From Cover to Cover (6 page)

While the documentation of sources is clearly an important factor in evaluating nonfiction, the success of a book should not rise or fall based solely on its citations or lack thereof. Of all the factors I have
described that make up a nonfiction book, documentation is clearly the easiest to assess: Either it’s there or it isn’t. For this reason, I suspect that some critics who are willing to write off a book due only to a lack of documentation are opting for the easy way out. They are disregarding some of the more challenging questions: What is the author’s authority? How is the material organized? Does the design clarify the sequence of ideas? Do the illustrations extend the text? What sort of writing style does the author use? The answers to all these questions and more ultimately add up to the success or failure of a book of information. We at least owe it to our audience of readers to consider them all as we evaluate nonfiction.

Traditional literature is a general term that applies to myths, epics, legends, tall tales, fables, and folktales that originated in oral storytelling and have been passed down from one generation to the next. The original authors of these tales are unknown, although today the stories themselves have sometimes come to be associated with the name of the person who first collected the oral version and wrote it down. Thus, much of the folk literature of Europe, for example, is attributed to the Brothers Grimm, who were among the first scholars to record the tales as ordinary people told them in the early nineteenth century.

The act of collecting oral stories for the purposes of recording them is an academic pursuit. For the past century and a half, it has been a particular preoccupation of anthropologists who wish to preserve the stories for scholarly cultural studies. Most of the traditional literature from non-European sources was initially collected for these purposes, not as a potential source of entertainment for American children.

How is it, then, that contemporary American children’s literature
abounds with traditional literature? There seem to be several factors at work. First, there is a long tradition of myth, legends, and folktales being served up as children’s literature. With the European fairy tales, for example, while children were undoubtedly part of the audience for the oral tales in their original context, they were not the sole, or even primary, audience. But once the tales were written down, they gradually came to be seen as the province of children, due to many of the common characteristics they share that make them very appealing and accessible to children: concentrated action; stock characters; patterned language; elements of fantasy; and simple themes, such as good versus evil and the weak overcoming the strong.

A second factor that has encouraged the link between traditional literature and children’s books is the emphasis on oral storytelling as a part of library programming for children. Librarians trained as storytellers quite naturally seek out stories from traditional oral sources as likely candidates for their own retellings. This creates a demand for publishing in this area, which in turn makes critics from the children’s library field fairly welcoming and receptive to a wide range of traditional material being published as children’s books.

Third, with the increasing demand for multicultural literature, there has been a tremendous increase in the amount of traditional literature from non-European sources over the past two decades or so. Critic Lyn Miller-Lachmann attributes this to the fact that folktales offer advantages to those who wish to expand multicultural literature: ready-made characters and plots that can be extracted from sources in the public domain that require no royalty payments. But children’s book editor Phoebe Yeh cautions that retelling and illustrating folktales from other cultures raises complex issues of authenticity. She points out that it is naive to assume this is the “safest” way to increase
the number of multicultural books. A good example of this fallacy is the multiple “multicultural” variants we’ve seen over the past two decades of different familiar folktales. In her article “Proceed with Caution: Using Native American Folktales in the Classroom,” professor Debbie Reese provides a thorough analysis of a single story that was taken from the Zuni people and recast as a Cinderella story in a picture book retelling. By comparing the picture book text to an authentic Zuni text, she was able to point out details that were added or changed to fit European values and make the story seem closer to “Cinderella” than it actually was.

A final factor that contributes to the abundance of traditional literature in contemporary U.S. publishing for children has to do with the power of the stories themselves. Many of them are exceptionally good stories, plain and simple. Who can
not
identify with the growing vexation of the Baby Bear upon finding his porridge eaten, his chair broken, and an intruder in his bed? Who can
not
be moved by John Henry’s valiant but unsuccessful attempt to race a steam drill? Ultimately, the tales have survived for their sheer power as stories dealing with universal human truths.

CLASSIFICATION OF TRADITIONAL LITERATURE

Scholars agree on several different categories of traditional literature, and these definitions can be useful to anyone evaluating traditional literature for children. The first step to take is to determine the category into which the tale falls. This will not only help in your overall approach to the book as you read and critique it but also will allow you to use more precise language when you express your opinions of the book.

Here are the most common categories of traditional literature.

MYTHOLOGY

These stories explain the existence and nature of the world, and generally feature gods and goddesses as their primary characters, although mortals occasionally put in an appearance. Myths are often considered to be sacred stories in their culture of origin.

EPICS

Long, episodic stories of adventure, grounded in mythology but featuring a mortal hero. The best-known epics in the Western tradition are
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
.

LEGENDS

Stories based on supposedly real people and their heroic deeds and adventures. Part of the intrigue of legends is that their characters, such as King Arthur and Johnny Appleseed, are said to have a historical basis, yet their stories are a mix of fantasy and reality.

TALL TALES

A type of legend in which the hero’s exploits are highly exaggerated and retold in a hyperbolic style, generally to the point of being hilariously funny.

URBAN LEGENDS

A recently identified type of contemporary oral tale that recounts bizarre or supernatural occurrences, sworn to be true as the teller generally claims the event happened to a friend of a friend. In spite of their name, they can be set in any real place, urban or rural. These tales are popular with older children, as well as teenagers and adults, and are beginning to make their way into published literature for children.

