Avoiding the issue
The venerable New Yorker looks at picture books in the ‘confrontation-averse age of parenting‘.
Like the novel or the sitcom, the picture book records shifts in domestic life: newspaper-burrowing fathers have been replaced by eager, if bumbling, diaper-changers. Similarly, the stern disciplinarians of the past—in Robert McCloskey books, parents instruct children not to cry—have largely vanished. The parents in today’s stories suffer the same diminution in authority felt by the parents reading them aloud (an hour past bedtime). The typical adult in a contemporary picture book is harried and befuddled, scurrying to fulfill a child’s wishes and then hesitantly drawing the line.
Worth a look.
October 19th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Mm, very very interesting. It is hard to be a children’s writer in this day and age where they have no freedom to roam and never get sent off to neglectful aunts to convalesce - no wonder so many authors are attracted to YA.