Review of Related Theories

As well as the other theorists, Piagetian theory on developmental stages has been continually developed and expanded to help literary experts determine the best and the most appropriate education, including literature, for children. However, Nodelman observes that the empirical study of Piaget seems to lie on the serious underestimation in seeing children which supposed to be misled by his own unconsciousness assumptions about childhood in general: the assumptions that thought develops in an evolutionary process in which what comes later is superior to what comes earlier 36 . Piagetan theory sees the stages through which childhood thinking pass as imperfect approximations of an ideal adult standard of mental functioning, and assumes that the worlds children invent at earlier stages of development are false and deficient of an objective truth that is only available to mature adults. It is then unfortunate that such classification leads to the inevitable generalization in which children are understood to be a class of people which are so often seen to inherent inferior qualities which distinguish the imperfect children from the perfect adults. These are contrast to what Purbani believes that children are in fact heterogeneous in personality, interests, characteristics, and talents 37 . Coles in Nodelman also demonstrates his disagreement to the generalization in defining children since he reported his experiences with the ‘out-of-categories’ children who are never involved in the Swiss and white middle-class children observed by Piaget 38 . 36 Nodelman, The Pleasures 76. 37 Widyastuti Purbani,. Sastra Anak Indonesia: Kegagalan Memahami Siapa Anak. Yogyakarta State University, Yogyakarta. 2003. Children’s Literature Seminar. 38 Nodelman 83. It points out that the intensity and maturity of their moral attitudes contrast with the categories of some theorists who have moral development all figured out because life is not always a matter of neatly arranged academic hurdles, with grades given along the way. This implies that some kids have various experiences with life while generalization never applies to all cases because it sees children only to be typical and more like each other of being children than unlike each other in being individuals. In fact, some of them have witnessed ‘adults’ matters’ like violence or sexuality, which according to Piaget do not included in children’s experience. As how it is not easy to give definition about who children are, defining Children’s Literature then also becomes problematic. Nodelman strongly criticizes that the developmental stages have led the book selection to almost exclusively and seriously limit children only with literature which fulfils the characterizations Piagetian stages discovered until these children enter the new stages. For example, children are avoided of treating content which is considered too far removed from the child’s limited horizons, optimistic, and active world. This means that applying Piaget’s classifications rigidly shackles children from richer literature since they are kept away from them until they enter the suit stages 39 . Nodelman adds, believing that ‘this is a book that six-year-old will enjoy’ is not only disregarding; but it is also active campaigning against anything distinct or individual in both ch ildren’s books and their readers 40 . 39 Nodelman, The Pleasure 78. 40 Nodelman 79. However, it is also problematical to see t he fact that Children’s Literature is understood as ‘literature for children’, crucially, what means by ‘literature for children’ is in question since the educators, experts, authors, and publishers of this literature are adults. Noticing that a border lies between adults and children, children’s literature becomes bias in essence. A dults read and write Children’s Literature as the observers who are ‘spying’ across the border that divides them from children. Nodelman explains this always means they disengage on how the texts might be read by and thus affect child readers 41 . Therefore, adults tend to focus on how the events described in a book might teach them to have bad manners or good values or whether the language might be too complex to them. This also means that adults assume to know how child readers generally will respond, that is, creating the themes, characters, or plots, which are assumed to be favourable for children. On his observation, Nodelman finds it surprising that the university students, parents, librarians, and other adults often agree with each other about such kinds of assumptions. T he good children’s books should provide simple texts, bright and colourful pictures, and end happily. Too long and too difficult books frustrate children and ruin their interest in reading literary works. It is also commonly assumed that it is important to do books selection based on age because children can enjoy and understand the books that are appropriate to their age. Children are also generally seen to be always excited to the fantasies about animals acting like human. 42 . 41 Nodelman, Reading 235. 42 Nodelman, The Pleasure 72. The other assumptions also say that children only like the books that they easily relate. Boys like stories about boys and girls are interested in books about girls. They do not have any interest to the exclusive adults’ life so that they do not understand sexuality and evil because they can only identify with characters they see as typically children. Therefore, “good” books also should not describe unacceptable behaviours which exposing violence because it will encourage their uncontrolled tendencies. It is also avoided to select books which contain the frightening depiction because it might scare them. Indeed, the best children’s books should teach valuable lessons of life. It is because when children read good book with good values, they will be good themselves. On the contrary, books containing bad values will make the readers imitate to be bad. It is clear that the views in seeing children based on the common assumptions and stereotyping influence the book selection for children. So often it is obvious as adults choose particular book as a good book for children, they have avoided, prevented, and silenced topics which do not meet the assumption. Here it can be seen silencing in children’s literature is being performed. The above ideas might be inaccurate or incomplete, but once it is believed, it will be believed not only true but also the whole truth. The wide society’s concept of ‘children’ as imperfect human beings represents two things. The first is ideology, in which it has affected society’s consciousness to drive people to assume the ways things are obvious and to impose obviousness as obviousness by disappearing. As a result, the assumptions are often taken for granted as the only, whole, and unquestionable truth. The second, the assumptions about children, as part of society ’s ideologies, is clearly always a matter of politic. This means that it relates to the ways in which people get and maintain power over each other. Similarly, the common assumptions about childhood and literature express how adults get and sustain the power they wish to maintain over children and control the amount of power adults want children to have over themselves. Throne also suggests that the understanding on children tends to be filtered through adult perspective and interest 43 . The act of achieving and sustaining control over children by creating assumptions that meet adult perspective and interest has been recently identified as the act of othering and colonialism discussed in the next related theory. Along with Nodelman who objects the evolutionary process from being children to adults, Oberstein offers an alternative to define Children’s Literature. She argues that it should be unnecessary to differentiate children from adult and therefore children’s literature from adult’s literature because it does not explain why some literary works intended for children are to some cases enjoyed by adults like White’s Charlotte’s Web and on the contrary, ones written for adults also please children such as Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe 44 . By less underestimating childhood, as this research also suggests, the definitions of ‘children’ suppose to support to liberate them: to understand that children are not the miniature of adults. They are different from adults in experience, but not in species, in degree but not in kind 45 . They are people that have their own race, gender, and problems but not under comparison to anything including to adult. 43 Nodelman, The Pleasure 75. 44 Oberstein in Hunt, Understanding 15. 45 Rebecca J. Lukens, A Critical Handbook of Children’s Literature. Sixth. New York: Longman, 1999 9. It is along with Nodelman who criticizes the fixed categorization of children based on ages in facts has created debate among experts as Purbani also observes that to define children varies from different time and different community 46 . At least, in understanding ‘Children’s Literature’, it is also necessary to hold the wiser belief that children’s books require the authors who want to write up, not down because White in Oberstein states that ‘Children are demanding… They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly… They love words that give them a hard time’ 47 . It should not be forgotten that children’s literature has to provide the same enjoyment and understanding as does literature for adults with concerns instead of assumptions because the readers are complex instead of typical individuals so that they need the portrayal of truths expressed in the words constituting literature.