FABLES

A very short story which teaches a moral or a lesson about conduct. Fables rarely feature more than two characters, and the characters are often animals.

FOLKTALES

Fanciful short stories with either human or animal characters. Most folktales have fast-moving plots in which good is eventually rewarded and evil is punished. Folktales themselves have been divided into several categories.

Cumulative
: stories such as “The House That Jack Built” that are structured with the repetition of an ever-increasing accumulation of details.

Pourquoi
: stories that explain the origins of natural traits, such as “Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears.”

Beast tales
: stories in which animals talk and behave as people.

Fairy tales
: Also called “magic tales” or “wonder tales,” stories with elements of magic and enchantment. They may include supernatural characters such as witches, wizards, elves, dragons, and even occasionally fairies.

Realistic
: The rarest type of folktale, these are stories with human characters and no magic elements.

As you evaluate any book based on traditional literature, one of the first things you should do is to determine the
tale type
. Is the story a retelling of a myth? Is it a legend? Or
pourquoi
tale? Sometimes this information will be given to you in the book’s subtitle or in an author’s note, but most often you will have to make this judgment yourself by applying what you know about the categories of traditional literature. Among
children’s literature professionals, the above-named categories are widely known and understood, so your use of these descriptive terms in published reviews will be especially helpful.

Traditional stories from all these categories are published in the United States for children each year, although the majority of these are folktales. Many are published individually, a single story presented in a thirty-two-page picture book; others are published as collections of tales in one volume. Whatever the mode of presentation, there are critical standards that can be applied to all traditional literature when it is being retold for a child audience. These standards relate to the context in which the literature is created: first, as an oral literature that undoubtedly changed as it was passed from storyteller to storyteller; next, as it was consciously collected and recorded for posterity; and finally, as it was taken from one written source, reshaped, retold, and re-created into another as a book for children.

ORIGINAL SOURCES

The evaluation of traditional literature begins with a healthy dose of curiosity about the original source of the material. Ask yourself: Where did this story originate? Because very few writers of children’s books have primary contact with the actual source of an oral story, they must generally rely on a printed version that was collected for another purpose by another person.

In recent years there has been a growing demand that authors who retell traditional literature for children cite the printed sources from which they derived the story. In her excellent article “Cite the Source: Reducing Cultural Chaos in Picture Books,” the critic and folklore scholar Betsy Hearne has evaluated the methods authors currently use for citing sources in picture book folktales and has found that they fall into five different categories:

• 1. Model source notes
  cite specific source(s) and provide a description of the cultural context in which the story was told, as well as a description of any changes the author made in his or her retelling.
  
• 2. Well-made source notes
  cite the specific source(s) in a highly visible presentation at the beginning or end of the book and may also include cultural details related to the story.
  
• 3. Fine-print source notes
  cite specific source(s) in a less visible manner, generally in small print on the copyright page.
  
• 4. Background-as-source notes
  give general information about the culture from which the tale comes and sometimes information about the story itself, without citing a specific printed source.
  
• 5. Nonexistent source notes
  provide no information on sources at all beyond, perhaps, a subtitle such as “An Old Tale” or “A Navajo Legend.”
  

Dr. Hearne goes on to argue convincingly that as critics we should consider types 4 and 5 completely unacceptable. She writes: “[I]t’s time to declare that part of a great picture-book folktale
is
the source note, that context is important to text.”

Occasionally, an author will collect a folktale directly from an oral rather than a printed source, and the same standards for source notes apply, perhaps even more stringently. As Dr. Hearne points out: “It is one thing to adapt a folktale from a printed source, which should, of course, be cited. It is another to collect a story from an oral source and not attribute it, which violates basic folklore and storytelling ethics.”

Source notes are invaluable to the critic. Beyond assessing the level and quality of the note itself, you may choose to seek out the original printed source to compare it to the book you are evaluating. This is an
especially important step to take when the tale is previously unknown to you or when it comes from an unfamiliar culture or tradition. By comparing the adaptation to the original, you can determine the quality of the author’s retelling. What details have changed? Is there a logical reason for any changes, omissions, or additions? Has the author successfully re-created the original tone of the story? What elements reflect the author’s own style?

Kevin Crossley-Holland’s model source notes for the retellings in his book
British Folk Tales: New Versions
offer capsule histories of the tales themselves, so that even tales that are familiar to readers can be read with new eyes. Look, for example, at his source note on the well-loved story “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”:

Crossley-Holland’s version of “The Three Bears” includes several details not commonly found in other retellings: The bears are all male and are described as “the great, huge bear” “the middle bear” and “the little, small, wee bear” rather than the more familiar Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear. Goldilocks expresses her frustration with
the words “Bother and bother!” and “Dash and dash!” When the bears return home, they find evidence of an intruder through clues Goldilocks has left behind: spoons left in porridge bowls, chair cushions left flattened and out of place, pillows and blankets rumpled on the bears’ beds. These details have generally been omitted from other retellings, in which the three bears seem to know instinctively that someone’s been eating their porridge, sitting in their chairs, and sleeping in their beds. Lastly the Crossley-Holland version ends with one further formulaic repetition: As the bears examine their beds, each of their voices enters into Goldilocks’s dreams. The great, huge bear’s voice is like thunder rumbling; the middle bear’s voice is like “…somebody speaking in a dream” and finally the shrill, high-pitched voice of the little, small, wee bear wakes her up.