Ravenshaw Journalof Literary

and Cultural Studies

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISHRAVENSHAW UNIVERSITY

CUTTACK, ODISHA

July 2012 Volume 2 Number 1

Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies

Ravenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies is published once a year, in January bythe Department of English, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, Odisha, India in collaborationwith the Ravenshaw English Alumni Association.

Editorial CorrespondenceMadhusmita Pati, Department of English, Ravenshaw University,Cuttack - 753003, India.E-mail: pati.madhusmita@gmail.com

© 2012 Department of English, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack

Included in the MLA index

Paul St-PierreFormer Professor, Montreal University

EDITORIAL BOARD

EDITORDipti R. Pattanaik

CO-EDITORSSusmita Pani

Urmishree Bedamatta

Ellen Handler SpitzHonors College Professor of Visual Art,

The University of Maryland (UMBC)

John CussenAssociate Professor,

Edinboro Univesity of Pennsylvania

Thomas KempleAssociate Professor,Department of Sociology,University of British Columbia

Himansu MohapatraProfessor, Department of English,Utkal University

Dr. Kerstin ShandsProfessor, Department of English,Sodertorns University

David DennenDepartment of Music,University of California at Davis

Sometimes it requires more courage to let go than to hold on,especially when the going is good. The going has been really good sofar for our journal. Within a span of two years and three issues we havebeen able to carve out a distinct identity for ourselves. We raised a veryresponsive international Board of Editors. We got the issues peerreviewed so as to maintain scholarly excellence. Fortunately for us,many scholars who have already achieved a fair measure of excellencein their respective areas of interest came forward with their contributionsfor our fledgling venture. All this happened while many journals in Indiadevoted to humanities and social science research were folding up dueto a lack of publishable material and resource crunch. I cannot claimthat we have not been affected by paucity of funds. In fact, we havenot been able to make our distribution network efficient due to lack ofresources. A few international publishing houses came forward tosponsor this journal and boost its quality of production and expand itsdistribution network. But for various reasons the deals could not befinalized.

But I am sure that if we continue to maintain the scholarly standard,its objective outlook and rigorous peer reviewing we will be able to tieup with some publishing houses engaged in the promotion of scholarship.

Editorial

I

I would therefore like to end with a note of optimism becausethis is probably the last editorial I am going to write for this journal.Very selfish career choice is forcing me to leave the RavenshawDepartment of English. This was a difficult decision, especially becauseI was so involved with the journal. But I also realized that my colleaguesat the Ravenshaw are prepared to continue the good work and helpthe Journal achieve new heights of excellence. With this assurance,my letting go has been difficult and easy; difficult because you needcourage to give up a good thing and easy because you are assured ofa better future.

A Surrogate Swan Song

It is in the fitness of things that Ernest Bond should write theeditorial of this issue. Our journal is structured in a way that allowsmaximum flow of outside knowledge and expertise into our midst. Wehad decided to invite scholars of international repute from time to timeto guest- edit specific issues. After hosting an international conferencein January 2012, we asked one of the keynote speakers to guest edit aspecial issue. Professor Bond, who is an authority in the field of children’sliterature readily agreed to undertake the arduous task. The outcomeafter almost a year-long exercise is admirable. I thank him for hisgenerosity and am happy that he has written the swan song for me.

With these words, I bid goodbye to all the supporters of thisyoung journal and hope it will prosper further in my absence, extend itsoutreach, maintain its democratic structure and hold on to scholarlyexcellence as its principal value.

D. R Pattanaik

II

ContentsEditorial I

Preface 1Ernie Bond

Reflections on Five Politically Inflected Children’s Books 5Ellen Handler Spitz

Transforming the Political while Creating for Children 25Raja Mohanty

Nature Biography in Unexpected Places 33Jen Cullerton Johnson and Mary Gove

Understanding the Politics of The Mangrove Tree 44Susan L. Roth

The Malayalam Experience of Children’s Literature 53Paul Zakaria

Children’s Literature as a Personal Translation 60of the Political into StorySuzanne Gervay

The Child as a Reader Communicating Belief 66Deepa Agrawal

On Children’s Literature and Politics: 74A conversation in two voices about Hands Around the LibraryKaren Leggett Abouraya and Susan L. Roth

Placing the Texts in their Contexts: A New Historicist 85Study of Shakespeare Adapted for ChildrenAnita Mishra

‘Nonsense’ as sense: 103Comic vision in two plays of Sukumar RaySaurav Dasthakur

Is Big Brother Watching? –State-Sanctioned Voyeurism Visualized in a 118Booker Contender: A Semiotic AnalysisAnjali Pandey

Contributors 148

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Preface

In January of 2012, Ravenshaw University convened aninternational seminar to discuss issues related to Children’s Literatureand Politics. Each presenter at the seminar approached this confluenceof ideas from a slightly different perspective, in a slightly differentfashion, which made for an amazingly rich dialogue about the potentialtransactions that story, and literary worlds might have with power,access, and ideology. Among the currents of thought there appearedideas about the impact of literature on children, the possible motivationsof authors, the various ways in which people create and interpretnarratives, and the political intrigues of forces within society.

Certainly the case can and has been made that every form thathuman expression takes is inherently political. Ellen Handler Splitz whogave the keynote address at the seminar, captured here in her essay“Reflections on Five Politically Inflected Children’s Books”, toucheson the history of western notions of childhood while exploring fivepolitically inspired picture books. Some of the motivations for writingthese children’s stories are perhaps heavy-handed, even deplorable,while others are narratives that might actually impact critical thought inchild readers.

Raja Mohanty makes the case that art, poetry, and literatureacquire a special quality, “dhvani”, when they undergo the almost magical

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transmutation in the act of creation. He then proceeds in his article“Transforming the political while creating for children” to reflect onhow that plays out in both his own works and within the larger contextof children’s literature in India.

Jen Cullerton Johnson and Mary Gove explore how literatureinspires young people to seek change in their world. In particularbiographical narrative is explored as a way to shift perspectives andinspire collaborative action. “Nature Biography in Other Places”explores ecological oriented biographies that have in the examples givenmoved from stories focused on an individual’s life to communityinvolvement in a movement. Similarly, Susan Roth, presents the storybehind her biographical narrative that introduces an individual lifeconnected to a community supported movement. In her essay,“Understanding the Politics of The Mangrove Tree” she explores thecontextual politics, the individual’s story, the community movement whicharose, and the publication process itself, providing a wonderfully holisticvision of the political forces at work on a particular children’s book.

Paul Zakaria as an author has experienced the impact of politicsand literature first hand. He speaks unabashedly about the history andpolitical context of children’s books in Kerala in his article “TheMalayalam Experience in Children’s Literature.” His personalexperience in the unfolding history of this literature provides amazinginsight into this entire body of literature. Suzanne Gervay reaches deepinto the personal political stories of her self and her family in “Children’sLiterature as a Personal Translation of the Political into Story.” Gervayplaces her body of work into a narrative that explores how an author’sexperiences impact literary creation.

Deepa Agrawal focuses on a particular political theme as it hasevolved in her writing, that of the strong girl character who shatters the

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conventional mould. She explores the range of manifestations of thistheme in her work, from stories wherein the character happens to bestrong because she is based on personal experience to stories that arewritten explicitly as girl empowerment stories. How these narrativesled into other types of social inequities and the impact that these storiesmight actually have on children’s attitudes are also touched upon.

The personal folds into the collaborative in the dialogue betweenKaren Abouraya and Susan Roth, who have co-authored a picturebookfocused on an explicitly political event in Hands Around the Library.In “On Children’s Literature and Poitics” the reader is provided with aconversation about both book creation and two interwovenunderstandings of a narrative that was envisioned as a political statementon the need to protect libraries around the world.

Anita Mishra departs form the personal to explore the historicaland social forces which influence the creation of and reaction to literaryworks in her “Placing the Texts in Their Contexts: A New HistoricistStudy of Shakespeare Adapted for Children.” In particular she examineshow the underlying depictions of racism and class differentiation havechanged in various adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Eachmanifestation of the classic stories also carry the social and politicalnorms of the respective time and place in which it was adapted.

Saurav Dasthakur in his article “‘Nonsense’ as sense: Comicvision in two plays of Sukumar Ray” applies the concept of thecarnivalesque to understandings of the marginal characters found inthe writings of the Kolkata-based playwright. The comic principle, as itplays out in Sukumar Ray’s texts, problematizes not only the commonunderstanding of his works as “nonsense” literature, but also leads intoquestions about the nature of children’s literature itself.

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Finally, Anjali Pandey examines the semiotics underpinning thesociopolitical machinery of state-sanctioned voyeurism in a modernLondon as experienced by a young, protagonist hero of immigrantroots in the Booker contender, Pigeon English. Her article, “Is BigBrother Watching?”, examines the semiotic strategies employed bythe author, Stephen Kelman. At the same time, the book renders ascathing indictment of a post-empire city of emigrated subjects.Perhaps, Pandey suggests, the narrative even prods its young readerstowards a critical vision of the politics of a modern police-state’sdeployment of mass-surveillance.

The collection presented here is surely an incredible intersectionof the divergent paths that our thoughts about politics and children’sliterature might take. Hopefully each of these articles and the body ofwork as a whole will inspire further dialogue and new understandingsabout how literature for young readers is created, the impact that thisliterature might have, and the societies out of which it emerges.

None of this would have been possible without the oversight ofDipti R. Pattanaik, who together with other colleagues in theDepartment of English at Ravenshaw University, spent countless hourscreating an international seminar that brought together amazing andunique voices to speak about and discuss this topic. Unfortunately notall of these voices could be represented in these pages, but hopefullythose and many others will continue to speak, and write, and carrythe dialogue forward.

Ernie BondGuest Editor

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It is never easy to reach across one’s boundaries of familiarityand culture, and one may not even know quite where those boundarieslie until one takes the risk of venturing forth. To do so may be to growcloser to one’s international peers and to begin to learn how to negotiatedifferences, not by eradicating them, for differences and contrasts giveour lives zest and piquancy, but rather by practicing empathy and bytaking steps toward subtler understanding.

For centuries in the West, notions of childhood were other thanthose to which we subscribe today. Sancho Panza, Cervantes’ squireto Don Quixote, adored his daughter but couldn’t even say exactly howold she was. This is because childhood was, in the 17th century, asomewhat inchoate notion. Children were viewed first and foremost asproperty, as possessions of their parents and as possessions, perforce,of whichever religious and/or civic organizations held sway during agiven epoch and in a particular given geographic region – city-state orpolis, republic or empire, the church, the manor, the fiefdom, the crownor the state, and so on. Regardless of social class, children were dressed

Reflections on Five PoliticallyInflected Children’s Books1

Ellen Handler Spitz

1 This essay is adapted from my keynote address at the International Seminar on the Politics of Children’s Literature,January 9, 2012, Cuttack, and I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Diptirajan Pattanaik who organized this conference. Italso draws on my New Republic / The Book online column, 11/17/11.

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for centuries like miniature adults and perceived as possessing nodistinctive subjectivity worthy of notice. Disregarded and for the mostpart left unrecorded, children’s wishes, fears, ideas, and imaginings –those stemming from antiquity and from the pre-modern and even theearly modern period - are largely unknown to us, for children werethought not to have inner lives worth investigating or chronicling. Rather,they were alternately petted and abused, fed, housed, and treated notunlike domestic animals as well as like slaves or servants or perhapslike women, who were likewise thought to be cognitively inferior andemotionally undependable. Even as very recently as the days of thegreat modernist writer Virginia Woolf, English women of the uppermiddle classes were still considered unfit for a formal education. Asmany of you may recall, it was Virginia Woolf’s brother Thoby whowas sent off to Cambridge University, whilst the supremely gifted Virginiaand her artistically talented sister Vanessa were made to remain athome to educate themselves as best they could. With regard to childexploitation, it is shocking to realize that not until 1938 did the UnitedStates President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sign The Fair LaborStandards Act, thus placing restrictions on many forms of child laborand to be aware that, even today, according to Human Rights Watch(http://www.hrw.org/), hundreds of thousands of children work ten hoursa day as farm laborers in the U.S. and are exposed to dangerouspesticides and other toxic substances. I offer this picture at the start tofocus our attention on the historical dimensions of our notions of“childhood,” a term that we really cannot take glibly for granted.

Even now there are many who imagine either because theygenuinely cannot think otherwise or for expediency’s sake that children’ssmall bodies and minds merely produce simple thoughts and undergono more than meager emotions. To the contrary of course, children feelintensely and passionately. They puzzle and wonder. They remember.

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Their minds are demonstrably and inherently philosophical. It is a child’smind that asks: “If gravity pulls everything down, then how can a birdfly?” And it is a child who asks: “Why must I be good even when Idon’t want to be?” And a child who asks: “How can I be sure, when Iwake up in the morning, that the hands of the clock have gone roundwhilst I was sleeping for when I see them again they are in exactly thesame place as they were when I went to bed?” None of these aresimple questions, for, although they may seem so at first, they entail, asbecomes instantly apparent the moment one attempts to answer them,a nesting set of time-honored philosophical conundrums in epistemologyand ethics.

When we fully grasp the gravity and urgency of children’squestions and recognize the existence of their richly burgeoning innerlives, we can see the point of not offering them simplistic, silly booksthat merely entertain but bring them nothing of substance. Instead, wecan accept the challenge of publishing and providing children’s booksthat honor the plasticity, the fervent nature, and the questing psyches ofyouth. Rather than seeing children as possessions to show off, exploit,or manipulate, we must regard them as future citizens of the world; aworld which, today, in the 21st century, desperately needs ever keenerand more empathic minds. Our children’s books should reflect newways of understanding childhood and prove genuinely educational, for,as the political activist Emma Goldman said, “The most violent elementin society is ignorance.”

In what follows, I shall focus on four American children’s booksand one book published in Canada and Britain but pertaining to SouthAfrica. The five are picture books aimed at children between the agesof four to ten years. Right at the start, I want to confess that I am notwildly enthusiastic about most of them and that indeed I am not keen on

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political books for children, that is, setting aside the point that all booksare in some sense political. So, my remarks are critical, but my hope isthat their substance will imply corrective directions although withoutprescription.

The first two books were published in 2010 and 2011, and theirostensible goal is to foster patriotism (a political goal if ever there wasone) and to teach American children about their history. Let me saythat I regard both of the two books, for somewhat different reasons, asfailing in their mission, and I bother to address them because, despitetheir poverty and distortions, they have proven highly successful innational sales in the U.S., to wit, they are big money-makers. To me,this is deplorable. In my view, much of what is offered today byAmerican publishers to children seems crass and poorly conceived,made with material gain in mind but with no strong, clear vision eitherof what is good for children or of what is good for society. My respectedand prolific colleague in the field of children’s literature, Jack Zipes,joins me, I know, in these sentiments. For this reason, it seems importantto point out what fails in such books so that we can forge new pathsand not slip back into attitudes that mirror the past, that is to say, theundervaluation and exploitation of youth.

The third book I look at here, also recently published, deals withthe tragic events in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001; cannily, it cameout just in time for the memorial events that took place on the tenthanniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Towers in New Yorkand the massive damage to the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The fourthbook, which I consider excellent, dates from 1996, and it appeared inprint just two years after the first democratic, multi-racial plebiscite inSouth Africa; the historic election when Nelson Mandela becamepresident of his apartheid-torn country. Lastly, we travel back even

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further in time and take a look at a strange book-a story, really-thatdates from 1944. This one, called The Square World, relates ametaphoric, apparently humorous but profoundly chilling tale, releasedby Walt Disney Publications in the United States during Adolf Hitler’srule in Germany. The National Socialists were in power in Europe,spreading their noxious racial propaganda and systematically murderingJews, gypsies, dissidents, and the mentally ill in a frenzy of monstrousgenocide. Each of the foregoing books can well be considered political,and my hope is that by discussing them, this essay will raise somefruitful questions and debatable themes for further consideration.

One of the most renowned contemporary American children’sbook writers and illustrators, Maurice Sendak, in his Nutshell Libraryof 1962, posed a memorable visual analogy between a little boy enjoyinga bowl of nutritious soup and an alligator gleefully reading a book. Bothof these activities-eating and reading- nourish children, albeit in differentways. Thus, with Sendak’s clever analogy, we see that serious authorsand illustrators of notable children’s books regard their projects withgravity as well as with levity, and their youthful audiences with respect.They themselves still recall the hot passions and curious puzzlementsof childhood. They aim high. In defiance of their wisdom, however,American publishers seem bent on producing a spate of trivial children’sbooks conceived not by dedicated and inspired writers but by celebrities-movie stars, pop icons, and political figureheads. The nutritive contentof most of these books is nil and yet they meet with commercial success.Mothers, who take great care to choose healthy food for their children’sbodies, unfortunately seem to take far less care when monitoring thecultural products that enter their psyches. Yet, just as the body grows,so does the mind.

A recent entry into the fray is an American history book in rhymefor the four-to-eight-year old set by Callista Gingrich, the third Mrs.

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Gingrich. It is not irrelevant that this author’s husband, Newt Gingrich,was formerly Speaker of the United States House of Representatives,and vyed to be chosen as the Republican candidate for the Presidencyof the United States. His wife thus has, by affiliation, become a prominentpolitical figure, at least for now. Her thirteen double-spread pagedbook - “13” standing for the thirteen original American colonies - featuresa cartoon elephant called Ellis. His name is a reference to Ellis Island,just offshore from New York City, which was the entry point from1892-1954 through which twelve million immigrants, many of them poorand oppressed, from all over the world entered the United States inhopes of finding refuge and a better life. This book has achievedimmense financial success. Its author, I am told, buoyed by a limitlesspurse, has traveled the country, accompanied by an actor dressed as anelephant, and promoted it shamelessly. Borrowing its title from thepatriotic anthem “America,” the book serves up a propaganda dish ofinsipid right-wing political ingredients. Gingrich’s pages trade in thefollowing: egregious oversimplification; the elimination of all conflict,suffering, or debate; mindless joviality; the complete absence of racialdiversity; and an elephant-child character who, apart from symbolizingthe author’s political party (the elephant is the Republican Party’s symbolin the United States; whilst the other major political party, the Democrats,have as theirs, a donkey) displays no discernible personality andundergoes no cognitive or emotional development of any kind. It isinconceivable that this book would have been published without itsauthor’s high-level (political) connections.

At the start, a roly-poly toy elephant sits in the reading room ofthe Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., “reliving” a brief rompthrough Gingrich’s badly distorted and truncated version of Americanhistory. Apparently for picaresque charm, a foolish-looking bald eagle,stripped of all the strength and power that, in 1782, made this bird the

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choice for the American national symbol, appears cheerily on nearlyevery page. Throughout the book, continuously and idiotically, no matterwhat is going on, the human and animal characters all, without exception,smile. The first president of the United States, George Washington andhis men, during the long, wretched months of the Revolutionary Waragainst England, when it was hard to feed and clothe the troops, battleice floes while crossing the freezing Delaware River in a hackneyedversion of Emanuel Leutze’s iconic oil painting of 1851, which hangs inthe Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and they smile. Marines,on another page, captured in bronze on the familiar Iwo Jima Memorialin Washington, DC, plant the American flag on that Pacific island duringWorld War II, and smile. (This image is based on the famous JoeRosenthal photograph, which was taken on February 23, 1945, andreprinted constantly and obsessively ever since. Nobody is smiling inthe original.) Boston colonists, before the outbreak of the Revolution,innocent of all the controversies swirling amongst them over theirseditious act, toss tealeaves overboard into the harbor, and – once again-they smile.

On another page, volunteers assist the victims of a disaster(possibly a hurricane). What is the political significance of this? Accordingto right wing American ideology, governments do not need to helpdisaster victims; volunteerism will solve all social ills! Thus, we find thevictims here picnicking under cozy blue blankets while consumingquantities of donated picnic foods-sandwiches, apples, and chocolatechip cookies, and, of course, they too ridiculously smile.

American flags wave on more than half the book’s pages, oftenrepeatedly within the same illustration. You will look in vain, however,for the depiction of a single African American person or for anyone ofAsian descent. This is shocking when you consider the fact that only

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just less than 65% of the population of the United States is non-Hispanicwhite, according to the census figures of 2010, and the rest are allpeople of color. What a skewed and distorted picture to present toyoung children! This is a book that silently and stealthily erases theexistence of nearly half of America’s population. Four innocuous femaleNative Americans, however, smile on a page devoted to the firstThanksgiving, in Sweet Land of Liberty’s solitary nod to the rich racialdiversity of America’s actual population.

Next, what about Abraham Lincoln? Rather than struggle to tellchildren anything at all about how their nation was torn apart in a greatCivil War (fought largely over the issue of slavery), rather than explainto them the painful tribulations of Lincoln’s presidency during thoseturbulent years, these pages portray the sixteenth American presidentas a contented boy in patched overalls relaxing under a tree. Nothingmore. Yet, Lincoln famously wrote: “Four score and seven years agoour fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived inLiberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”Are children 4-8-years old too young to learn those noble words andtoo young to associate them with this man? Naturally, in Mrs. Gingrich’sblanched-out history, Lincoln too is smiling.

The Ellis Island page, which is supposedly meant to teach childrenabout immigration, even has the Statue of Liberty smiling, and children,while learning that people came to America “from distant shores, /arriving in a country they had never seen before/ Speaking differentlanguages,” must stare here at a silly picture of New York harbor dottedwith pleasure boats-speedboats and motor crafts-each bearing the Starsand Stripes: an absurd illustration for the subject of immigration. Arefive-year-olds unready to hear a few lines by Emma Lazarus (1849-87),the Jewish-American poet of New York City, who wrote exquisite,

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unforgettable lines, which are engraved inside the monument of theStatue of Liberty: “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she(Lazarus wrote) /With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,/ Yourhuddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The wretched refuse of yourteeming shore./ Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/ I lift mylamp beside the golden door!”

When children’s books evade uncomfortable truths andwhitewash the history of what is real, they betray the past, the present,and the future. In addition to manipulating children and preying uponthem, we adults, by writing, publishing, and purchasing books like thisone, unpardonably underestimate, disrespect, and mistrust children.Callista Gingrich, after blithely addressing herself “to American Patriots,young and old, who make America a special nation,” not only fails toteach American history: she withholds it. The only saving grace, onehopes, is that children themselves after flipping through these pages,will be sufficiently bored that no lasting impression is likely to be made.

Sweet Land of Liberty may have been intended, at least in part,as a riposte to the publication last year by President Barack Obama ofhis own attempt at a patriotic book for children. Of Thee I Sing borrowsfrom the same anthem but takes a different phrase for its title. Surelywe can admire a president who cares enough about children and theireducation to make such an effort. (President Theodore Roosevelt,apropos, wrote a rather militaristic book for children with Henry CabotLodge in 1895, and called it Hero Tales from American History.)Obama’s book, however, addressed ostensibly to his daughters, whoare named only on the jacket flap, serves up a concoction nearly aslacking in substance as Gingrich’s. Self-consciously politically correct,it consists of a medley of “snapshots” with no plot and no pretense oftelling American history. Frankly and oddly ahistorical (Billie Holliday,

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for example, a jazz and blues singer who lived from 1915 to 1959, comesbefore George Washington, born two hundred years earlier), this booktries to introduce children- by a deft sentence or two- to thirteen (yetagain) American figures of note. Among its pantheon of notables, youwill find five women, five people of color, two artists, a scientist, asports figure (the baseball player Jackie Robinson), three socialreformers, and two American presidents. But the child reader learnsalmost nothing about any of them.

Owing to its extreme brevity of presentation, Obama’s book provesas lightweight as its Republican counterpart. Its illustrations resembleclaymation figures and thus with few exceptions (the portrait of MartinLuther King, Jr. is one), they produce an uncanny sensation ofcontrivance and weirdness, while at the same time the text tries toforeground the child reader by favoring direct address over rhyme. Yetthis produces false notes of its own, because it comes across neither asgenuinely personal nor as unashamedly impersonal. It rings inauthenticeven as it tries so hard to be genuine. Obama’s “you” is everyone andtherefore no one.

And then there is Lincoln: Of Thee I Sing at least shows theIllinois-born president grown up. He stands orating; a crowd has gatheredround him including a few uniformed Union soldiers, the flag is waving,and a text reports that he “kept our nation one.” Always trying to reachhis audience, Obama refers to our “enslaved sisters and brothers,” andhe exhorts children to work together as part of a family. Gingrich, bycontrast, informs her audience that Lincoln was called “Honest Abe”and was admired for his leadership qualities. The tone is very different:whereas Obama attempts to bring children in, Gingrich prefers distanceand an odd conceit of “objectivity.” Neither book, however, places Lincolnin visual proximity to anyone of color, despite the fact that this is precisely

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what young children need to observe pictorially. Only Gingrich mentionswar and neither author gives children any clear idea of the reasonswhy we honor and revere this beleaguered president.

Obama, too, provides his George Washington double-spread,where once again we find wintertime the chosen season. Here, insteadof crossing the Delaware River, our first president places his handson the shoulders of one of his ragged troops. Yet, this rare moment oftruth (“His barefoot soldiers crossed wintry rivers, forging ever on”)is belied by the illustrator, who paints the men not barefoot, but shodin boots! Finally, a third comparison: both books devote a spread toNeil Armstrong’s historic moonwalk of July 20, 1969. Gingrich’sversion predictably focuses attention on another enormous Americanflag that rises in an image with three additional flags, while Obama,talking again to his child readers, encourages them to imagine lookingback at “the world from way up high” and channels the astronaut’sown words on that day by suggesting that they too can be “braveenough to take ... big, bold strides.”

What I find wrong here is that, rather than superficial glosses,what children need are histories that treat important matters importantly.As the internationally acclaimed child developmental psychologistJerome Bruner famously wrote, we can teach highly complex ideaseven to the smallest children when we know our subject well and whenwe know the capacities of our audience. We all need good books-preferably ones not written by celebrities–that teach twenty-first centurychildren, all over the world, to value their own country’s past and present,not in isolation, but inserted rather into wide contexts that explore aspectsof other countries as well as the planet itself-books of substance, bookswhich connect children to greater horizons by challenging them withopen questions and with unresolved problems, books that stimulate thegrowth of their innate powers of empathy, imagination, and responsibility.

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America Is Under Attack by Dan Brown, a new book about 9-11, raises a host of questions for those interested in the problem: Howdo we tell children about a politically motivated disaster that occurredbefore they (in many cases) were born but that continues to impacttheir lives? This book was widely distributed in the US last year andenjoyed heavy sales. My informal research has led me to the conclusionthat many adults and children find it troubling and for a variety of reasons.At the same time, none of my respondents has been able–at least onthe spot–to come up with a more salubrious way to tell the terrible taleof 9-11. The facts are well-known: two hijacked passenger jet airplanes,on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, crashed into the twin towers of theWorld Trade Center in New York City, the tallest buildings in the world,and brought them down; two other hijacked planes were likewiseinvolved, so that the killing, in less than two hours, totaled approximately3,000 people. In addition, about 3,000 children, on that grief-strickenday, lost at least one parent. Some people might argue that childrenrequire protection and should not be told this story at all at ages 6 to 10,which according to the press release, is the audience at whom thisbook is aimed. But, if we stipulate that telling this history is important,then just how should it be told? What are our goals in telling it? Whatis the best, or even a good, way to do so?