1.2. The Other, Colonization, and Children’s Literature

Some children’s literature experts have noticed the tendency of subjugation and domination in C hildren’s Literature as it is seen from the adults and children relationship. Sarumpaet for the example points out that as historically children’s books written in the 17 th century aimed at giving education, Locke 1632-1704 argued that children’s mind is like blank paper Tabula Rasa to write thing done 48 . Within his argument, children possess equal ability to learn, and in this case, adults hold the responsibility in the process of their education. 46 Purbani, Ideologi 24. 47 See Hunt, Understanding 19. 48 Sarumpaet, Pedoman 106. Such argument has come when the period childhood was strongly believed as a very short period of human life, in which it determines the intellectuality, knowledge, and behaviour in their future. Therefore childhood was needed to be explored and drilled with abundance of good education, manners, or experiences. Such concept of childhood has much influenced adults-educators, parents, and writers- for children. Childhood has been taken as the period to fill the ‘blank paper’ and to invest good morality and knowledge that adults are found to work hard to put firmly the disciplines for the virtues that confirming the birth of colonialism and children as the other. Childhood then represents a new world to explore. Children are seen as a group of people needing observation and description Green 1962: 44-45 with adults’ power to describe who children are, what they should or should not do, and how to build them 49 . As Nodelman also recognizes the problematic relation between adult and the child, he finds out a parallel attitude between the European to the East and adults to children. 50 Coming upon the original quotations in Said’s Orientalism, in which they reveal that what it is called as ‘the orient’ has little to do with the actual conditions in the East, it is more on European invention that has had a power influence of how Europeans have not only thought about but also acted upon the East. Generating the same concept of Orientalism, Nodelman sees how often it has parallel insight into the most common assumptions about childhood and children’s literature which conclude the general natures of adults’ dominance upon children. 49 Sarumpaet, Pedoman 107. 50 Nodelman, The Other 29 –35.

