Mastering Children’s Literature…

Guest post by Brenda Daniels

August 2019 came around and I was ready. My schedule had been cleared of anything that wasn’t
essential. I’d done what reading ahead of time I could and I had five empty files waiting to be filled.
The first file to be filled was Critical and Theoretical Perspectives or CTP. Alison Waller introduced
the module by asking us to think about theory visually…

[I interrupt the text here to say that at this point in the blog post writing I gathered my physical
files from the cupboard above my desk, opened the Documents folder on my computer and then turned
hot, cold, wild and despairing. My ‘Roehampton’ digital file had disappeared. After an hour of hair-tearing
and anxious moaning to my daughter I thought to look in my computer’s trash folder. And there was
‘Roehampton’, all organised and as complete as I remembered it. Press: Restore.]

Take two: … and even provided us with a picture of binoculars to indicate ‘perspective’. This
visual aspect was surprising and influential. Pictures went on to form a part of all my degree assignments,
from CTP itself through Form & Genre 2, British Children’s Literature, Writing for a Child Audience,
Archives, and to the dissertation itself. Here is a selection I created:

Fig 1: : Desire paradigm in Rapunzel (CTP)

Fig 2: Miss Clavel in Madeline (Form and Genre)

Fig 3: Bird-inspired hat (British Children’s Literature)

Fig 4: Graph (Archives)

Fig 5: Illustration (Creative Dissertation)

The theme of pictures was used by feminist writer Lissa Paul. In her book, Reading Other-ways,
which I read for CTP, Paul examines pictures with questions that can be applied to texts too. Questions
include: ‘Whose story is this? Who is the reader? Who is on top? Who is silenced?’ Together with the
pictures and this interrogative approach, Paul advocates a multi-theory method for readings, and an
eschewing of totalizing discourses. I liked this multi-theory approach. Just as I liked the positive view of
theories in CTP. Different theories, CTP explains, help give different readings which in turn give different
perspectives of the same text. Like the picture theme, this multi-theory emphasis had a lasting impact on
my work. In both my CTP assignment and in my creative dissertation I used a multi-theory approach. For
CTP I examined Rapunzel and Tangled through the lens of feminism, critical multicultural analysis, cultural
materialism and reader response theory. And for my creative dissertation, in keeping with ‘variety’, I
wrote four short stories, and infused them with some of the same theories. By the time it came to doing
the dissertation I had also come across oral history theory and used that in what became an aurally strong
product, one I accompanied with oral recordings of my stories.

Variety and picture emphasis merged in the most sublime way in Form & Genre 2 when I chose to
examine the subject of ‘emotion ekphrasis’. In three blog posts on three different children’s books, I
relished the challenge to explain how the books’ genres (a picture book, an illustrated historical fiction
novel, and a timeslip novel) combined with their individual forms to convey emotions through ekphrastic
expression. Choosing the blog post option assignment fitted with my career experience as a generalist journalist and blogger. This generalist/variety penchant was evident in my Archives assignment too in
which I examined three different archives with a total of six items. No single archive and similar, boring
items for me. Oh no. Instead – diversity! Fun! Stimulation!

