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need to understand that literary texts are created during different historical
periods and naturally reflect the time when they were written and
published. The simplest example is clothes that naturally point at a specific
period. Setting is – or may be – significant to place the narrative in
a historical context as in Roberto Innocenti’s Rose Blanche, but is lost on
readers who do not recognize the markers, for instance, the Eiffel Tower
in Ludwig Bemmelmans’ Madeline. Here cultural decoding is essential.
Not least, ideological contextualization is essential. Picturebooks containing,
from today’s vantage point, conservative values, can still be
appealing to young readers on the plot level. Books that we as critics may
consider as artistically high standing can be obsolete in their ideology,
especially hidden ideology. On the other hand, sophisticated readers – I
would say, excessively sophisticated readers – might view Slovenly Peter stories
as parody, while others, including myself, are terrified. By contrast,
the images in The Girl who Was Good at Many Things reflects a modern, feminist
view of the child liberating herself from parental restraints.
It should be clear that the codes are hierarchical, starting from the most
elementary, the proairetic, to the most complex, the referential. Since literary
competence develops gradually, this would seem to be the most natural
order in training young readers in visual decoding. Yet there is some
difference inherent to the texts themselves. From his discussion of codes,
Roland Barthes identifies two distinct types of artistic texts, readerly and
writerly. Readerly are texts consciously based on codes common to
authors and recipients. Writerly texts deliberately break conventions and
thus defy recipients’ interpretations. Obviously, most of children’s picturebooks
fall under the first category, demanding little effort in the
process of decoding. Yet the texts that critics most often take up for discussion
are those that offer resistance and encourage readers’ interaction.
In terms of another theory, readerly texts are monological, while
writerly texts are dialogical, based on a creative dialogue between the
text and the reader. I am far from claiming that writerly texts in general
and writerly picturebooks in particular are unquestionably of higher
artistic quality. Yet they doubtless are more suitable for encouraging and
training visual competence in young readers.
Crossover Fiction:
Creating Readers with Stories
that Address the Big Questions
SANDRA L. BECKETT*
The recent crossover phenomenon, which was ushered in with the
extraordinary success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, has had an
enormous impact on children’s literature and reading in the last decade.
My recent book on Crossover Fiction examines the contemporary phenomenon
in a broad global and historical context. While crossover literature
is not a new phenomenon, it has recently acquired a new status and
a great deal of media attention. Although the genre also includes adult
fiction read by young readers, the term crossover fiction has generally
been adopted only for children’s or young adult books that appeal to
adults. This paper focuses on contemporary child-to-adult crossover fiction
that is playing a very significant role in «creating readers to understand
the world.»
Crossover fiction has been seen by many journalists and critics only as a
marketing and mass media phenomenon. The view expressed by the
author of the article «Harry Potter and the Art of Making Money» is widely
shared: «The whole J.K. Rowling thing long ago passed out of the realm
of literature into accountancy.» 1 Although the commercial success of the
super crossovers often overshadows literary considerations, these books
are a literary as well as a marketing phenomenon. 2 Yet, there are still
those who stubbornly refuse to see crossover fiction as «serious literature».
In a review of Io Non Ho Paura (I’m Not Scared) by Niccolò Ammaniti,
the British writer George Walden censures «those who sell us... kidult
writing as serious literature» 3 . His statement is inadvertently ironic
because this particular example, although hailed as a crossover novel in
the English-speaking world, was released as a highly acclaimed adult
novel in Italy in 2001. Crossover books, especially the hugely popular children’s
fantasy novels being read by adults, are often seen merely as
«escapist pap» or an indication of «the infantilization of adult culture»
and the «dumbing down» of culture in general. The American critic
Harold Bloom considers the success of the Harry Potter books in an article
titled «Dumbing Down American Readers», while the British writer
Anthony Holden claims it is additional proof that the British are «increa-
References
Arizpe, E. & Styles, M. (2003). Children Reading Pictures: Interpreting Visual Texts, London: Routledge.
Barthes, R. (1974). S/Z, New York: Hill & Wang.
Doonan, J. (1993). Looking at Pictures in Picture Books, Stroud: Thimble Press.
Lewis, D. (2001). Reading Contemporary Picturebooks, Picturing Text, London: Routledge.
Nikolajeva, M. & Scott, C. (2001). How Picturebooks Work, New York: Garland. * Professora de Línguas, Literaturas e Culturas Modernas da Universidade de Brock, Canadá.
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