Re: Children's books on Columbus
Susan Gardner (fen00sjg@unccvm.bitnet)
Thu, 16 Jan 1992 14:48:08 EST
I've just written an article, "My First Rhetoric of Domination:
The Columbian Encounter [I should have said "invasion"] in Biographies
for Children." It surveys three dozen books, K-12, over a 50 year
time span, in the US. Very basically, I said the representation of
Native peoples has hardly changed; has little to do with grade level;
and is awful. The article will appear in Children's Literature in
Education in early 1992. I CAN recommend Martin Meltzer's 1990 Columbus
and the World Around Him. The Christian Science Monitor had a very
uncritical review of more recent titles in October sometime. Hope this
helps. Susan Gardner, English Dept., UNC at Charlotte. P.S. I was
limited to articles in English, and would love to know about books
for Hispanic children, for example.