Whilst a mixture of things is my natural go-to it is challenging to hold together, and to write about
thoroughly. Because I struggled in assignments to keep within the word limits and failed at times to more
deeply interrogate points (because of the word limit) I sometimes missed out on a thorough
understanding, application and opinion of theories. Whilst I still have a way to go in digging deep enough,
overall I am proud of attempting, in these multi-theory, multi-view assignments, what was termed by
Alison as ‘ambitious’. Although I struggled at a micro level to narrow my focus, by the time it came to
doing the final assignment – the creative dissertation reflective essay – upon the good advice of my
supervisor I managed to choose only one theory with which to look back on my four short stories: Reader
Response Theory. And if I look at the two years it took me to do the whole degree I did indeed focus on a
macro level. As mentioned at the start of this post I had whittled down all of my life responsibilities to the
most important only. This undoubtedly helped me to finish and pass the degree. Off the back of this,
going into 2022, I have fixed my goals as specifically focusing on child writing. I plan to look for a publisher
for my dissertation stories, write a picture book (how appropriate!), submit four stories to child
magazines and enter ten children’s writing competitions. Still, I carry into the new year more of a hope
than a determination that these plans will pan out. After all, in August 2019 I didn’t know that just a few
months later the world would enter the COVID-19 pandemic. I didn’t know that the subsequent
lockdowns would put a sad, grinding halt to my husband’s 33-year career in aviation. Or that our family
would hold their COVID breaths as my mother’s struggle with cancer deepened. Or that, just as I thought
things couldn’t get worse, my country would experience the most awful political unrest on top of a
growing unemployment crisis. But then, I didn’t know that the Master’s Degree in Children’s Literature
through the University of Roehampton (distance learning) would be the most marvellous antidote to
those struggles. I’m so thankful for these two years of mastering (or not) children’s literature and the
vision it has given me for the future.

---

Brenda Daniels is a part-time writer and editor by profession and especially enjoys reviewing books. She lives in South Africa with her extended family where she helps care for her grandchild during the week and is waiting impatiently for the next grandchild who is due very soon. In 2021 Brenda completed the Roehampton Master’s Degree in Children’s Literature, with distinction.

|GUEST POST| The Monkey Mind and Inspiration

Guest Post by Rachel Heald 

Science suggests that, for some, mind-wandering triggers retrospection and ‘mental time-travelling’. In other words, when our minds wander, they tend to wander to ourselves. To our histories and then to our potential futures. This can be a good thing. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Brain & Cognition, the University of California, and the University of Aberdeen conducted two studies designed to test the linkage between mind-wandering, retrospection, and prospective thinking ⁽¹⁾. They conclude that diving into one’s past is important in stimulating innovative thinking about the future, either because retrospection triggers the same brain regions that are triggered by future thinking or because self-reflection itself is imaginative and therefore triggers broader imaginative thought.    

This is my dissertation year, but Covid-19 and the political climate here in the U.S. left me, like most, scattered and stuck, worried and, yes, retrospective. With an excess of time and much uncertainty about how to find focus and meaning in my dissertation, I decided to ‘retrospect’ back to the beginning and dig out the roots of my interest in children’s literature and culture. Alison Waller’s monograph ‘Rereading Childhood Books: A Poetics’ (2019) seemed a good starting point. It is impossible to read Waller’s book without retrospection. And it led me to a path that ultimately changed my perception of myself as a researcher and inspired a dissertation project I’ve enjoyed every step of the way.  

Centered on Waller’s interviews into the re-reading process and memories of childhood books, the monograph extends the work of a number of other researchers in oral reading history, psychology, book history, and, of course, children’s literature. These researchers are attempting to understand the nuanced ways a child’s emerging identity entwines with childhood reading and memories of it, with culture, and with the adult self. But Waller’s poetics is also a cautionary tale, exposing the pitfalls inherent in attempting to recall the reading past. In so doing, it pushes the remembering researcher to ‘excavate’ (as Waller puts it) deliberatively, particularly because nostalgia unavoidably shifts our thinking.    

Waller and other researchers have found that many people recall the ‘situatedness’ of their childhood reading before and even more than they recall the substance of what they read. As I did my own excavating, I found this largely true. I realized my memories of childhood reading trace to the adult who introduced me to childhood books. My mother was passionate about reading and children’s stories. Both her embodied expression of text – she read to me dramatically, enacting stories as much as reading them – and her expressions of self as a female in our culture and time, all of this seeped into my understanding of these stories. It extended beyond, to my relationship with reading and to my understanding of children’s culture and its connections with society.    

A drawing by my mother at about age 11. I recall at best faintly her reading to me the Beatrix Potter stories referenced and that evidently formed part of her cultural memory.

