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The Big Smallness: Niche Marketing, the American Culture Wars, and the New Children's Literature by Michelle Ann Abate

2018; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 46; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/chl.2018.0016

1543-3374

Niall Nance-Carroll,

Themes in Literature Analysis

Reviewed by: The Big Smallness: Niche Marketing, the American Culture Wars, and the New Children's Literature by Michelle Ann Abate Niall Nance-Carroll The Big Smallness: Niche Marketing, the American Culture Wars, and the New Children's Literature, by Michelle Ann Abate. Routledge, 2016. Michelle Ann Abate's The Big Smallness: Niche Marketing, the American Culture Wars, and the New Children's Literature is a timely book. In her introduction, she tracks how in children's literature as in adult popular culture "[n]ichification has become de rigueur" (3). Abate explains that the comparative lack of critical notice for niche texts in children's literature may be a result of their relatively small market impact, but she argues that they nonetheless merit attention for the ways in which they reflect deep divides in United States culture. In her exploration of the fragmentation of the children's literature world, Abate focuses on works crafted not for mass release or mass appeal, but rather to target particular specific sociopolitical interest groups, such as opponents of stricter gun laws (My Parents Open Carry) or advocates for legalization of marijuana (It's Just a Plant). Because these books are often "only reaching a tiny segment of the population—namely, the one who likely already agrees with the messages that they contain" (184), it might be easy to discount their influence. Abate's counterargument draws together diverse sources in publishing, economic, cultural, and children's literature theory and history. She swiftly summarizes the relevant points, covering children's publishing from John Newbery to multinational corporate ownership in two pages, but the brisk pace of the overview keeps the focus on the current moment in children's publishing. She also looks at advice blogs for aspiring writers—which suggest children's books as an "easy" place to start because of their supposed simplicity, [End Page 235] but immediately presents as a rebuttal Maurice Sendak's speech about how "damned difficult" it is to write for children (21). Abate goes on to examine in detail five niche picture books—the aforementioned It's Just a Plant, My Beautiful Mommy, Little Zizi, Maggie Goes on a Diet, and Me Tarzan, You Jane. These are truly niche books and Abate does not assume that the readers of The Big Smallness are familiar with them or with the small-scale public controversies that they sparked. The combination of fragmentation of news audiences and the fast-paced news cycle confined those stories to similarly niche audiences, for instance Fox News's accusation that My Beautiful Mommy was "marketing for doctors" (65) and Entertainment Weekly's naming It's Just a Plant as the "Outrage of the Week" (35). While Abate does not shy away from the dominant controversies surrounding each of the books that she investigates, she also goes on to explore other ideologies that each text promotes—such as the advocacy for child agency in It's Just a Plant, the distinctions of health/wellness in My Beautiful Mommy, the failure and threat of adult male sexuality represented by an intoxicated man in Little Zizi, and the autonomy of the child character in Maggie Goes on a Diet. For Me Tarzan, You Jane, Abate observes that the illustrations may undercut the explicitly heteronormative message by the attention to the scantily clad Tarzan (165). Abate situates this critique in the observations of scholars such as Bruno Bettelheim, Karen Zelan, and Nathalie op de Beeck, all of whom note that the ideologies the author may seek to instill in the book are not necessarily the ones that readers take from it. The extended analyses of each book engage critically with major theoretical perspectives and point out how books authored by amateurs can end up violating norms of more canonical children's literature in ways that are likely not tied to their dominant ideological purpose. For example, Abate explains that Maggie Goes on a Diet features "a daring new type of unfettered child protagonist," while even quite lauded children's books often feature characters who "are routinely relegated to a subjugated status because they are seen as lacking in important knowledge, wisdom, and experience" (128). Drawing on the work of Robert Hurley...