아동과 어른의 경계에 대한 질문

Questions about the Boundary between the Child and the Adult: Teaching Children s Literature at a University Class

This paper introduces some themes from a children’s literature class at university, which encourages students to consider their own concepts of children and of children’s literature. Most students who take this class are keen to discover how children feel about books, and to learn which books are good and suitable for children. This class invites students to ask questions about their own motivations and thoughts, and then to think more about what their questions may mean, and about what kinds of assumptions may have been made. This process includes asking questions about the boundary between adults and children, a topic which has been discussed by children’s literature critics. This class, however, does not present these theoretical approaches as something that students learn as a piece of knowledge, but aims to use them as a means to help students to question their own concepts, which they believe are already secure and stable. In relation to this basic question, this paper also introduces examples of reading: The Secret Garden, The Borrowers, and When My Name was Keoko. The Secret Garden suggests controversial questions about the portrayals of three child characters with three different class backgrounds, and the problematic concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘animals’ in relation to the children. The Borrowers shows a pioneering example of narrative in children’s literature and of understanding the concept of a story. While reading When My Name was Keoko, the class can think about the diverse issues regarding children’s history classes and children’s novels based on particular historical events.