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Postmodernism in Children'sBooks
Mary H. McNulty
Francis Marion University
O¥er the past ten years the lines between adulthood and childhood have become
increasingly blurred. Through access to the media, children share with adults many
fonns of entertainment. The television, the Internet, video games, and the VCR have
made traditionally adult fare readily available for children's consumption within their
own homes. Children today are wearing the same designer clothes as the adults, just cut
on a smaller scale. Children are committing adult crimes, and sometimes they are being
tried as adults. Where does childhood end and adulthood begin?
Another indication of the blurring of the lines between childhood and adulthood is the
booming sale of children's books. In fact, it is the only comer of the publishing field that
has experienced growth in the past decade. We have witnessed the Harry Potter books
taking the lead on the New York Times best seller list. Right now children and adults
alike are awaiting the publication of the sixth book in the Harry Potter saga. In England
these books were published also with a cover suitable for adult-just so that the mature
reader would not be embarrassed by being seen reading a child's book in public. According
to one publisher's estimate, one third of all children's books sold never get into children's
hands.
Perhaps now more than ever we are awakening to the truth of the statement C. S.
Lewis made almost fifty years ago: "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and
would have been ashamed if! had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them
openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness
and the desire to be very grownup" (210). Or the words of John Rowe Townsend: "I
believe that children's books must be judged as part of literature in general and therefore
by much the same standards as "adult" books. A good children's book must not only be
pleasing to children. It must be a good book in its own right" (8).
The Children's Literature Association has done some pioneering work in developing
recognition for scholarship in this field. Now the MLA holds special sessions on children's
literature, and many English departments offer courses in literature for children. Today
scholarly articles on Alice in Wonderland and the Wind in the Willows are now finding
their way into print. Students of literature, after realizing that there isn't much more to be
written about Dickens or Hawthorne, find that juvenile literature holds vast unploughed
fields for critical cultivation. As its best, this criticism has resulted in greater appreciation
and respect for the multi-layered insights of some childhood favorites, such as Burnett's
The Secret Garden. At its worst, this criticism attempts to prove that the Babar the
Elephant books ought to be burned as imperialistic propaganda and that Sendak's award-
winning picture book In the Night Kitchen is full of scatology and quite unsuitable for
young children. Children's texts, both old and new, are now scrutinized through the
lenses of contemporary literary theory.
Contemporary literary theory also has a role in the creation of these texts as well as in
the criticism of them, and as a result, the books themselves demand a more sophisticated
reader. Many books written for children over the past ten years, whether they be picture
books or the longer chapter books, bear the influence of postmodernism. Some of the
influence is visual as well as textual. . plot of the three pigs and the big bad wolf, it soon becomes apparent that the pigs are
Experimental fonns, the play with words and fonns, self-referential irony, and the
questioning of ultimate meaning are not limited to adult work. In David Macaulay's
33 . POSTSCRIPT
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Black and White, a 1991 Caldecott Award picture book, the narrative, as well as the
illustration, is divided into four strands. The author states at the beginning of the book
that the four strands may combine into one story, or they may not. The double pages of
the book are divided into quarters, with each quarter telling a different story, distinguished
by differences in text and artistic style. The black and white of the dog, the escaped
convict, the newspaper, and Holstein cows are so blurred together in the illustrations and
the text that the reader can have several explanations for the story or stories. Indeed,
adult readers often complain because this does not fit their preconceived notion of what
a picture book should be.
The best known of postmodern picture books is The Stinky Cheeseman and Other
Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Sciezka and illustrated by Lane Smith. In this book, one can
view postmodern play at its best. It has a self-conscious play with the conventions of the
picture book fonnat, as well as the overturn of the expected story line. The title page, the
endpapers, and the table of contents are all altered to show a self-conscious awareness of
the conventions, which, in turn, call the reader's attention to that which we take for
granted. The dedication page is printed upside down. The Jack figure, who serves as the
book's narrator, says: "I know. I know. The page is upside down. I meant to do that.
Whoever looks at that dedication stuff anyhow? If you really want to read it-you can
always stand on your head." The book has a surgeon general's warning: "It has been
detennined that these tales are fairly stupid and probably dangerous to your health." The
Little Red Hen constantly interrupts the narrative. The table of contents is found after
the first story of the book, and the Giant tells a story that is a stringing together of all of
the fonnulaic phrases found in our Western fairy tale tradition. One does not have to
deconstruct this work to show that it does not cohere. .As Deborah Stevenson states in
her article "Postmodernism, Self-referentiality, and The Stinky Cheeseman," the book
"alters book elements that kids do not even know, or do not know they know; often the
book teaches convention by subverting it" (33). Children know trom observing many
texts that the convention of the printed page is a consistency in font size but Jack's story
is a repetition of the same text in decreasingly smaller font. The book is postmodern not
in text alone. The final endpaper is placed earlier in the book by Jack the Giantkiller in
ord~r to fool the giant into thinking that the book is finished! Roger Sutton refers to the
technique ofScieszka's book as bibliometricks, which calls attention to the fact of writing
and book making (qtd. in Stevenson 34).
