New kid-lit anthology meets the Big Bad Wolfson
The Claremont Review of Books has posted a provocative review of The Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature. According to the reviewer, Dorothea Israel Wolfson, this new edition of the anthology “marks the genre’s sad end.” Why? Because, she says, the editors aim “to dampen children’s enchantment with the world, forcing them to acquiesce to the grim realities and multicultural obsessions of contemporary adults.” This volume is “not so much an anthology as a postmodernist manifesto…. Practically every text and every author (save for the ‘emergent’) is subjected to a wicked scolding from the editors for its racism, sexism, and elitism.”
Wolfson doesn’t exactly make a secret of her own political and cultural biases, but the review’s a great read nonetheless, and the quotes from the editors’ prefaces and commentary are fairly damning.
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Read the review here