I address this book not because I have resolved these hardquestions, but because I know that we, who care about children andabout their cultural lives, must not shirk them. Political traumas are farfrom decreasing in our century, and innocent children are being impactedby them, are living with them, and are living through them, and aredying from them or living on in spite of them–in many instances, sufferingirreparable damage on account of them. As an example, we might citethe so-called “witness drawings” collected by Human Rights Watch-made by children trapped in ghastly circumstances of politically

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motivated murder, rape, and mayhem in Darfur. Children really have, itseems abundantly clear, the right to be educated concerning what ishappening to them. If we withhold that knowledge–knowledge aboutthe circumstances that impact their lives, how can we hope to see themrise up later on to create a better and more peaceful world?

My first problem with this book is its title: America Is UnderAttack. Why use the present tense, after a whole decade has elapsed?This seems inflammatory. Have we gained no perspective? And whyfocus on notions of violence and aggression? Rather, it seems to me,what needs to be remembered, ten years later, is loss-loss of life andloss of those majestic buildings themselves, so thrilling in their toweringplenitude. Traveling north on the train toward New York City for years,those twin towers were always the first sign that the journey’s end wasnear: “Look!” all the children would exclaim, their noses pressed againstthe glass windowpane: “We’re almost there! I can see New York.”But, now they cannot. For the landmark has disappeared forever. DonBrown’s aim in this book seems to be verisimilitude. He wants,apparently, to tell his child readers what actually happened in detail:facts and figures. On one page, he informs children: “The secondhijacked jetliner had crashed through the 77th to the 85th floors of theSouth Tower. Massive flames spewed from the tower. Wreckage raineddown on the street. It was 9:03 AM, seventeen minutes after the strikeon the North Tower. People now understood the earlier crash was nota freak accident but a deliberate attack.” I am deeply in favor of tellingthe truth to children. Yet, what is the truth here? Above all, what is thevalue of all these numbers, figures, and quantifiers: the floor numbersof the buildings, the precise clock time-without reflection, and withoutinterpretation? What do these numerical measurements mean and whydo they matter? What can a child learn from them? And what have welearned ten whole years later? Later, we are informed, “at 9:59 AM the

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South Tower came down. In ten seconds the mammoth building wasreduced to rubble.” Ghastly, but what can a child make of it? It seemstoo terrifying to imagine, and many a normal child, it seems to me, willinstinctively build a high emotional wall against such information. For,to take it in and take it in seriously would be devastating. We know howthe psyche splits under the impact of extreme stress and trauma. But isthis what we really want to achieve in a children’s book?

An image I do regard as successful comes with an accompanyingtext that reads: ‘‘‘[The] whole area …became totally black,’ [the FireChief] said. ‘We stayed there until the rumbling stopped. I never evensuspected that the second tower collapsed.’” What the picture conveysat this point is far more telling and potent than the text because it lets usimagine and experience the choking air and opaque atmosphere–thecongestion of lungs and near-blindness, which smote so many peopleon that day. Through its gray and grainy texture, it conveys the waypeople–even grown-up, brave men–huddled together in the face of death:its mottled, scribbled wash and all the empty space say more than words.

A couple of pages later, in a truly scary picture, black smokepours out, spreading itself all over the pages, and a helpless little policehelicopter hovers, watching, but impotent to help. Another image triesto show the reaction of onlookers as the North Tower came crashingdown. But the people look like ghouls–unreal, bizarre–and they seemas uncanny as the event they are meant to be witnessing, which makesthem unreal and phony, somehow untruthful. I know the arguments forkeeping faces vague (so that children can project into them), but perhapsit doesn’t work and simply alienates. The last picture I want to refer tofrom this children’s book about politically induced trauma is the NewYork City skyline with its signature twin towers dramatically replacedby columns of billowing smoke. Child readers are told: “In 102 minutes

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hijackers had destroyed the World Trade Center, crippled the Pentagon,and doomed four jet liners. 2,973 people were dead, more than thenumber of Americans killed at Pearl Harbor or on D-Day. It was thelargest loss of life on American soil as a result of a hostile attack.”

What is wrong with this? Principally I would argue this book,America Is Under Attack, which was written presumably to teachchildren about an event that shocked the whole world and inaugurated–with wanton violence and innocent death– a new century in humanhistory, seems parochial, perhaps even subtly vengeful and it relies onnumeration to establish verisimilitude. But isn’t numeration itself a kindof primitive magic? For, actually, numbers do not constitute truth. Wefetishize them. If I were asked in this context where, if not inquantification, shall we seek truth, I would say for starters, why notturn directly to children themselves, for they are a great gage? Theyknow instantly when we adults are faking. They want and recognizetruth. Along with Heidegger, I myself doubt it can be found in measuresof quantity. We need other means–feeling and intellection.

Turning now to an excellent political book, which exemplifiesboth, The Day Gogo Went to Vote was written by Elinor BatezatSisulu, who was born in Zimbabwe, and illustrated by artist SharonWilson of Bermuda. It recounts a story in which a little South Africangirl, Thembi, age six, cherishes close ties with her centenariangrandmother Gogo (‘gogo’ is the Swahili and Xhosa word forgrandmother). These characters are depicted during the dayssurrounding the first democratic plebiscite in South Africa, when therenowned anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was electedpresident on April 27, 1994, thus establishing a long-awaited multi-racial democracy in South Africa. Instead of giving statistics or eventelling history or trying for a broad swath, the author here narrows

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her focus to the experience of just one small girl who, one imagines,will never forget the moment and never fail to grasp what it means toexercise the right to vote in a free election.

Apropos our discussion regarding the previous book, the subjectof numeration and truth comes up right on the first page of this one, andwe know we are in a completely different universe. Thembi asks herGogo how old she is. Instead of answering the child with a meaninglessnumber, this grandmother tells her something else. She says that whenshe was born there were no cars or airplanes and that, compared withher, Nelson Mandela is a young man. How much more real this is andhow respectful of what a child really wants to know and can actuallygrasp. How much better than an abstract number! On the next pagewe learn that Gogo has a beautiful blue bag, which Thembi admires,thus foreshadowing events that are to come later. We understand thecloseness of the relationship between grandparent and child not onlybecause we are told that Thembi’s parents both work so Gogo caresfor her after school each day but because, when we look at theillustrations, we can see the two of them touching and gazing fondly atone another.

Thembi’s father comes home with news about the election andwe learn that there will be a special voting day for people who are oldor sick. Gogo (who is both), announces she will go on that speciallydesignated day, but Thembi’s parents protest they cannot take herbecause they will both be at work. In that case, Gogo insists, she will gowith them on the regular voting day. She is, however, too frail for thejourney in an overcrowded bus, they argue, and too weak to standwaiting on long lines at the polling place. Gogo, however, refuses tolisten. “You want me to die not having voted?” she exclaims. And byconveying her character’s fierce determination, Sisulu shows her child

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readers just what voting can mean. She helps them experiencevicariously the necessity and gravity of exercising this fundamentalhuman right. Later, Gogo explains to Thembi: “black people have foughtfor many years for the right to vote. This is the first time we have achance to vote for our own black leaders, and it might be my last. Thatis why I must vote, no matter how many miles I have to walk, no matterhow long I have to stand in line.”

A car is arranged to take Gogo to the polling place but Thembi’sparents say Thembi is too young to go along. Gogo, however, contradictsthem by saying that Thembi is needed to help carry her blue bag. I lovethis moment–which not only includes the child but does so by empoweringher, giving her a task. At the polling place, Thembi is on the verge of tearsbecause she has been refused entry into the voting booth with Gogo. Theproffered explanation– that voting must be private and secret – makesno sense because, as she rightly says, she already knows whom hergrandmother is voting for! Once again, Gogo saves the day by pointingout to Thembi that she must stay outside the voting booth because she isactually needed to hold on to the beautiful blue bag. Children want to beneeded and to feel useful. They want to contribute, and instinctively thisauthor and her character valorize that need.

When Gogo emerges, reporters photograph her, and Thembi’smother explains that this is because she is the oldest voter in theirtownship. Everybody cries, and Thembi cries too, although she doesn’tknow why because she is very happy. Another moment of truth! Childrenrarely grasp the ways in which joy and relief and success after longeffort can bring tears just as easily as sorrow. In the end, grandmotherand granddaughter enjoy looking at their joint photograph in thenewspaper together and read the words above it: “The past and thefuture: hundred-year-old voter Mrs. M. Mokoena accompanied by six-year-old great granddaughter, Thembi.”

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A fifth book I would like to mention is much older than theothers. “The Square World” was published well over a half centuryago in 1944, and it actually existed, very briefly, as a story told withinthe pages of a book of collected stories called Walt Disney’s SurprisePackage, which as stated above, was published during World War IIin the United States by Walt Disney Enterprises. It has been almostimpossible to track this story down because, although the book itselfwent into several editions during wartime and was evidently popular,the story itself was excised from nearly all of them. Therefore, if yousearch rare and out-of-print book venues, you may luckily turn up acopy of The Surprise Package, but you would in all probability notfind this story. I have come to the conclusion that, for some reason,possibly to avoid offending American Nazi-sympathizers, it waspermanently removed after just one printing. The copyright page offersno clues but on the Contents page of one copy, the story is listed. Onall the other copies of the book I have searched, the story is missing.The title page, likewise, offers no inkling of its existence.

Very temptingly to children, the book’s jacket resembles a gift alltied up with a ribbon that must be opened before its treasures can beenjoyed. Several of the characters met in its pages are depicted on thejacket and have already started to tug at the ribbon. A child mightrecognize, for example, Wendy, Tinkerbell, John, Michael, and a piratefrom Peter Pan, which is adapted and abbreviated within. Thus, thejacket makes a clear analogy between the pleasure of reading and thatof unwrapping a beautiful present.

Just two pages long, The Square World tells a story about a landcalled “What’s-Its-Name” where people look just like everywhere else,some short, some tall, some round, and so on. They all seem contentwith this diversity. A rascal called the “Mighty-Highty-Tighty,” however,

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who is the ruler of the land, growls that he does not like so many shapes:“My shape is the right shape. All other shapes are wrong. I do commandthat henceforth everyone be shaped like me. And that means square!”Chuckling with horrid glee, he orders soldiers to measure people andstamp the square ones. Everyone else is carried off to jail.

A great squaring machine is set up in front of the jail, and theHighty-Tighty says: “Now…begins the fun…” People cry out in vainand one after another, they are crammed into the dreadful machine.They tumble out absolutely square. But the Mighty-Highty-Tighty isnot content and wants to square not only all the people but all the animalstoo. ‘Square me the birds, the fishes, and the worms!’ he commands.The soldiers rush to the fields. Angry squawkings rent the air, as theshape of very living creature is molded into a square. The Mighty-Highty-Tighty now calls for the squaring of ‘everything in all the land.’

In spite of loud wailing the soldiers square bicycle tires, churchspires, even the flagpoles, and the merry-go-rounds. Square childrengo off to their square schools riding on square school buses that bumpalong on four square wheels. People hail each other on the street withthe sign of a square. The Mighty-Highty-Tighty brags that he haschanged the shape of everything there is. “Now I must change theshape of everything that is to be. I must be sure that when I die mypeople still will be shaped like me. I do declare that henceforth allnewborn babies must be square,’ he declares, ‘Tomorrow, let all thetiny newborn square tots be wheeled beneath my balcony!’

This time the haughty ruler goes too far. The next day when aparade of baby carriages comes in sight, he sees that the newbornbabies of What’s-Its-Name look just like the newborn babies everywhereelse. Each has an ordinary baby’s shape, and not a single one is square.At this, the Mighty-Highty-Tighty gives a loud shriek of rage. Flinging

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himself from his balcony, he plunges into the pond beneath. The lastanyone ever sees of him is a square bubble.

Many years ago when I was a child, this story burned itself intomy impressionable young heart. Even all these decades later, it isimpossible for me to imagine a more powerful parable for teachingsmall children the dangers of totalitarianism. In conclusion, after sharingthese five politically inflected books, some more worthy than others, Iam hopeful that an international and interdisciplinary dialogue can ensuewith questions and directions for future exploration.

ReferencesAries, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood. Trans. Jonathan Cape. New York: Random

House, 1962. Print.

Brown, Don. America Is Under Attack. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2011. Print.

The Disney Surprise Package. New York: Walt Disney Productions, 1944. Print.

Gingrich, Callista. Sweet Land of Liberty. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing,2011. Print.

Harris, Alexandra. Virginia Woolf. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2011. Print.

Obama, Barack. Of Thee I Sing. New York: Knopf, 2010. Print.

Roosevelt, Theodore and Henry Cabot Lodge. Hero Tales from American History.New York: The Century Company, 1895. Print.

Sendak, Maurice. The Nutshell Library. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Print.

Sisulu, Elinor Batezat. The Day Gogo Went to Vote. Boston: Little, Brown andCompany, 1996. Print.

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Introduction: The dhvani of the apolitical

It is said that our quarrel with the world, that leads to politicsand poetry (and art and literature), emerges from the quarrel that wehave with our selves. Like all aphorisms, this rather cryptic observation,deserves contemplation, “How does one quarrel with oneself?”Presumably, this means that instead of voicing our disagreements,our discontent and our angst through the barrel of a gun or by burninga painting or a book, we pick up a pen, a pencil, some paints or a flutewith which we transmute our uneasiness, into fragrances. Thisremarkable alchemy, known to those inclined to contemplation insteadof quarrels, is particularly relevant when we set out to create literaturefor children. Without a good understanding of this, it is likely that ourcreations will carry our confusions instead of clarities. The ancientsknew this well and speak of a quality they called ‘dhvani’, withoutwhich words cannot become poems and writing cannot becomeliterature.

The word ‘children’ has for most an association with hope andfreshness; literature is certainly not a ‘bad’ word and ‘politics’ has been

Transforming the Politicalwhile Creating for ChildrenRaja Mohanty

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given the status of a science or even an art, by those adept at it! Inrecent times, however, one tends to associate politics with the dirty, thepetty and the corrupt. However, the act of living is often inescapablypolitical and perhaps it would be in order to examine without beingjudgmental on the politics of literature for children. The juxtaposition ofpolitics with ‘children’s literature, in the title of the collection is possiblyan invitation to both creators and critics for a closer scrutiny of all thatis created for children. For creators, this is an opportunity for a greaterself-reflexivity towards their own works. For critics this is an invitationto dwell on the incorrectness. The biases of a particular era that willy-nilly make their way into a creation without the awareness of the creator.In passing, one may observe with self-irony, that the very notion ofcreating literature specially for children, might be a peculiar side-effectof the age of commodification of all things natural. This results in thehill-God becoming minerals, the river-God becoming water and water-disputes, and the special time in our lives called childhood becoming anopportunity for products called children’s literature, children’s toys,animation for children, and so on.

Part 1

I shall re-visit a few works created in recent times and look atthe politics underlying these, before returning to the idea of the apolitical.The first is a book titled The Parable of The Raintree– published in1997, on the occasion of India completing 50 years of independencefrom colonial rule; the next example includes two works, The Circle ofFate (2007) and The Enigma of Karma (2011).

The Politics of ‘The Parable of the Raintree’

The Parable of the Raintree was a conception that appearsaccidental. As Jogesh Motwani (the co-creator of the book) was taking

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what would have been one of his uneventful evening walks, a raintreein one of the lanes of Colaba in Bombay (slowly changing to Mumbai),got uprooted and fell on a car that was parked below it. It was not yet1997 and having grown up in a campus that was full of trees and debateson development, it came to pass that we began working on book thatinterpreted this ‘accidental uprooting’ as a wilful and political act of theraintree symbolizing a protest from nature. The car on which the raintreefalls becomes the chosen manifestation of an aberration called progress.The choice of the tree and the car as symbols seems to have happenedquite naturally, from having lived amidst both - in the campus and in thecity of Bombay.

Being a part of the academic community who connected withthe critique of development by the activists of the Narmada BachaoAndolan, this work is clearly political, for it sought to questioncommonly held views on scientific utopia and progress. The workwas not created with any single audience in mind - and it certainlywas not created for children. However, done in a manner where imageand text come to occupy an equal relationship within the body of thebook, it possibly invites younger audiences to engage with the ideas inthe book. The ending has a dark humour about it, and if one would bewilling to classify this work as suitable for children, one would needto depart from notions of how a story for children should end - notwith a whimper, but with a bang! The book starts off with the date 15August 1997, when India was in a celebratory frame of mind in its50th year of independence from colonial rule. The aspirations of thepeople of independent India, is satirized by a critique of the unbridledgrowth of material pursuits

On ‘The Circle of Fate’ and ‘The Enigma of Karma’

Politics is essentially an outcome of unequal power relationshipsthat we witness everyday in our lives. Children, because they are

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dependent, are vulnerable to the power of those on whom they depend.What literature they read is decided by parents and teachers and I doremember a certain librarian who did not allow children to choose thebook that they should read but helped them by giving them books thatwould be good for them. What this implies, is that the world in generalis a terrible place - filled with violence and conflict, and unless there isthe wise-censorship called parental control, their tender souls may sufferirreversible damages.

The Circle of Fate and The Enigma of Karma, grew from aninterest to explore ways of recontextualising the traditional visual art ofpatachitra. They draw upon ancient stories, both of which touch uponsubjects that might be considered as too abstract for children. While itis true that the deeper essence of these stories would not become evidentto children, I would hesitate in passing sweeping proclamations in thismanner. What may come across as surprising, is that despite fairlylucid explanations, some adults also fail to grasp the essence of thesestories.

The Circle of Fate is a tale that speaks of how good intentionsmay lead to consequences that are not necessarily ‘good’. The tale,which at times is interpreted by readers as being fatalistic, has disturbedeven adults who ask if one should not attempt to do what seems asgood and worthwhile. What the subtler essence of the tale suggests isthat if one desires to see the fruits of one’s actions then one mayexperience a sense of being disappointed - a ‘message’ that is similarto that of the Bhagvad Gita. The Enigma of Karma is a work thatgrew out of the questions of the nature of our actions and dwells on thedebate between free-will and determinism and suggests that thoughthere might be forces that foretell our fate and destiny, our actions havein them the power to alter what has been ordained. It would be in orderto throw some light on the intended audiences for these books. It must

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be emphasized again that the works in their intent are not to satisfysome predetermined audience and were done because they wereinstrumental for my own intellectual and creative growth. The motivationwhen working apolitically is that if a work is infused with the rightenergies, it might reach out to very diverse audiences and very differentage-groups. Such an approach does not bracket certain kinds ofintelligence with certain age-groups. Such categorization might beneeded when we are dealing with basic language learning andcomprehension skills and should not always dictate what is appropriatefor children and what is not.

It would also be in order to point out that these works are notprimarily intended as a product. The act of book-making is an integralpart of the creative process with these books that have been handprinted with much patience and care. The act of making these booksmay be regarded as an act of resistance against the mindlessmultiplication of objects that shall add up to the debris of our times.While it is true that even a hand-crafted book is after all a book andmay be regarded as much a product as any other that is sold and has tobe an activity that is sustainable, one would miss the essence if thebook comes to be regarded as just an object; the process is central tothe creation of these works.

What could possibly be the politics of these books? Collaboratingwith an artist steeped in a traditional art has a political aspect to it.Unlike the collaboration with Jogesh Motwani (a fellow-student), whileworking on The Parable of the Raintree, the interaction withRadhashyam Raut was very different. My own exposures and educationwere along the lines of the modern worldview; Radhashyam had livedall his life in a village in the outskirts of Odisha in eastern India, withlittle exposure to modernity. Art education in India took on entirely newdirections as an outcome of the colonial encounter. The traditional arts

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survived as practices steeped with beliefs quite different from those ofthe modern movements in science and arts on the international scene.The collaboration with Radhashyam would therefore appear as aninteraction between unequal partners, but if I had the advantage ofmodern sensibilities, Radhashyam had the patience for very detailedwork, imbibed during his education in patachitra art. Gita Wolf at Tarapublishers, not only shared a belief in the beauty of the traditional artsof India but also a great regard for the practitioners. During theproduction of the book, she visited Odisha to interact with Radhashyamto understand the patachitra tradition. The production involved time-consuming experiments to ensure that the screen-printed reproductionshad a visual richness, that was at the same time contemporary andtraditional. In the absence of a respect towards the art and the artist,the collaboration would easily take on the kind of appropriation that isoften evident, when creators are driven by misplaced ideologies of‘saving’ an art that no longer receives the patronage it once had. Clearly,there can be no politics when motivations seek to draw their sustenancefrom striving towards a beauty that is not determined by the desire forany quick returns. If the experiment in which the apolitical interactionsbetween equals succeeds, this might serve as a political statement-of-sorts for those who may seek to emulate it.

Part 2The politics between the text and the image

There is another kind of politics that enters the making of anillustrated book for children - and this is the unequal power relationshipbetween the writer of texts and the artist. This is often true of booksfor children in India. Publishers, though they have begun to demonstratean understanding of the importance of the visual, have typically giventhe power to the writer and the text to dictate the visual. The use of the

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word ‘illustration’ clearly suggests that the image exists in order tosupplement or illustrate the text. Such an approach essentially denies tothe image the ability to evoke ideas in their own right. In this regard,one must acknowledge the contribution of artists, writers and publishersin the West in creating remarkable literature for children.

The political freedom of small and independent publishers

Major publishers have to ensure a large number of publicationsacross genres in order to support their investments for publishing anddistribution. Small and independent publishers have a greater flexibilityin this regard and can be sensitive to aspects that are difficult to addresswhen decision making has to include several teams of decision makers.There is much to be learnt from the work of small and independentpublishers in this regard. The work done by Eklavya, Tara, Tulika, Karadi,Pratham Books, Seagull, Navayana (to name a few) have much tooffer to those keen on embarking on a journey in children’s literature.

The politics of Indian-language publishing

Organisations such as the National Book Trust have sought tocreate and distribute, imaginative, well-written and well illustrated booksin Indian languages. Eklavya in Madhya Pradesh, started with a focuson science teaching and has over the years sought to include books insocial science and literature, primarily in Hindi and to an extent in Urdu.Eklavya’s politics are shaped by its vision to be a people-centredmovement and a very concerted effort is made to keep the prices ofbooks such that they are affordable to most. Pratham Books has alsotaken on a mission of making good quality books available at affordableprices to children in different Indian languages. A casual survey appearsto suggest that interesting work has been done in the field of children’sliterature in Bengali, Malayalam and Marathi. It would be in order to

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carry out a systematic study on this subject, but a more difficult taskwould be to actually start improving matters in various Indian languages.

I shall conclude with a few lines from The Little Prince by Antoine deSaint-Exupéry.

‘Goodbye,’ said the fox.

Now here is my secret. It is very simple.

It is only with one’s heart that one can see clearly.

What is essential is invisible to the eye.’

‘Men have forgotten this basic truth.’ said the fox.

But you must not forget it.

For what you have tamed, you become responsible forever.

You are responsible for your rose ...’

Surely, individuals and organisations here today feel responsiblefor contributing to the world of children’s literature. One hopes thatpolitics of children’s literature enables exchanges and interactions forthe work ahead of us.

Works Cited

de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine. The Little Prince. Trans. Katherine Woods.Reynal and Hitchcock, 1943. Print.

Mohanty, Raja and Jogesh Motwani. The Parable of the Raintree.Mumbai: Goldenbough, 1997. Print.

Mohanty, Raja. The Circle of Fate. Illus. Radhashyam Raut. Mumbai:Goldenbough, 2001. Print.

Mohanty, Raja. The Enigma of Karma. Illus. Radhashyam Raut.Mumbai: Goldenbough, 2011. Print.

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In classrooms, there is a paradox of two visions. Educationencourages young people to dream big; and when they do, we witnessthat fundamental message of hope: You make a difference. Your lifematters. However, the opposing side of individualism claims, If I wereto poof away, the world would not change much. Somewherebetween these two points of view, we advocate for the voice of manyindividuals with multiple perspectives that works toward the vision ofthe collective. Working in a synergetic way with others creates sustainablechange.

Contemporary Western society suggests that the efforts of anindividual can change the world. One person trumps all. The hero savesthe day. Open any comic book or graphic novel and you will see asuper hero defeating the villain. Pow. Crash. Bang. The boogeymanloses. The superhero triumphs.

This message is not only presented in comics. The idea that oneperson can “save the day” is prevalent in Western culture: the individualis all-important in our thinking. We celebrate the singular. We praisethe accomplishments of the brave. We salute the champion, root forthe underdog, and cheer for the star. Inside all of us is a deep need to

Nature Biography inUnexpected PlacesJen Cullerton Johnson and Mary Gove

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,committed citizens can change the world.Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

- Margaret Mead

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believe our actions have purpose and meaning. Our lens ofunderstanding is through our own individual actions.

Just as John Donne elegantly wrote, “no man is an island,” wedo not exist alone. We are who we are because of our connections toothers. Our relationships define us and shape our world. Both humansand animals need to bond and have a desire to express that bond. Thecontributions of one individual add value to the collective and the collectivesupports the individual. Many assume there is a disconnection betweenthe two. In fact, the opposite exists; both rely on each other in order tofunction.

In the United States and the West in general, kindergartenersare taught to believe that they can grow up to be anything, includingpresident. Four years later, the message changes, and in fourth grade,young people begin to learn that problems within society are too complexand too out of control for one person to make a difference. This changein idea confuses children – and adults!

Although it is true that a young person has the potential to achievewhatever he or she desires, it may also be true that focusing on themagnificence of the individual may result in frustration. Urging youngpeople to stand up for their opinions and telling the truth falls by thewayside when they confront the risk of going against the norm.Overwhelmed and discouraged, young people’s hope to bring changeto our planet fades. Subsequently, as young people grow into adults,they begin to experience community relationships and soon realize oneof the most important lessons of life: we must work together to achieveour aspirations.

Many major institutions are in peril and have thereby eroded thepublic’s trust. Consider the impact of Wall Street’s downturn, thestalemate of No Child Left Behind in education, the disintegration of

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unions, and the loss of pensions because of corporate greed. Year inand year out, “ordinary folk” pay the price for institutions’ mistakes andin doing so they have lost confidence in how society treats its people.Feeling disengaged, many lose hope.

Young students ask, If I help and nothing changes, why shouldI try?

