AustLit

'Though they can find themselves constrained by the imagined “demands of children’s literature as sanitary, benign, and didactic” (Tribunella 102), children’s picture book authors and illustrators regularly attempt to engage with “unimaginable, unspeakable, and un-representable horror” (Trezise 43). Whether it be in the form of genocide, war, persecution or displacement, they tend not to shy away from the atrocities of history when searching for subject matter. However, the balancing of the sanitary with the unimaginable demands a compromise. Authors and illustrators invariably soften, perhaps even distort the horror in their efforts to be morally instructive. In their creation of a “parable of war” (MacCallum-Stewart 177) they explore the underlying humanist principles of the stories they tell, rather than historical perspectives. This approach transforms historical particularities into “universals of human experience” (Stephens 238). Trauma is sometimes directly confronted, but this is the exception rather than the rule (Kertzer, “Anxiety” 208). Kidd contends that at “least some of the children’s literature of atrocity turns away from rather than confronts the difficulties of its subject matter, opting for simplistic narratives of character empowerment adapted from self-help literature” (185). For in any battle between hope and trauma, or at least the ones played out in children’s literature, the former usually emerges triumphant. As a result, books such as the three analyzed in this article are often very successful in exploring broader issues of personal morality, but they make for dubious history. The critical and commercial success of works that adopt this approach suggests that the book buying public share this preference for morality tales over historical accuracy.' (Introduction)