292 BOOK REVIEWS

The study examines translations and adaptations as social documents and

is filled with illuminating connections and astute social analysis. The literary
and aesthetic aspects of the translations and adaptations are not always given
the same amount of attention. Disney’s version, for instance, is considered in
terms of the fundamental changes it introduced but nothing is said about its
genesis. It originally started out much closer to Collodi’s version but, with an
episodic structure and unsympathetic protagonist, just wasn’t working as a film.
Production was halted after half a year, there was a major rethink, and the film
was recast, making Pinocchio seem more human and introducing the figure of
Jiminy Cricket. Reflections on this process, too, rather than simply on the result,
might have shown that the alterations were not only instigated by contemporary
social dictates but also had something to do with those of the medium.
Guided by their affection and admiration for Collodi’s novel – ‘we [. . . ]
love Collodi’s book’ (197) – the authors want to rescue the original story from
obscurity and reintroduce contemporary readers to the power and messages
embedded in it. In this they succeed admirably. Five complete translations are
available in the USA today. Apart from Perella’s (University of California Press)
there is a new, acclaimed one by the poet Geoffrey Brock (New York Review
Books Classics), a Penguin Classics edition of Mary Alice Murray’s version, the
engaging and popular British translation by Ann Lawson Lucas (Oxford World
Classics), and a version for Kindle by Carol Della Chiesa. This is bound to be a
source of pleasure for the enthusiasts Wunderlich and Morrissey.
Emer O’Sullivan
Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany
DOI: 10.3366/E1755619809000751

The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature. Perry Nodelman. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2008. 408 pages. USD 35 (paperback).
Already as a ten-year-old I steered past the children’s section in the local library,
eager to lay my hands on the ‘real stuff’. Sometimes this attitude would lead to
skirmishes with the librarians who wanted to dissuade me from borrowing certain
adult books, like the uncensored versions of The Arabian Nights. But I usually
triumphed since there was no law or regulation in any of the places where I lived
as a child – whether in Vingåker (Sweden) or Manzini (Swaziland) – to prevent
me from reading any book in the library. Anyway, I told myself (with a slightly
superior air), ‘children’s books are for little kids who can’t read themselves’.
Today, in contrast, I like to browse the children’s corners of libraries and book
stores. There, around knee-level, I often find what I am looking for. So, say what
I like about the divide, it has served me well, both as a child and adult, although
in a roundabout way.
But my unease remains. Why is the adult–child categorisation at all
necessary? Who benefits from it (besides me)? Is it even practical? And why is
children’s literature named after its presumed readership? Detective stories are
not read by detectives exclusively, and horror stories are not always perused by
BOOK REVIEWS 293

horrible people. But children’s books should, apparently, be read by children and
children only. To my mind this is an injustice to both children and adults as well
as to literature.
My personal reading history, then, naturally leads me to what is usually
referred to as the ‘childist’ position in children’s literature. The opposite view
(which for fairness should be called ‘adultist’, but is not) argues that children’s
literature is a recognisable genre and that its characteristics result from the ways
in which adults construct and represent childhood and children in ‘children’s
literature’. Perry Nodelman’s recent study, The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s
Literature, is one of the most ambitious attempts so far to define children’s
literature in this way.
I cannot pretend that The Hidden Adult does not ruffle me the wrong way – it
does – but Nodelman’s argumentation is both persuasive and comprehensive.
The study in itself is a case in point, for The Hidden Adult sums up, discusses and
draws extensively on the critical history of children’s literature, a history in which
genre definitions and the (im)possibility of the child have always been crucial.
The Hidden Adult could not have been written if ‘children’s literature’ (as a genre)
had just been regarded as children’s literature (what children read). Indeed,
the study makes sense of children’s literature criticism to an even greater extent
than it does of the children’s books that are its primary material. This makes
it essential reading for anyone interested in the academic study of children’s
literature. Another merit is that The Hidden Adult expands the specialist children’s
literature discourse and brings it to bear on the field of literary studies as a whole
(and vice versa), as Nodelman moves with equal ease among New Critics and
post-Marxists.
Two related metaphors are important to Nodelman’s argument. It is The
Hidden Adult of the title and the related figure of thought, ‘the shadow text’.
Both of these somewhat sinister metaphors indicate the presence of the adult
in children’s literature. But rather than simply positing a dual audience for
children’s literature Nodelman suggests that both ways of reading children’s
literature are intended (and more or less accessible) at the same time. He writes
that the function of children’s literature is twofold: it must construct a child
(defined as non-adult) while showing how the child may grow up and leave its
childlike state. This paradox is at the heart of children’s literature as we know
it, claims Nodelman. Children learn to be childlike through children’s literature,
each according to the norms of the society and culture of which they are a part;
and additionally, through this literature children learn to grow up in that society.
Children’s literature is innocence and experience at the same time.
The conclusion is that as long as the binary opposition adult–child is
cemented (and it has been for two hundred years), as long as identities are stable
and unchanging, and as long as the hidden adult lurks in the shadows with a
didactic agenda, we will have a specific ‘children’s literature’. Finally, however,
it could be argued that the adult–child opposition is in the process of cracking
up, that identities are becoming fluid and changeable (Nodelman mentions this
possibility), and that children as acting subjects are increasingly in charge of their
294 BOOK REVIEWS

