Volume 34 Nº 2 - August 1998

The place of children's literature in the literacy debate

Susan Clancy

The texts you have study in school shouldn't be seen as textbooks, mere exam fodder. They should blow up in your face, provoke, inspire, trouble and help you discover all kinds of new possibilities about yourself, other people, the world in which we live and the world of the future which we are in the processing of making. (Brady 1994)

If you have ever experienced the warmth, security and comfort of a hobbit-hole with its 'perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle', felt the dread of entering Mirkwood through an entrance that 'was like a sort of arch leading into a gloomy tunnel made by two great trees that leant together, too old and strangled with ivy and hung with lichen to bear more than a few blackened leaves' and been transfixed by Smaug as he comes 'hurtling from the North licking the mountain-sides with flame, beating his great wings with a noise like a roaring wind' (Tolkien 1975), then you are priviledged to know the power of a wonderful piece of literature...

Susan Clancy lectures in the field of literacy at Charles Sturt University and is a regular contributor to the professional literature. Among her current publications related to children's literature is 'Picture Books' in Reading Rime 42,2.

Address:
School of Education, Charles Sturt University - Riverina,
PO Box 588, Wagga Wagga 2650. sclancy@csu.edu.au