Mercer Mayer's Little Critter Series, the Queer Art of Failure, and The
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52.1 (2014) Feature Articles: The Biggest Loser: Mercer Mayer's Little Critter Series, the Queer Art of Failure, and the American Obsession with Achievement • Hey, I Still Can’t See Myself! The Difficult Positioning of Two-Spirit Identities in YA Literature • The Invisibility of Lesbian Mother Families in the South Austra- lian Premier’s Reading Challenge • What a Shame! Gay Shame in Isabelle Holland’s The Man Without a Face • Sexual Slipstreams and the Limits of Magic Realism: Why a Bisexual Cinderella May Not Be All That “Queer” • "A girl. A machine. A freak”: A Consideration of Contemporary Queer Compos- ites • A Doctor for Who(m)?: Queer Temporalities and the Sexualized Child The Journal of IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People Copyright © 2014 by Bookbird, Inc. Reproduction of articles in Bookbird requires permission in writing from the editor. Editor: Roxanne Harde, University of Alberta—Augustana Faculty (Canada) Address for submissions and other editorial correspondence: [email protected] Bookbird’s editorial office is supported by the Augustana Faculty at the University of Alberta, Camrose, Alberta, Canada. Editorial Review Board: Peter E. Cumming, York University (Canada); Debra Dudek, University of Wollongong (Australia); Libby Gruner, University of Richmond (USA); Helene Høyrup, Royal School of Library & Information Science (Denmark); Judith Inggs, University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa); Ingrid Johnston, University of Albert, Faculty of Education (Canada); Shelley King, Queen’s University (Canada); Helen Luu, Royal Military College (Canada); Michelle Martin, University of South Carolina (USA); Beatriz Alcubierre Moya, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (Mexico); Lissa Paul, Brock University (Canada); Laura Robinson, Royal Military College (Canada); Bjorn Sundmark, Malmö University (Sweden); Margaret Zeegers, University of Ballarat (Australia); Board of Bookbird, Inc. (an Indiana not-for-profit corporation): Valerie Coghlan (Ireland), President; Ellis Vance (USA), Treasurer; Junko Yokota (USA), Secretary; Hasmig Chahinian (France), Angela Lebedeva (Russia) Advertising Manager: Ellis Vance ([email protected]) Production: Design and layout by Bill Benson, Texas, USA Printed by The Sheridan Press, Hanover, Pennsylvania, USA Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature (ISSN 0006-7377) is a refereed journal published quarterly in Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall by IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, and distributed by The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2715 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218-4363 USA. Periodicals postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Bookbird, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Journals Division, 2715 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218-4363 USA. CANADA POSTMASTER: Bookbird, Publications Mail Registration Number 40600510. Send address corrections to The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2715 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218-4363 USA. Subscriptions to Bookbird: See last page. IBBY Executive Committee 2012-2014: Ahmad Redza Ahmad Khairuddin (Malaysia), President; Linda Pavonetti Vice President (USA); Hasmig Chahinian (France), Vice President; Marilar Aleixandre (Spain); Gülçin Alpöge (Turkey); Nadia El Kholy (Egypt); Kiyoko Matsuoka (Japan), Azucena Galindo (Mexico); Angela Lebedeva (Russia); Akoss Ofori-mensah (Ghana); Timotea Vrablova (Slovakia), Voting Members; María Jesús Gil (Spain), Andersen Jury President; Elizabeth Page (Switzerland), Executive Director; Ellis Vance (USA), Treasurer; Roxanne Harde (Canada), Bookbird Editor. IBBY may be contacted at Nonnenweg 12 Postfach, CH-4003 Basel, Switzerland, tel: +4161 272 29 17 fax: +4161 272 27 57 email: [email protected] <www.ibby.org>. Bookbird is indexed in Library Literature, Library and Information Abstracts (LISA), Children’s Book Review Index, and the MLA International Bibliography. Cover image: We want to thank Mr. Mercer Mayer for permission to run the image of “Eggs too Slippery” from Just for You. © 1975 and 2013 by Orchard House Licensing Company. All rights reserved. Editorial Roxanne Harde | iii Introduction Queerness and Children’s Literature: Embracing the Negative Laura M. Robinson | iv The Biggest Loser: Mercer Mayer's Little Critter Series, the Queer Art of Failure, and the American Obsession with Achievement Michelle Ann Abate | 1 Hey, I Still Can’t See Myself! The Difficult Positioning of Two-Spirit Identities in YA Literature Robert Bittner | 11 The Invisibility of Lesbian Mother Families in the South Australian Premier’s Reading Challenge Damien W. Riggs and Scott Hanson