The Embodied Child: Readings in Children's Literature and Culture ed. by Roxanne Harde and Lydia Kokkola

Reviewed by: The Embodied Child: Readings in Children's Literature and Culture ed. by Roxanne Harde and Lydia Kokkola Tharini Viswanath (bio) The Embodied Child: Readings in Children's Literature and Culture. Edited by Roxanne Harde and Lydia Kokkola. Routledge, 2018. Roxanne Harde and Lydia Kokkola's edited collection comprises sixteen remarkable essays that examine representations of the child's body in literature and culture as well as the "embodiedness of the reading process" (3). The essays provide robust considerations of a range of (mostly North American and European) children's texts from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day by employing a myriad of theoretical lenses including literary criticism, education, cultural studies, philosophy, disability studies, gender studies, and religious studies. Kokkola acknowledges in her introduction that much children's literature scholarship separates the body from the mind, where the child is traditionally associated with the desiring body and the adult with the rational mind. The dual purpose of this text, therefore, is to challenge such readings by examining the identity [End Page 93] politics surrounding children's bodies, and to "consolidate the disparate streams of scholarship on children and their bodies" (15). The first essay in the collection, "Anne's Body Has a Mind (and Soul) of Its Own" by Janet Wesselius, gives readers an overview of the history of mind-body dualism and relates it to the child's body in L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. The essays that follow are arranged in four broadly thematic sections, each with its own introduction. Section 1, Politicizations," deals with the politics surrounding the child's body and the functions of power in a myriad of social structures including race, gender, and class. Karen Sands-O'Connor's "Learning Not to Hate What We Are" engages with biographies of Marcus Garvey from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the West Indies during the Black Power movement (which politicized the bodies of African American children even as it helped them build self-esteem). Harde's analysis of Katniss Everdeen in Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy as the Appalachian body is among the most compelling essays in the collection. She argues that Katniss's body synecdochally becomes the homeland she represents, as her body—and the surrounding ecosystem—are repeatedly destroyed and rejuvenated. The last two essays in this section highlight the internalization of (often unattainable) female beauty standards: Heather Braun demonstrates how ultra-thinness is equated to (often powerless) sexual desirability in Louise O'Neill's Only Ever Yours; Michelle Martin and Rachelle D. Washington's essay on representations of African American hair in contemporary picturebooks begins with autobiographical criticism to exemplify how black girls and women are under enormous pressure to conform to Caucasian beauty standards. Each of the essays in this section calls readers' attention to diverse cultural constructions of the child's body and the impact that they have on society. The second section, "Corporealities," analyzes how normalcy is constructed and enforced in texts that feature differently abled bodies. The three essays in this section focus on novels and ephemera published between 1872 and 1930 that endeavored to teach young readers "corporeal lessons about morality, citizenship, and wellness" (96): first, Julie Pfeiffer and Darla Schumm read Katy's disabled body in What Katy Did as punishment for breaking gender codes in "Disciplining Normalcy"; next, Kristine Moruzi examines the early years of the Junior Red Cross magazine (1922–30) to show how "Canadian children were guided towards behaviors and attitudes designed to promote a healthy and charitable life" (113); finally, Amanda Hollander engages in discussions of how "eugenics seeped into mainstream British and American children's literature" by analyzing the works of Fabian authors such as E. Nesbit and Jean Webster (127). Ultimately, all three essays individually demonstrate how literature published over six decades in three different countries guided the child reader toward being a good (read: socially and culturally acceptable) citizen. [End Page 94] Section 3, "Reading Bodies," acknowledges that the "reading body is intimately intertwined with the processes of meaning-formation, critical and emotional response, and the forging of memories" (142). Cleverly organized, each essay in this section augments readers' understanding...

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