrong. No censorship is innocent. And as an outsider I perhaps see it more clearly than my American colleagues.

P.S. I am teaching Tom Sawyer, Bridge to Terabithia, and The Giver in the Spring again. Don't you think I am brave?

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Children's Literature in Ireland
By Jerry Griswold
Children's Literature, SDSU; Fulbright Scholar, University of Ireland, Galway, 1999-2000

My students at the National University of Ireland in Galway have one answer when I ask about Children's Literature: "Oh, you mean Roald Dahl and that sort of thing." In the bookstores here in Ireland, entire shelves are devoted to Dahl and a few more shelves to a smattering of contemporary writers. Even in very good Irish bookstores, you don't get a sense that the children's section is coherent and organized-at least in the way Americans are accustomed to having abundance marshalled into categories: Picture Books (from Goodnight Moon to Where the Wild Things Are), Classics (The Wizard of Oz to Little House on the Prairie), Young Adult (The Yearling to Judy Blume), etc. It seems that the Irish have a kind of hit-and-miss miscellany.

A handful of Irish scholars do have a clearer understanding about just what Children's Literature is; and in that regard, I would direct the interested to Valerie Couglan's and Celia Keenan's The Big Guide to Irish Children's Books (1996, Irish Children's Book Trust), Robert Dunbar's Enchanted Journeys (1997, Irish American Book Company), and the September 1997 issue of the journal Lion and Unicorn (vol. 21, no. 3). Still, someone consulting those works might come away with the notion that Irish Children's Literature is a relatively recent phenomenon since discussion is almost exclusively limited to writers of the last few decades--authors like Patricia Lynch, Marita Conlon-McKenna, and Siobhan Parkinson.

What goes hand-in-hand with this preoccupation with recent works and living authors is a fuzziness about the difference between Children's Literature and Children's Books. Irish scholars in the field are often also book reviewers who are very much on top of the contemporary scene. At the same time, many are also associated with schools of education and governmental initiatives to improve reading skills.

Certainly one unique thing about Children's Literature is that it is a capacious umbrella under which are gathered librarians, school educators, publishers, readers, professors, critics, and the like. And that plurality makes this field, in its own way, more vivid and more vital than other arenas of literature. On the other hand, a strong presence of literary critics in the field of Children's Literature has required (in the United States, at least) some scholars clearly situated in Literature Departments or English Departments-rather than schools of Library Science or Education where, quite naturally, their interests are quite different.

Things are beginning to change in Ireland, and something like a literary approach to Children's Literature is the focus of a new graduate studies program at St. Patrick's College in Drumcondra; and I have heard tell of an occasional literature course in the English Department at Trinity College. Still, my own courses in Children's Literature here in Galway have been reckoned very much a New Thing.

Nonetheless, a consciousness is rising in Ireland that distinguishes between Children's Books and Children's Literature; and that development is encouraged, I believe, by those scholars who (rumor has it) are at work on histories of Irish Children's Literature. It's my own opinion, of course, but I think the prestige of and understanding of Children's Literature in Ireland will rise when it is recognized not to be synonymous with contemporary works but includes (for example) Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, G.A. Henty, and Gulliver's Travels.

That said, American scholars and educators have much to learn from the way their Irish counterparts make use of a living tradition of myth and folklore. Oral literature is alive and features of the landscape often have tales attached to them. Storytellers are not relegated to story hours at the library, as they are in the States, but can be heard in pubs or encouraged to entertain at dinner parties. And American educators might do well to consider the addition of American folklore to the curriculum--from John Henry to Johnny Appleseed.

Finally, let me say Europeans are keen on "seminars"--short, intensive study groups--and I've grown to share that enthusiasm. In that regard, graduate students--professors, too--might be interested in two taking place this summer; presumably information can be found somewhere on the internet. The organization Children's Books of Ireland will have a "summer school" in Dublin May 24 and 25. Another event, perhaps the biggest of the season, will be a summer school July 30 to August 13 at the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature at Roehampton Institute London.

