How real should a children's book be? Are children harmed or helped by reading about tragedy or violence? What would you do if you had parents who objected to books that deal with difficult issues?

Many of the highly regarded works of realism for children published in the last few years have dealt with difficult issues such as abuse, death, neglect, poverty and human rights violations. In her Arbuthnot Lecture speech author Sheila Egoff argued a garden wall, a wall that had always kept children in a protected place, safe from the ugliness and despair of the adult world, could symbolize classic children's literature. She argues, "The wall represents seclusion, protection, confinement; the garden- order, serenity, aesthetic delight- no weeds, no inturions from the wild and the naturalistic. . . .In short, books gave children what society hoped for from its children rather than of what those chidreen-many of them at least-really were." (p 14) ^[7] After the Vietnam War and the sixties social revolution, books for children broke down that wall. As a result, Egoff states, "Children were no longer deemed to be innocent. . . . Children might still be seen as the hope of the world but this did not exempt them from an early exposure to society's harsh problems." (p.15) ^[8] How real should a children's book be? Are children harmed or helped by reading about tragedy or violence? What would you do if you had parents who objected to books that deal with difficult issues? Choose a book about a topic that would never have been dealt with before the 1960's and write a rationale supporting its use in your classroom.

^[7] Sheila Egoff, Beyond the Garden Wall some Observations on Current Trends in Children's Literature. The May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture, reprinted in The Top of the News. Spring 1979. 12-19.
^[8] ibid. p 15