How do we answer this question? What message can we instillin our young people so that they can discover answers? In many waysthe question Why should I try? speaks to the reality that young peopleare not invited into the conversation about their role in the preservationof the environment. Lack of involvement translates into a deficiency ofempathy for others and the world. We must consider how we can instillthe concept of the Iroquois’ Great Law of Seven Generations, whichurges us to think ahead and make decisions that will benefit children inthe future. In doing so, we dissipate the great need and greed for instantgratification.

So how can teachers motivate children to connect, to care?

We pass down culture from one generation to the next. Throughour storytelling and teaching, we explain that humans must experienceprogress in order to sustain motivation for a project. Consider the adventof the skyscraper, the development of the computer, or the foundationof medical advancement. No one man or woman can be attributed toany of these accomplishments. Instead, many people contributed toeach of these achievements, and in turn, more growth and movementevolved.

Rarely do we stop to consider the truth that behind every“celebrated” individual there is a whole host of people who supported,shepherded, and shared that individual’s vision. In Africa, there is a

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famous proverb that has been used and misused in Western culture tosell products, including diapers, and run presidential campaign ads: “Ittakes a village to raise a child.” Translation: No one acts within a vacuum.The web of our existence is collective and is formed through ourrelationships. Although on the surface this is obvious, even simple tounderstand, deeper probing demonstrates that sustainable change isnot made through individual efforts alone but through the support of thecollective whole.

In reading and literature classes, teachers and students alikeacknowledge the acts of one important individual person: the maincharacter. We consider the fate of the protagonist; the journey of oneperson whose life radically changes due to his or her heroic act. Inliterary analysis we ask if the character’s action is strong or weak?Does she overcome obstacles? Does his action help the whole?

Biography in Unexpected Places

Consider then the biography. We praise the pioneer spirit. Theharder the job, the bigger the character becomes. The biography of oneperson may be symbolic for an entire community. Martin Luther KingJr.’s story does not represent all African Americans, yet most peoplerecognize him as a symbol of Civil Rights, which involved manyindividuals working together. In his case and many others, the biographytakes on mythic proportions that impact the community’s shared story.A biography then is more than the narrative of one person’s life andoften represents the universal truth within the community. The biographymanifests into the story of community, as well as the individual.

As readers, we have a deep need to find ourselves within thetext of a narrative. Do we identify with the story being told? A connectionis paramount. As Nature writer Ralph Waldo Emerson affirms, “I can

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find myself in every fable,” so young people can find themselves in theenvironmental biographies of others. In this way, they may gain strengthin character and wisdom in action, not only to support themselves butalso to recognize the vitality in living things.

Biography, especially picture book biography, invites youngreaders to “live” a hero’s life. Text and image support imagination.Armed with the ability to role play and a keen sense of wonder, youngpeople imagine themselves doing courageous actions, similar to the actsin the text and illustrations. More importantly, the study of biographybecomes the study of how one person’s life connects to others andhow heroic feats become one of the many threads that weave throughthe story.

Biography of a Movement: Seeds of Change

Historically, most biographies focus on an individual’s life. Mostbiographies rely on a balance of presenting facts and interpreting themeaning of events. There is a balance between giving voice and lendingvoice. Traditionally, we have read a biography through the lens of asingle life. Now consider biography through the lens of those whosupported the individual. The picture book, Seeds of Change, exemplifiesa biography of both a person and a movement. One storyline centerson the leader and the catalyst of the movement. The other parallelstoryline focuses on the movement and the people who supported andshared the leader’s vision. Both perspectives blend together to make awhole story.

Seeds of Change is a picture book biography of anenvironmental movement through the life story of Wangari Maathai,who was the first African woman, and environmentalist, to win aNobel Peace Prize. She blazed a trail across Kenya, using her

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knowledge and compassion to promote the rights of her countrywomenand to help save the land, one tree at a time. The book is as much abiography of a Nobel Prize winner as it is the biography of a movement.In many ways Wangari’s life story mirrors the Green Belt Movement,an organization she founded. At each stepping stone, people embracedher activism. Wangari’s vision became a mutual mission with othersin the Green Belt Movement. The women dug in the dirt, carriedseeds, and planted trees. Women traveled to towns and villages plantingthe rows of the Green Belts and women influenced other women tojoin the movement.

When Wangari (2004) accepted the Nobel Prize, she said,

Although this prize comes to me, it acknowledges the work ofcountless individuals and groups across the globe. They workquietly and often without recognition to protect theenvironment, promote democracy, defend human rights andensure equality between women and men. By so doing, theyplant seeds of peace.

The Green Belt’s message to young girls and women was simple:work together and results will come. We can take the Green Belt’smessage one step further and interpret its meaning as evidence thatwhen working together our results have a domino effect, inviting othersto participate with us. When we evaluate Wangari’s life and the lives ofthose within the Green Belt Movement, we realize that she representsa universal truth that touches all our lives. Through her life, young readersunderstand that troubling issues, like deforestation and poverty can besolved - if we work together.

Biography of Place: A River Ran Wild

Lynn Cherry’s book, A River Ran Wild, is a biography of theNashua River and its parallel relationship with people who lived and

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worked along its shores. Like a botanist’s field guide, the illustrationsare mosaic and depict the changes of all the living things in that area,such as red tailed hawks, barred owls, geese, and deer. Readers seehow one species is prevalent in one era only to become extinct in another.The pictorial history of the river lends to the significance of the text,which offers the reader insight into ecological change. Each movementconnects to a historical moment, and each shows the human impact onthe health of the river. The story begins with the Native Americanswho respected the river, moves forward to Colonial times when menclaimed the river, and leads up to the industrial era when toxic chemicalsfrom mills polluted the river until many decades later Marion Stoddardand a group of committed individuals cleaned up the river. The effortsof Stoddard and the Nashua Committee for Concerned Citizens helpedpass the Clean Water bill and restored the river back to its naturalstate.

Unlike traditional biographies that require a human life toevaluate, Cherry provides us with an opportunity to shift our perspective.This biography comes from the viewpoint of the animals, the trees, thefish and the river. The river is the protagonist. Humans are secondary,the antagonist. They pollute the river with toxic chemicals and sewage.Shifting our perspective, we are invited to consider our humanness andhow we impact the nature around us. In the end, we learn that we arenot the only beings on the planet. Our negative actions haveconsequences. We must work together to restore the damage.

Biography of Activism: She’s Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head

Unlike Seeds of Change and A River Ran Wild, She’s WearingA Dead Bird on Her Head is a fictionalized account of two women’spolitical activism that helped pass laws to protect birds. Their activismwas tied to the conservation movement that eventually brought forth the

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founding of the Audubon Society. Harriet Hemenway and her cousinMinna Hall raised awareness about a species of birds that were becomingextinct because of women’s fashion. Fashion was indirectly linked towomen’s rights and during the Victorian era women did not have theright to vote.

Nonetheless, women came together to lobby for equality, as wellas for preservation of birds. They realized that a woman who wore adead animal on her head for the sake of fashion would not be takenseriously and that women needed to reconsider this fashion trend. Theyworked with other women and men to pass laws that prevented thekilling of birds for fashion, and then pushed for the laws to be enforced.Women and men, with persistence and commitment in this samemovement, worked together to usher in the 19th Amendment, whichsecured the right for women in the USA to vote.

Young people can learn the basic steps to become environmentallyactive. Through this story they are able to identify how to have a voicein the public arena even though their status is not valued. Since youngpeople do not have the right to vote, like Harriet and Minna, they canstart letter writing campaigns and influence government official bygathering information so that laws can be enforced.

These book choices are all biographies, but how do they fittogether?

What messages do they suggest about the individual and hisrelationship with the community?

What messages do they suggest about the community and itsrelationship to the individual?

Let’s take a look. Consider Marion Stoddart and what happenedto the Nashua River and Wangari Maathai and what happened to

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Kenya’s forests. Also, reflect on what happened to the fashion ofwearing dead birds on women’s hats at the turn of the century. Thesewomen did not just simply do, but their actions connected them toothers. Wangari Maathai, Marion Stoddart, Harriet Hemenway andMinna Hall valued strong connections between nature and humanexistence. They solved problems creatively and collectively. Theyunderstood too that if a community could come together, they could bemore successful. They formed organizations, such as the Green BeltMovement, the Nashua River Watershed Association, and the AudubonSociety. A committed group of individuals protested and worked together,and after years of hard work, trees flourished in Kenya, the NashuaRiver sustained healthy aquatic life, and women no longer wore birdson their heads!

In many ways these women were environmental pioneers insocio-ecological problem solving. They all had the ability to considerdevastating and complex problems in their society. They evaluated howhumans interact in their social environment and with nature. All of thewomen understood that we are connected as a planet. Most importantly,their actions were not carried out alone but with the support of thecommunity.

Start Where You Are

Wangari Maathai, Marion Stoddard, Harriet Hemenway andMinna Hall started where they were, where they lived – a perfectplace to start. It is possible that all of the women could have startedtheir environmental work in other lands, in other states, or in differentcities. And yet they did not. Their vision focused on what was beforethem: the local ecology. They acted locally. Their message of startingwhere you are is profound and deliberate.

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In Wangari’s hometown, people had begun to cut down the sacredmugumo tree, a tree in which the Kikyu believe is where their ancestors’spirits rest. The mugumo tree is home to many animals. Trees had beenslashed, and now mothers, like her, walked miles for firewood, had littleto eat, and did not have enough money to support their families. Thereis a direct connection between cutting down trees and young mother’slives: without trees, families starve. When Wangari returned to Kenyafrom the United States, she watched the forests being destroyed sothat companies can use the trees for timber and the land for coffeeplantations. She worked with others to change her community’sperception.

Marion Stoddard moved to the Nashua River area. The riverwas once a dwelling place for wildlife, including an abundance of fishand the native Nashua peoples. Marion too saw what was happeningto the natural environment and experienced the negative effect on thepeople who lived there. She wanted her family and neighbors to enjoythe nature around them. Like many others, she understood that toxicchemicals cause cancer and ruin river ecosystems. She realized themills along the Nashua polluted the river so that fish could no longerthrive. She worked with others to spread awareness about the river’sdestruction.

Harriet and Minna made their high society and fashionable Bostonfriends - who wore dead birds on their heads - aware of what washappening to many species of birds as a result of their fashion statement.They too did not work alone, but enlisted the help and support of manyothers.

There is a Swahili word that means let’s work together: harabee.In a sense, harabee invites and welcomes anyone who hears the wordto cooperate with others. Collaborating with others often brings aboutcompromise. Many people in Western society fear that compromise

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shows weakness. Yet the truth is we cannot get our own way at eachturn. There must be give and take between all in the group. Sometimes,the ideas that strengthen the group are implemented so that all canbenefit. This often happens when there is compromise.

Works Cited

Amnesty International. [Online]. Available at: http://www.amnesty.org/[Accessed 14 April, 2012]

Cherry, Lynne. A River Ran Wild. New York, NY: Harcourt BraceJovanovich, 1992. Print.

Children’s Environmental Health Network. [Online]. Available at: http://www.cehn.org/ [Accessed 5 April, 2012]

Johnson, Jen Cullerton. Seeds of change. New York, NY: Lee & LowBooks, 2010. Print.

Lasky, Kathryn. She’s Wearing a Dead Bird on her Head! New York,NY: Hyperion Books for Children, 1995. Print.

Maathai, Wangari. Nobel lecture. 2004 Nobel Peace Prize lecture[Online]. Available at: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2004/maathai-lecture-text.html [Accessed 4,April, 2012]

Maathai, Wangari. The Greenbelt Movement. [Online]. Available at:http://www.greenbeltmovement.org [Accessed 12, April, 2012]

Zawilinski, L. HOT blogging: A framework for blogging to promote higherorder thinking. The Reading Teacher 62.8 (2009): 650-661. Print.

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History

If it weren’t for politics, The Mangrove Tree might never havebeen written. During the Second World War, American citizens whohappened to be Japanese-Americans were forced into internment campsin California for no other reason than that they were ethnically Japanese.Amongst the many who were so exiled, living in the desert behind barbedwire fences, were Gordon Sato and his family. They were placed in acamp called Manzanar.

Brilliant, creative and curious even in that situation, Gordon Satospent his time in Manzanar, playing the trumpet in the Manzanar’s jazzband, attending high school, and, also, figuring out how to grow corn inthat California desert to help to feed his family.

After the war, when these innocent Americans regained theirfreedom, Gordon Sato completed his advanced education and becamea world-renowned cell biologist, making major contributions in his fieldthrough research and biotechnology.

In the 1980s Dr. Sato decided to direct his energies and creativityin a new direction. He began to fight famine worldwide, eventually

Understanding the Politicsof The Mangrove TreeSusan Roth

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concentrating his efforts in war-torn Eritrea by introducing ways togrow mangrove trees in the salt water along the Eritrean coast. Beginningwith the simple addition of elements needed for mangrove nourishment,Dr. Sato created and combined the linked segments needed to attainthe balanced system that is now in place in Hargigo, Eritrea. This pilotnow serves as a model for all coastal communities in need of food. TheManzanar Project (so called by Dr. Sato as a reminder that hope cangrow from injustice) has already been brought successfully to Mauritaniaand expanded in Morocco to include ways to farm the desert there.

Politics

Dr. Sato’s efforts in fighting hunger did not begin in Eritrea. WhenI met him many years ago he was just beginning experiments in growingblue-green algae along the coast of China. He had a plan that includedseeding the area with brine shrimp (they eat the blue-green algae) inorder to create a different sort of food chain, one still based upon theocean’s innate ability to sustain food production. My first memory ofhim is with a small tape recorder (that’s how many years ago it was)hooked onto his belt and attached to an earpiece. He was teachinghimself Chinese by listening to tapes during every available minute. Hebelieved that being able to communicate in Chinese would help hisnegotiations with the government. In spite of the fluency he attained,the political bureaucracy in China finally forced Dr. Sato to find anothercoastline for his innovative scientific plans.

He moved his operations to the long coast of Chile until politicalissues again interrupted his efforts.

The famine conditions following its war with Ethiopia broughtGordon Sato to Eritrea. The political climate still is not stable there, butsomehow he has been able to maintain his operations in Hargigo in

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spite of the fact that many of his original contacts, people who becamefriends, those who were instrumental in helping him with the project,are now in jail as political prisoners. In fact, visiting Eritrea is all butforbidden by the U.S. State Department. Just before Dr. Sato’s last tripseveral months ago, I suggested that he let me go with him. “AbsolutelyNOT!” he said. “It’s much too dangerous!” When I said in that caseperhaps he shouldn’t go either, he just laughed. But even he was unableto get all the way over to the tiny village of Hargigo on that trip. Yet,partly by luck and miracle, I suppose, The Manzanar Project is stillworking well in Eritrea.

Ecology

The system that Dr. Sato created in Eritrea sounds logical andalmost simple. This is the story. Gordon Sato noticed that mangrovetrees were growing naturally at the place where a sweet water riverempties into the salt Red Sea. He saw that camels were feeding on theleaves of those mangrove trees. He blocked off the area with a simplefence, preventing the camels from eating all the leaves.The leaves werethen fed to the sheep and goats in the village. The animals liked themangrove leaves and did well with this diet.

Dr. Sato figured out that the sweet and salt water, when mixedtogether, contained nitrogen, phosphorous and iron. By burying smallplastic bags of nitrogen and phosphorous (with a few pin-pricked holesin the bags) attached to thin iron rods stuck into the ground under theshallow salt water along the coastline, he provided what is needed tomake mangroves flourish in seawater. In a drought-stricken countrywith little freshwater, his concept was as brilliant as it was simple.

When small mangrove seedlings were planted in the Red Sea(mostly by the village women), they grew fast and well into trees that

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are now part of the mangrove forest along the coast of Eritrea. Theharvested leaves provide good food for the domesticated animals in thevillage, sheep and goats.The new forest of trees has invited birds to flyinto the branches and fish to swim around the roots. Wood from themangrove trees provides kindling for the people of Hargigo. The fishprovide food and even some industry for the people of the village.

But the sheep and goats, although they were healthy and producingbabies, were not able to sustain their young. This was because theanimals were not lactating.

Dr. Sato determined that the sheep and goats were missingnecessary nutrients required for lactation. He found the nutrients in theuneaten, discarded parts of fish: the bones, the heads and the tails. Heground these parts to form a fishmeal, sprinkled the fishmeal on top ofthe mangrove leaves that the sheep and goat were eating. The animalsloved the addition and continued to eat with enthusiasm. This additionprovided what they needed to produce enough milk to feed their youngand even to provide dairy products for the people in the village.

Although by western standards the people in Hargigo still livevery simply, by small Eritrean village standards they are quite prosperous.Their flocks have increased substantially; this is a measure of wealththere. More importantly, the people are no longer hungry.

This extraordinary operation has provided the model for Dr. Sato’scontinuing successful work in Mauritania and in Morocco.

Family and Friends

How did this amazing story land on my drawing board? Myscientist husband and Gordon Sato were friends for years. When wewere still living in Bethesda, Maryland, my husband needed a scientificadvisory board for his research work at the National Institutes of Health.

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He invited his friend Gordon to be part of it. The board met severaltimes a year. After working all day, the group would come to our housefor supper. We remained friends with Gordon after he turned his attentionto world hunger and followed his efforts with interest. When he movedto Boston we would visit him every time we were in the area.

One time he told us about the Eritrean project. I immediatelythought of it as a potential subject for a children’s book, but I was afraidto ask his permission to use it. I thought that perhaps he would thinkthat making a picture book about something so serious, something thathad taken so much of his energies and efforts, would somehow trivializehis monumental work. My husband thought I was being shy and silly,and he urged me to ask Gordon directly, but I could not bring myself todo it.

Once I sent a few of my picture books to his grandchildren.Because I didn’t have their addresses, I sent the package to Gordon.The next time we had lunch together in Boston, Gordon’s wife, Josette,as well as Gordon, showed special interest in my work. They were, infact, so appreciative that I found the courage to ask my question rightthen. “Would you maybe consider letting me write and illustrate thestory of the Manzanar project?” I sort of whispered. They were bothvery enthusiastic immediately. A champagne moment followed.

But then I had a very big, daunting responsibility. It was a scaryproposition, writing this book. I felt very inhibited, almost as if Gordonwere on my own scientific board. I imagined him sitting at his desk, redpencil in hand, just waiting for my first draft. I very much wanted tocreate this story for children, but I just did not know where to begin.

I called my friend Cindy Trumbore for advice and a littlehandholding. Years ago Cindy had been my editor at Dial Books ForYoung Readers. We have worked together on at least six books at that

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publishing house and when she changed houses we continued to worktogether on more. We have stayed friends all along. And so I told Cindythe story. “That book will write itself!” she said. “It’s perfect for a‘House That Jack Built’ format.”

She explained what she meant: that using this building block stylebased upon the very old poem was a perfectly acceptable writing form,really not any different than writing in a sonnet form or haiku form. Sheurged me to try it and I did.

Some days later when I showed her my efforts she told me shewanted to edit it for me. A few days after that, she sent me a completedtext. I loved what she did to it. “You are the co-author!” I declared.“Am not!” she said. “Are too!” I insisted. I was right, and I won, andthat was lucky because at that time we didn’t even realize how right Iwas, especially because of all the difficult writing yet to come.

Publisher

Collaborating in writing, for me, is a wonderful way to work. Itmeans that there is someone who cares about the little details at leastas much as I do–like, for example, which sounds better: A MangroveTree or The Mangrove Tree? Even a very good friend would not beinterested in the dilemma, but a collaborator definitely cares. The sameis true when authors worry about where to send the manuscript whenit’s ready to go.

This time, after we unanimously decided that Lee and Low wouldbe the perfect place for The Mangrove Tree, we found that we almosthad a third collaborator, our careful and thoughtful editor, Louise May.At the beginning we were not totally happy about this, however. Louisedecided that we needed more substance for our readers. She saidalthough she loved the story and the way it was told, that her readers

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needed extra information about this important project. This was a veryannoying surprise to both Cindy and me. We had thought the book wasfinished, perfect as it was. We were so disappointed that we evenconsidered pulling the book and looking for another publisher. Fortunatelywe listened instead.

What resulted is the page-turning format, with the slightly older,more informative prose on the right that heralds the illustration on thefollowing spread, and the gentle, simple, building poem on the left. Itbecame almost two books in one, understandable and accessible byvery young children, yet with further information available for interestedolder children, too.

I could not have done this without Cindy’s participation thatincluded her careful research developing into her clear, precise yet lyricalprose so beautifully balanced by the delicate poem on the facing pages.And neither of us would have done this without the insight (and demands!)of our editor’s vision. We thank her and appreciate her talents and herpatience.

Illustrations

We need to return to the politics in children’s literature. I havenever been to Eritrea and I was not able to go there, because thepolitical situation was too unstable. Yet I had to create the collagesfor the illustration in this book, and they had to look like the Eritreanstory it tells. Luckily Gordon has a few million good photographs fromhis many trips. Cindy and I studied them all, over and over again. Shehelped me to organize them in collections of subject matter makingthe inspiration searches considerably easier. And so the collages grewfrom the photographs.

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I was still sorry that I had not been able to travel to Eritrea to seethese things with my own eyes, yet, by the time the illustrations werecompleted, I hoped that the renditions did not stray too far from the realEritrea. Before I relinquished the art to Lee and Low, I drove to Bostonto show my finished work to Gordon. This was to be sure that I hadn’tmade a huge mistake or even missed a nuance that he alone wouldrecognize.

Gordon was very appreciative. He said that I had done a goodjob and the book would be beautiful. I relaxed, then. Emboldened by hispraise, I asked about my favorite spread, the landscape of pre-mangroveEritrea, the one used for the endpapers. “I’m so thrilled!” I said. “Thisreally DOES look just like Eritrea, then?” Gordon smiled a crookedsmile. “It does not look just like Eritrea,” he said, “but it is reminiscentenough of Eritrea.” I asked him if I should try again, but he assured methat it was a fine interpretation. Politics permitting, I am still lookingforward to being able to see Eritrea for myself.

As always, my collage materials know no politics and ignore allborders—even those with armed guards and walls. I collect materialsfrom everywhere I go and determine what pieces to choose for theillustrations by judging their color, size, texture, and design.

And Finally

What did Cindy and I learn from all this? What do we wish ourreaders could learn? Why should we choose subjects like this for booksfor children?

If children can learn from history, the bad as well as the good, andlearn to turn their own sometimes painful stories into something good;

if they can begin to understand politics and be prepared to becomeactive in politics as the needs arise;

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if they can become educated about the ecology of our planet,and therefore can be moved to participate in saving andmaintaining our resources and in behaving responsibly with them;

if their relationships with family and friends can be warm andongoing and giving and interesting and creative;

if their professional relationships can be the same;

if they can manage to find stimulating, satisfying, productive workthat allows them their own special paths to follow;

if, through all these venues, they can maintain a respectful,interested curiosity and appreciation of others of different countriesand cultures and beliefs;

if they can learn to stretch out open hands to others in friendshipand generosity when they are young, before they ever hear ofprejudice and hate;

if there are enough heroes to emerge among these children toprovide them with inspirational leadership when they are ready tofollow…

…then maybe the world will survive another generation.

If, in telling the story about our hero, Gordon Sato, Cindy and Ican inspire a child to find his or her own pathway towards meaningful,generous contributions that make a better world, then we will havefound the answers to our questions.

Works Cited

Roth, Susan and Trumbore, Cindy. The Mangrove Tree: Planting Treesto Feed Familes. New York: Lee and Low, 2012. Print.

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The Malayalam Experienceof Children’s LiteraturePaul Zakaria

Malayalam is a young language whose modernity is just over100 years old. The first novel came out around 1900. Poetry made abreak from the ancient mould in the first decades of the 20th century.It was almost a one-man show of the poet Kumaran asan. The shortstory became an accepted literary form in the 1930s and 40s. Onecould say that the sensibility shift from romanticism to realism was firstachieved by the short story.

The realist period merged into the progressive, with communismas the nascent energy, in the 1940s and 50s.The progressive phaseshifted to the early modern in the late 1950s. One could say that fromthe 1960s, modernity in content and form became clearly visible inMalayalam.

By modernity I mean a shift in content and form that resonatedto new and emerging trends all over the world in thought, craft andsensibility with broad humanist underpinnings.

If one were to look for a formal beginning of children’s literaturein Malayalam, that would be in the 1930s when the Travancore king’sgovernment asked well-known writers to contribute poetry and fiction,specially written for school textbooks for children.

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But it was as part of the progressive movement of the 1940s and50s that children’s literature became a familiar literary format inMalayalam. I can briefly state that the progressive movement was theresult of a number of factors which included the educational work ofthe missionaries, the work of the social reformer Narayana Guru andthe influence of communist ideas.

There were many hands at work in the field of children’sliterature. One of them was Mathew M. Kuzhively, who was the firstto start a Malayalam publishing house only for children, in the 40s. Hewas the first to re-tell Greek, Roman and other myths for children. Afew publishing houses noted the demand for children’s literature andresponded to it. Retelling of fairy tales like those of Anderson and theGrimm brothers appeared on the scene.

I remember hanging on like a hungry dog to the story ofThumbelina, retold in large type, with drawings, in about 4 pages, in alittle book called Anderson Kathakal. It must have been less thanone-tenth of the original but it mattered. The Thousand and One Nightswas another popular source for re-telling. Then came adaptations oftales from the Ramayana and the Mahabharatha. I’m of course talkingabout printed texts. Oral traditions of folk tales, riddles etc. for childrenhad always existed.

The breakthrough in children’s publishing came in 1971 underthe auspices of the Writers’ Cooperative Society, which is said to bethe first ever writers’ cooperative in the world. Later writers themselvesdegraded it into a bureaucratic den and a political playground and it is azombie today, but that is another story. But in its heydays it was one ofthe most powerful instruments of social change operating in Kerala.

The writers’ co-op also started another reading revolution inKerala: a home library movement under which you could pay for the

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home library in easy instalments. It was one of the foundation stones ofKerala’s cultural renaissance. The writers’ co-op also inaugurated agrand flow of translations of world classics into Malayalam, as also ofworks from other Indian languages.

As a young boy I could read Crime and Punishment or Warand Peace or Godaan or Arogyaniketan in Malayalam. If I wishedto read, the whole Das Capital was available to me in Malayalam. Infact, I tried to read it a couple of times and found Marx was not friendlyto children. The year-end Gift Box of children’s books introduced andpromoted by the writers’ co-op in 1970 became one of the turning pointsfor children’s literature in Malayalam.

Another landmark of the progressive renaissance was theextraordinary library movement, spearheaded by a single person: P. N.Paniker. Libraries came up in every village and they brought a wealthof reading to the children. I, for example, am the product of a couple ofvillage libraries.

