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Ethics in Children's Literature. Edited by Claudia Mills. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014.
Reviewed by Kenneth Kidd
As its title indicates, this is a collection of essays about ethics in children's literature, and an excellent one at that. Dealing more in practical or applied than in theoretical ethics, these essays take up a rich variety of topics and are strong across the board. But this volume isn't only a topical collection, but rather a book about children's literature-as-ethics, about the complicated ways in which ethics and children's literature are intertwined. It raises big questions-What does it mean to write "for" young people? What counts as "ethical" or "moral"?-while focusing on particular texts and contexts. It nicely shows that we cannot know where "ethics in children's literature" might start or stop.
In her preface, Mills explains that the book emerged out of a conference held at the Prindle Institute for Ethics at Depauw University, where she was a visiting professor. Mills's excellent introduction reflects the four-part organization of the volume and hits on the book's central point: moral instruction hasn't gone away, but rather has diversified in strategy. The three essays in part 1, "The Dilemma of Didacticism," make clear that "didacticism" is not only foundational to children's literature but can also be politically progressive. Claudia Nelson writes on books of golden deeds, which emphasize self-sacrifice and often embrace a collectivist sensibility. Emma Adelaida Otheguy provides a fabulous comparative treatment of the children's magazines of Mary Mapes Dodge and José Martí, demonstrating how the latter used direct address, metaphor, and narrative repetition toward progressive ends in La edad de oro (The Golden Age). Whereas US writers "tend to separate the instructional purpose of a story...