1.2.1. Inherent Inferiority, Opposite, Contradictory, and Declined

Children’s less experience and incapability to speak for themselves becomes the reasons for adults to define and to study what children are. In doing so, as what Said forces to come to the uncomfortable conclusion, adults define children differently, so often more inferior, from adults. This places children as the other - the people whom adults are not. This implies that adults can see themselves as rational, virtuous, mature, and normal exactly because they have what they call irrational, depraved fallen, childlike, different children to compare themselves to. Adults need children to be ‘childlike’ to understand what maturity is – the opposite of being childlike. Therefore, children’s literature keeps imprisoning children into their ‘childlike’ so that stories or characters illustrating irrational, depraved, and inexperienced children come to bear because adults, which they call considerably better, do not want to be equalized to children as their other. Still, because the strong need to colonize the weak to make themselves stronger, the contradictory occurs when seeing the group they observe. For example, in one way, adults believe children inherently imaginative so they should be provided with books which will teach them how to be imaginative. In the other words, children need to learn from books by adults how to act like children. To tell children how to act like children is to restore them to the ‘classical’ texts. The classical texts which address to the written descriptions of children in the earlier times including the classic books and texts of children psychology and adults’ personal memories about their own childhood have led to the discovery of the ideal children. Therefore, through literature and life it is necessary to restore children to the original ‘ideal’ childhood they appear to have lost sight of and declined. Indeed, the depraved ‘childhood’ remains inherently stable in the works of child psychology and literature as the ‘eternal truth’ to confirm adults’ eternal’s differences from the other by forgetting the significant changes the times and cultures might bring toward the representation of the inherent cognitive development of all children previously studied by Piaget to the few individual Swiss children.

1.2.2. Inherent Femaleness and Danger

The other similar concept of Said is that Orientalism explains that traditionally and in the history of arts and contemporary pin-up photography, female are always seen as appropriate subject to gaze at by male as female inherently passive and yielding to the convenient of males 51 . Nodelman parallelizes that children also always become adult’s appropriate subject to gaze at as they are soft, passive, dependent, and yielding to the convenient of adults. Therefore, the literature implied is rather talking about how charming children in their passive willingness to be gazed at, how cute they are in their endearing efforts to put on a good show for adults. They are told that their true happiness consists in pleasing adults, bending their will, and doing what they want. The eternal desire and failure to understand the other also confirms something else: its paradoxical attractiveness and danger to the observers. Just like the Europeans who are attracted to the excesses of Eastern, they blot them out to make the orient more like rational European so that it will not become a danger making Europeans more like them, and therefore weakening Europeans. In similar notion, if 51 Nodelman, The Other 29. adults have a secret desire to act childishly for being irrational, lawless, less responsible, or careless, then adults need to protect themselves by making children less childish.

1.2.3. Inherent Adult-Centered

Rose in Nodelman suggests, “we write books for children to provide them with values and with images of themselves we approve of or feel comfortable with. By and large, we encourage in children those values and behaviours that make children easier for us to handle: more passive, more docile, more obedient and more in need of our guidance and more willing to accept the need for it” 52 . As a result, children’s books will frequently reflect obedient, smart, diligent, mature, and religious characters of children are created and selected to make adult convenient and easily handle their children. Sarumpaet says further this is based on the concept of children as investment, the belief of the smarter a child, the prouder the adults 53 . It is clearly seen, in their position as leaders, adults only give priority to their own benefit. Children are the objects of adults’ pleasures and in children’s life and, in fact, adults are the prior because adults are their owner. Zornado also elaborates the detachment parenting culturally enforces split between the mind and feeling and the body of a child. In this kind of parenting, infant learns adults’ determination of the rightness and the wrongness. When the child’s needs and feelings are deemed inappropriate by adults, the repression and further cultural production has begun. As a result, rather than reading a child’s behaviour as a 52 Nodelman,The Other 30. 53 Sarumpaet, Pedoman 107. way of reading and supporting her emotional needs, adults instead read the child’s behaviour as ‘misbehaviour’. As a result, children’s anger is disallowed and their emotion is inappropriate. Children are taught to deny their own body in which adults see them as the source of damnation. The myth of damnation has widely influenced the writers of children’s literature as well as adults as the one who purchase and select to also deny children’s feeling, then to deny felt experiences as a child which implies that children’s books has denied children as the centre of the story. Children’s body and child characters in the story are simply the vehicle and the container and therefore rarely neutral as they are the sites of ideological indoctrination of particular dominant culture. Children’s books therefore keep saying children’s feelings of anger, shame, or longing as bad. As a result, misbehaved children are not the ‘ideal’ character in stories that they do not need to be existed. If they do, the writers as the creator need to punish them at the end.