Yet another milestone of the progressive renaissance was thework of the Sastra Sahitya Parishad, or the Science Literature Society,which was an important contribution of the Left to Kerala’s culturallife. It spread the message of a secular, democratic, enlightened societyand spoke up for the first time in Kerala for the environment. It produceda series of books for children to bring them the progressive messageand brought out a children’s version in Malayalam of Rachel Carson’sSilent Spring.

Children’s literature had finally come to stay.

Writing by children also found a place in popular literary journalswith a column devoted to children’s writing. Some of the contemporarywriters of Kerala began their career in those columns. Fiction for

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children began to be serialized in the prominent literary magazine,Mathrubhumi. Initially it was the puranas and mythology that did therounds. Perhaps because material was easily available there for retelling.

A bizarre entrant into children’s literature in Kerala in the 1960swas Soviet Russia. As part of the soviet propaganda machinery, theForeign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, had a powerful presencein Kerala, with cheap, well-produced books in English and Malayalam,including selected Russian classics in translation. The Russians broughtthe first international class children’s books to Kerala. They were allstories about Russian children or for them, but translated to Malayalam.These books were our first experience of well-designed, attractivelyillustrated, multi-color children’s books. The Russians gave us also ourfirst Malayalam pop-up books.

So, along with Stalin, Lenin, Malenkov, etc. (who were not entirelyengaging for most young readers), we also got lovely children’s books.If the Soviets hoped to convert Malayali children to communism, it wasa nice way of doing it. No tanks, no firing squads, no secret police. Iknow they succeeded in converting at least one person. That was me.I was a hard-core communist by the time I was 12. So now you knowwhat children’s literature can do if it wants to.

I am not surprised that the Catholic church too had a strong wingof children’s literature in Malayalam. Propaganda and cult-making lieat the heart of both Catholicism and communism.

Anyway, by the 1980s and 90s major publishers and media houseshad entered the children’s book market. But the lion’s share of thewriting aimed at children had a shallow, artificial, manufactured quality.Mediocrity was the hallmark. Illustrations, with rare exceptions, wereunimaginative and mechanical. Child characters were presented either

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as mindless puppets or smart alecs, or eternally weeping and wailingcreatures. Values conformed to the worst kind of traditionalism, andeverything was steeped in a cloyingly sweet romanticism.

Sermonising and talking down to children was the standard mode.Instead of expanding imagination, the attempt was to subdue imagination.But then a lot of the mainstream literature itself was proceeding alongsimilar lines. In any case it was good that a body of writing for childrenthrived, in whatever shape.

By the 1990s, children’s books from the west also had enteredthe market in a big way. The so-called English-medium children wentfor the English books. The readers of the children’s books in Malayalamwere the rural and small town children studying in Malayalam-medium.They still constitute the lion’s share of the readership.

The entry of mainstream newspaper houses into the children’sliterature market happened in the 1980s. Commercially, it was verysuccessful but this had disastrous results for children. They created amassive output of frightening mediocrity, of empty sentiments andmoronic jokes. These children’s periodicals are bestsellers, but diabolicin their content. They hold up no civilisational values for children.

On the other hand they are ruthless in reinforcing puritanical,retrograde values. They have no qualms about holding up ridiculousgod-women and god-men and ramshackle politicians as role-modelsfor children. In other words, these children’s publications are re-workedcopies of their mainstream publications: oblivious of civilisational needs,callous to humanistic and democratic values and immenselyopportunistic.

Another point to be noted is that while almost all writers of theprogressive period and of the beginning of the modernist period wrote

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for children, the modernists did not. That certainly is some sort of acomment on modernism.

The setting up of the State Institute for Children’s Literature in1981 was a step in the right direction but it was immediately degradedinto a shelter for fortune-hunters and hangers-on of political partiesbegging for a placement, each time the government changed. The fundsprovided to the institute were farmed out to cronies to produce a longarray of shabby, indifferent books.

It was the last five years that saw the institute fulfilling the purposefor which it was created, namely to produce books of excellence forchildren. This came about because, to everyone’s surprise, a publishingprofessional with national and international experience was given chargeof the institute as director and allowed to run it.

But as soon as the new government took charge he was sackedand the institute handed over to a party man.

There was a hilarious sentence in the formal complaint madeagainst the director by a trade union leader, which was used to sackhim. It said that if the present director was allowed to continue, andsince he was only in his early forties, nowhere in the near future willpeople of the political culture of the party in power be able to dominatethe institute. So much for the value politicians place upon children’sliterature!

In my opinion, children’s literature in Malayalam must attend tocertain needs if it is to grow into an original field of creative writing thatcan help children develop their inner selves and grow up as large-hearted,cosmopolitan citizens of a secular democracy.

Identify new and talented writers.

Persuade well-known writers to write for children.

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Identify illustrators with original and contemporary styles.

Find ways to improve the quality of production without raisingprices.

Pay conscious attention to the content in terms of affirmationof humanistic values: there is a need to be alert toresponsibilities in terms of gender, socio-economic status,environmental stewardship, human rights, democratic andsecular vision, freedom of the individual, stances against classand caste considerations, citizen’s rights… The list could goon much longer but these issues are vital.

The most serious challenge to children’s reading in Kerala comesfrom their own parents and teachers. They insist that children read textbooks only. Any other reading is considered unnecessary and put downwith a heavy hand – except perhaps the popular children’s periodicals,and that too only up to a certain age. Children are seen as beingsuccessful only in terms of their ability to become rank-holders in examsand entrance tests, so the possibility of their becoming a good citizenand a good human being is not in the agenda.

I do not blame the parents. In the kind of brutal, vicious societythat has evolved in Kerala under the iron hands of the political parties,parents are running away from an unidentified apocalypse. There is anoverwhelming sense of insecurity. They see an escape only in becomingrich and richer, and they want their children to do that job.

So we have fine, promising children growing up to be doctorswho treat each patient as a profit-centre, engineers whose so-calledscientific minds are for hire by any bigot and managers for whom everysocial responsibility is a negotiable item.

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Children’s Literatureas a Personal Translationof the Political into StorySuzanne Gervay

As a Hungarian girl, my mother Veronika studied with the firstviolinist at The Budapest Symphony Orchestra. Her father was aProfessor at the university. She seemed like a princess to me in the fewold photos that still remained. Her life was opera, theatre, balls. Therewas a servant who cleaned the silver in preparation for the eveningmeal in her house.

My father Zoltan was different — a farmer and a trader, whoworked and loved the land. He also loved philosophy and was deeplyinterested in the tumultuous politics of the time.

My father had returned after terrible years in forced labour inRussia. He was now working for the Underground helping to createillegal Swiss passports, setting up illegal houses hiding orphaned children,allocating medicine. When the Professor became ill with TB, my motherwho was only a girl, crossed the devastated city to find medicine forher father.

She found my father Zoltan. So began their journey together,surviving under communism, food shortages, human rights abuses. Theymade that frightening decision to escape Hungary. They left everything

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they knew – family, friends, home, culture, language. They escapedacross the minefields with their small son to a refugee camp in Austria.There they waited for a country to take them. They wanted to go toAmerica but it was Australia that took them.

The story of war-torn refugees has been well documented, filmed,reported and in some ways become truisms, clichés, in an all too familiarpolitical landscape. However the experience of war, escape, finding anew home can never become clichéd with its long reaching impact onthe next generations. As the daughter of post war refugees, I was thechild of war, migration, loss, re-establishment of home. I saw my fatherwork long hours in the car factory; my mother work in the clothingfactory and raise their children. They spoke with heavy accents, missedtheir culture, placed heavy expectations on their children seeking toheal from the political terrors they’d endured. However the drivingforce in their lives was a belief in family, love and the freedoms offeredby the new world.

As a child, books and writing were an escape from my home lifewhich was turbulent with parents working long hours, guilt at my ownexistence, wanting to make up for things I did not understand. My parentswanted to keep their children safe and entered into a conspiracy ofsilence. The silence was frightening.

I write to break the silence because young people feeleverything. However they don’t have the experience to understandthat they are not alone, that there are pathways forward. I am drivento write story underpinned by social justice. It is unconscious, political,as I navigate the refugee journey of my family and translate it intomeeting challenges and empowering young people on their search formeaning, identity and home.

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My Jack books are rite-of-passage children’s novels in Australia.I Am Jack is about school bullying; Super Jack is about blending families;Always Jack is about cancer and refugees. Darlison writes that mystorytelling in Always Jack encapsulates:

… the realism of a young boy’s life, yet still deal with bigissues such as cancer, Death, Divorce, grandparents, siblingrivalry, friendships, refugees and the Vietnam War (…) Partsurvival manual, part therapy, part autobiography, part fiction,Always Jack succeeds in distilling a complex medical conditionfor young readers to digest.

(Darlison 9)

However life is not a single narrative and the Jack books navigatethe complexities of life with warmth, humour, family and community.

With my narratives I seek to engage young readers in socialjustice. I was privileged to represent Australia with my refugee story‘To East Timor’ in the IBBY anthology Peace Story where twenty-two countries, twenty-two authors and twenty-two illustrators contributedyouth stories for peace. An initiative of The Republic of Korea IBBY,it was launched internationally on Nami Island in the Republic of Korea.

One of the inspiring experiences of my life occurred recentlywhen I was flown to New York to address the Burn Congress (by TheNew York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical College, theNew York Firefighters Burn Foundation and The Phoenix Society forBurns). They asked me to speak about the power of my young adultnovel Butterflies to travel with young people and community.

I was on the faculty with Kim Phuc, who was the nine year oldgirl running naked from napalm in Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize winningphoto. That experience, impacted me profoundly and it impacted the

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narrative in Always Jack. When Jack and his best mate Christopher(whose parents are Vietnamese refugees) present their Vietnamproject to the school assembly and their families, they end theirpresentation with:

"Jack and Christopher (say) together: Kim Phuc, the girlrunning from the bomb, said, ‘Don’t see a little girl crying out infear and pain. See her crying out for peace." (Always Jack 106)

This 1972 image of the Vietnam War has become an internationalicon for peace. The effect of war on children through Kim Phuc’sstory deeply connected to my own sense of war and dislocation andbecame integral to Always Jack.

My young adult novel Butterflies which took two years toresearch and write, was deeply embedded in my belief in inclusion.

I had a definite agenda. Butterflies would be medicallyaccurate, but it would not be a medical book. It would bepsychologically accurate in terms of child growth anddevelopment, but not a didactic textbook. It would reflect thestories and journeys of the young people and families whom Ihad interviewed. I wanted to write a story where disability ispart of the fabric of life, but not life itself. The main characterKatherine would be burnt but never be a one-dimensionalstereotype. Katherine would be complex like all human beingswith a real family, a background and a personality that reachesfrom the page into the lives of readers. Katherine’s life wouldshow that disability does not separate burn survivors from thecommunity, but unites them in the common bond of humanity.Butterflies would be good literature and a powerful tool inunderstanding disability. (Gervay, Disability StudiesQuarterly)

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Today Butterflies is recognised as outstanding youth literatureon disability.

My recently released picture book Ships in the Field has takena lifetime to create. It is the immigrant story; the refugee story; mystory; your story. It is personal. My father made hats from the serviettesat dinnertime for the family’s amusement. My mother cooked chickensoup every night. My father worked in a factory and my mother seweddresses both in a factory and at home. Their trips into the country werea happy family time, connecting with their new land, building family andthe future. My father did see the ‘ships in the field.’

However through the personal comes the universal story.Everyone knows what it feels like to be a child afraid of the night.Everyone wants the security of family as a child, as a parent and adult.Everyone feels the unspoken fear of silence, when parents have secrets.

Ships in the Field is deceptively simple. But it is not simple.Anna Pignataro’s illustrations are deceptively simple. But they are notsimple. In a very special collaboration, Anna has brought her Egyptian-Italian refugee background to my Hungarian refugee background tocreate a book that will reach children and families engenderingunderstanding, identification and inclusion. Ships in the Field is bothpersonal and universal – the universal refugee immigrant experience ofwar, loss, migration, home.

Ships in the Field has on its back cover:

‘Everyone has the right to a nationality’ (Universal Declarationof Human Rights)

Jeder hat das Recht auf eine Staatsangehörigkeit. German

Svako ima pravo na dr•avljanstvo. Bosnian/Croatian

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Minden személynek joga van valamely állampolgársághoz.Hungarian

Setiap orang berhak atas sesuatu kewarga-negaraan.Indonesian

Sing saha bae boga hak dina nangtukeun kawarga-nagaraanana. Sudanese

Her ferdin bir uyrukluk hakký vardýr. Turkish(Gervay, Ships in the Field, back cover)

I seek to mesh the political with the creative to unlock journeysin children’s literature to create a better world.

Works Cited

Darlison, Aleesah. "Tackling the tough issues with a light touch." AlwaysJack. The Sun Herald 21 Nov 2010 Australia ed: 9. Print.

Gervay, Susanne. Butterflies: Youth Literature as a Powerful Tool inUnderstanding Disability. Disability Studies Quarterly 24.1(2004).

Gervay, Susanne. Butterflies. USA: Kane Miller, 2011. Print.

Gervay, Susanne. I Am Jack. Australia: HarperCollins, 2000. Print.

Gervay, Susanne. Super Jack. Australia: HarperCollins, 2003. Print.

Gervay, Susanne. Always Jack. Australia: HarperCollins, 2011. Print.

Gervay, Susanne and Pignataro, Anna. Ships in the Field. Australia:Ford Street Publishing, 2012. Print.

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The Child as a ReaderCommunicating BeliefDeepa Agrawal

At a children’s literature festival in Srinagar, a young girlapproached me. “Please give me,” she breathed, her grey eyes largeand serious, “give me a few words that will guide me through life.” Fora few moments, I was stumped. She looked so earnest that it made menervous. What a terrible responsibility she had imposed on me! Finally,I gathered myself together and mumbled, “Always believe in yourselfand never give up.”

It was not the first time a child had requested such a one liner.Never, however, with such intensity.The incident reminded me yet againwhat children expect from us as writers—words that can act as abeacon in times of confusion and distress.

We know that a one liner, no matter how worthy the sentiment itencapsulates, cannot be the ultimate guide in the complex business oflife, and somewhere I felt like a fraud. To bring more honesty into ourinterchange, I picked up one of my books from the book stall shelf. Itwas my title Not Just Girls. “Try reading this,” I said.

I hope she read that book, because it is about girls trying to believein themselves and not give up and hopefully she found situations thatillustrated what I said.

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Katherine Paterson (1995), one of the most respected children’swriters in the world says in her book, A Sense of Wonder: “I do believethat those of us who have grown up have something of value to offerthe young. And if that is didacticism, well, I have to live with it. Butwhen I write a story, it is not an attempt to make children good andwise—nobody but God can do that and even God doesn’t do it withouta child’s cooperation. I am trying in a book simply to give children aplace where they can find rest for their weary souls.” (59)

She goes on to explain that she is trying to act as a companion toa confused and fearful child, reaching out through a story “…peopledby characters who are me but not simply me.” (60)

The whole question of politics apart, we all know literary worksare intrinsically linked to the author’s personal experience, socialbackground, core beliefs and prejudices. While writing for children,writers may delve into their own childhood memories, sometimes justto share them, or to answer questions that baffled them when theywere young, or raise issues that disturbed them. Your parents’ happy orunhappy marriage, the sassiness of your younger sister or the bullyingways of your older brother or his wimpyness will turn up somewhere ina story sooner rather than later.

Yes, in your writing, it is hard to get away from what and whoyou are and what and who you want to become. When I look back onmy first published book, sometimes I cannot help wondering if it mappeda particular course for me, even though I know it is not strictly true.The itinerary had been present somewhere long before I beganwriting.That year, Children’s Book Trust had announced a competitionon the theme “Portraying Boys and Girls as Equals” and I decided toenter. Why? To quote from a paper I presented at a conference inMangalore organised in 2008 by the Children’s Literature Association

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of India on the theme “Politics and Polemics in Children’s Literature”:“As the mother of three young daughters, the theme immediately strucka chord. And a picture book story Ashok’s New Friends (1990) –about young Ashok’s encounter with a boy who likes to cook and hissister, who is good at karate, was the result. The book went on to winthe N.C.E.R.T National Award for Children’s Literature in 1992-93.”

The need to inspire my daughters and other girls to challengestereotypes was definitely on my mind when I wrote Ashok’s NewFriends. This book was a precursor to many other stories in which girlcharacters shatter the conventional mould. But it is also true that manyof these characters sprang into my head without the impetus of a giventheme. In fact it was a revelation when readers observed this elementin stories where such noble notions were far from my mind. For examplein an article, writer and critic Nandini Nayar (2006) states: “Agarwalpays special attention to the boy-girl equation in her books and attemptsto be fair to both the sexes…But in most cases the girls display courageand initiative that marks them out as braver.” (322) Among others,Nandini has mentioned my second published title A Capital Adventure.This book, however, grew organically and was conceived as a mysterystory meant to entertain rather than influence. It was the storyline thatgrabbed the reins when I was working on it rather than the aim todepict strong girl characters.

Traveller’s Ghost is another book in which the narrative formeditself, though a girl named Kriti does take the initiative to deal with thespirit haunting her and her friends. Again in my fantasy novel Anitaand the Game of Shadows, which appeared a few years later, theprotagonist Anita is the one who has to confront and destroy the evilKing of Shadows and rescue her parents. I think that when I waswriting these stories it was absolutely natural for me to believe that agirl could accomplish those daring tasks as well as a boy.

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Several years later, I was commissioned to put together acollection of girl empowerment stories by Paro Anand for Rupa & Co,which appeared under the title Not Just Girls. When I was making aselection from stories that had appeared in magazines earlier, I wasdelighted to discover that I had enough to make up a book. One or twohad indeed been written on a given theme. But there were also storieslike “Delivery Girl” in which a girl opts for the dangerous choice ofhelping to arrest a criminal who has made use of her, and others like“Never Talk to Strangers” in which a timid girl strives to break out ofher mould and trust her instincts.

Some of these characters could have been inspired by spunkygirls I encountered in my childhood or diffident ones trying to stretchtheir comfort zones. But more recently I made a conscious choice towrite two books with inspiring female protagonists. The biography RaniLakshmibai, the Valiant Queen of Jhansi is one. The other is mylatest book Rajula and the Web of Danger, a retold folk epic ofKumaon in Uttarakhand. I had heard about this unusual tale of a girl’sbravery and determination, rare in our oral tradition and was keen towrite a book based on it. In this thousand year old story, the heroine’sdaring and initiative and her spirited challenge to her powerful magicianfather makes her the perfect role model for the contemporary girl, andI must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed writing it.

Katherine Paterson (1995) also says in The Spying Heart: “It isnot enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give themsomething worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations—something that will help them make sense of their own lives andencourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quitedifferent from their own.” (301-2)

Right from childhood I have found it hard to make sense of socialinequities and that is another question I have been attempting to answer

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through my stories. In one of my early picture books, The Toy Horse Itried to show that give and take at an equal level is possible betweenchildren of unequal means. In this simple tale, a middle class child covetsRami's [a banjara (gypsy) girl] toy horse. Rami gives it up, but the othergirl senses that she is sacrificing something precious and impulsivelyhands over her own doll. A short story “Fire” from the previouslymentioned collection Not Just Girls! examines this issue in greaterdepth through the complexities of the relationship between Puja andParuli. Based on a childhood memory, this story is about a friendshipbetween two middle class girls and a maid’s daughter, which founderswhen Paruli, the maid’s daughter tells a lie to avoid punishment. Pujaadores Paruli but cannot forgive her for lying, till she understands Paruli’scompulsions, but by then it is too late. In the story “The Odd Weekend,”from the collection Everyday Tales, Mitu is jolted out of her complacencywhen her mother’s friend, the ‘crazy’ Zoya Aunty with whom her parentshave left her for the weekend, takes her to a slum for social work. Mitubegins by wrinkling her nose at the scene: “Heaps of garbage rotted allaround and smelly drains (which doubled as toilets) ran along the houses.Didn’t anyone tell them about germs, I wondered? Well, Zoya Auntydid.” (37) Asked to narrate stories to the kids, a sulking Mitu soon findswonderful warmth filling her up and leaves as reluctantly as she hadarrived. This story too, is based on an unforgettable childhood experience.

Bringing domestic help into children’s fiction sometimes makeswriters uncomfortable because they feel it indicates that the author isratifying an exploitative practice. I am not so sure. All middle classfamilies employ domestic help and often mothers bring young girls alongto assist them in their chores. I feel that portraying bonds that sometimesdevelop spontaneously among children, makes a story more true to life.Many urban children tend to distance themselves from people not of

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their social strata; are very conscious of differences and often have astereotyped view of the other. Involving children from under privilegedgroups as active participants in the narrative rather than mere backgroundfigures helps to reinforce empathy and smooth the awkwardness thatis responsible for the distance.

I also feel it is imperative to depict that any kind of sharing witha needier person should be free of condescension. In a very early titleof mine – Three Days to Disaster the initial encounter between Sonalithe protagonist and Kamli the banjara girl who helps solve the mystery,is based on a real life incident that had a deep impact on me. A brusqueshopkeeper refuses to sell biscuits to Kamli because she does not haveenough money. When Sonali offers her some in an impulsive gesture,she refuses. In the above mentioned article Nandini Nayar says, “She[Kamli] maintains both her dignity and the sense of awe at being noticedby the educated, well-dressed girl.” (322) When, in the course of thestory, Kamli is in a position to assist Sonali and Gogi in capturing thecriminals, “Kamli is terrified of the consequences of helping the children,yet she goes ahead.” (322) In my mystery novel The Hunt for theMiracle Herb, Harku the boy domestic helper plays an important partin locating the herb Rina, Ajay and Geeti are looking for, as also inapprehending the man who is putting obstacles in their way. Similarly,in The Capital Adventure, Mohini, the maid’s daughter, whom Shiprahas befriended, is courageous enough to free Amit and Rohan from thecriminals who capture them, at great personal risk. Better still, shedaringly tries to get hold of the briefcase full of cash that the crookshave extracted as ransom. Caught in the act, she does not give upfighting till the others arrive with a rescue force. Thus, she not onlydisplays initiative and guts but her participation becomes crucial for thesuccessful resolution of the story.

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The big question, however, is—do such stories really influencechildren’s attitudes? Here I would like to quote from a blog post on TheToy Horse by a lady named Pallavi, which I stumbled upon. “It’s aninvaluable book to have because it teaches in such a tender way thedifference between haves and have-nots…” she writes. Again, “I readit out often to my daughter who is only 4 years old but really verymoved by the story. It also gives us an opportunity to provide her witha perspective on things she will see and experience all around her inIndia.” (2011) In a review of Rani Lakshmibai: the Valiant Queen ofJhansi Rohini Ramakrishnan writes in The Hindu, “…it remains withyou long after you have finished the book and through these [narratives]you relive the past and realise that here is a woman who can inspireyou to face life, despite all the hurdles and hardship…” (2011)

F. Scott Fitzgerald said: “You don’t write because you want tosay something, you write because you have something to say.” Thetruth is, whether you fashion a story deliberately to educate childrenor let one emerge organically from the deep, dark well of yourconsciousness, unless you believe in the issue, the most diligentlycrafted words will slip through the reader’s mind like water through asieve. You have to create a story that will resonate in the reader’smind long after she has finished reading it. Where the child reader isconcerned, it is not just about choosing politically correct themes. It isabout communicating your faith, your conviction in the most honestway you can, so that it touches the heart of the reader and leaves apermanent imprint.

Works Cited

Agarwal, Deepa. Not Just Girls. New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2004. Print.

—. Ashok’s New Friends. New Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 1990.Print.

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—. A Capital Adventure. New Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 1990.Print.

—. Everyday Tales. New Delhi: Harper Collins India, 1994. Print.

—. Three Days to Disaster. New Delhi: Ratnasagar Publishers, 1990.Print.

—. Ashok’s New Friends. New Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 1990.Print.

—. Traveller’s Ghost. New Delhi: Harper Collins India, 1995. Print.

—. Anita and the Game of Shadows. Gurgaon: Scholastic India Pvt.Ltd. 2002. Print.

—. Rani Lakshmibai. New Delhi: Puffin Books India, 2009. Print.

—. Rajula and the Web of Danger. Gurgaon: Hachette India, 2011.Print.

—. The Toy Horse. New Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 1997. Print.

—. The Hunt for the Miracle Herb; New Delhi: Puffin Books, 1995.Print.

Katherine Paterson. A Sense of Wonder. New York: Penguin Books,1995. Print.

Nandini Nayar. “Deepa Agarwal and Indian Children’s Literature inEnglish: An Introduction”. Perspectives on Indian EnglishFiction. Ed. Jaydipsinh Dodiya. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2006.Print.

Pallavi. "Some bit of this and some bit of that." [Online] Available at:http://kinderwagon.blogspot.com/2011/09/toy-horse-deepa-agarwal.html#comment-form. [Accessed May 16, 2012.]

Ramakrishnana, Rohini. I will ride ten elephants. The Hindu. May 9,2011. [Online] Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/kids/article2003345.ece. [Accessed May 16, 2012]

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On Children’s Literatureand Politics: A conversationin two voices about HandsAround the LibraryKaren Leggett Abouraya and Susan L. Roth

Susan:

For all my years I had dreamed of going to Egypt to see thepyramids. Four and a half years ago my family and I finally arranged todo this. But our grand plan was so discouraged by so many, evenincluding our travel agent, that we ended up deciding it would be prudentto postpone the trip.

The reason? POLITICS. There were periodic violent eventsinvolving tourists in Egypt. Just before our scheduled departure a Frenchwoman was killed in the main marketplace. “Don’t take the chance”,we were begged. “You’ve waited this long, wait until it’s safer.” Wecanceled the trip.

When it was too late to change the plans again, I told my friendKaren Leggett Abouraya (at that time not yet co-author of Hands Aroundthe Library). Karen is married to an Egyptian and has been travelingback and forth for years with her family. She had helped me with ouritinerary and was dismayed to hear that we had changed the plans.

Karen

“You’re going to Turkey instead?” I said to Susan,disappointed and incredulous. “That’s ridiculous! The whole world

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is both dangerous and safe. You have a greater chance of havingan accident on the way to the airport than of having a problem inEgypt. I feel so sad for the tourist business in Egypt. It’s a majorEgyptian industry, and tourist hysteria is a contagious virus andso damaging. Don’t keep waiting to go to Egypt.”

Susan

On the way back from a safe, interesting trip to Turkey, westopped in France to visit a friend. In her house I noticed Egyptianposters on the walls and books about Egypt on the shelves. It turnedout that our hostess had just returned from her sixth trip to Egypt. “Whyaren’t you scared?” I demanded. “Didn’t you hear about that Frenchwoman in the market?” “Egypt is completely safe!” she vowed. “I amtotally comfortable, the people are gentle and caring, the art andarchaeology are infinitely fascinating. About that poor unlucky woman?It could have happened in New York or Paris, too.”

That settled it. In December, 2009 my husband, daughter and Iarrived in Cairo with an itinerary that, thanks to Karen, includedAlexandria.

