Focus: Children’s Literature — November/December 1997

Children’s Literature

Volume 19 Number 1
November-December 1997

FOCUS: Children’s Literature

Subversive Children’s Literature
Jan Susina, Focus Editor

Bike Dreams
Lissa Paul Reviews Aidan Chambers’s Dance on My Grave and Peter Pohl’s Johnny, My Friend

Making Poetry Safe for Schools
Richard Flynn Reviews The Invisible Ladder: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poems for Young Readers, edited by Liz Rosenberg

Feminist Subversions In Children’s Fiction
Roberta Seelinger Trites Examines the impact of feminism on children’s literature

Designs of Innovative Picture Books
Jodi Slothower Reviews J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh’s Free Lunch and The Graphic Alphabet, by David Pelletier

New Feminism for Girls
Patricia Pace Reviews Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

Girls Becoming Goddesses
Jan Susina Reviews Francesca Lia Block’s Girl Goddess: Nine Stories and Lauren Greenfield’s Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood

The Stinky Fish Smell of History
Violet J. Harris Reviews Ken Mochizuki’s Baseball Saved Us, Heroes, and Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story; Pat and Frederick McKissack’s Red-Tailed Angels; Faith Ringgold’s Bonjour, Lonnie; and Yoskiko Uchida’s The Bracelet

And the Winner Is . . .
Louisa Smith Reviews E. L. Konigsburg’s A View from Saturday

The World of Work in Picture Books
George R. Bodmer Reviews Gary Paulsen’s Worksong; Arthur Geisert’s The Etcher’s Studio; Alma Flor Ada’s Gathering the Sun: An Alphabet in Spanish and English; Teddy Jam’s The Fishing Summer

FEATURE: Tenured Radicals

The Job Wars
John Wilson Reviews Cary Nelson’s Manifesto of a Tenured Radical and Will Teach for Food, edited by Cary Nelson

The Daughter’s Sensation
H. Kassia Fleisher Reviews Jane Gallop’s Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment

Book Reviews

Annie Finch reviews Suzanne Noguere’s Whirling Around the Sun

Jim Feast reviews Gordon Lish’s Epigraph, Dear Mr. Capote, and What I Know So Far

Fred Muratori reviews Heather Allen’s Leaving a Shadow, Marcus Cafagñas The Broken World, Daniel Hall’s Strange Relations, Juliana Spahr’s Response, and Karen Volkman’s Crash’s Law

Jamey Hecht reviews Yannis Ritsos’s Late Into The Night

Thomas J. Harford reviews David Shields’s Remote

Joseph Conte reviews Myra Shapiro’s I’ll See You Thursday and Marilyn Kallet’s How to Get Heat Without Fire

Peter Fortunato reviews Gary Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers Without End

Nikki Dillon reviews Kit Reed’s J. Eden

Rochelle Ratner reviews Rick Moody’s Purple America

Lucy Ferriss reviews Gina Berriault’s Women in Their Beds: New and Selected Stories

David Matlin reviews William Langland’s Piers Plowman, The C Version

Richard Kostelanetz shares an Irvin Faust retrospective
Steven Marks reviews poetry by Mark Wallace, Kristin Prevallet, Jefferson Hansen, Wendy Battin, and Jena Osman

Rants and Raves

Letters to the Editor