This understanding inspired me to center my dissertation on my mother’s relationship with her favorite children’s stories. Although I certainly view this as an opportunity to understand the woman who was such a tremendous influence on me, my aim is also mercenary. I plan to use her story as a case-study that will allow me also to excavate (to hijack the metaphor) the layers of my own understanding of ideas that intrigued me most during my time at Roehampton, and particularly during this surreal Covid year. Some of the additional theorists whose work I am digging into include J.A. Appleyard, Hugh Crago, M. O. Grenby, Karen Littau, Margaret Mackey, Sarah Pyke, and Shelley Trower. Their ideas are helping me to frame a methodology through which to read the story of my mother’s childhood reading life.  

Because my project is entwined with my memories, the process has necessarily been recursive. I’ve found myself cycling between flashes of recollection and my theoretical research. In any other year, I’m not sure I would have recognized it this way. But everything we learned this spring in the Archives & Research module worked neatly in tandem with my Covid-heavy mind. The module taught us to approach all of our research as archivists, with an open mind, allowing connections to emerge, and embracing re-visioning. In fact, it was only because of that thinking that I finally realized my project is inherently an archival one. It rests not just on my ‘memory archive’ but also on my own informal ‘family archive’. This hasn’t been an easy or straightforward process for me but, fortunately, it’s bullied my monkey mind to sit still, at least for a bit.  

 A stack of books that always sat on my mother’s shelves (some post-date her childhood and were purchased for reading to me); I will likely consider at least Dr. Dolittle, Kim, and Le Petit Prince — which she called her ‘favourites’.  

And this brings me back to the science of retrospection. Beyond its challenges, this deep dig has also inspired so many questions I hope to consider with future research. My ‘imagination domain’ has been triggered, and I’m excited about the new-to-me areas of theory I want to pursue. So, though I would never claim that Covid-19 has a silver lining, in my dissertation project and the satisfaction this process has given me I catch a glimpse of an incandescent thread.    

⁽¹⁾ Smallwood, Jonathan, Jonathan W. Schooler, David J. Turk, Sheila J. Cunningham, Phebe Burns, C. Neil Macrae. ‘Self-Reflection and the temporal focus of the wandering mind.’ Consciousness and Cognition. (2010).    

Rachel Heald is a postgraduate student in the MA in Children’s Literature (Distance Learning) at University of Roehampton. 

|GUEST POST| Beginning as an MA Distance Learner

Guest post written by Hannah Louise Oldham.

I began university as an undergraduate almost exactly ten years ago. I had just turned eighteen and had really no idea what to expect when I rolled into Exeter wearing flip flops on that hot autumn day. Beginning that journey again triggers a sort of sense memory of those moments when I stepped into my student halls and onto campus for the first time, all tied up in scents and flavours and feelings. Sunshine mixed with bursts of warm rain; rustling pages, cheap wine and cheese toasties.

Beginning instead as a distance learning, part time postgraduate immediately felt quite different. I know my way around a library now, for instance, though I now have to find my own ways to access one, alongside tentatively exploring the wide world of digitised texts available from the University of Roehampton library. The balance of work and studying has swung the other way – as an undergraduate I would fit my hours working in the campus bookshop around my studies, now I squeeze studying in before I start work in the morning, or when I get home at night. When I think about my undergraduate life I marvel over how much time I seemed to have, and how I didn’t seem to realise it. Looking back, I seemed to spend an ordinate amount of time just sitting and thinking. I wondered how I was going to fit everything in now.

|EVENT REVIEW| ‘Being Human’ & MA Open Day from a Distance Learner’s Perspective

Review written by Marcia Kean

A Distance Learner Finds Her Way to Roehampton At Last!

One of the most delightful aspects of the Roehampton Distance Learning program is the opportunity to chat with our tutors on the phone during the semester. Now, double that pleasure for an actual onsite visit, which I did last month for the ‘Being Human in YA Literatures’ symposium and the MA Open Day. I used these events as my ‘excuse’ and Virgin Atlantic was happy to carry me across the Pond from Boston. Here, I share my experiences of both events.