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"From My Bookshelf":
25 Books Every Children's Literature Scholar Should Start With
By Maria Nikolajeva

• Ahmansson, Gabriella. A Life and its Mirrors. A Feminist Reading of L. M. Montgomery's Fiction. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1991.
  

• Carpenter, Humphrey. Secret Gardens. The Golden Age of Children's Literature. London: Unwin Hyman, 1985.
  
• Cart, Michael. From Romance to Realism. 50 Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.
  
• Chambers, Aidan. Booktalk. Occasional Writing on Literature and Children. London: Bodley Head, 1985
  
• Dusinberre, Juliet. Alice to the Lighthouse. Children's Books and Radical Experiments in Art. London: Macmillan, 1987, 2nd ed 1999.
  
• Foster, Shirley & Judy Simons. What Katy Read. Feminist Re-readings of "Classic" Stories for Girls. London: Macmillan, 1995.
  
• Golden, Joanne M. The Narrative Symbol in Childhood Literature. Exploration in the Construction of Text. Berlin: Mouton, 1990.
  
• Griswold, Jerry. The Classic American Children's Story. Novels of the Golden Age. New York: Penguin, 1996.
  
• Hollindale, Peter. Signs of Childness in Children's Books. Stroud: Thimble Press, 1997.
  
• Hunt, Peter. Criticism, Theory and Children's Literature. London: Blackwell, 1991.
  
• Hourihan, Margery. Deconstructing the Hero. Literary Theory and Children's Literature. London: Routledge, 1997.
  
• Inglis, Fred. The Promise of Happiness. The Value and Meaning in Children's Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
  
• Kuznets, Lois. When Toys Come Alive. Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis and Development. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
  
• Lurie, Alison. Don't Tell the Grownups. Subversive Children's Literature. Boston: Little, Brown, 1990.
  
• McGillis, Roderick. The Nimble Reader. Literary Theory and Children's Literature. New York: Twayne, 1996.
  
• Nikolajeva, Maria. From Mythical to Linear: Time in Children's Literature. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1999.
  
• Nodelman, Perry. The Pleasures of Children's Literature. New York: Longman, 1992, 2nd ed. 1996.
  
• Reynolds, Kimberley. Children's Literature in the 1890s and the 1990s. Plymouth: Northcote House, 1994.
  
• Rose, Jacqueline. The Case of Peter Pan, or The Impossibility of Children's Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1984.
  
• Rustin, Margaret & Michael. Narratives of Love and Loss. Studies in Modern Children's Fiction. London: Verso, 1987.
  
• Sale, Roger. Fairy Tales and After. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
  
• Stephens, John. Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction. London: Longman, 1992.
  
• Trites, Roberta Seelinger. Waking Sleeping Beauty. Feminist Voices in Children's Novels. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997.
  
• Tucker, Nicholas. The Child and the Book. A Psychological and Literary Exploration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
  
• Wall, Barbara. The Narrator's Voice. The Dilemma of Children's Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1991.
  
• Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. New York: Wildman, 1983.
  

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New Children's Literature Bookshelf in Love Library Grows to 200 Books

Through donations of books received for review by SDSU's Children's Literature Book Review Service, located on-line through links at the English and Comparative Literature Department's Web site, the English and Comparative Literature Department has donated 200 new children's books to Love Library. Expensive picture books, novels, scholarly works, and series books now occupy their own non-circulating shelf, the "Children's Literature Bookshelf," adjacent to the Library's 4th floor Juvenile circulating Collection and display of Newbery and Caldecott award books.

The department has thus presented double the number of children's books the library's annual budget would otherwise have allowed. Books received for review are either donated to the Bookshelf or sold to Aztec Shops to raise money for children's literature events. Reviews are written by faculty, staff, and students, including several from the Master of Fine Arts Program.