own cultural consumption and production, not least through the influence of
other narrative media and textual worlds than the book. The need to construct
childhoods and develop strategies for growing up will of course remain, but
whether children’s literature can continue to be anything but a parenthesis in
the history of literature is another matter.
Björn Sundmark
Malmö University, Sweden
DOI: 10.3366/E1755619809000763

The Child that Haunts Us: Symbols and Images in Fairytale and Miniature Literature. Susan
Hancock. London: Routledge, 2009. 168 pages. £18.99 (paperback).
‘The child that haunts us’ is the spectral archetype of the Child in Jungian
cognitive psychology. In Carl Gustav Jung’s own words, it represents ‘a synthesis
of the “divine”, (i.e., not yet humanised) unconscious and human consciousness’
(Hancock 25) which lies in preparation for the emergence of the self as its absolute
antithesis. This Child archetype emerges as ‘trickster’ or ‘hero’ (in male or female
form) in the literary texts that comprise the ‘case studies’ of Susan Hancock’s
thesis. It mutates into the ‘collective unconscious’ (128), is linked with the ‘ideal
child’ (135), appears as the ‘possible dream child of a male ego’ (101), becomes
misconstrued in the perception of the adult (or child reader) as the ‘real child’
(101, 129), and is ultimately described by Hancock as ‘the child of futurity, the
one we periodically fear will not grow according to our desires, the one we
periodically fear we can never protect, and the one we ultimately know will move
beyond our care’ (138). So, the archetypal Child engages an imagined past as well
as symbolising hope for the future and is pivotal in the matrix of anima/animus
manifestations that appear in the selected narratives.
Susan Hancock takes these Jungian themes and weaves them effortlessly
through her analysis of the relatively critically neglected genre of Miniature
Literature. As well as its alluring title, this book also comes wrapped in an alluring
book jacket, bearing the muted, fairy images of Richard Dadd’s ‘Puck’ which is
well selected. And, although it would be folly to judge a book by its cover, those
who, like me, may welcome this focus on Jungian psychoanalytic criticism as
another relatively neglected critical field, will not be disappointed by it. Equally,
anyone coming fresh to the field of Jungian criticism and Miniature Literature
will be comforted by the meticulous attention to context and explanation of both
the theoretical field and its relation to Miniature Literature (and vice versa). The
introduction in Chapter One is a model for its clarity, detail and scholarship.
Hancock’s study places the appearance of Miniature Literature in a
broad generic, cultural and historical spectrum, with multiple manifestations
of (unsurprisingly) miniature characters and worlds as its distinctively defining
characteristic. These are the small people (‘manikins’) we find, for example, in
the ‘Tom Thumb’ cycle of tales which is considered here in relation to Hans
Christian Andersen’s ‘Tömmelise’ [‘Thumbelina’ or ‘Inchelina’], the Japanese
tale ‘Issun-boshi’ and Jean Inglelow’s Mopsa the Fairy. They are the elves,