Cover not available
Part of
Children's Literature and the Avant-Garde
Edited by Elina Druker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 5] 2015
► pp. 267–284

Chapter 11. Surrealism for children

Paradoxes and possibilities

| Kansas State University
This chapter addresses what an avant-garde for children might look like, and what it might do. It is called “Surrealism for Children: Paradoxes and Possibilities” because the very notion of an avant-garde for children strikes the author as both paradoxical and not, and as both possible and impossible. In making this claim, the author argues with – and revises – his own analysis in The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks (2002), which took for granted that an avant-garde for children was both possible and critically viable. What he once accepted as a certainty, he now thinks of as an intriguing question. The answer resides among the three main (and overlapping) areas around which the paradoxes and possibilities of a Surrealist children’s literature circulate: knowledge, experience, and audience.
Published online: 29 July 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.5.12nel
References (46)
References
Primary Sources
Aaronson, Marc. 1998. Art Attack: A Short Cultural History of the Avant-Garde. New York NY: Clarion Books.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Louise. 1963. A Child’s Guide to Freud. Illus. Whitney Darrow, Jr. New York NY: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Billout, Guy. 2002. Something’s Not Quite Right. Jaffrey NH: David R. Godine.Google Scholar
Browne, Anthony. 1997. Changes. London: Walker Books (first published 1990).Google Scholar
. 1999. Voices in the Park. London: Picture Corgi (first published 1998).Google Scholar
Carvalho, Bernado. 2010. Trocoscópio. Carcavelos, Portugal: Planeta Tangerina.Google Scholar
Horvath, Polly. 2012. Mr. and Mrs. Bunny — Detectives Extraordinaire! By Mrs. Bunny. Translated from the Rabbit by Polly Horvath. Illus. Sophie Blackall. New York: Schwartz & Wade.Google Scholar
Jackson, Shelley. 2010. Mimi’s Dada Catifesto. New York NY: Clarion Books.Google Scholar
Johnson, Crockett. 1955. Harold and the Purple Crayon. New York NY: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
. 1960. A Picture for Harold’s Room. New York NY: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Johnson, D.B. 2012. Magritte’s Marvelous Hat. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Krauss, Ruth. 1960. Open House for Butterflies. Illus. Maurice Sendak. New York NY: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Lester, Mike. 2000. A Is for Salad. New York NY: Putnam & Grosset.Google Scholar
Mansbach, Adam. 2011. Go the Fuck to Sleep. Illus. Ricardo Cortés. New York NY: Akashic Books.Google Scholar
Queensland Art Gallery Children’s Art Centre. 2011. Surrealism for Kids. Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art.Google Scholar
Raimondo, Joyce. 2004. Imagine That: Activities and Adventures in Surrealism. New York NY: Watson-Guptill Publications.Google Scholar
Seuss, Dr. 1957. The Cat in the Hat. New York NY: Random House.Google Scholar
. 1993. Fox in Socks. New York NY: Random House (first published 1965).Google Scholar
. 1983. On Beyond Zebra! New York NY: Random House (first published 1955).Google Scholar
Tan, Shaun. 2007. The Arrival. New York NY: Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine (first published 2006).Google Scholar
. 2008. The Lost Thing. Sydney, Australia: Hachette Livre (first published 2000).Google Scholar
Timmers, Leo. 2012. The Magical Life of Mr. Renny. Translated by Bill Nagelkerke. Wellington, New Zealand: Gecko Press (first published 2010).Google Scholar
Travers, Pamela L. 1962. Mary Poppins. Illus. Mary Shepard. New York NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (first published 1934).Google Scholar
Tullet, Hervé. 2011 Press Here. Translated by Christopher Franceschelli. San Francisco CA: Chronicle Books (first published 2010).Google Scholar
Van Allsburg, Chris. 1981. Jumanji. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Wiesner, David. 1992. June 29, 1999. New York NY: Clarion Books.Google Scholar
. 1991. Tuesday. New York NY: Clarion Books.Google Scholar
Willems, Mo. 2011. Beligerent Bunny in “Olive Hue Show Mutts”: An Intoxicatingly Hard Reader. Sketchbook Vol. 18. Mo Willems (self-published).Google Scholar
. 2004. Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale. New York NY: Hyperion Books.Google Scholar
Secondary Sources
Anderson, Matthew T. 2008. Experimental literature for children. Unpublished talk.
Atkinson, Nathalie. 2011. The best 27 from 2011. National Post 31 December 2011. Weekend Post, 15.Google Scholar
Bürger, Peter. 1984. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Translated by Michael Shaw. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Dove, Rita. 1999a. Rita Dove. In For the Love of Books: 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most, 70-75. New York NY: Grosset/Putnam.Google Scholar
. 1999b. On the Bus with Rosa Parks. New York NY: W.W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Gablik, Suzi. 1991. Magritte. New York NY: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Lurie, Alison. 1990. The cabinet of Dr. Seuss. The New York Review of Books 20 December 1990: 50-52.Google Scholar
Marcus, Leonard S. 2011. Touchy: Picture books and the feel of the page. The Horn Book Magazine 86(7) (Nov.-Dec. 2011): 34-38.Google Scholar
McCloud, Scott. 1994. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York NY: HarperCollins (first published 1993).Google Scholar
Nel, Philip. 2002. The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks. Jackson MI: University Press of Mississipi.Google Scholar
. 2012. Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature. Jackson MI: University Press of Mississippi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reynolds, Kimberley. 2010. Radical Children’s Literature: Future Visions and Aesthetic Transformations in Juvenile Fiction. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan (first published 2007).Google Scholar
Shortsleeve, Kevin. 2011. The cat in the hippie: Dr. Seuss, nonsense, the carnivalesque, and the sixties rebel. In The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Literature, Julia L. Mickenberg & Lynne Vallone (eds), 189-209. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Tigges, Wim. 1987. An anatomy of nonsense. In Explorations in the Field of Nonsense, Wim Tigges (ed.), 23-45. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Tønnessen, Elise Seip. 2013. Nye medier, nye modaliteter, ny estetikk (New media, new modalities, new aesthetics). Nordisk barnelitteratur - et nytt kunstforskningsspørsmål? [ Nordic Children’s Literature – A New Research Question? ] Norsk barnebokinstitutt, Oslo, Norway. 25 August.
Tzara, Tristan. 1992. Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries. Translated by Barbara Wright. New York NY: Calder Publications/Riverrun Press.Google Scholar
Ware, Chris. 2013. Foreword. In Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby, Volume One: 1942-1943, Philip Nel & Eric Reynolds (eds), 7-9. Seattle WA: Fantagraphics.Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Palo, Annbritt & Anna Nordenstam
2023. An Artist and a Writer: YA Literature by Anna Höglund. Children's Literature in Education 54:1 ► pp. 110 ff. DOI logo
Dorkin, Andrew
2021. Humouring Futurity: Avant-Garde Poetry for Children?. CounterText 7:3 ► pp. 350 ff. DOI logo
Ridderstrøm, Helge
2021. Patafysikk for begynnere. Barnelitterært forskningstidsskrift 12:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.