Curious About George: Curious George, Cultural Icons, Colonialism, and US Exceptionalism by Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre (review)

Abstract

Children’s Literature Association Quarterly enduring romanticized image of the solitary reader, an image masking the reality that reading is a fundamentally social and relational act” (5). Hagen also raises important questions about what those who mediate children’s reading should not take for granted: “it is imperative to ask questions of books, data sets, archives, libraries, and public programs or policies, regarding how these are designed, compiled, and organized, because the analyses in these essays have highlighted how assumptions about the effects of reading on the reader permeate every aspect of the investigation of reading” (15). Most readers of this review are mediators of children’s literature, one way or another. This book invites such readers to reflect on the varied ways we frame literature for children and make it available, and to consider the impact, intended or accidental, of our assumptions and practices.