In addition to books reviews, the Children's Literature web site provides information on events, faculty, and classes, and showcases outstanding student work and essays by faculty.

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A Letter of Protest to Scholastic's School Program
from Mary Galbraith
Children's Literature, SDSU

Dear Scholastic, I realize you have a tough role to fill, trying to offer materials that will attract students used to TV and video and other stuff, but I like to think that you stand for something other than being a gateway to consumerdom. Lately, your offerings have been so commercial that I cringe. Reeses pieces, Nickolodeon, Pokemon, Disney... My 8-year-old daughter asked me to buy the "Just 4 Girls" pack that you offered, and though I objected to the sex-linked name I said yes in an unguarded moment. When I saw that the magazine in the pack was put out by a makeup company and that the magazine seemed calculated to get preteen girls to worry about whether they were okay or not, I was outraged. For God's sake, there's enough of this at the mall. Why does she have to be pushed into it through school-approved materials? Where is your integrity? By the way, I teach children's literature and I do appreciate your low-cost editions of quality books. Please continue to fulfill this vital function and leave the advertising to others.

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La Comtesse de Segur:
French Children's Authors
by Kathy Coleman
Children's Literature Specialist, SDSU Love Library

La Comtesse de Segur was born Sophie Rostopchine in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1799. Her father, Fyodor Rostopchine, was an adviser to Czar Paul I. Sophie grew up at Voronovo, her father's vast country estate. Fyodor was the governor of Moscow during Napoleon's siege in 1812. Moscow burned during the siege, under ambiguous circumstances, and her father was forced into political exile. The family moved to Paris in 1817, where Sophie met and married Eugene de Segur. She became the mother of eight children, and only began writing as a grandmother in her fifties. Her books, published by Hachette in the famous "bibliotheque rose" series, were immensely popular. They included a collection of fairy tales, novels, a collection of plays, and religious works based on the Bible. Indeed, all of her works for children are still in print today. While Jules Verne was the most popular writer among young French boys, la Comtesse de Segur was the favorite of French schoolgirls. She influenced many of the important writers of the twentieth century, including Proust, Mauriac, and Nabokov. Unlike most of her contemporaries, Sophie did not write stories about perfect children behaving according to adult standards of conduct. Instead, her characters are real children, who get dirty, fight, and make foolish and even cruel mistakes. Although few of her works have been translated into English, they are very rewarding to the reader of French, both as documents of her time, the Second Empire, and as timeless portraits of real children.

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Selected Recent Faculty Activities

Alida AllisonEditor and Contributor. Russell Hoban/Forty Years; Essays on His Writing for Children. New York: Garland, 2000. Co-organizer, Russell Hoban Conference. Warwick University, U.K., Fall 2000.

June Cummins Recipient of the Children's Literature Association Scholarship Award in 1999 for work on Making Americans: Twentieth-Century Children's Literature and American National Identity. "Laura and the 'Lunatic Fringe':Gothic Encoding in Laura Ingalls Wilder's These Happy Golden Years." Children's Literature Association Quarterly (Winter 1999):187-93. Conference papers on Laura Ingalls Wilder and travel theory (MLA 1998); Sydney Taylor, Judaism, and Narrative Assimilative Processes (ChLA 1999); A Little Princess, Film Adaptation, and Magical Realism (MLA 1999); and on Beatrix Potter and Christina Rossetti at the ChLA conference, Roanoke, VA, Summer 2000. Chaired MLA session on YA literature and girls (MLA 1999); slated to chair MLA session on Theorizing Multiculturalism (MLA 2000). Co-founder and co-leader of the Children's Literature Society of the American Literature Association.

