Book Review 3
Mar. 13th, 2011 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drownedinlight Title: Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction
Author: Kerry Mallan
Summary: Kerry Mallan explores desire, romance, beauty, technology, sexual identity, and comedy in children's and young adult literature to better understand the way gender is portrayed in these varying subjects and genres.
What I liked about this book: I thought the way Mallan split the book up was rather well done, and the issues discussed within them rather true to life. I thought she picked really good popular examples, many of which I had heard of, and had good frame of reference for, not only that, but she is able to sucessfully mix eras of fiction to help explain her ideas. I also really liked how she quoted her sources in this, which really helped me get into what she was trying to explain, especially for the sources I hadn't heard of before. Mallan really gets into so juicy meat of how the dilemmas of gender crop up in children's fiction, how they are portrayed and why they are like that.
What I didn't like (so much): Though I thought she did a good job of balancing her summarizationa and analyzation, I felt that Mallan still over summarized a tad. An annoying thing that she also tended to do quite a bit was repeat part of a summarization later, almost word for word, but this was only a couple of sentences out of the text at large, so I'll let it lie. My biggest complant is something I don't think Mallan can be faulted for, but is more of an academic thing at large: the interchangability of "children's" "Young Adult (YA)" and "juvenile" fiction.
This is something that goes on quite a bit in academia and something I think needs to change. One: because I think the word juvenile has a very negative conotation, it sounds like children's and young adult fiction are going to prison. Even though it is just another word for youth or inexperience, and ultimately, and most of these stories have evendence of growth and going on a journey, our generation still associates that word with juvenile hall. A very bad place to go.
Two: Children's and YA fiction are very, very different, and should be kept in different parts of the library for very good reasons. YA fiction usually gets into the nitty-gritty down and dirty of post-pubesent growing up. I'm not saying that children shouldn't know all these things, as they will eventually experience them, and of course time and place of learning is different for everyone. But there's also a way of going about things too. For instance, one of the picture books mentioned in Gender Dilemmas talks about homosexulity. Another has slight mysogenistic themes (from what I could tell by Mallan's writing, these were painted in a slightly negative light). But they were written in a way for young children to be able to understand.
Mallan was very good about refering to YA as YA though, even though they were all lumped together under the title, which is why I'm counting it, and because it bothers me.
Over all though it: Exceeded Expectations.
But See for yourself: Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction by Kerry Mallan (who apparently charges a lot for her books...)
Now Reading: Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross
Project WC: 30708
Author: Kerry Mallan
Summary: Kerry Mallan explores desire, romance, beauty, technology, sexual identity, and comedy in children's and young adult literature to better understand the way gender is portrayed in these varying subjects and genres.
What I liked about this book: I thought the way Mallan split the book up was rather well done, and the issues discussed within them rather true to life. I thought she picked really good popular examples, many of which I had heard of, and had good frame of reference for, not only that, but she is able to sucessfully mix eras of fiction to help explain her ideas. I also really liked how she quoted her sources in this, which really helped me get into what she was trying to explain, especially for the sources I hadn't heard of before. Mallan really gets into so juicy meat of how the dilemmas of gender crop up in children's fiction, how they are portrayed and why they are like that.
What I didn't like (so much): Though I thought she did a good job of balancing her summarizationa and analyzation, I felt that Mallan still over summarized a tad. An annoying thing that she also tended to do quite a bit was repeat part of a summarization later, almost word for word, but this was only a couple of sentences out of the text at large, so I'll let it lie. My biggest complant is something I don't think Mallan can be faulted for, but is more of an academic thing at large: the interchangability of "children's" "Young Adult (YA)" and "juvenile" fiction.
This is something that goes on quite a bit in academia and something I think needs to change. One: because I think the word juvenile has a very negative conotation, it sounds like children's and young adult fiction are going to prison. Even though it is just another word for youth or inexperience, and ultimately, and most of these stories have evendence of growth and going on a journey, our generation still associates that word with juvenile hall. A very bad place to go.
Two: Children's and YA fiction are very, very different, and should be kept in different parts of the library for very good reasons. YA fiction usually gets into the nitty-gritty down and dirty of post-pubesent growing up. I'm not saying that children shouldn't know all these things, as they will eventually experience them, and of course time and place of learning is different for everyone. But there's also a way of going about things too. For instance, one of the picture books mentioned in Gender Dilemmas talks about homosexulity. Another has slight mysogenistic themes (from what I could tell by Mallan's writing, these were painted in a slightly negative light). But they were written in a way for young children to be able to understand.
Mallan was very good about refering to YA as YA though, even though they were all lumped together under the title, which is why I'm counting it, and because it bothers me.
Over all though it: Exceeded Expectations.
But See for yourself: Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction by Kerry Mallan (who apparently charges a lot for her books...)
Now Reading: Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross
Project WC: 30708
