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Hollindale 1988: 4 agrees as well that there are child people and book people. While child people are those concerning about children and
their importance, book people are people who produce children‟s stories to
please themselves. It is for dominating children from knowing what is really going on nowadays in th
eir life. It is only for adults‟ benefits to make them dependent and unknowledgeable. The plot, characters, and
point of view, are made to be too simple. Nodelman 2008: 9 believes that simpler plot or simpler form of literature only avoids children from
thinking critically, arguing their ideas, and freeing their mind to get more advanced knowledge. In the future, they can give up on reading
complicated stories as they get used to be provided only with simple and easy reading including stories. Nevertheless, Huck, Hepler, and Hickman
in Gapalakrishan, 2011: 4 argue that children nowadays are more knowledgeable and sophisticated about some particular experiences about
life compared to children in the past. Children cannot be free totally from adults‟ interference, but adults need to understand that they grow up and
need to be empowered, not controlled. Those conventional images of children as a result will be penetrated in
children‟s mind unconsciously since “they have an impact on the reader‟s expectation for the text” Botelho and Rudman, 2009: 5. It means that the
texts with conventional images of children will strongly influence on the way children think and behave in their everyday life. If that socially
constructed images of children stay exist, both in literature and in daily
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life, children cannot widen their horizon and they will be perceived to have inherent characteristics as Nodelman 1992 explains.
4. Deconstruction in Children‟s Literature
Texts are ideological including in children‟s literature. Hollindale
1988: 11-18 states there are three levels of ideology. The first level of ideology is an explicit ideology where the author directly tells or writes it.
It is commonly found in conventional children‟s literature. Then, the
ideology can be put inside the stories very neatly. It is the one that the author intends to tell it, but she or he hides it. The last is where the author
even does not realize that there is an ideology inside of his or her work. The more silent an ideology is, the more powerful it will be in spreading
value. If it is a positive ideology, it will not create matter. Yet, if it is negative ones, it will be very problematic.
One way to make children aware of an ideology existence in children‟s
stories is to “deconstruct them in order to reveal their underlying
ideology” Hunt, 1999: 52. As previously stated, it is not to destroy the text, but since the texts are “constructed”, it can be deconstructed by
seeing an alternative way of reading stories. If children arenot taught how to read texts critically, especially children who are in marginalized group
girls, blacks, children with disabilities, etc, they will believe easily and forever in the ideology of the “truth” and “central concept” constructed by
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Western philosophy. It is because, as Bothelo and Rudman 2009: 2 believe that “language circulates the dominant ideologies of gender, race,
and class.” The language in the text, afterwards, plays crucial roles in spreading ideologies. There have been a lot of signs which actually do not
represent the signified, rather, it constructs emotional association. When children are given the sign “wolf”, it is not important about the mental
concept or the „physical world‟ as an actual animal. Rather, it is associated with emotional concept where it is „dangerous‟, „shaggy‟, „huge‟, and
„predatory‟. Moreover, when they are given a sign „prince‟, they will relate that sign to emotional association such as „brave‟, „young‟,
han dsome‟, „rich‟, „kind-hearted‟ Hourihan, 1997: 12-3.
These images of signs appear ofte n in children‟s literature. What
makes it problematic is that this pattern can re-occur, be re-written, be re- used, and be re-worked for any other text in the next generation. Hourihan
1997: 13 believes that this kind of pattern which appears in other stories called as intertexuality, a belief that is proposed by Kristeva in the late
1960s. Kristeva in Lassen-Seger, 2006: 21 explains that the essence or the idea of a story is never new; it is only the past experience of previous
stories.The stories nowadays are only the new version of the stories in the past having same essence. According to Hourihan 1997: 12, the pattern
will construct images that function to shape people, including children, perception of reality.
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Deconstruction in children‟s literature also has a mission “to expand the universe of small, to give voice to children and listening to their
speeches; allowing representing childhood in their own way…” Silvia, 2014: 55. Children need to be aware to re-think about gender roles that,
for instance, girls must be obedient and dependent on boys. They are not allowed to be
free from adults‟ interference. They need to re-think about classism and racism which happen nowadays in certain places and how
they affect humanity. By doing that, they will be critically reading, thinking, and presenting role in their real life.
Jacqueline Rose, James Kincaid, Perry Nodelman, Kimberley Reynolds, and Karin Lesnik-Oberstein in Lassen-Seger, 2006: 10
suggest that this approach “has enabled oppositions between adulthood and childhood to be deconstructed in order to expose and possibly
challenge existing power relationship.” In children‟s stories, there have been many binary opposites such as adultchild, gentlemanpirate,
masterslave, malefemale, whiteblack, humananimal. These binaries can create structure that is problematic in external reality, for example, the
meaning of „gentlemen‟ in Stevenson‟s Treasure Island is the opposite of „pirates‟ meaning. It is because „gentlemen‟ is constructed as „brave‟,
„knowledgeable‟, „neat, „honest‟, „self-controlled‟, and „sober‟. Whereas, „pirates‟ meaning is the opposite of those „gentlemen‟ meaning,
„innocent‟, „dirty‟, „deceitful, „violent‟, „drunken‟ Hourihan, 1997: 16.