My husband was skeptical. “Do you really want to bother leavingthis incredible richness?” he asked, leaning over a case of ancientsketches for paintings on stone in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Wehad already traveled to see most of the famous major sites. I think all ofus would have liked to stay in that museum for at least six months.

But it was too late to change the plans, and soon we were off forAlexandria and the Library that Karen had promised was as importantas the pyramids.

By this time I had fallen in love with Egypt and I had begun tosearch for an Egyptian story to write for children, brazenly confessing

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that what I really wanted was a legitimate excuse to return. Besidesthis, of course, I was fast realizing that there were wonderful storieshere to share with children. We joked about my potential books as wediscovered more and more things we loved about Egypt. What about abook about kosheri? (the delicious and unique street food of Egypt,made of lentils, pasta, rice, spicy tomato sauce and onions).

What about greywacke? (the funny-named hardest black stoneused for the most exquisite, elegant and detailed carving in my mostfavorite of Egyptian sculptures).

Or what about the ridiculous traffic in Cairo? I was in love withancient Egypt, yes. But I was also in love with Egypt-now.

Even so, I, too, had my doubts about the Alexandria Library.After all, the original Alexandria Library was a lost wonder of the world.The new Alexandria Library was probably just a contemporary buildingusing the famous ancient name. Everyone knows that the ancient scrollswere long gone.

But when we walked inside the door and crossed over to thefirst balcony for the first glimpse of the extraordinary, dazzling space, Iknew we had been mistaken.

I stood in silence for the first five minutes, filled with thoughtsabout other magnificent places and grand spaces: the Grand Canyon,the Taj Mahal, the Andes, the Alps, Petra, the Eiffel Tower, the EmpireState Building, the Coliseum, everything larger than life. The AlexandriaLibrary did not disappoint.

My daughter spoke first. “Here’s your book!” she said. She wasright, too.

Karen

Susan did not simply stand in awe at the Library. She jumpedin with her whole being, visiting the Children’s Library, exchanging

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photos and emails with then-children’s librarian Shaimaa Saad,sharing possibilities for the future. Susan came home bursting withexclamation points.

Susan

I tried to call Karen right from the Library, but my cell phonewould not connect. We spoke as soon as I got home. “YOU write it,”I said. “It’s only reasonable. I never even would have seen it if youhadn’t made such a fuss!” “We’ll do it together,” she said. And so webegan.

Karen

I had always wanted to write about Egypt for young people– to let them know that there is so much more to this vast countrythan pyramids and mummies, fascinating as they are. I envisioneda nonfiction book with a story that would engage young readersin the mysteries of the ancient Library and intrigue them with thevast opportunities of the new Library – opportunities for the freethinking, free gathering and free questioning inherent in ademocratic society.

My first draft began with a small boy standing amid themarket clamor and aroma of the old port, waiting to carry scrollsto the ancient Library. It ended with an exercise in civil discoursebased on Skype conversations that Susan and I organized betweenAmerican students in Alexandria, Virginia, and Egyptian studentsgathered by Shaimaa Saad at the modern Library in Alexandria,Egypt. We were playing around the edges of politics, as theseyoungsters moved beyond stereotypes to acknowledging theirsimilarities. “They discovered that they wore the same jeans and

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T-shirts,” we would ultimately write, “they all ate pizza, liked manyof the same singers, and even knew some of the same professionalwrestlers.”

Susan

We sent word sketches to our editor and she responded to eachtry: too historical; too contemporary; too political; too idealistic; too dry;too capricious; too specific; too pedantic; not pedantic enough; notspecific enough; too long; too short. We were very close to giving up.

Karen

As Susan and I debated form and audience, voice and tone,our manuscript went through many upheavals. In the midst of itall, Egypt began its own upheaval on January 25, 2011, ending18 days later with the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.The Arab Spring was upon us. And that too would dramaticallyalter our manuscript.

Susan

It had never occurred to either of us to write about the revolutionitself. We could have imagined the editor’s responses to that: too violent;too dangerous; too unresolved; too political; too not-for-children. Andbesides, the revolution had nothing to do with the Alexandria Library…

…until suddenly one day it seemed to have EVERYTHING todo with the Alexandria Library. My husband and I were driving, listeningto the breaking news on the radio. The trouble was spreading in Egypt.Protesters were gathering in Alexandria. And then we heard, live, talkabout the Library and the people who had left the march to hold handsright then, around the Library, protecting it.

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“Your book!” my husband said. I called Karen from the car, andthe rest is “Children’s Literature and Politics.”

Karen

Dr. Ismail Serageldin, the Director of the Alexandria Library– officially retaking the ancient name Bibliotheca Alexandrina –waxed eloquent on the Library website and in media interviewsabout the youth who were leading the revolution. “This revolutionin Egypt was a liberal revolution,” he said. “And I’m proud andhappy that the Library of Alexandria may have contributed in somesmall way to supporting the kinds of ideas that have found theirexpression in the young people who led this revolution.”

The young people holding hands around the Library seemeda perfect ending to our story. The editors thought otherwise. Theymoved the ancient Library to the backmatter, relegated the smallboy to memory and insisted on putting the revolutionaries’ protectionof the Library – politics – on center stage.

The emails between editors and authors were as plentifuland intense as revolutionary Twitter posts. There had to be a balance– dramatic tension that did not swallow the facts, incipient dangerthat did not become random violence, a marketing dream that didnot wreak havoc with the truth.

Susan

It was a difficult balance to reach. Fortunately for the publication,(not to mention the people and their beautiful city), unlike in Cairo,things never got completely out of hand in Alexandria.

The immediacy and the changing times in Egypt was and is anotherpolitical issue. The amount of time, from the moment of acceptance by

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the publisher to the moment of publication for any children’s picturebook, is almost always more than a year. What if our book effectivelywere to become a period piece by the time it’s published in August,2012? No one knows what might still happen in Egypt, though fortunatelyfor our story, the event upon which we focus really did happen as wehave told it. No matter what follows, the warm, hand-holding momentat the Alexandria Library is one that will live forever. We only hope thatthe political situation will settle soon, before more lives and livelihoodsare threatened.

Karen

Our book is a true collaboration – the essence of politics atits best. We compromised on form and style, but not on facts. Iadopted Susan’s lyrical style; she accepted my journalist’s insistenceon not embellishing the truth. We had hoped to address religiouspolitics more directly.

Susan

The picture book format (still my favorite) does have its limitations.Under the heading of ‘just the right balance’ of harsh political messagesshould be included ‘just the right balance’ of religious messages. Maybeall the dinner table subjects that we are taught never to mention aremostly taboo for picture books, too.

One piece that we especially wanted to include was howChristians and Arabs were being so respectful of each other’s religiousexpressions during the initial protests. There were beautiful, trueexamples of diverse people being kind and helpful and decent to eachother. Sadly, our mentions were mostly edited out. Of course, picturebooks have severe space and production constraints too, being usually

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no more than 32 pages, sometimes stretching to 40, so perhaps thatwas part of the reason for the exclusion.

I think it bears reminding at this point that book publishing is,after all, a business. The first objective is to create a book that willattract attention and sell. Certainly everyone would like all books to beinteresting, intelligent, excellent, beautiful, original, lovely. But if the bookdoesn’t sell, the publisher cannot stay in business. It is the publisheralone who has the last word on that prediction. Will it or won’t it belikely to sell? No one knows, but it’s the publisher’s dice that are rolling.Writers can either compromise or self-publish or not publish at all.

And then there are the pictures. Usually when I begin to workon a book, often before the text is complete, I have an idea of how thebook will look. Even though I work in collage and even though processis really part of every finished piece, most of the time my early visiondictates the direction that the art takes. But this did not happen withHands Around the Library. Awed by the huge physical structure ofthe Library, at first I was certain that I would make nothing but photo-montages for this book. Instead, the pictures seemed to buildthemselves…dominated by the leitmotifs of the marching protestorsand the signs that they carried.

A second theme grew out of the photographs of Egyptian artand artifacts that Karen’s daughter, Nadia Abouraya, provided. Mostof these images came directly from the Abouraya home. The dominantinspiration for me was an appliquéd and quilted fabric that hangs ontheir wall.

This is actually part of a tent like those used now in Egyptiancities, to block off parts of streets for small urban celebrations such asweddings. The bright colors and infinite design variations adapted well

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to my collage medium, and I felt that these ‘design quotations’substantiated and enhanced an important point of our book.

Karen

The cover entailed more compromise. Susan and I wantedthe background to be the magnificent granite wall of the Library,with its hundreds of unique characters from modern and historiclanguages. Thinking that too obscure, the publisher opted for thecolors of the Egyptian flag – which does indeed make the coverdramatic and eye-catching. Susan walked a tightrope between mycall (and my Egyptian husband’s) for fewer women in hijab andmen in beards and the publisher’s desire to keep these images frontand center as an immediate cue to buyers that ours is a ‘multicultural’book. As a result, many Westernized Egyptians who participatedin the revolution may see themselves in our text, but not on ourcover.

Susan

And so our countdown to publication date continues. Today theLibrary is still safe and open, although politics remain uncertain in Egypt.

Recently, Karen’s husband went to Cairo for a meeting, stoppingin Alexandria to visit family and friends. While there, he managed tomeet with Library Director Ismail Serageldin, one of the two featuredcharacters in our story. Tharwat Abouraya hand carried folded andgathered sheets of Hands Around the Library, the still unbound butprinted version, to give to the director.

Karen and I had both been anxious about possible objections.What if he didn’t like that suit he’s wearing? (I mean the one I literallywove for him out of paper). What if he thought I made his glasses too

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big? What if he objected to turning such a serious event into a picturebook? What if? What if?

But Serageldin was totally enthusiastic and absolutely supportive– including asking his staff to help implement our suggestion for aLibrary-sponsored symposium on children’s literature as part of thebook launch. He invited us to return to Egypt!

Sadly, though, politics intervened again. Serageldin is facing hisown challenges and we have been advised to postpone the symposiumuntil a more peaceful time. Politics affect all of living, and children’sliterature, too.

The recent event that we chose to highlight is about contemporarypolitics. This book is about NOW, not about pharaonic Egypt. We aretalking about yesterday, this minute and tomorrow. We are waiting andwatching with the rest of the world. We make our political statementsloud and clear as we join hands with all those Egyptians who wish toprotect their Bibliotheca Alexandrina. And we speak through our medium,the one that we love best, children’s books.

Karen

The message implicit in our book is a celebration of librariesas a place to nurture those freedoms. (We shall be expanding on thesethemes on the book’s future website, www.handsaroundthelibrary.com.)In the eighteenth century, the American Benjamin Franklin formed agroup called the Junto Society to debate politics, morals and naturalphilosophy. It was this group that created the first American library,among numerous other public amenities. Today, the BibliothecaAlexandrina is reviving ancient traditions of teaching, scholarship,research and public discussion. There are countless efforts to bringliteracy, books and libraries to communities around the world that arepoor in resources but rich in spirit.

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Yet even in America, libraries are under siege – by politics.American mayors have reported that hours, staff and services at locallibraries were the number two area for budget cuts, second only toservices at parks and gardens. All politics are local. Children’s literature– and our children’s ability to access literature – is at stake. HandsAround the Library in Alexandria is a metaphor for every library inevery village, city, state and nation that cries out for our passion andour support.

Works Cited

Roth, Susan and Abouraya, Karen. 2012. “Hands Around the Library”[Online] Available at: http:www.handsaroundthelibrary.com[Accessed 1 June 2012]

Roth, Susan and Abouraya, Karen. Hands Around the Library:Protecting Egypt’s Treasured Books. New York: Dial, 2012.Print.

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Placing the Texts in theirContexts: A New HistoricistStudy of ShakespeareAdapted for ChildrenAnita Mishra

I

Though William Shakespeare lived in 16th century England, hisworks have reached beyond time and space to grip the imagination ofreaders across the globe for centuries. Shakespeare’s plays, inparticular, continue to be incorporated as part of both canonical andpopular media. They are performed by prestigious theatre companiesand have generated more than four hundred films across languagesand cultures to date, besides inspiring countless literary interpretationsover the centuries.

Several adaptations of Shakespearean plays are written forchildren. Adapting any text specifically for children aims at simplifyingits plot, enabling young readers to access the sophisticated and eloquentlanguage. A text is often chosen for adaptation based on its canonicalstatus. Adapting canonical material for children introduces them to thehierarchic formulations of ‘good’ or ‘classic’ as opposed to ‘popular’literature at an early stage, and teachers and parents often hope thatadaptations will encourage children to read the texts in their ‘original’forms. This early experience becomes an integral part of the cultivationof their literary tastes in the future.

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Shakespeare’s plays have been successfully adapted for childrenas novels based on single works, and collections of short stories aboutmultiple plays. This paper analyzes how adaptors for children oftendirect their readers about what they should see in, and understand about,the writings of a man who wrote for the adult audience of a bygonetime. Adaptors must translate such complexity into comprehensibleclarity besides trying to form the critical and aesthetic senses of theirreaders, whose relative innocence and adaptability due to their youthmakes them susceptible to suggestions. “Placing the Texts in theirContexts” looks at two collections of Shakespearean stories and studieshow the adaptors attempt to modulate the readers’ responses towardsprevailing issues like racism or class differences according to the normsof the society they have been recreated in.

The extent and nature of the relationship between a text and itsvarious contexts have often been questioned in Literary Criticism. Atext can be analyzed either in isolation, or in conjunction with the widercircumstances which, directly or indirectly, play a role in its creation.The New Historicist School of critical theory, which began in the early1980s, was developed by Stephen Greenblatt and gained prominenceduring the 1990s. It is not an entirely new concept, but borrows fromearlier schools of thought like Marxism (treating literature as a productof the conditions in which it was created) and Post-Structuralism(different interpretations of the same text), and the Doctrine of Textualitywhich declares a continuity between a text and its surrounding context.It demonstrates how every literary work is influenced by the time andsociety in which it was produced. In the words of D.G. Myers,

“…practitioners of the new method are concerned with […] therecovery of the original ideology which gave birth to the text, andwhich the text in turn helped to disseminate throughout a culture…”

(28-29)

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New Historicism continues to be a popular school of literarytheory in the twenty-first century. Applying New Historicism, this paperassociates two adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays with their respectiveperiods in history to see if the texts are constitutive of, and constitutedby, the contexts or not. Trying to find the imprint of social contexts onan adaptation is more difficult than on an ‘original’ piece of literature(the word ‘original’ has been used here for convenience; it does notindicate a hierarchy as adaptations are as ‘original’ as the text beingadapted), since an adaptation has a double layer of contexts around it –the original writer’s and the adaptor’s - and the adaptor tries to preservethe original atmosphere and attitudes as far as possible. Due to thisattempt by the adaptors, the influences of Shakespeare’s times andsocial conditions on the adapted tales are usually stronger than those ofthe adaptors’; especially in those tales which offer the plots of theplays in a simplified style without attempting to mould them to someother situation or context. Despite this, reading some modernized versionsof Shakespeare will yield enough hints (albeit small) about the adaptorsand their time to aid in understanding the texts themselves in betterways.

British history, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, is anextensive field. It encompasses the English Revolution of 1640-1660,the Great Fire of 1666, the Industrial Revolution, colonialism and itsdecline, the two World Wars, the Great Depression and similar landmarkperiods in the historical tapestry of social and political Britain. But, almostas important as these, are smaller and less conspicuous changes achievedwithin these four centuries. The last two centuries, from 1800 to 2000,were especially vital because of the importance given to humanism andequal rights for different communities across the Western world. Afterlong-drawn-out protests, racial sensitivity and class equality wereacknowledged as valid and essential to progress. The process started

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in the eighteenth century, and the changing perceptions about suchdemands were seen in the twentieth century in political provisions likeanti-racism laws and the establishment of a welfare state. The prevailingattitudes towards these topics impress the adaptors consciously orsubconsciously and come out in their works.

The adaptations to be examined for this purpose are those ofThe Tempest, King Lear, Othello, Merchant of Venice, As You LikeIt and The Taming of the Shrew from Charles and Mary Lamb’s Talesfrom Shakespeare (1807, 1980 ed.) and Leon Garfield’s SixShakespeare Stories (1988, 1994 ed.) and Six More ShakespeareStories (1994).

There are two levels of contexts working around any text – thatof the individual who is writing and his/her own ideologies, and that ofthe larger society in which he/she lives. This duality of influence hasbeen described by Alan Sinfield in Literature, Politics and Culture inPost-war Britain (1997) as:

The project of involving literature fully in its context seemsunsatisfactory so long as we maintain a formulation like ‘theindividual versus society’ - in which the individual is imaginedas essentially autonomous and society is envisaged as anundifferentiated external force. But this formulation seemsinadequate in each of its parts. Firstly, the individual exists andmakes sense of himself or herself within society… Secondly,society is neither monolithic nor static; it is composed ofdiverse groups whose interests, opportunities and attitudesinteract in complex ways in accordance with their relativepower at different points. (8)

Following from this, a brief glance at the lives of the writers tobe discussed hereafter will be necessary. Charles (1775-1834) and Mary(1764-1847) Lamb were born into the upper-servant class of late

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eighteenth century England, children of an erstwhile manservant. Maryreceived little schooling and was a house-bound person for most of herlife, though access to a good library made her a passionate reader anda self-taught scholar. The Tales were her first major work, in which thereaders are introduced to the dramatic works of Shakespeare throughcontemporary Victorian English to facilitate their understanding. Herbrother, on the other hand, was a prolific writer by the time the Talescame into existence. The siblings were conventional, and literary-mindedin a domestic way.

Leon Garfield (1921-1996), on the other hand, was a product ofthe twentieth century. He was born into a strict Jewish family, buteventually separated from them. He had disinterred concentration campvictims during World War II, and this experience lent social awarenessto his writing. Garfield’s Shakespeare Stories were written in an attemptto emulate the success of the Lambs and were moderately popular,though his ‘original’ books gave him more prominence in Britishchildren’s literature.

Coming from different times and societies, the Lambs andGarfield bring diverse perspectives into their work. The adaptor’spersonal opinions of particular characters or situations, as well as his/her moral stand on certain themes, come out while attempting to directthe readers’ tastes. This paper will now examine the ways in which thedevelopment of class and racial consciousness over time has left itsimprint on the adaptations under question.

II

Racism and class differentiations are an indelible part of theworld’s history. The Chambers Dictionary (1998 edition) defines ‘race’as “The descendants of a common ancestor, esp. those who inherit acommon set of characteristics…”, and ‘racism’ as “Hatred, rivalry or

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bad feeling between races; belief in the inherent superiority of someraces over others, usually with the implication of a right to be dominant;discriminative treatment based on such belief”. The Oxford Dictionary(2000) defines racism as

1. The belief that there are characteristics, abilities or qualitiesspecific to each race;

2. Discrimination against or antagonism towards other races.

Racial discrimination had been common in the Western worldsince the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries due to a rapid increase inexploration, expansion, slave trade, colonization and imperial domination,and continued openly till the twentieth century when imperialism declinedand humanitarian ideologies captured the public imagination. The effectsof racism have been traumatic too often and for too many. Most of theinhabitants of Western countries considered themselves to be superiorto those whom they had colonized in every field of life; from social andreligious practices and beliefs, to intellectual capabilities. Theyperpetuated mental, physical and economical atrocities in the name of‘civilization’ on anyone racially different from themselves.

Shakespeare’s society also perpetrated this attitude, but his playsbroke ground by attempting to understand diverse points-of-view.Through soliloquies, Shakespeare’s plays have given a voice to thesubaltern sections of English society like Jews, Moors, women, blacks,illegitimate children and Fools, and help audiences to understand the‘other voices’ around them. Indeed, there are few black or white(metaphorically speaking) characters in Shakespeare’s plays; most ofthem are varying shades of grey. Portrayals of other races and ethnicgroups are mostly seen in Othello, The Tempest and The Merchant ofVenice, and comments on class are scattered sporadically across hisworks. His adaptors try to keep them intact in their rewritings, but

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often their own sympathies regarding these social issues become visiblethrough their choice of omissions and inclusions in the adaptations.

The horrific French Revolution occurred in the late eighteenthcentury, and keeping English servants happy with their designated placein society was essential. Therefore, Mary and Charles Lamb purgedtheir Tales of most instances of class conflict and kept the portrayal ofdifferent classes to a bare minimum. Their book was originally intendedfor young girls from the upper and middle classes, who seldomfamiliarized with those ‘below the stairs’ except to give directions. The‘perfect’ servant-master understanding and the attitude expected ofthe ideal servant is demonstrated in The Tempest, in the scene betweenProspero and Ariel when he chastises the latter for daring to ask for hisfreedom. Prospero is not domineering, and acts like a reproachful teacherchiding a disobedient student rather than a cruel master threateningdire consequences. Ariel also seems repentant of his mischievousrebellion, rather than frightened into submission.

“Ariel, thy charge is faithfully performed; but there ismore work yet.”

“Is there more work?” said Ariel. “Let me remind you,master, you have promised me my liberty. I pray remember Ihave done you worthy service, told you no lies, made nomistakes, served you without grudge or grumbling.”

“How now!” said Prospero. “You do not recollect what atorment I freed you from. Have you forgotten the wicked witchSycorax, who with age and envy was almost bent double?…Because you were a spirit too delicate to execute her wickedcommands, she shut you up in a tree, where I found youhowling. This torment, remember, I did free you from.”

“Pardon me dear master,” said Ariel, ashamed to seemungrateful; “I will obey your commands.” (4, emphasis added)

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Ariel speaks respectfully while asking for his freedom, andProspero, apparently, replies in kind. The threat to imprison Ariel in“the knotty entrails” of an oak goes unmentioned. Showing recalcitrantwives and servants being beaten into submission may have beenconsidered comedy in Shakespeare’s time, but the eighteenth centuryaudience was more socially aware and thus, gentle censure was thoughtenough to enforce the submissiveness expected of good servants.

Loyal attendants can also be found in ‘As You Like It’ and ‘KingLear’. Adam’s love towards Orlando is eulogized at length, as isOrlando’s speech regarding the services of the “good old man”; theyare role models of the “faithful servant and his loved master” (49,emphasis added), and Lamb intensely focuses on their relationship. Thisportrayal remains faithful to Shakespeare’s play. Charles Lamb usesadaptor’s license when he includes the Fool in ‘King Lear’ to the list ofdevoted servants, and depicts him much more sentimentally than theoriginal character created by Shakespeare:

[The] poor fool clung to Lear after he had given away hiscrown, and by his witty sayings would keep up his goodhumour, though he could not refrain sometimes from jeeringat his master for his imprudence in uncrowning himself andgiving all away to his daughters...

(98, emphasis added)

Thus the Fool is lauded as a faithful follower whose words helphis master maintain sanity in distressful times, and his tendency of tauntingLear about his follies is shown expressly as originating from his concernfor Lear’s well-being. Individual opinions might vary on this account,but Lamb projects devotion as the sole interpretation. Something isomitted in The Tempest, something is kept intact in As You Like It andsomething is added in King Lear to make these stories conform to thevalues which the adaptors want to advertize.

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Caliban from The Tempest stands at the borders of racial andclass differences – he is an embodiment of both the colonized native,and the unwilling servant. Portraying Caliban was a sensitive issue,especially in a social climate that saw excessive colonization go hand inhand with humanitarian sympathy for the colonized. Mary Lamb choosesto justify Prospero’s treatment of Caliban –

The lively little sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in hisnature, except that he took rather too much pleasure intormenting an ugly monster called Caliban, for he owed hima grudge because he was the son of his old enemy Sycorax.This Caliban, Prospero found in the woods, a strangemisshapen thing, far less human in form than an ape; hetook him home to his cell and taught him to speak; andProspero would have been very kind to him, but the badnature which Caliban inherited from his mother Sycoraxwould not let him learn anything good or useful: thereforehe was employed as a slave, to fetch wood and do the mostlaborious offices…

(1, emphasis added)

Such a description alienates the reader’s sympathy from Caliban,while explaining his conditions as being the consequence of his ownnature rather than the fault of the “lively little sprite Ariel” or the‘benevolent’ Prospero. Caliban is “less human” - and consequently, notto be judged according to human standards. Lamb glosses over thecharacter as much as possible; she omits the sub-plot of Caliban’sattempt to murder his master, as well as the tentative reconciliationbetween them at the end when Prospero acknowledges Caliban as“mine” and Caliban realizes the greatness of his master. The brightnessof The Tempest seems to be marred for her by Caliban’s presence, asthe island might have been for Prospero himself.

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A similar racial uneasiness is found in her rendition of TheMerchant of Venice. Mary Lamb explains away the tragedy of analien in a ‘civilized’ European city by making the character of Shylockextremely wicked, and hence deserving his ultimate downfall. Hercharacters are all either good or bad and lack the grey shades drawnby Shakespeare in the play.

Shylock the Jew lived at Venice; he was an usurer, who hadamassed an immense fortune by lending money at greatinterest to Christian merchants. Shylock, being a hard heartedman, exacted the payment of the money he lent with suchseverity, that he was much disliked by all good men, andparticularly by Antonio, a young merchant of Venice; andShylock as much hated Antonio because he used to lendmoney to people in distress, and would never take any interestfor the money he lent; therefore there was great enmitybetween this covetous Jew and the generous merchantAntonio. Whenever Antonio met Shylock on the Rialto (orexchange), he used to reproach him with his usuries and harddealings, which the Jew would bear with seeming patience,while he secretly meditated revenge. Antonio was thekindest man that lived, the best conditioned, and had themost unwearied spirit in doing courtesies; indeed, he wasone in whom the ancient Roman honour more appeared than inany that drew breath in Italy. He was greatly beloved of allhis fellow citizens…

(69, emphasis added)

Mary Lamb thus gives a subjective reading of the story. Shedoes not show Shylock’s constant humiliation at Antonio’s hands, nordoes she try to sensitize her readers towards the issues faced by Jews,as Shakespeare did in his play.

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Though she meticulously paraphrases Shakespeare’s famoussoliloquies, the moving “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech is omitted fromThe Merchant of Venice. The sorrow which Jessica’s elopement causesShylock and her casual neglect of her father’s feelings are discarded,and she is simply a “daughter who had lately married without his consentto a young Christian, named Lorenzo, a friend of Antonio’s, which hadso offended Shylock that he had disinherited her.” (76) The elopementis condoned and Shylock is made to appear as a misguided parent,acting churlishly due to prejudices. Finally, in Shakespeare’s play, Antonio,aided by the Duke, forces Shylock to turn Christian or else forfeit hislife – thus actually leaving him no choice. But Mary Lamb makes herDuke say “…if you repent your cruelty and turn Christian, the Statewill forgive you the fine of the other half of your riches.” (76) Thus,here Shylock is portrayed as actually being given agency to choose hispath, and it is his greed which makes him leave his own religion forChristianity, not the ‘generous’ Antonio. The good and bad charactersare sharply divided, and her interpretation smacks of racism.

