“Only Children”: Authors and the Audiences They Call Into Being Jennifer Burek Pierce, Ph.D. The University of Iowa

Lesnik-Oberstein “The definition of children’s literature lies at the heart of its endeavor: it is a category of books the existence of which absolutely depends on supposed relationships with a particular reading audience: children” (17)

Townsend “Before there could be children’s books, there had to be children – children, that is, who were accepted as beings with their own particular needs and interests” (3).

Abbott, How the Story Books Are Made (1855) “intelligible to every class of readers,”versus “the younger ones must expect to find it above their reach. They had their turn in the Story of Timboo and Fanny” (vii).

Perros “’Writing is saying something to someone who’s not there…. Or if he’s there, we’ll be the ones who’ve gone away.’”

E.B. White “Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth...”

Analyzing Authors’ Commentaries

Neil Gaiman “When I was 12, or 15, or 20, I can’t think of anything I would have wanted more than to have encountered one of my favorite authors or gone to a talk or have them teach me. And that didn’t happen, just because there weren’t any authors around where I grew up, and there wasn’t something like the Web.”

Sendak “You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.”

Katherine Paterson “What I think I’m doing when I write for the young is to articulate the glorious but fragile human condition for those whose hearts have heard but whose mouths, at the age of five or ten or fourteen, can’t yet express. But the truth is, I can’t really express it either. So what happens is a reciprocal gift between reader and writer: one heart in hiding reaching out to another” (152-53).

Hisham Matar “That mysterious book, according to the logic of my memory has fathered every book I have read since. … Every word I have written has been propelled by an enthusiasm rooted in that afternoon so long ago, when I was a boy and didn’t yet know that I needed books at all” (p. 48).

Jack Prelutsky “I have the words in mind, but I also have the child in mind, including the child within myself” (Zinsser 101).

Conclusion

Robert Darnton “how to place boxes in different positions, provide them with appropriate labels, and connect them with arrows pointed in one direction or another.” See https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3403039/darnt on_revisited.pdf?sequence=2

Indigo Girls, “Virginia Woolf” And here's a young girl On a kind of a telephone line through time And the voice at the other end Comes like a long lost friend So I know I'm alright Life will come and life will go Still I feel it's alright 'Cause I just got a letter to my soul

Michelle J Edwards (2016) Friend 1: “Does she have any playmates? Always seems to be alone with her kitten doll.” MJE: “Good observation. I am playing with who she might be, and she is definitely part of a larger world. I think that may be my next step with her. I have never worked this way before. I love getting feedback on each post.”