The Ugly Side of Cute Picture Books about Animals
Title and/or Affiliation
Director of Graduate Programs in Children's Literature, Hollins University
Presenter Bio
Lisa Rowe Fraustino, professor of English, Eastern Connecticut State University; Ph.D., Binghamton University. Fraustino became the Director of Graduate Programs in Children’s Literature at Hollins University in August of 2018 and has been on the visiting faculty, teaching both critical and creative courses, since 1995. Her middle-grade novel The Hole in the Wall won the 2010 Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature, her article “The Rights and Wrongs of Anthropomorphism in Picture Books” won the 2016 ChLA Article Award, and her volume edited with Karen Coats, Mothers in Children’s and Young Adult Literature, won the 2018 ChLA Edited Book Award. She is past president of the Children’s Literature Association, and is also the author of I Walk in Dread: The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials; The Hickory Chair; and Ash. http://lisarowefraustino.com/
Session
Workshop: Anthropomorphism and Animal Others
Location
Zoom
Start Date
9-7-2022 11:00 AM
End Date
9-7-2022 12:15 PM
Abstract
Because of the human propensity to anthropomorphize—and to reward children’s literature for doing it—we may struggle to understand all the ways picture books use conceptual metaphor to construct reality through fantasy. If we accept the allegorical use of anthropomorphized characters as stand-ins for people, then to reveal the hidden aspects in a particular story perhaps we should set aside the associations we have with the characters as whatever species they appear to be and instead imagine ourselves in their place. This literary empathy may help to determine whether our anthropocentric values—our species chauvinism—has obscured ideas that we might not find so cute if they were represented by human bodies. Fraustino will demonstrate her theory through close reading of the conceptual metaphor CHILD IS FISH in Leo Lionni’s Swimmy and John Klassen’s This Is Not My Hat.
The Ugly Side of Cute Picture Books about Animals
Zoom
Because of the human propensity to anthropomorphize—and to reward children’s literature for doing it—we may struggle to understand all the ways picture books use conceptual metaphor to construct reality through fantasy. If we accept the allegorical use of anthropomorphized characters as stand-ins for people, then to reveal the hidden aspects in a particular story perhaps we should set aside the associations we have with the characters as whatever species they appear to be and instead imagine ourselves in their place. This literary empathy may help to determine whether our anthropocentric values—our species chauvinism—has obscured ideas that we might not find so cute if they were represented by human bodies. Fraustino will demonstrate her theory through close reading of the conceptual metaphor CHILD IS FISH in Leo Lionni’s Swimmy and John Klassen’s This Is Not My Hat.
Comments
Moderated by Sarah Park Dahlen