Compared to Shylock, Othello is given more sympathetictreatment by Charles Lamb. He is considered to be a great and nobleman, and “Bating that Othello was black, the noble moor wanted nothingwhich might recommend him to the affections of the greatest lady.”(211) In fact, his suitability is extolled so much that it begs the question– was Lamb trying to explain something that, he feared, might beinconceivable to his audience? Othello’s advanced age is not hinted atin the beginning, and only his skin colour appears to set him apart in theopening paragraphs of the tale. And yet, an inherent prejudice againstDesdemona’s choice, and a struggle to accept it, is evident –

…this noble lady, who regarded the mind more than the featuresof men, with a singularity more to be admired than to be

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imitated, had chosen for the object of her affections a moor, aBlack, whom her father loved and often invited to his house.Neither is Desdemona to be altogether condemned for theunsuitableness of the person whom she selected as her lover.

(211, emphasis added)

Ironically enough, Iago’s grudge against Othello in the story doesnot have a foundation in the latter’s colour - it is more centered on thelack of a promotion and jealousy regarding Othello’s familiarity withIago’s own wife Emilia. Though he plays on Othello’s inferioritycomplexes concerning his colour and age, Iago’s hatred is not a racialresentment but personal. The backbone of Othello is altered by Lamb.

Garfield belongs to a different world, and his interpretation ismore fearless. He is a shrewd observer of the class conflict presentin Shakespeare. His irony is couched in subtle sentences, so much sothat the barbs may almost be missed by inexperienced readers. InThe Merchant of Venice, he brings out an interesting differencebetween the merchant class and the aristocratic class, as exemplifiedby Antonio and Bassanio respectively. Bassanio’s background is madeclear by lines like “[Bassanio] had spent all his rich inheritance andwas drowning in a sea of debts” (50), and “Maybe it was not anenterprise that a sober merchant would have embarked upon, but itseemed proper for a youth like Bassanio, who was made, not fortrade, but for love.” (51). It becomes immediately clear that Bassaniobelongs to the careless aristocratic class while Antonio is a hard-working businessman. Antonio’s sorrow for Bassanio’s lack of capitalis portrayed ironically thus:

It grieved the good merchant to see the carefree young man growgrey and pinched for the want of so mean a thing as money.

(50, emphasis added)

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Their lives are shown to be completely different, and hence theirattitudes are also different. But they are essentially from the same strataof society, a strata determined by ethnicity rather than class; a stratafrom which the Jew, Shylock, is barred despite his wealth. The differenceis visible in the territories inhabited by Antonio and Shylock – the formerstands in “the bright air…full of the winks and chinks of smiling money”(49) as opposed to Shylock’s place of business, which is:

In a narrow street, where the water ran dark and crookedbetween high weeping walls, and little barred windows, likeimprisoned eyes, stared dully down...

(54, emphasis added)

This gloomy description is that of a Jewish ghetto, and its sordidstate is used both to create an atmosphere of evil around Shylock andto show the desperate conditions of Jews in Europe. Garfield, himselfhailing from a Jewish family, knew and sympathized with the ostracismthe community had faced for centuries in Europe; and his version ofThe Merchant of Venice handles Shylock’s character with sensitivity.Shylock hated Antonio because -

The merchant lent money without interest and so broughtdown the cost of borrowing in Venice. Money was the Jew’sonly commodity, and the Christian undermined him. TheChristian could make money out of trade; the Jew, by Venetianlaw, could only make money out of money. Take away hismoney and you take away his life.

(55, emphasis added)

Garfield brings a twentieth-century understanding to Shylock’simmense hatred for Antonio. He explains the practical reasons behindthe Jew’s hard bargains as arising from the meanness of the Christiansrather than entirely his own nature. His suffering after Jessica’selopement is that of a grieving father rather than that of a miser:

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The Jew, his eyes all red from weeping, glared at the Christiangentlemen, in whose contemptuous smiles he read, all tooeasily, mockery for his loss. His daughter was gone, and theylaughed at him. Such a daughter, they jeered, was too good forsuch a father to keep…The money-lender glared around himwith such ferocious distress and such ancient anguish, thatthe brightly hovering world of Venice seemed to shrink andtremble. Shylock went on, his voice as raw as the shrieking ofsea birds: “Hath not a Jew eyes? ...” Shylock stopped, pantingfrom his exertions. To the relief of Antonio’s friends, amessenger came…The lookers-on shrugged their shouldersand strolled away.

(65 - 66, emphasis added)

Garfield thus transforms an individual’s anguish into the reactionto the repression of an entire community that was often treatedcontemptuously by Europeans; Shylock becomes the prototype of abattered and ‘ancient’ race, maltreated by uncaring Christians. His futureactions are justified, or at least made understandable, by his presentdistress.

Garfield’s authorial interpretation is also found in the meticulouscataloguing of the different kindnesses demonstrated by Gloucesterand Cornwall’s servants in the scene after Gloucester’s blinding inKing Lear. He contrasts the gentleness of the servants with the crueltyof the masters, calling into question the issue of ‘natural’ behavior ofthe classes.

“Hold your hand, my Lord!” cried out a servant, scarceable to believe what his master had done. The duke turned onhim. They fought. The servant wounded his master; then paidfor his brave humanity by losing it. Regan stabbed him from

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behind... [Gloucester] was led away, and servants, out of sightof their mistress and master, soothed his bleeding face withwhites of eggs, and gently bandaged over his horrible lack ofeyes […]

An ancient countryman, a tenant of the earl’s, saw himfumbling the air, and was at once filled with pity. He took himby the hand and led him away from the castle. Gloucesterbegged him to go away, for he feared that any who helped himwould suffer for it, even as he had suffered for helping theKing.

‘You cannot see your way,’ answered the ancient one,as if that was reason enough for setting pity above commonsense. So they wandered on, the tenant carefully keeping hisblind lord out of the ditches…

(14 – 15, emphasis added)

The humanity of the servants is set in contrast to the ruthless‘common sense’ of their masters. Though the Duke’s servants are toofrightened to help Gloucester before getting ‘out of sight of their mistressand master’, they are more compassionate than Gloucester’s own sonwas towards him; and the old tenant and the first servant never heededthe repercussions before assisting a helpless man. The royal couplebloodthirstily and cowardly blinds an old man while he is tied up, and astranger from the servant class lays down his life for him. The contrastis obvious.

Another of his intriguing inclusions is the ‘Induction’ scene inThe Taming of the Shrew, which few adaptors keep on, let alonedescribe so extensively. He remains faithful to the framework andpersonalities bestowed upon the characters by Shakespeare himself,but adds his special wit in order to present a transformation which

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showed to the Elizabethan world (and to countless theatre-goers andreaders since then) the impracticability of swapping one’s social standing.Garfield explains how Christopher Sly “…was offered all manner ofdelicate things, quite unsuited to a tinker’s tastes” (166, emphasisadded), and was given a talk on “Apollos and Daphnes and suchlike,which were all Greek to Sly.” (166) Interestingly, the converse situationis also included in the very same play, and the social swap of Tranio andLucentio is carried out without anyone noticing the exchange; thusproving the common humanity of man, irrespective of class.

He writes in detail about Prospero’s threat to Ariel in The Tempestto trap the latter in the oak, though he justifies it slightly by mentioningbeforehand that when Prospero had freed the spirit from his imprisonmentin the cleft pine, he had demanded twelve years of absolute obedience inreturn. “Ariel’s service still had two days more to run” (27), and therefore,his attempt to be released before the agreed time was unjustified anddeserved reprimand. Similarly, he describes Adam’s role in every detailin As You Like It (74, 77), and contrasts his loyalty against the falsesycophancy of courtiers with their “mask of smiles” (72). Garfield is oneof the rare adaptors who give the sub-plots of the Touchstone-Audreyand Silvius–Phebe romances with detailed descriptions. They all belongto the lower classes except for Touchstone, whose ‘courtier’ mentality isamused at the idea of marriage with someone as unsuitable as Audrey.Both he and the ‘Lord’ in The Taming of the Shrew attempt to elevatesomeone beyond their class, and both see the futility of this action. Oneof the best portions of the story is the scene where the three wanderersmeet Corin for the first time:

“Holla, you clown!” called out Touchstone, with a courtier’scontempt for simple countrymen who were little better thanthe beasts they tended.

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“Who calls?” asked Corin; and he stared in wonderment asthe trees disgorged themselves of strange fruit indeed: ahaughty jester, a lady dressed as a shepherdess who, he wouldhave taken his oath, had never tended sheep save with aknife and spoon, as mutton, and a swaggering younghuntsman with villainous sword and fearsome spear, whosecomplexion was as soft as a flower.

(77, emphasis added)

The ways in which people from different classes view each otherare shown here as laughably similar. Both view the other’s world withincredulity, and some degree of ‘contempt’. In spite of such varyingoutlooks on each other and life in general, they come together out ofnecessity, and waive their personal views regarding the other sectionof society. Corin settles to work for a master and mistress, who knownothing of shepherding, for a better salary; the others also embrace thecountry life as being essential for their escape; and all except Touchstoneappear to revel in the idea of their new calling in life. The switching ofclass for personal benefit is seen as painless in the cases of almost allcomers to Arden like Rosalind and Celia, Orlando and Oliver, the DukeSenior, and his band of courtiers.

Conclusion

Adaptors add their personal touch and ideas to an establishedentity like the Shakespearean plays through the contemporaneous socio-historical contexts seen in the tales themselves, to mould Shakespeare’sworks for the consumption of the young. Scrutinizing these adaptors’works shows how their writing styles and selection of materials fordissemination are influenced by the social concerns and points-of-viewprevalent in their times. Such adaptations help a literary tradition tocontinue into the next generation, while helping the readers to see beyond

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the plot and canon to the matter contained within the plays according tothe expectations of their respective societies. Hence, the books areoften rooted in their particular period of history while gaining newmeanings through the eyes of different generations of readers.

Works Cited

Garfield, Leon. Six Shakespeare Stories. Oxford: HeinemannEducational Publishers, 1988. Print.

Garfield, Leon. Six More Shakespeare Stories. Oxford: HeinemannEducational Publishers, 1994. Print.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More toShakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980(2005). Print.

Lamb, Charles and Mary. Tales from Shakespeare. New Delhi: Rupa,1807 (1980). Print.

Myers, D.G. “The New Historicism in Literary Study.” AcademicQuestions 2 (1988–89): 27-36. Print.

- “Race”. The Chambers Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers HarrapPublishers, 1998. Print.

- “Race”. The Oxford English Dictionary. Vol. 14. UK: Oxford UP,1989. Print.

Sinfield, Alan. Literature, Politics and Culture in Post-war Britain.New York: Athlone Press, 1997 (2004). Print.

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‘Nonsense’ as sense:Comic vision in two playsof Sukumar RaySaurav Dasthakur

I shall begin by raising a simple question that might serve as apoint of self-criticism, and then trying to partly answer the question byway of self-justification. In other words, the question is intended toserve as a critique of the kind of exercise exemplified by this paper, anexercise which is then defended. The question is: Why am I at allconsidering the literary works discussed in this paper as “children’sliterature”? Neither the writer nor the reader in this particular casebeing a child, and nor the kind of reading of the works proposed here, Ihope, being quite childlike, how do I justify the inclusion of this paper inan edited collection on children’s literature?

The question of authorial intention is long in the grave alongwith the dead author. Are not we, then, left with essentially two optionsof approaching a work of so called “children’s literature”? Either oneapproaches the work with the presupposition that she is dealing with awork of children’s literature, and reads the text accordingly, or onereads them with an open mind, so as to keep oneself prepared for thepossibility of ending up questioning any essentialistic generic labelling/pigeonholing. Taking the second approach–that is, acting as a resistingreader who refuses to submit to any a priori generic/cultural

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expectations-would actually imply reading all texts as open textscapable of endlessly re-locating or re-positioning themselves in termsof generic nomenclature or any other kind of categorisation. Indeed,that is precisely the rationale I can provide to partly justify my ascriptionof ‘adult’ meaning to works of art widely considered to be works ofchildren’s literature.

Not only, thus, is the text born in the process of reading, but alsothe reader is embedded in the kind of reading ascribed from outside tothe text. The reader thus is as much a discursive construct as reading,and the child in the genre of “children’s literature” is an equally elusive,or at any rate, an unstable entity. As Jacqueline Rose argues in TheCase of Peter Pan, ‘there is no child behind the category of “children’sfiction”, other than the one the category itself sets in place’ (Rose: 10).

It is only through this kind of an apologia that I can pave the wayfor myself to be able to question the dominant Bengali critical tendencyof associating the term ‘nonsense’ with the creative works of SukumarRay (1887-1923), a Kolkata-based poet, writer and playwright in thefirst two decades of the last century, widely considered the greatestwriter of ‘nonsense’ literature–and arguably of children’s literature atlarge–in Bangla.1 Meetings of the Nonsense Club–an intimate andinformal cultural organisation Ray founded with family members andclose friends–were the occasion for reading out and performing severalof his poems and plays. This is one of the reasons that readers acrossgenerations have been misled to unproblematically associate his poemsand plays with the category of nonsense.

That most of such works–especially poems–would later bepublished in the children’s magazine Sandesh, founded by Ray’s fatherUpendrakishore Ray Choudhury and subsequently edited for aconsiderable period of time by Ray himself, only strengthened the logic

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behind such an association. Now, interestingly, the two plays I woulddiscuss in this paper–Chalachitta–Chanchari (an untranslatablenonsense title), and Shabdakalpadrum (The great ancient philologicaltree)–were neither written to be staged by the Nonsense Club, norpublished subsequently in Sandesh.2 And yet, curiously, to date, evenafter some scholarly interventions challenging the tradition of(mis)interpretation of Ray’s works over the last two decades or so,they are usually approached and invariably published under the rubricof “children’s literature.”3 And, thus, in a culturally symptomatic fashion,far less critical attention has been devoted to Ray’s works than theyreally deserve.

It is beyond the scope of this paper, of course, to engage in anydiscussion of the politics of such convenient categorisation and resultantdomestication of the possible subversive potentials of Ray’s works. Ishall only observe by way of a passing remark that such eloquent culturalstrategies of foregrounding and silencing only betray the power of thesite of children’s literature to act as a ‘medium’ for adult people’s dialoguewith the self, or the various modes of self-fashioning they ceaselesslyengage in–individual, communal and cultural. The fringe status of adiscourse is often reflective of its power of political intervention. Surelyone of the reasons behind the broad Bengali tell-tale critical amnesiaregarding Ray’s creative corpus is his famed inexhaustible playfulness,passion for mirth and joviality, incredibly rich resourcefulness in inventinggames, funny ‘nonsensical’ situations and apparently meaninglesslinguistic disorders, and above all refusal to submit to undesirable orauthoritative seriousness, in real life as well as in textual practice. Thatsuch energetic and indefatigable indulgence in the non-serious has astrong misleading capacity, at least so far as the reception of his literaryworks is concerned, is evident today. One important way in which Ray’sworks, including those I am concerned with in this paper, reflect his

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actual passion for the playful. The aim of this paper is to show how thecomic elements in the two plays mentioned are used for some seriouspurposes, to interrogate certain dominant ideologies of his time andthus are part of Ray’s ideological vision. It seeks to explain how Rayemploys humour as a strategy of critique of certain discursive practicesprevalent in the Bengali urban middle class life in the late colonial period.For this purpose I shall draw on Northrop Frye’s theory of the comic asexpounded in his Anatomy of Criticism and Mikhail Bakhtin’s conceptof ‘folk laughter’or what he alternatively describes as ‘carnival laughter’,elaborated in his Rabelais and His World.

The late nineteenth early twentieth century India witnessed theproduction and circulation of a flurry of discourses in its socio-political-cultural life. Two of the dominant ideologies of the time, imperialismand nationalism, fought to take control over the Indian psyche througha politics of foregrounding and silencing on the one hand and modes ofsubversion of that politics on the other. The imperial project of establishingall-round hegemony over the indigenous subjects by effecting acombination of coercion and consent manufactured through productionof discourses, behind the facade of reformation and ‘redemption’ ofthe ‘barbaric’ masses was often countered by the dominant nationalistdiscourse of ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ Indian subjecthood. The negotiationof such immensely problematic questions as those of ‘modernity’ and‘nationhood,’ ‘identity,’ the desire to preserve and reconstruct the ‘ideal’Indian self in an age of inevitable hybridisation and colonial culturalonslaught took place within a complex discursive field fraught withseveral contradictions. Pseudo-intellectualism and production of hollowrhetoric was one of the means to elide such contradictions in a sectionof the urban educated middle class of the time.

Such rhetorical practices revolved around two dominantdiscourses of the time among others the discourse of science on the

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one hand and that of ancient Indian scriptural and philosophical wisdomon the other-which often came to be associated, in a crudely reductivefashion, with two value-systems, worldviews and even civilisationalideals competing for supremacy in the colonial world. If the discourseof science assumed symbolic significance to represent the West, colonialmodernity, English education, material progress in a world of increasingopportunities and also cultural displacement in the Indian context, ancientIndian (Hindu) scriptures, treatises and philosophy were made torepresent the East, Indian identity, native tradition and heritage, aSanskrit-based pedagogy, and cultural rootedness often at the cost ofmaterial sacrifice.

The binary oppositions were not absolutely free of moralimplications, with a strongly scientific bent of mind suggesting to theorthodox Indians a passion for rampant ‘amoral’ westernisation. Notonly did these discourses assume great political significance in the conflictof the imperial and nationalist ideologies, they also accrued aroundthemselves an aura of discursive power, a stamp of authority for theindigenous middle class mind. Employment of pseudo-scientific orpseudo-philosophical language and rhetoric devoid of any substanceoften lent positions, persons, perspectives and discourses an air of powerand authority.

Such a practice of valorising the form without content, ‘shapewithout form, shade without colour’ was profoundly reflective of thecolonial culture that reduced many an indigenous persons and positionsinto a ‘paralysed force, gesture without motion’ (Eliot: 77). Mycontention in this paper is that Ray critiques such hollow discoursesof high-seriousness and positions of power and authority, some peculiarproducts of colonialism in the indigenous culture, through an extensiveuse of various modes of ‘folk-laughter.’ Folk laughter in its different

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forms, according to Bakhtin, challenges the idea of the permanenceof prevailing systems and hierarchies and in the process it alsoforegrounds the transience of all accepted ‘truths’ and authorities.Bakhtin describes medieval folk laughter as ‘the social consciousnessof all the people’ (Bakhtin: 92). The paper would seek to trace howthis ‘social consciousness of all the people’ operates through certainmarginal voices in two plays of Ray and what aesthetic and ideologicalsignificance it had in and outside the textual universe, at a criticalphase of Indian history.

Northrop Frye’s idea of the ‘comic’ mode in Anatomy of Criticismincludes an obvious ideological dimension. The textual employment ofthe ‘comic’ for Frye has extra-textual, sociological significance. Notonly does he understand ‘the theme of the comic’ as ‘the integration ofsociety’ (Frye: 43); further he goes on to emphasise the radical potentialof the comic text, which, he argues, depicts ‘the movement from onekind of society to another,’ the ‘new society . . . frequently signalizedby some kind of party or festive ritual’ (163). Such an understanding ofthe comic mode as charged with almost a revolutionary possibility echoesBakhtin’s conception of ‘folk-laughter.’ For Frye, the source of muchof the comedy in the comic mode is ‘usually someone with a good dealof social prestige and power, who is able to force much of the play’ssociety into line with his obsession. Thus the humor is intimatelyconnected with the theme of the absurd or irrational law that the actionof the comedy moves toward breaking’ (169). In Ray’s Chalachitta-Chanchari hybrid English-educated urban middle class intellectualslike Janardan, Nikunja, Ishan, Satyabahan,Srikhanda and so on, whoindulge in a ceaseless production of hollow, nonsensical pseudo-scientificand pseudo-scriptural serious rhetoric, pretending to effect aconstructive synthesis of the East and the West, indigenous antiquity

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and alien modernity, enjoy such ‘social prestige and power.’ Thesombre gravity and grandiloquence of their ostensibly meaninglessutterances create an air of absurdity and irrationality that serves asan important source of laughter in the play. In Shabdakalpadrumthe source of absurdity and irrationality is the pompous Guruji whoembodies the powerful indigenous middle class impulse of uncriticalvalorisation of the ‘glorious’ ancient Indian philosophical tradition asa means of ‘preserving’ and reconstructing Indianness in the face ofcultural colonisation of the native mind.

An equally interesting transportation of Frye’s idea into thepresent context could be done through the invocation of what Fryecalls ‘the contest of eiron and alazon’ (172). Frye describes the alazons,or ‘the humorous blocking characters of comedy,’ as ‘nearly alwaysimpostors, though it is more frequently a lack of self-knowledge thansimple hypocrisy that characters them’ (172). Hardly can one think ofa more apt description for the powerful characters in both the plays.The secret of their power is their ability to dabble in, however superficiallyand insubstantially, several hegemonic discourses of the time–the Englishlanguage, Anglocentric discourse of Science and the ‘authentic’ IndianSanskrit-based tradition of philosophy and spiritualism. They are certainlyno less than intellectual impostors, but then so far as their words andactivities are less exclusively individual than symptomatic of a broadcollective tendency at a particular critical phase of Indian history, itseems it is more ‘a lack of self-knowledge than simple hypocrisy thatcharacters’ these impostors. And the social critique of the two playsrevolve around two of the most remarkable eirons-self-deprecators-inthe history of Bengali “children’s literature,” Bhabadulal andBishvambhar. Indeed, it is these two humble, self-deprecating characters,by way of acting as the authorial spokespersons, who deflate from themargin all serious discourses and pompous high rhetoric of the alazons.

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And it is their humble marginal character as well as location within thedramatic design, their crisp use of a mundane language and idiom ofprofanity, their unselfconscious ability to insert banality into discoursesof verbosity that act on the one hand as source of the ‘comic’ in theplays and as powerful means of social critique on the other.

Bakhtin’s idea of ‘folk-laughter’ can here supplement Frye’s ideaof the eiron for us to understand the nature of humour and its ideologicalsignificance in the two plays. On the occasion of his discussion of folkhumour in a specific tempo-spatial context, namely, Europe in the MiddleAges and the Renaissance, Bakhtin comments on the general natureand sociological significance of laughter:

The serious aspects of class culture are official andauthoritarian; they are combined with violence, prohibitions,limitations and always contain an element of fear and ofintimidation... Laughter, on the contrary, overcomes fear, for itknows no inhibitions, no limitations. Its idiom is never used forviolence and authority.

(Bakhtin: 90)

Folk laughter has a distinctive communal character in whicheverybody laughs and is reduced to an object of others’ laughter. Theaim of such laughter is pure fun and not sneering at or ridiculing otherindividuals, except in case of satires directed at institutions, with authorialconsent. ‘Carnival laughter,’ as Bakhtin defines it,

is, first of all, a festive laughter. . . Carnival laughter is thelaughter of all the people. Second, it is universal in scope; it isdirected at all and everyone, including the carnival’sparticipants. The entire world is seen in its droll aspect, in itsgay creativity. (11)

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Folk-laughter destroys the seriousness of atmosphere createdby authoritarian discourses to sustain a hierarchical social structure. Itchallenges the ‘aura’ of all pompous high rhetoric, and thereby bringsthings down to a ‘profane’ level and draws attention to their transientand mutable nature. As Bakhtin suggests, folk-laughter is marked byan ambivalence by which it creates as well as destroys, glorifies anddegrades at the same time. This is precisely how it subverts the existingpower structures:

This experience, opposed to all that was ready-made andcompleted, to all pretence at immutability, sought a dynamicexpression; it demanded ever changing, playful, undefinedforms. All the symbols of the carnival idiom are filled with thispathos of change and renewal, with the sense of the gayrelativity of the prevailing truths and authorities. We find herea characteristic logic, the peculiar logic of the ‘inside out’ (al’envers), of the ‘turnabout’, of a continual shifting from top tobottom, from front to rear, of numerous parodies andtravesties, humiliations, profanations, comic crownings anduncrownings. (10-11)

Folk-laughter in its different forms thus challenges the idea ofthe permanence of prevailing systems and hierarchies and in the processit also foregrounds the transience of all accepted ‘truths’ and authorities.The democratic atmosphere created by carnival laughter is similar inspirit to Bakhtin’s idea of ‘dialogism’ or ‘polyphony’ that challengesany hierarchy between different languages, voices, perspectives andthe narrator and characters in a work of art. ‘Polyphony’ creates anatmosphere of play of equally empowered voices and discourses. Thechallenge and ridicule inherent in the carnival spirit of folk-laughteraimed at the serious ‘monologic’ discourses of powerful institutions

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that strive to perpetuate the existing power-dynamics, therefore, voicethe destabilizing desire of the marginal space.

The comic in the two texts apparently lacks the communalcharacter and the carnival spirit that are essential features of folk-laughter. Indeed, the characters within the dramatic world do not laughat all; they either keep on erecting the edifice of inflated high rhetoricwith utmost seriousness, or demolishing such constructions with anabsolutely straight face. And yet the carnivalesque atmosphere is createdin them through the deflating and ‘uncrowning’ presence of the twomarginal figures-Bhabadulal and Bishvambhar-who unwittingly exposethe hollowness and the authoritarian desire of the high discourses in theplays. They are simple, honest, unpretentious fellows who are consciousof their foolishness and even idiocy. All they do is to unintentionallymisinterpret the nonsensical high rhetorical discourses and give them,again unintentionally, some simple but unmistakable twists, therebyliquidating the authority of certain dominant discourses and causinglaughter in the audience. The audience is almost invited to participate inthe narrative of the plays. And this is precisely when the carnivalesquemoment is born: laughter without malice or any interpersonal misgivingsis created with a clearly iconoclastic social intent. Humble and self-deprecating eirons challenge and dismantle the authoritarian impulsenot in alazon individuals but of discourses. If Bhabadulal andBishvambhar are sneered at within the narrative, they reduce thosesneering at them to objects of the audience’s laughter at the level of themetanarrative. They parody, travesty the others’ pomposity without anyavenging spirit, and do so in a constructive fashion, albeit unknowingly.Hierarchies, thus, are subverted, without being followed by newhierarchies.