Mary Galbraith In press Agony in the Kindergarten: Indelible German Images in American Picture Books. Nordinfo, 1999. Forthcoming "Primal Intensity in Cute Pictures: Madeline as a Secret Space of Ludwig Bemelmans' Childhood." Michigan Quarterly Review, Summer 2000. "Freud and Toad Are Friends." Children's Literature, 2001. Academic presentations "Hear My Cry." Children's Literature Association, Calgary, July 1999. "Agony in the Kindergarten." Nordinfo, Worcester, England, June 1999. "Classic Picture Books as Secret Spaces of Childhood," panel participant, Children's Literature Association, Roanoke, Virginia, June 2000. "Primal Intensity in Cute Pictures," accepted talk, Reading Pictures Conference, Cambridge, England, September 2000.

Jerry Griswold Master of Ceremonies, International Research Society for Children's Literature and Children's Literature Assoc. Joint conference in Calgary, Summer 1999. Lecturer at the Roehampton Summer Institute in Children's Literature, August 2000. Fulbright Scholar, University of Ireland, Galway, 1999-2000.

Peter Neumeyer Reviewer of children's books for The Boston Globe Recipient, Mildred Batchelder Award for best translated children's book, Quint Buchholz's The Collector of Moments, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Steven Potts "A Tale of Two Cultures: Science and Critique," 20th annual J. Lloyd Eaton Conference, UC Riverside. 1999.

Carole Scott "Dual Audience in Picture Books," Transcending Boundaries: Writing for a Dual Audience of Children and Adults, ed. Sandra Beckett. New York: Garland, 1999, 99-110. "Some Other Country's History," Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature, vol.9, no. 2, August, 1999, 21-30. "Hoban's Street Performers," Russell Hoban/Forty Years: Essays on His Writing for Children, ed. Alida Allison . Garland: New York, 2000, 3-14. Picturebook Dynamics, with Maria Nikolajeva, New York: Garland, 2000.

Roberta Stagnaro "Fin de Siecle Families," for American Literture Association panel on "Twentieth Century Changes over Time in Children's Literature," sponsored by the Children's Literature Society, Long Beach, May 28-30, 2000.

Awards During the 1990s, SDSU's Children's Literature Faculty Received These Awards for Scholarship & Writing:

Best Book of the Year, International Research Society for Children's Literature, Lois Kuznets for When Toys Come Alive: Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis, and Development, Yale University Press, 1994.

Best Book of the Year, Children's Literature Association, Jerry Griswold for Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America's Classic Children's Novels, Oxford University Press, 1992 (reprinted in paperback as The Classic American Children's Story by Penguin.

Best Article of the Year, Children's Literature Association, Carole Scott, 1990.

George Mackenzie Award for Contributions to Children's Literature, Peter Neumeyer, 1996.

Mildred Batchelder Award for Best Translated Book, Quint Buchholz's The Collector of Moments, Peter Neumeyer, 1999.

Twenty-five Years in Print, Alida Allison, The Toddler's Potty Book, Price/Stern/Sloan.

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R.S.V.P.: SDSU Children's Literature
Our Next Decade

Please take a moment to respond to these possible areas of development:
A Master's Degree Specialty in Children's Literature
A Children's Book Research Center in Love Library
Intensive summer programs for university credit
Outreach to local teachers
Public colloquia with visiting and SDSU scholars/authors
And/Or: __________________
E-mail: allison@mail.sdsu.edu

or write:

A. Allison
English/CompLit
SDSU
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182-8140

Thank you!

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El Vagon Literario
New Spanish Language Children's Literature Journal Seeks Submissions

Liora Stavchansky of Iberoamericana University in Mexico City is soliciting submissions for the new journal she is editing. Short articles about children's literature, education, reading, and/or psychology can be translated into Spanish by the journal's editorial staff. Stavchansky has frequently visited SDSU as a guest of its Children's Literature Circle, and SDSU faculty (Jerry Griswold, Harry Polkinhorn, and Alida Allison) have reciprocated by lecturing at Iberoamericana.
Information:
Liora Stavchansky, Dept. Psicologia,
Prol. Paseo de la reforma 880, Lomas de Santa Fe,
Mexico City 01210, Mexico

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