In the same vein, Goldilocks and the Three Hares has the same playfulness with
convention. Also here the self-reflectiveness of a postmodern work is displayed by the
foolish banter of the mice who, at the bottom of the page, offer comments on themselves,
the story, and even the publisher. The title page of this book does not differ much trom
the cover, but our attention is called to the fact that the characters are grumbling about
having to hold the same pose. Also the mice are making puns on the names of Putnam
and Grosset. Another postmodern aspect of this book is its attempt at intertextuality.
Goldilocks, in entering the house of the three hares, falls down a rabbit hole, thus
associating her with another literary child, Alice of Alice in Wonderland, who entered
her adventures in the same manner.
Postmodernism found its ultimate place in the picture book with the publication of
David Wiesner's The Three Pigs in 2001. A winner of the 2002 Caldecott Medal for its
excellent illustration, The Three Pigs questions all that one takes for granted about stories,
character development, and language. Although the book begins with the conventional
going to take control of their own plot. They escape trom the story, deconstruct it, play
MARVH. MCNULTY. 34
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with it, and explore other possibilities. Other characters are introduced into the plot
Works Cited
and reshape it. When the pigs decide to reconstruct the story, meaning is displaced.
The wolfis no longer a major factor in the story. Language falls apart. The conventional
sentences are not completed. Instead of the wolffalling through the chimney into the pot
of boiling water, the wolf is pushed aside by the pigs' powerful ally, the dragon. The Lewis, C.S. "On Three Ways of Writing for Children." in Egoff, Sheila et aI., ed.
pigs, the cat, and the dragon at the end of the book are pictured eating alphabet soup (The Only Connect: Readings on Children's Literature, second ed. Toronto: Oxford, 1980.
letters of the alphabet have been collected trom the unfinished stock phrases of the text). Macaulay, David. Black and White. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.
The wolf is alienated and pictured outside the cozy dwelling that the pigs have Nodelman, Perry. The Pleasures of Children's Literature, second ed. NY: Longman,
reconstructed for themselves out of the outworn conventional tale. 1996.
Interestingly, too, the story has its own intertextuality because Weisner has embedded Petach, Heidi. Goldilocks and the Three Hares. New York: Putnam and Grosset, 1995.
characters and scenes from his previous picture books. The dragon comes from his 1988 Scieszka, John, and Lane Smith. The Stinky Cheeseman and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.
Free Fall, and one ofthe scenes that the pigs pass through in their travels is a variation of
page from his 1991 Tuesday, also a CaldecottAward winner. The boy dreamer from Free
New York: Viking Penguin, 1992.
Fall also makes a cameo appearance in the Three Pigs, and the pigs themselves bear Stevenson, Deborah. "'If You Read This Last Sentence, It Won't Tell You Anything:
close resemblance to the pigs found briefly in both Free Fall and Tuesday. Postmodernism, Self-Referentiality, and The Stinky Cheese Man." Children's
All of this leads to a number of questions. Do these books serve as a training ground Literature Association Quarterly, 19 (Spring, 1994): 32-34
to develop more sophisticated readers, readying them for adult fare? Are the books Townsend, John Rowe. Writtenfor Children. London: Miller, 1965.
intended for an adult audience, those connoisseurs of children's books who believe that Wiesner, David. Free Fall. New York: Morrow, 1988.
books have no boundaries in their readership? Has "literary quality" become more Three Pigs. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
important than conveying an easily apprehended story? The best answer to the questions Tuesday. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1991
which these books raise is perhaps in the words of Perry Nodelman:
Our obligation is to allow [children] to know as much as possible about the world
they share with us, to enrich their experience in ways that will allow them to develop
deeper consciousness of who they are. And because literature and techniques of
responding to it are not only a part of that world but windows opening onto the rest of it,
I believe that children particularly need and can be taught to share our own strategies for
making sense of literature. (41)
Picture books such as The Three Pigs can aid the college student as well. Weisner
presents to the viewer postmodernism in a visual form. It has been commonly known
that some students comprehend better in the visual mode than in the verbal. By looking
at a traditional tale and breaking down this well known text, visually deconstructing it,
playing with it, allowing it to interact with other texts, stripping it of its meaning and
showing the inadequacy of words, students can better grasp the postmodern, which
questions all that we take for granted about language, tradition, and experience.

35. POSTSCRIPT MARYH. MCNULlY. 36