International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature

Egoff 1987:355

Yoko Inokuma, similarly, in discussing writing about minority groups in Japanese
children’s literature, argues that

the didactic motive of the authoress is quite clear... There is no doubt about the

legitimacy of her motive. But both Korean and Japanese readers will find it difficult

to identify themselves with the characters who are only one dimensional... Finally...

his [Imao Hirano’s] desire to enlighten Japanese children...betrayed him into

producing an autobiography of a mediocre literary value... Books of high literary

value are, after all, short cuts to the real understanding of and sympathy with

minority groups.

Inokuma 1987:75, 76, 82

Inokuma’s statement introduces a word which is a mainstay of children’s literature
critics: ‘identification’. The idea of ‘identification’ as an explanation of how and why the
‘child’ reads in turn supports the assumption that the ‘child’ is in the good ‘children’s
book’: the ‘child’ is supposed to be inherently and voluntarily attracted to books in
which it recognises itself. As the Israeli critic Adir Cohen claims:

Writers have become aware that, for the child, a book is a source of satisfaction that

derives from identification and participation, and an expansion of his own

experience. They provide him with an opportunity for catharsis, self-knowledge,

and broadening his psychic experience. The process of reading, identification,

participation and relating brings the reader into the reality of the book in dynamic

fashion.

Cohen 1988:31

But ‘identification’ is caught up in the same debates concerning the definition of the
‘child’. Since the supposed process of ‘identification’ depends on the definition of the
‘child’ the critic employs; different definitions lead to different evaluations of a book’s
ability to lead to the child reader achieving ‘identification’, and this also involves
different concepts of what ‘identification’ actually is and does. The whole discussion,
however, emphasises the persistence and depth of the assumption of the existence of an
essential ‘child’: how otherwise could the notion of ‘identification’ be thought to function
with respect to children’s fiction, which by definition has a complex relationship to
‘reality’? An essential ‘child’ in fiction is still supposed to be recognised by the ‘reading
child’ as ‘real’.
Implicit and overt assumptions about the ‘child’ and children’s literature thus
permeate explanations of ‘identification’, as we saw already in Adir Cohen’s statement.
Donna Norton describes ‘identification’ as a ‘process [which] requires emotional ties with
the model; children believe they are like these models and their thoughts, feelings, and
characteristics become similar to them’ (Norton 1983:20). American critics Judith
Thompson and Gloria Woodard draw the conclusion from this premise that

DEFINING CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AND CHILDHOOD 25