1.2.4. Inherent Silencing

Within his arguments, Nodelman describes whether adults keep speaking for children in order to prevent them to speak for what adults call as brute things, even though those brute things, in facts, to certain extend, indeed happen in the children’s lives 54 . It is adults who write, edit, publish, buy, select, and read for children to keep speaking at the first. As the result, sexuality, teenage pregnancy, divorce, or drugs are frequently absent in children literature as adults never wish children to talk about 54 Nodelman, The Other 30. those matters. Adults aim at keeping their children to be as pure, ignorant, and innocent of that knowledge as they believe children are supposed to be. Such hard issues often undergo censors and silencing before the texts are received by the implied readers - children. The dominating adults in childhood development and literature are seen as self-confirming description by Nodelman 55 . This implies when adults assume children have short attention spans and therefore never let them try to read long books, then do not in fact read the long books, and they will seem to adults to be incapable of doing that. As a matter of fact books adults claim children will not like get unpublished without any chance to try and to know whether they might like the other kinds of books. Childr en’s literature tends to be a more subtle version of the kind of adult power. Like the case of silencing, describing childhood for children is in the hope that children will accept adults’ version of their life. The fictional children in book are meant to secure the child who is outside the book and to fill the hopes that they will become more like the fictional children adults invented, and therefore less threatening. Children, then, are provided with subtle novels with a description of people and events t hat insist reality to se the world and themselves in adults’ way.

1.3. Silencing, Censorship, and the Innocence of Childhood

Until recently, when parents and educators are asked what harm they think from violent, sexual, other controversial art and entertainment so that they do not want children to know, the answers range from the broadly moral that kids should not 55 Nodelman, The Other 32. be robbed of their innocence to developmental and psychological like fear, nightmares, anxiety, over-sexual behaviour to the imitative that they will mimic violence or sexual activities they are exposed 56 . Yet, according to Heins, as the history also notes, only since the modern era children and adolescents became the object of purity crusaders. Since the 17 th century the youthful sexual innocence has been celebrated especially in Europe. The modern concept of childhood as a peculiarly vulnerable state arose in 17 th century is a period of sexual innocence where libidinous thought should not be exposed. Locke, for example, brought the influence to concern censorship for leading the assumption that amoral literature could create “impressions as real to the mind as those made by other experience.” 57 The social-purity movements, which also viewed children as carriers of the Original Sin who must be controlled and indoctrinated into right behaviours and which viewed sexual desires as sinful, with support from government and professional group have had justified censorship by denying the existence of and maintaining the need to repress the sexual interests of youth 58 . In his rejection toward children’s innocence, Davies in Robinson argues that Children are not inherently innocent and unknowledgeable, but rather are engaged in making meaning in their everyday lives and, as mentioned earlier, actively negotiate competing discourses that they encounter in order to constitute themselves as 56 Heins 10. 57 Heins 21. 58 Heins 26. intelligible subjects 59 . This implies that children, with their struggles and frequently limited knowledge, learn to shape to understand love, sex, and the other knowledge considered as adults’ matters. Therefore, instead of dismissing them as cute and innocent, Robinson argues adults need to learn to respect and admire them as they search for insights into the way the social world works, even while they find themselves trapped in normative versions of identity, gender and human relationships 60 . While to say that children are easily-corrupted being, Heins argues that even scientific experiments result in causal relations of media and the harms it causes and the view of explicitly sexual material’s negative impacts on children are still unproven and questionable. She explores the dilemmas of such researches based on their ‘real’ effects the scientists tried to measure when the presentation of sexuality may be frightening or arousing for some children and may be uncomprehending for the other ones. Indeed, Heins also disproves the widely believed imitative theory in the relation between childhood and media by presenting the ambiguities, contradictions, and deficiencies of media effects studies proving psychological effects and imitation 61 . Heins also clearly presents the example in which New York’s juvenile delinquents have been related to children’s reading comics and this camouflages the 59 Kerry H. Robinson, Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood: The Contradictory Nature of Sexuality and Censorship in Children’s Contemporary Lives New York: Routledge, 2013 13. 60 Robinson xi. 61 See Heins 237-242. Heins analyzes B andura’s widely applied experiment on Bobo Dolls proving children’s imitative behavior which results in questioning Bandura’s validity and accuracy. fact that 93 percent of all children in the city had read comics and they were not all juvenile delinquents 62 . Therefore the meaning of statistic too raises problems. When researchers rely on statistical correlations to demonstrate imitative effects from ‘graphic’ or ‘violent’ media, the ‘significant’ results do not mean ‘important’ because they do not likely happen just by chance. Rather, the research’s results are only ‘attributive’ and probabilistic’ instead of ‘deterministic’. For instance, teenage pregnancy occurred long before soap operas portrayed illicit sex and children misbehaved before the appearance of Tom and Jerry cartoon and comics. In other words, trying to tease out the effects of the ‘indecent’ art and entertainment on human behaviour is impossible because human behaviour is complex. Defining the concept of ‘bad’ or ‘gratuitous’ art or entertainment also suffers from vagueness, variability, and subjectivity. That the depiction of war in Saving Private Ryan is educational or gratuitous is indeed ‘coloured by viewers’ psychological, emotional, and cultural background that quantitative measurement becomes ludicrous.” 63 Even worse, she argues, the conclusions range from non- empirical predictions that the ’obscene’ art or entertainment will lead to the end of literacy to assertion that their very existence is responsible for the increased rates of sexual or violent crimes. The scientific validity can also causes problem when it is only the suggestive and compelling data reported 64 . As a matter of fact, many parents and educators have also been driven by the outgrown fear of the effects that they want to prevent children from the exposure of 62 Heins 240. 63 Heins 238. 64 Heins 239. pornography and violence. In this case, the parents would prefer to have bad reality not to exist. Unfortunately, one way for them to try to make reality go away, at least in their own mind, is not to allow their children to have access to printed material that affirms that reality. Censorship grows out of fear and parents fear the outside world. They fear the influence of the world on their children so that they want to control so tightly that they constantly feel threatened. In a sort of false hope, adults are trying to make all the ‘bad’ things in the world simply disappear. They assume that things like premarital sex will not occur if kids never read about it 65 . Heins adds, this also presents the ignorance it might make toward Aristotle’s catharsis – the therapeutic or “drive reduction” effects of entertainment or the attitude of the audience of tragic dramas which responds to depictions of even the most appealing even ts not with anger or frustration, nor by imitating the characters’ gruesome deeds, but by identifying with their sufferings and emerging exhilarated and emotionally drained. Aristotle in Heins also argues that catharsis not only permitted feelings that in real life contain a morbid and disturbing element’ to find relief, but produced a ‘distinctly aesthetic satisfaction’ whose effect was to ‘purify and clarify’ the emotions 66 . Heins explores by giving example in which reports in the early 1990s presented that adolescents who like heavy metal music –commonly associated with aggression – listen to it especially when they are angry, that the music has the effect of calming down and dissipating their anger and that adolescents generally favour 65 West 147. 66 Heins 229. music as an aid in coping with their problems 67 . “We will not be led into fascism or rape or child abuse or racial expression through aesthetic experience”. On the contrary, “the more practiced we are in fantasy the better we will master its difference from the real”, Steiner writes 68 . Dealing with this, Heins argues that youths are not endangered by explicitly sexual material and therefore argues that there is no simple causes might be taken by government to censor material without violating their rights. She asserts that censorship is not the best way to prepare youngsters for their adult life. Censorship may also frustrate young people’s developing sense of autonomy and self-respect, and increase their feelings of alienation 69 . Heins provides solutions that beside being sure the real, not just symbolic, harm results from youthful pursuit of disapproved pleasures and message before mandating indecency laws, internet filter, and the other restrictive regimes, it is better to socialize children, training in media literacy and critical thinking skill, comprehensive sexuality education, literature classes that deal with difficult topics rather than pretending they do not exist, and inclusion of young people in journalism and policy making on this very issue of culture and values 70 . In short, it can be said that how the strict regulation of children’s knowledge, often in the name of protection or in the child’s best interest, can ironically, increase children’s prejudice around difference, increase their vulnerability to exploitation and 67 Heins 236. 68 See Heins 253. 69 Heins 12. 70 Heins 11. abuse, and undermine their abilities to become competent adolescents. Therefore, it is important to be aware of the censorship and being too handy to make books as scapegoat for the human social problems.

