We enter into Mr. McGregor's garden or the land of Oz as if those places really exist while, at the same time, acknowledge that they are not to be found in the actual world of our everyday existence. So too we must learn to accept the statement of a literary theory as if the premises were valid, use that theory as a lens to examine the particular aspects of the literary work or the literary experience on which it sheds light, and makes what meaning we can of what we see with that light. The lenses I use to find my way through the wilderness of literary criticism are closest to those of the reader-response critics, particularly to the transactional theory of Louise Rosenblatt. My personal literary history has also been influenced by early studies based on the formalist approaches of the now old New Critics and the archetypal theories of Northop Frye. It is from this combination of perspectives that I view the theory, research, and teaching of children's literature.
Literature is, first of all, to be experienced, to be enjoyed, to be appreciated, to be loved.
Each reader, in the process of experiencing a literary work, both brings meaning to and takes meaning from that work. Thus, the meaning made from having experienced that work is personal and idiosyncratic and is based on all that the reader has known and experienced outside that work. Meaning is also communal in the understanding of the human condition as expressed in an communicated by the work. Without that initial appreciation of and engagement with the work, the experience remains meaningless. Without that process of meaning-making which is reading, there can be no progression to critical or theoretical judgment.