Reading Otherways

Lissa Paul’s book derives from her classes in children’s literature at the University of New Brunswick, and is as much about the practice of teaching the genre as it is about the texts themselves. Its manner is at least as important as the content. Without being insistently chatty and informal, it is personal and conversational, using the pronoun ‘I’ a lot and inviting the reader into dialogue, just as a seminar leader does. Paul notes her early academic training, which told her ‘that the use of “I” was forbidden in formal essays’, and her book is offering not only an updated critical approach but a much better interactive method.

Her purpose is to show her students and readers that the pseudo-scientific objectivity of New Criticism (and the authoritative dogmatism of Leavisite analysis) has given way to the recognition that texts, including children’s texts, are susceptible to multiple readings. A book changes according to the theoretical lens applied to it, as Paul illustrates by bringing feminist, Marxist, Freudian and post-colonial perspectives into play. It also changes according to the age and situation of the reader, as she shows convincingly with ‘Hansel and Gretel’, and in response to historical and cultural change.

The book is an excellent piece of teaching about teaching, and illuminating on its chosen texts, notably Little Women and Carrie’s War . The only problem is that Paul never quite decides whether she is primarily advancing a feminist critique or primarily arguing for relativism and diversity. In the end, feminism emerges as first among equals in a book that students of children’s literature will find both useful and engaging.