A Distance Learning Student Visits the NCRCL Open Day 2016

The annual NCRCL Open Day was held on Saturday 11th June 2016 at Digby Stuart College, University of Roehampton. Gail Pilkington, a Distance Learning MA student, attended the event and has written her impressions of the day.

By Gail Pilkington

Visiting the university as a distance learner can be a little daunting, especially with all the building work on campus, but from the security staff to fellow students everyone I met was exceedingly helpful and friendly.  With excellent cake, biscuits, and coffee, the Open Day started with informal chats and the air of hospitality continued. Having only met my tutors through Skype, it was lovely to actually see them and to hear the brief introductions from all the NCRCL staff.

At the #NCRCL Open day, listening to Aiden Chambers being a delightful! ❤ pic.twitter.com/15hh0kZPj1

— Demet (@Nokona89) June 11, 2016

 

Aidan Chambers then began his talk ‘The Stranger Within Me’ and the audience was captivated.  We were challenged: Who is your second self?  Who is the stranger within, the writer who writes? While the talk took some unexpected turns, the time passed unbelievably quickly with everyone being challenged to “find your voice”.  Inspired, we took our first break to chat with other attendees and lecturers, as well as to see the posters* produced by final year students on their dissertations, both critical and creative. We returned for the second part of Aidan Chambers’ talk with bated breath: Chambers’ story of finding the stranger within him, the true voice for each of his novels.  We were encouraged to see the novel as an artwork, but to understand that in undertaking a novel we needed ‘the energy of delusion’, the confidence to write and to fail.

Nivia De Andrade Lima, winner of the Penni Cotton Prize for work in Visual Texts, with Professor David Rudd.

We could have continued to listen to Aiden Chambers all day, but unfortunately our time was nearing its end. The morning concluded with hearing about the excellent work of two current MA students: Nivia De Andrade Lima, Distance Learning MA student, was awarded the Penni Cotton Prize for her Visual Texts essay ‘The Ironic Use of the Gutter in Postmodern Picturebooks’; Emily England received the Pinsent Prize for her strong performance on the on-site programme; and Annette Russell was awarded the Hancock Prize for her strong performance on the Distance Learning programme and her dissertation, ‘”Who’s that girl?” Fracturing postmodern female selfhood in adolescent fiction’.

Children’s Literature Collection in the Roehampton University Library

The Open Day finished with a tour of the university library by Julie Mills, Subject Librarian in Children’s Literature, which in itself was a great reason to visit the campus. The tour was enhanced with tips from other students on good books to read for next year’s modules….so much for a summer beach read!

*Poster presentations by current MA students studying on-site or by distance learning. A winner was selected from each group.

Winning poster by Siobhan O’Brien, Distance Learning MA student.

Winning poster by Stine Storli Andreassen, on-site MA student.

NCRCL Virtual Open Day 2015

Virtual NCRCL Open Day

Available Online Now

Live Seminar: Friday 29th May, 19:00-20:00

The NCRCL invites you to find out more about the MA/PG Dip in Children’s Literature by distance learning. Explore the Virtual Open Day to discover what modules you can study, who will teach you, and how to apply. You can also join us for a Live Seminar on Friday 29 May at 19.00-20.00.

In this live session you will have a chance to meet the Programme Convener, Dr Alison Waller, and support staff on the MA. There will be a presentation about the content and mode of study, some information about resources and other practicalities, and a quick introduction to some of the texts you will be reading if you become a distance learning student with us. You will also be able to ask any questions you might have about the academic and practical elements of studying at a distance.  If you are interested in joining this live session, please email Alison at a.waller@roehampton.ac.uk.

(You will need to make sure your computer or device is set up to run Blackboard Collaborator software before you join the live Seminar – guidance on how to do this can be found here.)