The serious discourses of prestige and power in contemporaryBengali and Indian urban middle class life, the discourses of ‘Western’

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science and ancient Indian wisdom, are couched in the plays in anappropriately grand language and pompous idiom. An almost inscrutable,deliberately jargon-oriented English is used as the language ofscience–probably in mimicry of the western use of the classicalLatin in this sphere–and a sophisticated, Sanskritised vernacular isthe medium of representation of the ‘authentic’ Indian discoursesof ancient wisdom. Names of western scientists and philosophersof authority and meaningless terms like ‘ayaskandha-paddhati,’‘lokashta-prakaran,’ ‘sinnex cosmopodia,’ ‘pulse extracyclicequilibrium and the negative zero’ (Ray: 87), ‘graduated psycho-thesis of phonetic forms’ (88) and so forth are dropped at the dropof a hat in Chalachitta-Chanchari. In contrast to such grand andelevated uses of language, Bhabadulal and Bishvambhar speak anordinary colloquial language in an everyday folk idiom. Not onlydoes the unpretentious and unheroic ‘realism’ of such language ofthe soil, by acting as a foil, magnify the artificiality and absurdity ofthe high rhetoric; it also mimics, negatively parodies, deconstructsand profanises the languages and discourses of power and therebybring them down from their high pedestal. For example, Bishvambharengages in a dialogue with Guruji in Shabdakalpadrum thus:

Guruji: Be it the Vedas, the Puranas, Smriti, or Shastra, whatare they? Only a series of sentences, nothing but a few words[shabda/ sound], aren’t they?... In the dawn of creation, whenlife, cause and sky were together on the verge of being, wouldcreation come into existence without the great deafeningprimal sound ‘Om’? Sound is creation, sound preservation,sound is destruction. Why so many words? Why does LordVishnu carry the conchshell? Why does Lord Shiva play thevishan? Why does He sport the damaru? Why does Naradplay the lyre on his way to heaven?... Think it this way,

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whatever you can conceive of is sound - the Shastras dictatethat sound is the Great Being, Brahma -

Bishvambhar: The crackers our Matilal made the other day,oh-what great sound! Let me read out the poem I have writtenabout it, shall I. (91)

As in the example much of the folk-laughter in the two playsemerge from the congruent coexistence of two kinds of language–onebeing that of power and the other, more closely attached with the popularsphere, completely irreverent to such power.

Commenting on the ‘language problem’ of Europe in the MiddleAges, Bakhtin writes that ‘the line of demarcation between two cultures–the official and the popular–was drawn along the line dividing Latinfrom the vernacular’ (Bakhtin: 465). Gradually of course “the vernacularinvaded all the spheres of ideology and expelled Latin. It brought newforms of thought (ambivalence) and new evaluations; this was thelanguage of life, of material work and mores, of the ‘lowly,’ mostlyhumorous genres (fabliaux, cris de Paris, farces), the free speech ofthe marketplace” (465-66). In the colonial Indian context the problemof distribution and circulation of power along linguistic lines was evenmore complex. English was not merely the language of official andadministrative life; it was the language of power for the hybrid,ambivalent, ambitious, upwardly mobile middle class. And the languageof ‘official’ dissent, of ur-India, of the puranas and the shastras,embraced by another section of the same middle class, was Sanskrit, incirculation through a specific variety of the vernacular itself. Againstthese two ‘official,’ high languages were the languages of people, theordinary folk vernaculars. Bhabadulal and Bishvambhar incorporatethe folk vernacular in the two plays, and thereby successfully subvertthe ideological dominance of the two ‘official’ languages.

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Bakhtin talks about the extensive use by Rabelais of variousirreverent, ‘lowly,’ unofficial popular linguistic registers, like abuses,oaths, swearing, curses and so on, which together constitute what hecalls the language ‘of the marketplace,’ the ‘peculiar argot’ (188) ofthe people. Bhabadulal and Bishvambhar do not use oaths, swearingand curses as such. But they do use abusive language about authority;Bhabadulal several times in the last scene of the play and Bishvambharonce, when he creates uproar among the disciples of Guruji by speakingof Guruji’s tail with a metaphorical intention (Ray: 89, 91). They challengepositions and languages of hegemony through disruption, distortion, beingirreverent and prodigal about decorum of language usage, beingsupremely careless about hierarchies, order of things and discourses,and finally by creating disorder and chaos out of apparently immutableand ordered systems. One of the disciples in Shabdakalpadrum,Harekananda, expresses his displeasure at such attitude of Bishvambharin the very first scene of the play: “Look, I don’t like this frivolity and‘don’t care’ attitude. If you are not willing to revere anybody, pleasedon’t bother to come here” (91). Carnival laughter thus challengeshierarchy of languages and voices and becomes instrumental in theintroduction of a ‘dialogic’ practice at the level of narrative.

To conclude, Ray in the two plays rather cursorily discussedhere, critiques a particular aspect of Bengali urban middle classintellectual and political life in the age of late colonialism, that mighthave validity also for other Indian cultures. His use of the comicmode, seen from a politically informed perspective, is geared towardsplayfully exposing the functioning of power in the world of discoursesthat assumed more than regional significance at this time. He wascritical neither of the discourse of science nor of the discourse ofancient Indian philosophical-spiritual heritage. Indeed, as is wellknown, and as many of his works suggest, his was a robustly scientific

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and rational temperament, and being one of the most enthusiasticyoung leaders of the Brahma Samaj he internalised in his own waya deeply spiritual sensibility.

All he is critical of in these plays is the impostor culture of highseriousness that relegates both science and spiritualism to the level ofhollow rhetoric divorcing them from their practical content. From amarginal, popular perspective that relies strongly on a destructive yetregenerative comic principle he lashes out at a cultural condition inwhich form, facade and words wield more power than content,substance, ideas and action. It takes a naive reading that segregatesthe texts from the context of their production, and refuses to questionthe dominant critical discourse of Ray being a writer of children’sliterature alone, to misread the playful and so called ‘nonsensical’ natureof these works. Alternatively, the plays raise questions about anyanesthetic perception or even validity of the generic nomenclature of“children’s literature.” They remind us all over again that after all ‘thereis no child behind the category of “children’s fiction [or literature]”,other than the one the category itself sets in place’ (Rose 10)

Notes

1. The translation of quotations from the Bangla originals is mine.

2. According to the bibliographical information provided in probably the most reliable

and popular edition of Ray’s complete works till date, edited by Satyajit Ray,

Ray’s son, and Partha Basu, Shabdakalpadrum, written in 1915, was published

‘much later’ in Alaka and Chalachitta-Chanchari, ‘written around the same time

as the earlier play,’ was published after the author’s death in Bichitra in Ashvin,

1334 (Ray: 168). I have used this edition in this paper.

3. The most notable of such against the grain works is Shibaji Bandyopadhyay’s

Gopal-Rakhal Dwandwasamas: Upanibeshbad o Bangla shishusahitya (Kolkata:

Papyrus, 1991).

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WORKS CITED

Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky.Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965 (1968). Print.

Eliot, T. S. ‘The Hollow Men,’ Selected Poems. New Delhi: Rupa &Co. and Faber & Faber, 1992. Print.

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1957. Print.

Ray, Sukumar. Samagra Shishusahitya. Eds. Satyajit Ray & ParthaBasu. Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, Bangla 1383, ninth rpt. Bangla1392. Print.

Rose, Jacqueline. The Case of Peter Pan, or The Impossibility ofChildren’s Fiction. Revised edition. London: Macmillan, 1984(1994). Print.

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Is Big Brother Watching? –State-Sanctioned VoyeurismVisualized in a BookerContender: A Semiotic AnalysisAnjali Pandey

Neoliberalism and Construing Consensual State-SanctionedSurveillance

Very rarely does the world of young-adult fiction overtly ventureinto the arena of politics as it does in Pigeon English, a novel on the2011’s Booker shortlist. Pigeon English is a young-adult, novel byBritish author Stephen Kelman whose critique of 21st century BigBrotherism while localized to British society has global implications fora technologically connected world increasingly premised on the state’spersistent encroachment into civilian domains. In a pithy comment, Klein(2007) wryly observes that “Surveillance is the new democracy” (11)-an observation made in response to the increasing utilization oftechnology-toys of “mass surveillance” (Sumpter, 20011: 225) such as“virtual fences” (11) and “unmanned drones” (11) which in the nameof so-called ‘border security’ continue to give free rein to what Klein(2007) calls an “invisible web of continental surveillance” (11). The

“I ran past the CCTV camera. I let it snap me for luck.”(Kelman, 2011: 261)

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eyes of Pigeon English are positioned precisely on this type ofvoyeurism- the state’s increasingly roving and presciently presentcameras of surveillance. While the novel focuses on a number of otherthemes that are contemporary, the focus of this paper is on the themeand trope of state surveillance. Indeed, the state’s ever-increasingpaternalistic, and often, patriotically framed (albeit, seeminglyconsensually-driven), yet nonetheless, surreptitious obsession withcitizen-surveillance forms the main thrust of literary focus in PigeonEnglish. This trope of the visual-of seeing and being seen forms thethesis of the novel and is the subject of semiotic scrutiny in the currentessay.

It is also not often that a young-adult novel uses pictures to evokeits meaning–a strategy of writing usually reserved for children’s fiction(Sipe, 2008). Consequently, the visuals in Pigeon English, have to beevaluated using a different semiotic eye. These picture-imageconflations have to be subjected to discoursal scrutiny both for whatthey say, as well as for what they encode in terms of authorial intent.After all, the first question for discussion in the appendix of this literarycontender for Booker Prize prods readers in explicit ways to reflect onthis unique literary feature. Visuality seems to serve a deliberativeauthorial outcome evident in the prompt below:

1. Pigeon English is written from an eleven-year-old boy’spoint of view but is not a children’s novel. How do ‘adult’issues appear? Discuss particular scenes and characters.(Kelman, Reading Guide: 267)

Pigeon English is indeed a sign of the times a literary forayemploying hypervisuality and hypertextuality as both strategy and intent.The end product is a literary semiotext (Baudrillard, 1983) of real ‘seeing’subsumed in the service of ‘wasted’ state-sanctioned visuality–a

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metropolitan voyeurism of constantly watching without really seeing,the specific workings of which are outlined below.

In his astute analysis of the role of reality TV’s, “televisedsurveillance” (4) in naturalizing and legitimizing modern, Orwellian-inspired, Oceania-like “submissions to surveillance,” (3), Couldry (2008),proffers astute exemplars of the manner in which state voyeurism formsa commonsensical feature of the agenda of western neoliberalism. Asan example, he cites the convincing case of so-called “workplacesurveillance used to monitor every aspect of performance” (6)-scenariosin which citizens ‘willingly’ permit the legitimization and “permanentpossibility of surveillance” (6). Such active, micro-oriented corporatevoyeurism used to “monitor every aspect of performance including thelength of toilet breaks” (6) has become so “entrenched a practice”(Couldry, 2008: 6), as to instigate more pervasive deployments of macro-oriented, state-spying. After all, more research is increasingly spotlightingother arenas of mass, government-sanctioned voyeurism. Take forexample, the ever-pervasive reach of “electronic voyeurism” (Kemper,2000: 9)-a novel, invention of workplace-oriented surveillance in whichunder the pretext of preventing “cyberloafing” (Kemper, 2000: 10),which employers increasingly insist accounts for “30 percent to 40percent of lost worker productivity” (Kemper, 2000: 10), morecorporations continue to use as legitimate pretext to sanction increasinglyinvasive acts of voyeuristic watchfulness.

In Pigeon English, the eventual utility of state-sanctionedsurveillance even becomes the subject of a protracted debate betweenHarri, the immigrant-protagonist of the novel and his mother-a dyadwhich juxtapositions the innocence of a child’s ‘seeing’ against the jadedcomplacency of adult ‘blindness’.

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Mamma says the CCTV cameras is just another wayfor God to watch you. If God’s busy in another part of theworld, like if he’s making an earthquake or a tide, his camerascan still see you. That way he can never miss anything.

Me: ‘But I thought God could see everything at thesame time.’

Mama: ‘He can. The cameras are just for extra help.For the places where the devil is very strong. It’s just tomake you safer. (116)

Allusions to ‘safety’ are not accidental in the dyad excerptedfrom the novel above. After all, it is such “protectionist discourse”(McDougall and Peim, 2007: 306) which continues to underpin theincreasing argument for the encroachment of state-sanctionedvoyeurism into everyday lives, particularly in neoliberal societies eagerto utilize the alibi of ‘safety’ to further sanction increased “voyeuristicparticipation” (McDougall and Peim, 2007: 308) and camerapenetration into everyday lives. That the London bombings, and theso-called ‘global war on terror’ (Pandey, 2012) constitute a key literarybackdrop in the chronoscope of events which unfold in Pigeon Englishis immediately apparent.

Consider the following excerpt from the novel, in which Kelmanin line with his overarching thesis of ‘exposed’ visuality, employs thevividness of synaesthesia as a literary allusion to the bombings. Thesevisual tokenizations, however, are not cited as literary devices to breakthe monotony of text in the novel, but rather, serve to bear the burdenof semiotic message–further tokenizations of the trope of constant, state-sanctioned surveillance–of being “watched”, being controlled, and beingcontained. In a sense then, these visio-literary devices encode the duality

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of both ‘seeing and ‘being watched’, particularly in a post-bombingLondon of ‘imminent’ terrorist threats. After all, there is a protractedscene in the novel of an illegally ‘found’ Pakistani couple – no accident,about the nationality chosen for these ‘culprits’– (the local butcher,named Nish and his wife)- who are roughly carted off by the police(182) to the jeers of a by-standing fruit-seller’s taunts of: “Send himHome!” (182). We are told: “They locked up Nish’s van so nobodycould get inside. Then they took Nish and his wife away. They putchains on their arms” (182-183). There are hints that it is their ‘illegal’status which triggers this treatment. In a visually-rich scene textualizedby the bystander witness–the eleven-year-old Harri–readers are givenother vivid details:

It was too late to do anything, they were already taking Nishaway. He was shouting and screaming like an alien. Hesounded mad. He didn’t want to go. The policemen werepulling him and pulling him but he was hanging on to his van.He wouldn’t let go of it. They had to pull his fingers off. Icould hear them breaking. […] Nish’s wife fell over. Thepoliceman pushed her, I saw it with my own two eyes. Hershoe fell off. I picked it up for her. She was crying. Hertoenails were painted red. They looked crazy and lovely. Herlips were red as well. There was meat everywhere. […] (182)

Again, Kelman’s use of “multisensory” (Slattery, 2005: 122)descriptions is strategic rather than accidental. Allusions to the “red” ofpainted toe-nails and raw meat is not lost on readers. Eventually then,the act of looking exposes the duality of state-sanctioned acts of beingwatched. Here, then, we see the manner in which the so-called globalwar on terror, as construed by the Bush-Blair, transatlantic alliance(Pandey, 2012) of coalitionary politics (reminiscent of the generation

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prior-pairing of Reagan-Thatcher) creates a “form of socialism basedon terror” (Cowley, 2010: 24) in which state-sanctioned surveillanceunder the guise of ‘security’ abolishes all “rights of civil liberty” (Dalvai,2010: 394) eventually subjecting the populace to a surrender to thestate’s “vague notions of regulation and citizenship” (MacDougall, andPeim, 2007: 310). After all, when the novel first opens, the youngprotagonist of the novel is quick to note of a policeman he sees at acrime scene: “We weren’t allowed to talk to the policeman […] I couldsee the chains hanging from his belt but I couldn’t see the gun” (3).

The relentless and numerous injunctions banning modes ofbehavior are encountered by the young Harri everywhere. Their visualityis carefully appropriated by Kelman in potent literary terms via a strategyof multimodal rendition. Soon, we witness Harri’s own slow ideological“buy-in”-the evolution of his own “habitus” (Bourdieu, 1984) into thisbounded, sanctioned, visually-contained, and rule-bound world with itsovert visualizations of embargo, prohibition and consequence. Harrigallantly refuses to buy pirated films because in his words: “If you buya pirate DVD the money goes to Osama Bin Laden. We learned it atschool” (251), yet another exemplar of how self-regulation, indeed,consent is manufactured when the state is not directly ‘looking’.

One could further argue that it is through such seeminglyconsensual acts of participant acquiescence that citizen surveillancecontinues to be legitimized in modern western societies. What isparticularly fascinating is that even ironically subversive,” “voyeurdrama” (Thomas, 2000: 56), or reality-TV-based shows such as BigBrother, authenticate western-sociopolitical values and dispositions ofthe need for example for: absolute control, team conformity,inauthentic authenticity, manufactured positivity, and mostimportantly, the primacy of individualization (Couldry, 2008: 10-11) in

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participatory democracies-all sociopoliticized values of socialist-democracies that Stephen Kelman in this Booker contender puts underliterary scrutiny.

In Pigeon English, a dystopian novel with its own Orwellian-inspired “fusion of realism and satire” (Dalvai, 2010:388) then, the actionunfolds in a post-London bombings metropolis consensually given up tosuch invisible totalitarianism-or what has recently been called a“paternalistic authoritarianism” (Cowley, 2010: 24) of an “overweeningstate” (Cowley, 2010: 23) which Kelman subjects to a literary self-reflexivity. It is no accident that Kelman’s own writing is itself a by-product of such state-induced control. Proffering biographical details,Danford (2011) reports that “Stephen Kelman…discovered an upsideto unemployment. After being “made redundant” at a job in localgovernment administration, the 34-year-old inhabitant of Luton took sixmonths to write a first draft of his debut novel” (124). So successfulwas the ensuing manuscript, that it launched a bidding war among 12different publishing houses eager to secure rights to its publication(Aspden, 2011), some details to which we now turn.

The Booker Prize and Reception of the Novel

Critics of the 2011 Booker Finalist List voiced theirdisappointment in vociferous terms at both the 13-authored longlist culledfrom 138 submissions (Flood, 2011: 10) as well as at the much anticipated,6-authored shortlist in the literary race to what Bosman (2011) describesas “the most prestigious award for fiction in the English-speaking world”(3). The debate seemed to pivot around a single explosive word:“readability” (Flood, 2011: 10), a criterion which “so enraged pretentiousfolks” (Zipp, 2011: 1) as to prompt venerated Booker judge, AndrewMotion to go on record with the defense that this was “patently not

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true” (Flood, 2011: 10). It is not “readability” however, that really seemedto be the deal breaker, but narrative innovation. If literary prizes aremeant for “novel undertakings” (Danford, 2011: 124) in the Bookerworld, the judges were indeed right to put Pigeon English on theshortlist. Far from being a “simplistic portrait of a kid’s life in the housingprojects of London” (Adams, 2011: 34), this 21st century literary creationwill likely go down as one of the more subtly complex exemplars of21st century narrative invention-indeed confirming that in our current,hypermedia and hypervisual world, an innovative use of pictographicstrategies, rather than mere textual writing, can serve to dually ‘draw’reader-attention to the machinery of containment and control in themodern police-state-even in a novel seemingly targeted at the veryyoung. The hypervisual world of both being watched and ofwatchfulness is inscribed via a duality of pictographic and textual meansby Kelman details of which are outlined below.

Pigeon English complete with its own discussion questions,chronicles the tragic tale of a young African immigrant (culled from areal life-story) of a pre-teen’s assimilation into a metropolitan Londonof socialized housing. As Jones (2011) reports, the seemingly fictitiousplot which unfolds in Pigeon English is in fact adapted from non-fiction, from real London life.

It is transparently based on the story of Damilola Taylor, abright-eyed, grinning 10-year-old in a school uniform, recentlyarrived from Nigeria, who bled to death in a Peckham stairwellin November 2000, after being attacked by a pair of 12-year-olds. (1)

The eleven-year old protagonist, Harri, in Pigeon English, bythe unfortunate circumstance of poverty is forced to both witness andexperience the reality of metropolitan violence which surrounds him at

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every spatial turn, a ferocity which eventually claims his own life, and atragic outcome occurring in spite of the plethora of CCTV camerasencircling the public housing complex where he lives in, and in whosedank stairwell he is ruthlessly murdered and left to bleed. This theme ofpointless “watching” with no real “seeing” forms the main action of thenovel–a trope further inscribed into the novel’s literary percale via salientpictographization strategies to which we now turn. Perhaps this is whatexplains the seemingly amorphous dedication: “For the traveler,” in anovel heralded by the potent and equally enigmatic epigraph by E.E.Cummings in the opening couplet which reads:

I’d rather learn from one bird how to singThan teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

The Reality in Pictographization: Stating the Argument

This paper contends that Kelman’s creative genius lies in hiscareful synergization of 21st century multimodality with textualvariegation, indeed, a brilliant exegesis of blending and bleedinghypervisuality with hypertextuality. Kelman thus utilizes two levels of“projection resources” (Chen, 2010: 487) to construct his trope of ‘seeing’versus ‘being watched’– a heteroglossic synthesis of literary strategieswhich exist both at the “level of lexciogrammar” (Chen, 2010: 487) aswell as the level of lexico-semiotics–meticulous conflations of visualand textographic imagery. In the interests of space, the focus here issolely on hypervisuality. If Pigeon English convinces readers ofanything, it is that Kelman is a masterful user of visuality as a narrativetrope in and of itself. Via the use of ‘seeing’ strategies (pictographization)rather than just ‘telling’ strategies (textualization) Stephen Kelman, inPigeon English, successfully inscribes at the very same time as heexploits multimodality to create a dual trope of active and passivevisuality, of both ‘seeing’ and of being ‘watched’.

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Kelman’s intertextual strategies of narrative construction, whileobviously simple and overt in their taxonomic variety, also function insubtly complex ways– inevitably entailing a covert, hybridized, tripartitesynchronization of text-image conflations or “intertwinglings” (Slattery,2005: 123) of picturized meaning including but not limited: “anchorage”(where the text elucidates the image); illustration (where the imageelucidates the text) and relay (where the text and image stand incomplementary relationship to each other) (Chen, 2010:497)–a revivalof Roland Barthes’ rhetorical triumvirate of text-image workings. Thesethree semiotextual strategies result in a literary product which visually,as it textually renders a scathing indictment of a post-empire city ofemigrated colonized subjects in the ‘flat-world’ [pun intended] of anoppressively policed, and CCTV-wired 21st century London as visualizedthrough the eyes of a ‘watched’ protagonist child-one, who like most inthis century ‘sees’ his world, near and far in pictures, either viewedthrough his eyes, or through a pair of camouflage-colored binoculars,whilst simultaneously recording of its visual details in and through text-image conflations.

Surveillance and Seeing: A Child’s View

The “prohibitive” nature of a society under the constantsurveillance of ubiquitously occurring CCTV cameras is surreptitiously,albeit relentlessly detailed by Kelman throughout Pigeon English. In achilling foreshadowing of the novel’s focal intent, Harri’s friend, Dean,offhandedly comments: “Surveillance and evidence, it’s the only way”(61). The carefully pointed, and ultimately ‘pointless’ positioning ofCCTV camera-lens which crowd Harri’s world, are indeed ‘noticed’by him. Harri tells readers:

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[…] there’s cameras all over the place! There’s one at bothends of the shops and outside the newsagent’s. There’s eventhree just inside the supermarket just to stop Terry Takeawaystealing the beer.[…] If I go fast enough the camera can’tfollow me…[…] We had to keep our backs to the camera untilX-fire found a target. (116-117)

That all these cameras are in fact blind to the real threats ofsafety forms a persistent semantic motif in the novel. When aneighborhood elder is attacked by gangsters and asks: “Will they be onCCTV?” (111), the response he gets from a neighborhood-child-alreadysavvy to such wasted watchfulness is: “They’ll have covered their faces”(111)-caustically adding: “They’re ignorant but they’re not stupid” (111).Even, a mere child like Harri, unlike the ‘watchful’ police is able toeventually spot the killer of the murdered-child found outside his flat, achilling episode which both opens and foreshadows the action to come.Simulating the visuality of an opening scene in a slowly unfolding film,readers are first introduced to the novel’s protagonists in dialogic form,an illustrative effect enhanced via screenplay scripting, an innovativeliterary strategy used with consistency throughout the novel:

You could see the blood. It was darker than you thought. It wasall on the ground outside Chicken Joe’s. It just felt crazy.

Jordon: “I’ll give you a million quid if you touch it.Me: ‘You don’t have a million.’Jordon: ‘One quid then.’ (3)

It is not just mounted cameras, but even higher-positionedhelicopters which keep up the act of constant surveillance. Harri seesand hears their relentless whirring constantly. At one point, he tellsreaders: “The helicopters were out looking for robbers again, I couldhear them far away” (24). Early in the novel, he confesses: “Some

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people use their balconies for hanging washing or growing plants. I usemine for watching the helicopters” (6).

Harri’s view is also at times aerial. He sees his world firstthrough his bare eyes from the balcony of his 9th floor flat where hewatches “the car park” (24), and at one point, actually ‘sees’ the killerhide the murder weapon. Harri thus becomes the ultimate visual witnessin the novel. He tells readers: “He pulled something from under the bin.[…] I only saw it for one second but it had to be a knife.” (25). He isquick to add: “The helicopters didn’t even see him. They didn’t followhim or anything, they were too high up” (25). Later, Harri gets technicalhelp for his close-up shots at ‘seeing’. He wins a pair of binocularswith a carnival-bought raffle ticket. “I looked at the whole world throughthem. They made everything close” (108-109), he excitedly tells readers.

The trope (Hebron, 2004) of ‘looking’ is both literally andfiguratively forgrounded in the novel. In Harri’s race to search for cluesto the murdered boy’s death, he zooms in on his own world realizingthat through these powerful binoculars-like CCTV cameras, “Nobodyknows we are watching them” (154). He continues with: “Especiallywith the binoculars you can see things you don’t normally get to see”(154)-a foreshadowing of the novel’s ultimate message-the close-up,accurate, zoomed-in world of a child’s sightedness as contrasted againstthe missed, blurry and ultimately, downright blindness, of aerially-mounted, CCTV-lens of adulthood. When a neighborhood thug smashesHarris’ binoculars to pieces, he declares with weighty words: “Withoutthe binoculars I’m just a civilian again” (180)-a poignant claim alludingto the increasing powerlessness experienced by a citizenry subjectedto the mass voyeurism of the modern socialist state. After all, the gestalt-like, bookcover of the British-edition of the novel, potently draws readers’attention to the overall trope of sightedness and aerial voyeurism encoded

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in the novel (see, Figure 1 below). While some critics have argued thatthe weakest passages in the novel include: “the protective pigeon’sportentous prose” –a literary “misstep which falls flat” (Aspden, 2011:39), the current paper urges for a reading in which it is the ‘watchfulness’of a higher power–symbolized in the form of a presciently- presentpigeon whose aerial positionality really ‘sees’ everything– a type ofvision which Kelman seems to insinuate, we as a society can ultimatelyonly truly rely on.

