CFP!

Below is an actual assignment that I’m turning in tomorrow! One of my classes is called “Picture Book Theory” and yes it requires that I sit around reading a bunch of children’s books, but it’s REALLY HARD, okay?!

The assignment was to find an actual Call For Papers (CFP) for an actual fancy-pants conference somewhere.

THIS is the CFP I liked.

Below is the abstract that I wrote in response. The fun thing about an abstract is that you get to write it AND submit it without EVER EVEN beginning to write the paper that it is summarizing! In reality though I’m probably going to send up writing this paper for my class.

Category: childrens_literature

253 words

Abstract:

Slightly Hidden Histories: What and Why Pictures Books Choose to Obscure When Retelling History. 

From Dr. Seuss’s anti-Nixon story Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now! to Shaun Tan’s haunting Postcolonial work The Rabbits, picture books created (ostensibly) for children often choose to obscure their macro points in favor of making the micro ones. Often these obfuscations are working to subversive ends, overtly telling purely historical or farcical tales for children, while covertly providing commentary on contemporary political and cultural world issues. Underground by Shane W. Evans never mentions slavery, civil war, or America and so subtly that history of the 19th Century Underground Railroad becomes about modern refugees of every type and in any nation. Technically similar but ideologically different obscuring took place in the wake of 9/11 as a spate of picture books in many languages sought to educate the world about the proud and peaceful character of Islam, without ever mentioning 9/11 and while saddled with the unique challenge of not being able to depict the Prophet Muhammad in the retelling of his own history.  

It is through carefully concealing or omitting some specific details that otherwise innocuous picture books can become charged with anti-establishment and anti-hegemonic meaning. When details go missing in picture books, it is a political act and this paper will explore how that which isn’t stated is often the most important statement being made.

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