Easey | 23 What a Shame! Gay Shame in Isabelle Holland’s The Man Without a Face Anne Stebbins | 34 Feature Articles Sexual Slipstreams and the Limits of Magic Realism: Why a Bisexual Cinderella May Not Be All That “Queer” Jon M. Wargo | 43 “A girl. A machine. A freak”: A Consideration of Contemporary Queer Composites Jennifer Mitchell | 51 A Doctor for Who(m)?: Queer Temporalities and the Sexualized Child Adrianne Wadewitz and Mica Hilson | 63 Celebrating the Margins: Families and Gender in the Work of the Swedish Picturebook Artist Pija Lindenbaum Lydia Kokkola and Mia Osterlund | 77 Letters Identifying Effective Trans* Novels for Adolescent Readers Mary Catherine Miller | 83 IBBY.ORG 52.1 – 2014 | i The Queer Art of Failure by Judith Halberstam Lydia Kokkola | 87 Fictions of Adolescent Carnality: Sexy Sinners and Delinquent Deviants Reviews by Lydia Kokkola Laura Robinson | 89 Books on Books Christiane Raabe and Jochen Weber | 90 October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepherd by Lesleá Newman Sylvia Vardell | x Donovan’s Big Day by Lesléa Newman, illus. by Mike Dutton Samantha Christensen | 10 The Girl of the Wish Garden: A Thumbelina Story by Uma Krishnaswami Taylor Kraayenbrink | 33 Nobody Knows by Shelley Tanaka Melek Ortabasi | 62 Postcards Nataberne [The Night Monkeys] byLakambini Sitoy, illus. by Lilian Brøgger Tia Lalani | 86 That’s Life by Robert Winston Doris Audet | 98 Lunar Eclipse by Serkan Aka and Ayse Pinar Koprucu, illus. by Serkan Aka Tülin Kozikoglu | 98 Kummallisuuksien käsikirja [The book of oddities] by Mauri Kunnas, illus. by Mauri Kunnas Melissa Garavini |111 Focus IBBY Elizabeth Page | 99 ii | booKbirD IBBY.ORG Editorial Dear Bookbird Readers, Dear Bookbird Readers, s I prepare this—Bookbird’s Queer Issue—for press, I am listening to Canadian singer-songwriter Kate Reid’s latest Bookbird Editor album, Queer Across Canada. After interviewing more than seventyA queer adults and their children, Reid prepared the Queer Across Canada Musical-Educational Kit, which includes the seventeen-song album and an educational resource package that pairs activities and exercises with the songs in order to teach children about gender and sexual diversity, homophobia, heternormativity, and to encourage acceptance of diverse people, families, and communities. A number of Canadian musicians make guest appearances on the album, which also features a choir of young people from Gab of Qmunity, an Roxanne Harde is an Associate Professor LGBTQ resource center in Vancouver, and children from some of of English and a McCalla University Professor at the University of Alberta, the queer-headed households Reid interviewed. Overall, the Queer Augustana Faculty. She studies and Across Canada Musical-Educational Kit is a groundbreaking, musical- teaches American literature and culture. She has recently published Walking educational project for families and educators. the Line: Country Music Lyricists and However, Reid’s project is not alone in taking on controversial American Culture (Lexington 2013), and her essays have appeared in several themes and issues. Cultural production for children and young journals, including International Research adults—books, art, music, television, film—has long engaged with in Children’s Literature, The Lion and complex cultural issues and weighty sociopolitical concerns. From the the Unicorn, Christianity and Literature, Legacy, Jeunesse, Critique, Feminist golden age of children’s literature on, those who create for children Theology, and Mosaic, and several edited have laced or loaded their work with pointed social critique and sharp collections, including Enterprising Youth and To See the Wizard. political satire even as they have reflected current social, political, © 2014 by BooKbirD, INC. EDitorial environmental, economic, and cultural concerns; Lauper was motivated to fund True Colors when think of Alice or Huck Finn or the Onceler; she learned that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans- remember your journeys to Oz, or through the gender youth make up about 40% of all home- Secret Garden, or over the bridge to Terabithia. less youth, yet only 3% to 5% of the general youth However, if those who create, consume, employ, population in the United States, and queer home- or study texts for children and young adults have less young people are the chief beneficiaries of long engaged with difficult subjects, we have been the foundation. Similarly, Dan Savage’s It Gets much slower to embrace queerness. I suggest this Better Project works “to communicate to lesbian, slowness even as I work on an issue that features gay, bisexual, and transgender youth around the guest editor Laura Robinson’s compelling discus- world that it gets better, and to create and inspire sion of queerness in children’s literature, along- the changes needed to make it better for them.” side seven first-rate articles,