1.4. The Pleasures of Children’s Literature

The problematic Children’s Literature lies in the fact that it has the implied readers [read: children]. This means the writers [read: adults] imply a reader who takes pleasures they offer in order to attract most of their attention. Nodelman further adds that each text written for children frequently implies a child reader with specific knowledge, comprehension skills, and tastes 71 . Nevertheless, when the study of concept of childhood is no longer highly distinguished, this research takes its stand to agree that the pleasures of children’s literature is in essence the pleasures of all literature. Nodelman suggests that there are several kinds of pleasures in literature, which also address to the pleasures of children’s literature. The pleasures lead to one basic pleasure, that is, the pleasure of conversation or the dialogues between the texts and the readers; and between readers and other readers about the texts. This relates, at first, to the ways in which pictures, words, and ideas allow the readers to visualize people and places they have never actually seen or thought before, even though some of them are only the unfamiliar versions of similar life experiences. In her discussion about setting, Lukens argues, if setting is essential to the readers’ understanding of story, the writer must make them see, hear, touch, and 71 Nodelman, The Pleasure 18. even smell the setting. It is as much the writer’s task when writing for children as for adults to evoke setting, described either in paragraphs or in phrases woven into action, by the details of colour, sound, figurative comparisons, and other stylistic means. As well as in visualizing people, Lukens suggests, in increasing readers’ belief in the characters’ reality, readers need to come to know them through the words they say, through the words they look and how they act. Readers are eager to believe in the characters’ experiences in the chosen words 72 . The readers are also pleased with the words themselves. It is about the way their patterns can make sounds and can combine with each other to express beauty or even fears. Skilful authors know what to do with words. They add, subtract, experiment, and substitute words to create the style that best tells their stories. The skilled writer also chooses words to become setting, plot, character, and theme to make good writing. Kids, like all literature readers, like to have their emotions evoked: laughing or feeling the joy and the pain that the characters experience. With the organized emotional involvements, the delays of the suspense, the climaxes and resolutions, and the coincidences that create challenging plot, readers also get pleasure in the reading process. This includes the way in which the readers accept or deny the structures of words, pictures, and events consciously form meaningful patterns and wholeness. The pleasures that might satisfy readers are also about the finding of mirror for their selves. Readers like to identify themselves with the fictional characters, even though sometime it is also pleasurable to have literature as a place to escape, in which 72 Lukens 196. readers can step outside of their selves at least imaginatively and experiencing the lives and thoughts of others’. In doing so, creating characters makes the same demands of how readers respond to other human beings. They need to see similarities to their selves, or if not similarity, recognizable traits and responds. Readers may say they ‘identify with’ someone. It is true, Lukens argues that not that every character be exactly like readers’ self, but that a character should be credible 73 . Further, readers find it more enjoyable to give comments and to consider the meaning on literary works and then to discuss it with the others and their various or similar responses. It is also important to note that all readers are delighted when they recognize gaps and when they learn to fill them in their reading. Readers then deserve pleasures on the formula-repeating the familiar experiences of stories they have enjoyed before and even newness which means experiencing different ones; and the last but not the least, readers also fond of gaining insight into history and culture through literature. The elabor ation of kinds of pleasures in Children’s Literature becomes necessary to relate to the issue of silencing because so often the act of censorship in children’s books prevents writer from being honest so that this weakens the texts to be logical and therefore prevents reading of gaining literary pleasures.

