The Next Generation (2009)

The Next Generation Richard Flynn This final issue of the Children's Literature Association Quarterly for 2009 is also the last issue under my editorship, which began with volume 29 number 3 (fall 2004). Before I take the opportunity to offer a short retrospective and thanks to the many colleagues who have made editing this journal such a rewarding experience, I would like to comment on the articles in this issue, all of them by first-time contributors and relatively new children's literature scholars. These essays continue the tradition of eclecticism that has always been one of the Quarterly's great strengths. As this issue demonstrates, we welcome cultural studies and postcolonial readings as well as reconsiderations of classic texts for children. The Quarterly has been hospitable to beginning and seasoned scholars alike throughout its history, but I have found this job most satisfying when I have been able to nurture new talent. In the present issue, the scholars submitted remarkably polished work, which has benefited from the peer-review process. Ramona Caponegro's "Where the 'Bad' Girls Are (Contained)" discusses the intersection of "domestic containment" and pop-Freudianism in the 1950s and the construction of the largely ignored figure of the female juvenile delinquent in the pages of the Ladies' Home Journal and in three novels for young people: Hal Ellson's Tomboy (1950), Anne Alexander's The Pink Dress (1959), and Elizabeth George Speare's The Witch of Blackbird Pond (1958). Caponegro argues convincingly that paying more attention to the cultural history of the female delinquent can help us gain perspective on the limitations as well as strengths of the psychoanalytic lens through which youth culture was viewed during the 1950s. Kara Getrost's "Brother or Other?" investigates the role of adolescence in late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British and German adventure novels. Demonstrating that the coming-of-age-story model is inadequate to describe the complexity of colonial relations, she criticizes the reliance on binary oppositions between adult and adolescent that equate the adult with the colonizer and the child with the colonized. The discourse of adolescence allows for hybridity—adolescent boys, then, [End Page 309] become "liminal figures that neither completely accept nor resist colonial pedagogy." Regina Puleo's reading of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm distinguishes Rebecca Rowena Randall from other early twentieth-century protagonists such as Anne Shirley and Pollyanna Whittier; she argues that Rebecca gains both a voice and agency. Wiggin's refusal to allow Rebecca to marry Adam Ladd emphasizes her self-reliance and self-sufficiency: she is educated, financially secure, and on her way toward becoming a writer. In this reading, Aunt Miranda is not an obstacle to "the making of Rebecca" but a role model and benefactor. Kristin N. Taylor reads L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in light of the changing discourse on sentimental views of childhood and adoption that took hold during the Progressive Era, including the rise of psychological and developmental models of childhood. In the second part of her essay, Taylor uses a contemporary psychological model about the ways adoptees journey toward self-integration to elucidate some fresh insights about Dorothy's journey. It was not until I received her contributor's note that I realized that Taylor will be receiving her bachelor's degree shortly after this issue appears. I hope she will continue participating in the next generation of scholarship in children's literature studies. Looking back, then, on my own journey as editor, I may not have achieved self-integration, but I'm ready to click my heels three times and say, "Take me home to Aunt Em." First and foremost, I must thank my associate editors, Caren Town, Kenneth Kidd, and Katharine Capshaw Smith, for their collective head, heart, and courageous dedication to excellent scholarship. They have assisted me in reading essays, finding readers, and serving as sounding boards when I have had to make some tough decisions. Mark West's service as book review editor has been exemplary, and I am continually impressed with his ability to get books reviewed in a timely fashion and to tap into his reserve on short notice. The incoming editors are...