Visual Anchorage

One of Kelman’s most creative of intertextual strategies is ofanchorage (where the text illuminates the image (Chen, 2010). Considerfor example, Kelman’s astute use of capitalizations to visually renderan obvious ‘boundary line’ when the novel first opens. Once again,simulating the visuality of a slowly unfolding opening scene in a watchedfilm, readers confound the gruesome imagery of a murdered boy lyingin his own congealed pool of blood. Harri tells readers:

You wanted to touch it but you couldn’t get close enough.There was a line in the way:

POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS

If you cross the line you’ll turn to dust. (3)

The textographic use of both capitalizations and spatial centeringto create visual “salience” (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006: p. 201-203)in a bid to both construct, as well as draw readers’ attention to thepresence of a visual boundary as ‘sighted’ and understood by a child isparticularly effective on the part of Kelman in the opening pages ofPigeon English. This textographic device simultaneously serves toforeshadow Kelman’s semantic focus on ‘seeing’ vs. ‘watchfulness’

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as well as draws reader-attention to the dichotomy betweenwatchfulness and its enforcement particularly as this pertains to visuallyrecognizable ‘lines’ of state control. The literary trope of being ‘watched’is further culled in and through an equally potent appropriation of multiple‘sightings’ of restriction-a textual use of capitalizations meticulouslycentered on the page to simulate the visuality of prohibitive interruption,at the very same time as it serves as an obvious reminder of the modern,neoliberal state’s persistently injunctive “notion of regulation andcitizenship” (McDougall and Peim, 2007: 310).

Consider another example: Kelman’s use of this strategy to encodethe oppressively rule-bound society which Harri inhabits, a world inwhich visual prohibitions constantly bar, ban, forbid, and ultimately containhis actions. Harri recounts his first encounter with this visuallyproscribed world, and his peers’ meager attempts at defiance:

The shopping center doors open by magic. You don’t even haveto touch them. There’s a big sign with all the rules written on it:

NO ALCOHOL

NO BICYCLES

NO DOGS

NO SKATEBOARDS

NO SMOKING

NO BALL GAMES

Underneath the real rules somebody has written a new rulein pen:

NO FUGLIES

A fugly is a girl who always wants a baby from you. Dean Griffintold me about them. (29)

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If Stephen Kelman uses the visuality of capital letters to encodestate-sanctioned prohibitions, he manages to use the strategy of listing,evoked via lower-case lettering, to encode the role that other state-sanctioned instruments of socialization (Bourdieu, 1984) such as schools,play in re-coding such obedience. Harri, in his role as “protagonistwitness” (Clark, 2011: 10) is careful to list the visuality of theseubiquitously sighted prohibitive injunctions designed to instigate “self-regulation” (McDougall and Peim, 2007: 310) which surround him atevery spatial turn. It is no accident that the school rules are stated notvia capital letters, but in lower-case format, a hyponym of sorts in thegrand scheme of institutional control, spanning those seen at the mall tothose glimpsed in those underscored in the school environs.

Some rules I have learned from my new school

No running on the stairs.

No singing in class.

Always put up your hand up before you ask a question. (63)

The list continues for another page, a litany of “Don’ts”, whichwhile encoding all the preoccupations of a mere child also serve as atextualized commentary on the potent socializing force of schoolinginto the “habitus and dispositions” (Bourdieu, 1984) of mainstreamsociety. The list ends with two outrageous ‘internalizations’ of aheterosexual society eager to marginalize the ‘other’ and to ‘out’ non-conformists. Harri’s two-page list of prohibitives soon moves from therealm of encoded injunction to school-induced, and child-internalized,conformism. Harri tells his readers:

If he wears a pinky ring he’s gay

If she wears a bracelet on her ankle she’s a lesbian. (64)

Again, in a world in which all are constantly under surveillance,“viewer voyeurism” (McDougall & Peim, 2007: 308)–constantly being

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watched if you will–creates the necessary self-censorship in citizen-control. Eventually then, what you “see” translates into what you are.This simulation of a child’s world also serves as a commentary on thepotent, socializing force of schooling (Bourdieu, 1984) into adult-oriented values and beliefs. Harri is quick to describe a classmate inthe following terms: “Altaf is very quiet. Nobody really knows him.You’re not supposed to talk to Somalis because they’re pirates.Everybody agrees” (52), yet another instance of a gradual buy-in ofstatus-quo beliefs, and citizen self-regulation at work when the state isnot ‘looking’.

Visual Illustration

Perhaps the most unique of literary strategies is the manner inwhich Kelman uses seemingly child-like images or visual illustrationto scaffold his textual thesis concerning the reach of state control evenin the lives of its youngest of citizens. Harri tells readers: “There arewarnings everywhere. They’re only there to help you. They’re veryfunny” (46). Readers are then treated to a meticulous pictographizationof three of such signs which only add to “the interpretive possibilities”(Turk, 2011: 298) embedded in the text. The first ‘sighting’ appropriatesa child-generated lexical item, “hutious,” to describe a sign:

The big fence around the front of school has hutious spikes ontop to stop the robbers climbing over. There’s a sign on the fence: (46)

Readers soon “see” what Harris sees: (see, Figure 2)

Figure 2 (46)

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Like Harri, we ‘see’ the irony embedded in these prohibitions.Harri describes yet other signs he sees around him:

Asweh, its very funny. There are signs all over school telling youto turn off your mobile phone: (46)

Figure 3 (46)

With the material pressure to acquire such tech-tools, the ironyembedded in a school’s meager prohibitive attempts is not lost on readers.The novel is replete with countless clues to the larger metaphor ofsightings, of seeing, and eventually of looking. We “see” how Harri andhis child friends “look” for clues to “the murder weapon” (98) in a bidto eventually solve the crime that the adult, and ultimately, inept Londonpolice are unable to solve [perhaps in their hasty bid to round up illegals]?“Come on, man, keep looking” (98), urges Jordon, Harris’ crime-solvingpartner, a literary maxim which soon acquires double-entendre.

Parody via glyphization

The visual signs, guiding and constraining Harri’s behavior soontake on an ironic twist, a parody of intertextuality in which “imitationcharacterized by ironic inversion” (Hutcheon, 2006: 6) forms the mainthrust of the narrative sequence. We see “an integrated structuralmodeling of the process of revising, replaying and transcontextualizing”(Hutcheon, 2006: 11) the visuality of a child’s ‘sightings’ as contrastedagainst the incompetent apparatus of state surveillance. The firstparodying occurs via visualization. Harri remains perplexed by anothersign which he describes in the following terms:

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Harri is quick to comment:

It doesn’t even tell you what the question is. You just haveto say no to whatever they ask you. (98)

We see a further parodying of this injunction-oriented, and rule-bound metropolitan world inhabited by Harri which contains a riverfilled with pollutants. Harri tells readers:

The river is behind the trees. It’s only dark. It’s toosmall for swimming and the water is acid…. You canjust sit there and watch all the things in the river go past.It’s usually just sticks or cans or paper. (47)

Once again, we see how the machinery of citizen self-regulationis constructed, how in fact, the manufacturing of consent works. It iswithin such a context that readers are given the following visual‘warning’ whose irony is not lost on readers. Harri tells readers: “Wefound another crazy sign by the river. We love that sign. It’s our newalltime favorite.” (47).

Figure 4 (98)

There’s a sign next to the playground: (98)

Figure 5 (47)

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Figure 6 (148)

Harri continues with the narrative: “I waited for Dizzy to catchup to me. I held the fence like I was a prisoner” (148-149). This recodingof an already ‘sighted’ pictographic image simulates the “personalbranding” (Delo, 2011: 68) so rampant in the “thoughtcasting” (Croal,2008: 56) of current hypermedia-culled discourse.

Visual Relay-Pictographization via Peritextualization

The third of the semiotic strategies Kelman employs with literaryefficacy is of relay where text- image conflations complement eachother. Immediately apparent in the novel is the use of the strategy ofperitextual signification (Pandey, 2011) - a multimodal strategy in which

There is a similar use of inter-referentiality-”a discursive processthrough which intertextual chains are produced” (Parkison, 2009: 136)in which the visuality of seeing is contrasted against watchfulness via are-referencing of a previously ‘sighted’ sign in the form of -ahypermedia-culled “glyphization” (Hyman, 2006: 231; Lacefield 2009)of semiotic signs already ‘sighted’ by readers. We therefore ‘see’ onceagain, the visual which fences in Harri from real safety, in a scenewhen he is being chased down by neighborhood thugs. He tells readers:“I stopped at the sign” (148), just as readers ‘see’ the sign. Again, theuse of the visual permits for an immediacy, the possibility of readerpresence in the unfolding scene. We feel as though we are right there‘watching’ his entrapment.

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Kelman augments both his narrotological, as well as his thematicsignification of ticking time, in a novel ultimately structured as a simple‘whodunit-type’ of suspense story, and encompassing what one criticdescribes as a “pacy plot” (Jones, 2011: 1), and yet another, “a murder-mystery of sorts” (Aspden, 2011:39). Kelman adopts a narrative stylethat is episodic, what Turk (2011) defines as a “reportorial style whichcreates the illusion that events are being narrated in an unselectiveway” (304) when in reality they are being chronologically rendered.How does Kelman achieve this one might ask? He does it via visualmeans, through peritextual pictographizations which carefully createwhat Lambert (2009) calls a “cliffhanger continuity” (4) in the text. Viathe use of visual ‘meme-like’ picturizations (Hyman, 2006) completewith their own hypertextualized labeling, readers soon realize that theschool- term which forms the time tapestry on which the action unfoldsin the novel, is ultimately drawing to an end. Kelman achieves narrativesuspense via a visual forefronting of month-long installments of timecarefully coded and visualized in the narrative, albeit as innocuousperitextual (Sipe, 2008) ‘sightings’ by the reader.

These visual “markers” of time in the novel (see, Figure 7),then become a way to chronologically connect Harri’s ‘disconnected’musings. For readers, it is clear that the novel encompasses achronological time-frame, the flow of a spring term into the impendingsummer. Immediately apparent, are the multimodal signpostings of timerendered through child-like pictographizations (see, Figure 7 below),and labeled via “textual teasers” (Lambert, 2009: 10) of chronoscopictime, the passing of the months of: March, April, May, June and finally,July. Again, these visual signs, far from being child-like details includedto break up the monotony of text, serve to augment Kelman’s ultimatethesis regarding the wasteful watchfulness of surreptitious, state-

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Also apparent is the careful labeling of each of these images onKelman’s part. The role of such “labeling” confirms an “interpolationof the authorial presence so as to assert or insist upon the value orwarrantability of the proposition” (Martin and White, 2005: 128)—anassertion both of a literal meaning (the passage of time) as well as asymbolic meaning (a reassertion of the trope of aerial watchfulness) onKelman’s part. This innovative use of “hybrid spaces” (Shegar andWeninger, 2010: 434) in which to engage in “creative improvisation”(Shegar and Weninger, 2010: 434) on Kelman’s part, confirms yetanother manner in which his use of text-image conflations renders aunique “semiotic mode” (Shegar and Weninger, 2010: 434) of meaningpotential in the realm of young-adult fiction.

Like everything in the text however, these drawings whilereminiscent of childhood, are not intended to portray child-like content.

Figure 7 (2; 49; 106; 151 & 218)

March April May

June July

sanctioned surveillance, and its visual discovery or ‘seeing’ on the partof its youngest.

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An analysis of the significations soon reveals that the image of thefinger print, or even the silhouette of a CCTV camera, are adult insemantic import. Eventually then, all five of the images: the plane, thefinger-print, the camera, the view of the sea, and finally the pigeon (themoniker of the novel) conjure at the very same time as they corroboratea trope of aerial watchfulness, a ‘seeing’ from above constructed viaan innovative use of “text and genre chains which induce thematicintertextuality” (Shegar and Weninger, 2010: 437). Inevitably then,Kelman’s “intertextings are co-thematic” (Torr, 2007: 87). These“peritextualizations” (Sipe, 2008: 134) impel in readers a renewedattention on the “focal text” (Torr, 2007: 78) which both precedes andsucceeds each of these visual significations, and only adds to thesuspenseful import of the unfolding plot. The semiotic effect is potent.As one critic notes: “As this charming boy gets closer to a solution,readers will feel their adrenaline start pumping hoping Harri will succeedand remain safe” (Kempf, 2011: 85). He does not however remainsafe. The novel ends on the last day of school-right before the summerholidays, with the repeat of another killing of a child, this time, theprotagonist–a bookending of violence which serves to signpost Kelman’sultimate thesis.

Narrative Timely-ness: Why is Kelman’s MultimodalityImportant?

The last words out of the dying Harri’s mouth in Pigeon Englishare visual. He ‘sees’ an image as he lies bleeding to death. While aseemingly simplistic overgeneralization- “All babies look the same”(263), this candid, textually-rendered claim is predictably Kelman’sultimate indictment as to the cruelty of a cosmopolitan London unwillingto recognize such sameness, that all babies are indeed the same.Kelman’s pictographizations in Pigeon English are intentionally stylistic,

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a means to add “new resonance” (Sârghie, 2010:106) to his writing,and form a new “third space” (Levy 2008) in which to invent. Theanalysis thus far points to an interpretation in which pictographization,like other forms of intertextuality, is “not merely decorative addition toa text, but sometimes a crucial factor in its conception and composition”(Lodge, 1992:102) and one might add, in its reception.

After all, the novel has been marketed astutely all over the world,and already comes “packaged with reading group discussion points”(Aspden, 2001: 39). Why such an unusual marketing strategy, particularlyfor a novel bound for the Booker List? Pigeon English in its debutweeks alone saw “sales in seven countries world-wide” (Danford, 2011:124). While it is hard to speculate as to the actual literary intent behindKelman’s choices, what is significant is the novel’s portended shelf life,(it has already been adapted into filmic form on British TV). Part of thereason for this portended literary longevity rests in Kelman’s use ofliterary intertextuality, a device which only heightens the realm ofinterpretive possibility embedded in the novel for a 21st century audiencealready reared on such multimodality. Pigeon English is in effect likelyto impel a new kind of “readerly activity” (Turk, 2011: 296) in ageneration of readers already weaned on hypervisuality. The currentgeneration of readers already expects to encounter ‘dialogic’engagements with the texts they ‘read’. As a “transformative text”(Turk, 2010: 296) then, Pigeon English, affords particularly youngerreaders unique interpretive possibilities, even prodding them as to the“necessity of reading differently” (Turk, 2010: 296) especially in a‘Kindle-oriented’ world of literary discovery in which “reflexivity andintertextuality create a self-referential cycle” (Sharma and Philip, 2010:114) of literary potential and where “these readerly activities make foran especially high level of audience participation amounting to a co-construction of the text.” (Turk 2011: 296).

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Kelman’s pictographizations, indeed his visuality, is likely to triggerliteracy encounters in young readers, which induce novelty in the readingencounter, and prompt a new kind of readerly interpretation in youngreaders, which is not surprising since as Torr (2007) rightly notes, making“semiotic intertextual connections requires considerable experience withwritten and visual texts” (90). That the novel overtly prods its readersinto a self-reflexivity about its own intertextuality is most apparent whenwe examine the discussion questions which the novel already comesprepackaged with. Question 7, for example, asks readers: “Harri makeslists and diagrams to explain what he has learnt about his new life in theUK. What effect do his explanations have on you as a reader?” (Kelman,2011). The novel urges its readers towards a ‘new’ kind of reading, andultimately towards a new kind of ‘seeing’. Is it any wonder then, thatsome critics predict that Kelman’s debut novel “will be read by millionswho have never read a book review and in a year or so will be a fixtureon the school English syllabus” (Jones, 2011: 1).

Conclusion

The current paper has examined the manner in which the socio-political machinery of “the apparently consensual regime ofneoliberalism” (Couldry, 2008: 12), as played out in modern Britain, isboth experienced and critiqued by the young protagonist hero ofimmigrant roots in Pigeon English. In the novel, the invisibletotalitarianism of state-voyeurism in 21st century London forms thebackdrop of literary critique on the part of Kelman, as does theverisimilitude of its unforgivable failing and eventual inability at keepingthe youngest of its citizens really safe. Pigeon English is a timely, 21stcentury young-adult novel both on a thematic and stylistic level. So, farfrom being a platitudinous, even idiosyncratic synthesis of visual and

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verbal detailing, Stephen Kelman delivers a novel worthy of plaudits,an intentional, stylistic ‘picto-texting’ of meaning-what Torr (2010)describes as “semiotic intertexting” (86), to render a literary-scape inwhich textuality and visuality both incarnate and synchronize the twinacts of ‘seeing’ and being watched. The recent resolution of the real-life, racially-motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence by a British gang,and the subsequent inability of the British police to convict the obviousmurderers (even exculpating the real criminals at one point), in an‘investigation’ taking over 18 years to solve (Muir, 2011: 1), makesPigeon English a relevant novel for the times.

The novel’s focal emphasis on individuated ‘seeing’ and itsconcomitant ‘watchfulness’ or sightedness, when contrasted againstthe institutionalized voyeurism of wasted, state-sanctioned surveillance-blindness, is forefronted by Kelman, via a plethora of innovative,intertextual and pictographic means, semiotextual strategies whose text-image conflations are co-thematically recoded as anchorage,illustration and relay (Chen, 2010) with consistency in the novel.Kelman’s creative delineation of the duality of active watchfulness withits passive, more sinister state-sanctioned equivalent: “watchedness”in effect, impels in readers a co-construction of textographic renderingof ‘seeing’ versus being ‘watched’ in a hyper-CCTV-wired cosmopolitanmetropolis of 21st century migration. Eventually then, the novel employsa modern, hypermediated, texto-visual narrative lens to both film andphotograph a cosmopolitan city’s blind spots in a bid to deliver its ownscathing indictment of a 21st century, multicultural metropolis of post-empire emigration, in which ‘looking at’ citizens trumps ‘looking out’for its young—a society in which ubiquitously occurring, aerially-mounted, CCTV cameras fail to spot what even ground-level placedchildren can so clearly ‘see’.

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That such pervasive control is not just a feature of Britain, butelsewhere, is noted by Klein (2007) who chronicles the increasingtrend towards so-called “integrated security” (11) such as for example,plans even in the US “to link thousands of CCTV cameras on streets, subways, apartment buildings and businesses into networks capableof tracking suspects in real time” (11)—a plan of action also usheringin a new trend of what Sumpter (2011) labels an Oceania-like use of“warrantless spying” (207) in which “discreet GPS mobile trackingdevices” (208), are increasingly being employed for the explicitpurposes of remote monitoring and “persistence surveillance” ( 222)of citizens on the part of the police. It is this type of increasedvoyeurism pervasively becoming entrenched in the modern, police-state which constitutes the focus of Stephen Kelman’s literary lens—a strategy in which visuality is used to ‘draw’ reader-attention to theinherent blindness on the part of citizens to the visibly-invisiblewastefully-watchful cameras of state-surveillance already positionedat every spatial and electronic turn.

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KAREN LEGGETT ABOURAYA

Karen Leggett Abouraya is an award-winning radio and printjournalist, currently writing for Voice of America, InternationalEducator and other publications. Broadcasting on ABC Radio inWashington, D.C., for many years, she frequently focused on educationand children’s literature. A past president of the Children’s Book Guildof Washington, D.C., her reviews of children’s books have appeared inthe New York Times, Baltimore Sun and online. She graduated fromBrown University and has worked, traveled or studied in Europe,Southeast Asia and the Middle East – especially Alexandria, Egypt, herhusband’s hometown. Abouraya is the coauthor of Hands Around theLibrary: Protecting Egypt’s Treasured Books. She has two adultchildren, lives with her husband in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA, wherethey are actively following and participating in the historic Egyptianelections.

DEEPA AGRAWAL

Deepa Agrawal is the author of over fifty stories, novels andpicturebooks for the young as well as fiction and poetry for the adultaudiences. She is known for her strong female characters and for aconcern for gender equality. Her books include Anita and the Gameof Shadows, A Capital Adventure, Three Days to Disaster, and NotJust Girls! Agrawal’s series books are among the most widely circulatedchildren’s books published in India. Five of her books have been listed

Contributors

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in the White Raven Catalogue. Ashok’s New Friends received theN.C.E.R.T National Award for Children’s Literature in 1992-93, andCaravan to Tibet was chosen as the best book from India for theIBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Honour Listin 2008.

ERNEST BOND

Ernest Bond served as the guest editor for this volume of theRavenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies. Bond is theChair of the Teacher Education Department and Professor at SalisburyUniversity (Maryland, USA). His publications include Literature andthe Young Adult Reader, Interactive Assessment (with Tierney et al),and a chapter in Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter. He has beenhonored with the Regent’s Award for Teaching Excellence (UniversitySystems of Maryland) and US Professor of the Year - Maryland(Carnegie/CASE). Bond has also served as a jurist for the Green EarthBook Awards, Outstanding International Books for Children, and theHans Christian Andersen Awards.

SAURAV DASTHAKUR

Saurav Dasthakur teaches English literature and culture in theDepartment of English and Other Modern European Languages atVisva-Bharati, Santiniketan. His areas of interest include PostcolonialLiteratures, 20th Century English Literatures, Translation Studies andLiterary Theory.

SUSANNE GERVAY

Susanne Gervay is an Australian author who is widely publishedin literary journals and anthologies. She has written for a variety ofages. I Am Jack, a rite-of-passage book on school bullying and the first

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book in a series, has also been adapted into a play. Gervay’s literaturefor young adults includes Butterflies, The Cave, and That’s Why IWrote This Song (coauthored with her daughter Tory). Her workappears in the anthologies, Peace Story and Fear Factor TerrorIncognito. Ships in the Field, her first picturebook, was published in2012. Gervay is a leader in the Society of Children’s Book Writers andIllustrators (SCBWI) Australia, and Chair of the Sydney Children’sWriters and Illustrators Network.

MARY GOVE

Mary Gove is an associate professor at Cleveland StateUniversity, Ohio USA. She is the author of Learning to Read, Readingto Learn, which has been used in university classrooms for twentyyears. Her present research interests include teachers’ perceptions ofthe effects of No Child Left Behind legislation on classroom teachingin the USA and ecological critical literacy. Gove teaches both graduateand undergraduate courses on Literature Based Reading Instructionand on Literacy Research.

JEN CULLERTON JOHNSON

Jen Cullerton Johnson is the author of fiction and creativenonfiction for literary journals and magazines. Johnson holds a MFA inNon-Fiction from the University of New Orleans, a MEd in Curriculumand Development from Loyola University of Chicago, and is an Illinoiscertified teacher. Her non-fiction children’s book Seeds of Changeabout the life and work of Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Wangari Maathai,received the Green Earth Book Award for children’s nonfiction. Johnsonoften speaks about Green Literacy and the role of environmental booksfor children and adults at diverse venues from the EnvironmentalProtection Agency to the International Reading Association. Jen is also

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a founding member of MuseWrite a literary arts organization based inChicago. She lives and teaches in Chicago, Illinois.

ANITA MISRA

Anita Misra did her M.A. and M.Phil courses from the Universityof Hyderabad. Her thesis dealt with Adaptations of Shakespeare’s Worksfor Children (2011). She currently serves as a Junior Lecturer in Englishin Dhenkanal Government Women’s (Jr.) College in Odisha, India.

RAJA MOHANTY

Raja Mohanty has written and illustrated ten books, many ofthem made by his own hand. His works are diverse, including adaptationsof Chekhov’s stories, collaborative work with traditional visual artists,and “silly tales” for children. He teaches courses in design and visualarts at IDC, IIT Bombay and is involved in several projects on Indianart and cultural traditions. Mohanty is also a film-maker and Art Directorfor ZED TV with fifteen years experience in the field of visualcommunications. He is a PhD Research Scholar, MSU Baroda (- Masterin Design, IDC,)

ANJALI PANDEY

Anjali Pandey is a Professor in Applied Linguistics at SalisburyUniversity (Maryland, USA). She holds a PhD. in Applied Linguisticsfrom University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, M.A. in TESOL fromUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, and B.A. in Linguistics from AhmaduBello University, Zaria, Nigeria. Her current research encompassesissues related to linguistic disempowerment in film, transnational literatureand popular culture using a critical discourse analysis framework. Herlatest book: Manufacturing Linguistic Insecurity on the Silver Screenis due to be published by Cambridge Scholars Press. Anjali’s backgroundstraddles three continents: Africa, Asia and North America.

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SUSAN L. ROTH

Susan Roth is the author and illustrator of many books for children,including the best-selling Listen to the Wind and My Love for You.Her most recent book -- The Mangrove Tree:Planting Trees to FeedFamilies (with Cindy Trumbore) received the Green Earth Book Awardin children’s nonfiction, the Orbis Pictus Award for OutstandingNonfiction, and the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award; it has alsobeen named an American Library Association Notable Children’s Bookand a Best Children’s Book of the Year by Bank Street College ofEducation. Roth’s books, with their lyrical writing and trademark collageart, frequently introduce children to unheralded heroes whoseaccomplishments have improved the lives of others. Her “Let’s HoldHands” paper dolls have been made in Pakistan, Ghana, Bolivia, Russia,Dominican Republic, Italy, Kenya, Japan, Australia – even in the greatlibrary in Alexandria, featured in Hands Around the Library, whichshe co-authored with Karen Leggett Abouraya. Other honors includeNew York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year, American BooksellersAssociation Pick of the Lists, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award.She has three grown children and lives with her husband in New YorkCity.

ELLEN HANDLER SPITZ

Ellen Handler Spitz is a writer, lecturer, and scholar. She currentlyholds the Honors College Professorship of Visual Arts at University ofMaryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She attended Barnard College(A.B.), Harvard University (M.A.T.), and Columbia University (Ph.D.)She is the author of numerous articles and reviews as well as booksincluding Art and Psyche (Yale University Press, 1985), and InsidePicture Books (Yale University Press, 1999). She has taught and/orlectured in England, France, Italy, Israel, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain,

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Russia, Canada, India, and the Peoples Republic of China. Her areasof research explore the cultural lives of young people, the relationsbetween aesthetics and psychology, and interconnections among variousart forms.

PAUL ZACHARIA

Paul Zacharia is a groundbreaking Malayalam short story writer,novelist and essayist. Born in Urulikkunnam in Kottayam district inKerala, India in 1945, Zacharia lives in Trivandrum. His first collectionof short stories was published while he was still at college. Since then,five volumes of his short stories, a novella and a collection of essayshave been published. He is considered to be one of the most importantIndian writers living today and his writings have been translated intonumerous languages. Zacharia’s narratives are consideredunconventional in style and theme, and marked by a deep sense ofhumor. His novella, Bhaskara Patelum Ellarum (1992), has been madeinto a movie by the renowned film director Adoor Gopalakrishnan.Zacharia received the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for his shortstories in 1978, the Katha Award for Creative Fiction in 1993, and theKatha Award for Translation in 1995. As a socially and politicallycommitted and engaged writer, his opposition to political forces haveoften involved him in controversy and pushed him into the media spotlight.

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The editors invite submission of manuscripts for the third issue ofRavenshaw Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies. Manuscripts shouldnot exceed 5000 words. This is a peer reviwed journal with an ISSNnumber, MLA indexing and it has an international board of editors. Thejournal does not pay the contributors. Authors will receive a complimentaryone year subscription to the journal.

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