Deep in the Heart. . . .

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Deep in the Heart. . . . Marilynn Olson Although it is almost a certainty that I should be chivying a corrupted disk instead of writing a note (Quarterly editors at the turn of the century spend a great deal of time on errant technology), last occasions still seem to call for a measure of formality. This issue marks, for example, the final appearance of Susan R. Gannon as book review editor, a post from which she has encouraged children's literature criticism with intelligence, charity, and broad scholarly judgment. Thus, we need a moment to reflect on the ideas our last issue addresses and the goals we have, in general, felt of value. In this the first number of the twenty-fifth year, we are concerned, it seems, primarily with the recreation and creation of historic moments and society's present uses of the past. Sanjay Sircar's article on Tulsi, an Indian missionary story, will be new material for most readers. Missionary stories are most often treated in an oversimplified or dismissive way—to a greater degree, but in something like the same way that Kate Greenaway is apt to be dismissed in studies of Ruskin. Yet both articles, Sircar's and Anya Silver's on Greenaway, talk about fundamental concerns, and it is only a peculiarity of our moment in time, perhaps, that has made Christian acculturation an edgier topic than erotic children. Chris Hopkins's article on the Borrowers series and Anne Scott MacLeod's on Howard Pyle's Robin Hood discuss, in part, very popular children's titles as responses to anxiety and change within specific historic periods. Although the books were written decades apart, the time frame under discussion is, as Hopkins notes, to some extent the same one. In both cases, charm and anxiety exist in a balance. But when Roderick McGillis alludes to his childhood Robin Hood in the theory column, he sees the subversive elements of the story, rather than its comforts, as the aspect that made the tale relevant to him as a mid-century child. Finally, Marisa Fernández López's article on translation studies in Spanish children's literature, particularly those concerned with popular English texts, notes that countries differ markedly with regard to the value they place upon conveying the author's original text and cultural norms. Taken with Nancy Tolson's column on African American picture books using the blues aesthetic to survey the past, we find an unusually cross-cultural discussion of societal intent. Our own intentions in our historic moment at the Quarterly have been cross-cultural. We have been interested in helping the Quarterly's interests match the international ideals of the Association and in providing the members with knowledge of international scholarship (and international scholars with knowledge of ChLA scholarship) to undergird their own. To some extent, this also was the goal of the bibliography issues. We have been assisted both by committed members and by the powerful reach of the Internet in acquiring potential authors from an increasingly wide population. If we see an unmet challenge in this area, it is in the near absence of Latin American authors from our pages and Latin American scholars from our bibliographies. Since we have been, physically, very close to Mexico all these years, we find the higher profile of such recent young adult books as Parrot in the Oven, noted by Mary-Agnes Taylor in her review article in The Five Owls Southwestern issue (14.1), also important. Collectively, we have tried to develop young scholars in our field, and the quality and sophistication of Quarterly articles themselves, and thus to build our future. We have tried to publish papers with an eye to the varied tastes of the membership, but, perhaps, to push them a little. The new editors of the Quarterly are well known to the membership of the Association, and have also been represented in our pages. Gillian's first Quarterly, Cecilia Anderson's theme issue on the American West, contained an article on Scott O'Dell by Anita Tarr. Roberta Seelinger Trites has published several articles with us; she was, additionally, the guest editor of my first issue, with the topic...