1.5. Therapeutic Effects in Voicing the Silenced in Children’s Literature

Hunt claims that children’s literature brings some very fundamental concerns of its existence. The concern is about what children’s reading is for. The dulce et utile 73 Lukens 83. philosophy has been inherent when Children’s Literature is discussed. The books for children have to be pleasant, and in the same time, they essentially have to be useful 74 . Children’s books have been used for different purposes at different times because they are related to the primary concern of what ‘good’ books are for. Some books are ‘good’ because they are time-passers, others are for acquiring literacy, others are ‘good’ for expanding imagination and ‘good’ for enforcing certain social attitudes, others are good for dealing with issues and coping with problems, and most books do several other things. However, Post- structuralism reminds that knowledge as well as ‘good’ is constituted through discourse partially and politically shifts and changes according to the power relation. This offers multiple positions and viewpoints to construct the ‘good’ literature. One of the old certainties about ‘good’ literature suggests that the texts are good because they are worth studying for two main reasons: they are wise, and they are beautiful. Nodelman invites to question this on who decides what wise or beautiful is as well as the reason why we should trust their judgement. He also invites to criticize the possible vested interests of the decision maker in identifying the desirable beauty 75 . When in fact many people, including literary experts, disagree about the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ literature, then there is an alternative to see Blume’s condemned works for being inappropriate for children as a work of literature which 74 Hunt, Understanding 11. 75 Nodelman, The Pleasures 5. can also be good to be useful to assist readers dealing with social and personal development problems by employing Bibliotherapy approach. When related to its application in helping children in facing hard times in their growing up personality and behaviour recently in life that is now full of risks, bibliotherapy, coined by Samuel Crothers in 1916 in formulating the use of texts in treatment is not supposed to be a new approach to be the practical outcomes of reading children’s books even though the systematic use of the treatment is relatively recent 76 . Texts cover ones that have the power to soothe, awaken, probe, and inspire like fiction, poetry, drama, or biography 77 . It enforces the belief that there is relationship between the vicarious reading and personal emotional and behavioural development of a child as reader. 78 As it is combined with the variety of issues addressing rich problems and difficult times of young people like the issues frequently silenced from Blume’s novels including sexuality, bad realities, and misbehaviours, bibliotherapy can become an innovative approach to help children deal with them. By using text biblio- as medium through which the helpinghealing - therapy is considered to occur, Pardeck formulates, bibliotherapy has major goals as follows: a to provide information on problems which are experienced or may be experienced in the future, b to provide insight into problems, c to stimulate discussion about problems because books help verbalizing reader’s thoughts and 76 John T. Pardeck and Martha J. Markward, “Bibliotherapy  : Using Books to Help Children Deal with Problems.” Early Child Development and Care 106.1 1995: 75. 77 Newell 24. 78 Newell 23. feelings leading to therapeutic resolutions, d to communicate new values and attitude d to create an awareness that others have dealt with similar problems to prevent a person feeling alone, isolated, and different, and f to provide variety and alternative of solutions to problems to be generated in the real life 79 . Indeed, it can be applied not only for helping clients with emotional problems but also helping them understand basic development needs for all ages and for dealing with many different kinds of issues. Helps from books indeed include two general kinds. The first is the slow and steady growth into a deepened self from the experiences of reading literature with timeless values. The second is the immediate first-aid for emotional illness which may be found in the here – and – now books with a mission, not lasting literature, but as necessary as a shot of penicillin for a particular infection. Basically, bibliotherapy works in three major steps. At first in the identification process, a child with problem, for example, must be able to identify with the character in the book which experiences similar problem to his or her own. He or she first needs to recognize the character’s anger, frustration, or expectation. When needed, a counsellor can play role as helper in interpreting the motives of the story characters and understanding the relationships among the various characters in the story. At this stage, too, the child makes inferences regarding the meaning of the story and to apply the meaning to the problem confronting him or her. The assistance of identification can be through questions like “How are you like or unlike the boy or 79 John T. Pardeck, “Bibliotherapy: An Innovative Approach for Helping Children.” Early Child Development and Care 110. 