Aesthetic Approaches to Children's Literature: An Introduction (review)

Reviewed by Roderick McGillis University of Calgary Maria Nikolajeva, Aesthetic Approaches to Children's Literature: An Introduction. Lanham, Toronto, Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 2005. Maria Nikolajeva's Aesthetic Approaches to Children's Literature is an excellent introduction to narratology and also to narrative directed specifically [End Page 413] toward a young audience. Indeed, it is the most complete account of narratology as it relates to children's literature that we have. My designation of this book as an introduction to narratology narrows the conception of the book as Nikolajeva perceives it. Her title indicates that this is an introduction to "aesthetic approaches" to children's literature. The word 'aesthetic" suggests a focus on the intrinsic workings of the subject under discussion. Nikolajeva argues that children's literature differs from mainstream literature and has "an aesthetics of its own" (xvii). How do we understand the beauty of children's literature? How does this body of literature work? Or how do we "approach" this literature? The word "approaches" in the title suggests a plurality of method when it comes to our reading of children's literature, and the term "children's literature" suggests a body of material that has a certain coherence, that may cohere into a genre. Genre, however, is a complex term as the chapter on "the Aesthetic of the Genre" indicates, and children's literature, itself claiming genre status, contains a number of genres within it. Children's literature may be a genre, but Nikolajeva notes that it "is not a homogeneous genre" (58). The generic aspect of children's literature remains confined to prose fiction. Right away we might discern a problem, one that surfaces in the book's desire to introduce the reader to a range of theories and methods. In the book's Conclusion, Nikolajeva notes that "we have used different methods and tools, depending on what aspect of the text was under scrutiny" (270). Here the word "scrutiny" might take us back to F. R. Leavis and the journal he co-founded in 1932. Nikolajeva's use of 'scrutiny" here is nice; it takes us back to the near beginnings of the New Criticism, a form of critical inquiry that focused on the aesthetics of a literary work. Aesthetic Approaches to Children's Literature also takes such a focus. Chapter 2 has the title, "The Aesthetics of the Work," and despite an explanation late in the book of the difference between the terms "work" and "text" (251, 257), the emphasis remains on "the literary work as a whole" (21). Nikolajeva endeavors to provide her reader with the ability to "understand and interpret a piece of literature" (21). We see in this introduction to what I may call strategies for reading a return to a pre-theory focus on close reading, with the awareness that we are post theory. I mean by this, that Nikolajeva's work takes note of theory while avoiding the political implications theory brought us. Nikolajeva points out, again late in the book, that specific approaches are pertinent to specific works; no single approach will serve for all hermeneutic activity. In other words, the reader ought to apply a judicious pluralism when approaching works of literature. For example Nikolajeva notes that, "it is pointless to apply formalist models to contemporary [End Page 414] psychological novels because they do not follow the straightforward narrative patterns of the stories for which the formal method was originally developed" (270). She goes on to make a similar point about the discussion of "gender stereotyping in formulaic fiction"; such a discussion is ill advised because gender stereotyping is "by definition part of [formulaic fiction's] aesthetics" (270). On this last point, I suspect we could argue just the opposite: the discussion of gender stereotyping is crucial to the discussion of formulaic fiction precisely because of the ideological work of such fiction. As for the pointlessness of applying formalist models to contemporary psychological novels, I think Nikolajeva does this herself in her...

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