1 1995: 83. girl in the story?” or “How is what’s happening with you like or unlike what happened in the story ?” can help clients to see commonalities. As reader is able to identify with the story character, he or she is helped to moves into the catharsis stage in which he or she must experience an emotional release and involvement in the story. As a counsellor might be needed, he or she can monitor the reader’s reaction to the literature, the degree of similarity between the reader’s own emotional experience and the problem being considered, and the emotional experiences of the reader through the identification with the story character. Question like “When is the problem not a problem?” assists identifying and expanding effective coping and problem solving methods already in place. The last step is insight where the reader begins to recognize solutions to a problem through the texts. This enables him or her to come up with new ways of dealing with problem. At this stage, the reader needing guidance can also be helped by practitioners by delivering questions such as “Did you like the way the problem was handle d in the book?”, “Do you think it would work if you tried it?” and “Is there anything you would do differently to make it work better for you? ” would likely prompt further exploration of solutions. Even though bibliotherapy can be used as a self-help, it is important to note when bibliotherapy process is guided by practitioners’ intervention, there are several points to consider in the book selection for guiding the clients in having the treatment. According to Schrank it is necessary to consider: a problems or situations that are of interest or relevance of the client; b characters development to allow for sufficient identification; c story depth that enriches the meaning of life; d for children, situation in the story that are appropriate for their developmental level e reading levels that are appropriate to the readers f stories that are well written g opportunities for the readers to offer alternative solutions to situations or problems and h stories that are free of sexist language and racial bias. In addition to that, practitioners have to develop trust with the client so that treatment can run well. However, considering the appropriate stories when it is based on developmental level can create biases since appropriateness is very subjective that it might prevent particular issues not being taken simply because they are regarded as ‘inappropriate’. It is also important to note that in doing book selection, it is necessary to consider that the object of bibliotherapy is not to overwhelm the child as client with his or her feelings or concerns. Instead, practitioners can tell that the book is enjoyable and discussion can be available for sharing. Again, the child’s right to refuse to read the book or not to finish it must be respected. Such a refusal may indicate that the child has found the book too threatening or simply uninteresting. Beside with one person, bibliotherapy might also be implemented either with small or large groups. The benefits increase when it is applied to a group since it creates a sense of belonging among members and provides the sense of security. The group dynamic allows members to share common experiences and this will lessen anxieties. Working in a group, as Pardeck Pardeck argues, may lead an individual to develop a different perspective and a new understanding of problems. 80 80 Carla Vale Lucas and Luísa Soares. “Bibliotherapy  : A Tool to Promote Children’s Psychological Well- Being.” Journal of Poetry Therapy 26. 3 2013: 142. Since bibliotherapy is not simply the activity of reading, but the combination of reading with a method of reflecting on the reading, many researchers have discussed activities to engage in during bibliotherapy. The activities especially for group setting might include creative writing, art activities, discussion, or role playing 81 . In this study, however, bibliotherapy is not understood to be an absolute way of gaining the result proving th at texts like Blume’s novels might successfully help the young readers coping with their problems and difficulties in their real life. It is because despite the multitude benefits of bibliotherapy mentioned in the early discussion, there are also drawbacks that must be considered that are admitted by the experts in this field. The first is because the treatment is influenced by availability of books or other materials on certain topics. Also the client may have no motivation for reading, may be defensive when discussing the characters or may also project their own motives on to characters, thus reinforcing their own perceptions and solutions. Many books are also too message-driven, focusing too heavily on the problems experienced by the characters instead of the plot. Other limitations can also be pointed dealing with the facilitator who has limited knowledge of human development and developmental problems, and inadequate knowledge about appropriate literature. As a result, Gladding Gladding in Pardeck Markward say the limitations can be overcome through the regular implementation of it and the use 81 See Pardeck 85. of group discussions and other activities and therefore, facilitators need to be properly trained which can cause another problems 82 . Because bibliotherapy takes several forms and can be used in many setting, judging its effectiveness is also admitted difficult. Pardeck notes that numerous studies have been completed reporting the inconclusive evidence on the effectiveness of bibliotherapy even though studies have found positive changes in mood and behaviour in study participants after receiving treatments 83 . Riodan and Wilson claim measuring the effectiveness is hard especially because the therapy is subjective and individual in nature 84 . It is also important to acknowledge that bibliotherapy should not be used as separate therapy but rather what, when, and how it should be used as a part of a treatment plan 85 . This means bibliotherapy is not effective or desirable as a standalone treatment, and recommends that it be combined with other types of therapy. As a matter of facts, silencing difficult or ‘inappropriate’ knowledge from young readers prevent them from having the opportunity to gain the advance benefits of bibliotherapy as this study implies. However, the last but not least, this thesis needs to say that bibliotherapy approach here is partially adopted through Judy Blume’s novels for their process how the texts can heal and create their cathartic effects without any observation on the guided reading needing the involvement of 82 See Lucas Soares 140. 83 Pardeck Markward 75. 84 Richard Riordan, et al., “Bibliotherapy  : Does It Work?” Journal of Counseling Development 67. 9 1989: 506-508. 85 See Pardeck Markward 76. particular readers as clients and of trainers or practitioners in practical treatment of therapy using the novels aiming at measuring the effectiveness.

3. Theoretical Framework

In answering the research questions listed in chapter one, it needs to employ several concepts to be the framework of thinking and to help the analysis. In finding the voiced silenced-issues in Blume’s novels, it is necessary to understand the factors influencing the silencing. In doing so, this research is conducted under several approaches. At first, by questioning the validity of some ‘truth’ and facts about the definitions of childhood and children’s literature, drawing insight from Post- structuralism helps to uncover the common beliefs and the problems of generalization in understanding children’s literature in which children are seen as a group of homogenous people with their innocence, happy life, and fragility . Then, Post- colonial approach is, too, borrowed in this research to dig out the power relation between adu lt and children which leads to adults’ determination for children’s book selection, silencing, or censorship. While in finding the relations between the presence of those voiced realities and the literature pleasures they can provide, a concept in the pleasures of children’s literature is used like how post-structuralisms question the certainties about the pleasures of children’s literature. It is also based on the argument breaking the boundaries differing children’s literature to adult’s literature that the concept of pleasures in children’s literature here is then the pleasures of all literature. It includes how the intrinsic and extrinsic elements of a literary work embody pleasurable texts PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI and ho w children’s right to gain the same kind of pleasures with adult’s texts is well considered. In addition, to relate them to the practical uses of literature, a concept about the practical use of literature is then partially applied with bibliotherapy as its approach. By using its ability to connect fictions to their function to help readers dealing with reality, this method is partially employed; however, this research does not take its technique for the practical application of treatment by presenting real readers as the clients to measure the efficiency.

CHAPTER III Romance, Sensuality, and Sexuality

Childhood innocence is mobilized to regulate children’s access to certain knowledge, with sexual knowledge as the most controversial area according to Robinson 86 . This observation leads this thesis to examine how sexuality and sensuality appear in the selected novels of Judy Blume as well as the kinds of pleasures and the uses of her books for young readers as they deal with the most frequently absent topics among the other silenced areas. The reference is to the sexual-related issues found in the novels includes romance, puberty, teenage pre- marital sex, and the birth-control. In voicing those silenced-issues, this research finds that the novels offer some pleasures of reading: the pleasures of words and the pleasures of storytelling. More than that, this chapter also elaborates how voicing sexuality in children’s books can be therapeutically beneficial to answer the mystery of taboo areas as well as to spark discussion on difficult matter like sex especially when authors appear to be one of trusted adults for the disconnected kids.

1. Childhood’s Romance, Sensuality, and Sexuality: Against Childhood

Innocence Coming as the author who wanted to write something she knew to be true in her pre-teen perspectives about growing-up characters, Blume has been at the center of controversial battles to ban or censor for scaring parents with controversial issues perceived as corrupting children’s innocence and increasing children’s sexual 86 Robinson 18.