Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Glorifying the Needle and Thread
- 1 On Pins and Needles: Hypermodernity and Hyperclothing Ourselves
- 2 The Perfect Pattern: Dressmaking as a Political Tool in María Dueñas’s El Tiempo Entre Costuras
- 3 Lining with Surrealism: Spaces and Stitches in César Aira’s La Costurera Y El Viento
- 4 Unraveling Gender and Sexual Confinements in Pedro Lemebel’s Tengo Miedo Torero
- 5 An Honest Measuring Tape: Peripheral Places in Frances de Pontes Peebles’s The Seamstress
- 6 Tailoring Peace and Purpose: Sartorial Representations in Children’s Literature
- Conclusion: Final Notions: Toward Consumer Consciousness
- Works Cited
- Index
6 - Tailoring Peace and Purpose: Sartorial Representations in Children’s Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Glorifying the Needle and Thread
- 1 On Pins and Needles: Hypermodernity and Hyperclothing Ourselves
- 2 The Perfect Pattern: Dressmaking as a Political Tool in María Dueñas’s El Tiempo Entre Costuras
- 3 Lining with Surrealism: Spaces and Stitches in César Aira’s La Costurera Y El Viento
- 4 Unraveling Gender and Sexual Confinements in Pedro Lemebel’s Tengo Miedo Torero
- 5 An Honest Measuring Tape: Peripheral Places in Frances de Pontes Peebles’s The Seamstress
- 6 Tailoring Peace and Purpose: Sartorial Representations in Children’s Literature
- Conclusion: Final Notions: Toward Consumer Consciousness
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairy tales. Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest. This need was created by myth. The fairy tale tells us of the earliest arrangements that mankind made to shake off the nightmare which myth had placed upon its chest.
(Walter Benjamin, 373–4)Si un día decidía regresar, el hilo le indicaría el camino.
If he decided to return one day, the thread would lead the way.
(Txabi Arnal, El corazón del sastre)In 2014 the Chilean animated short film Historia de un oso [Bear Story], directed by Gabriel Osorio Vargas, made history; having received an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 88th Academy Awards, it became the first-ever Chilean winner of an Academy Award and the first Latin American animation to win an Oscar. Based on the life of the director's grandfather, who was imprisoned after the 1973 coup d’état, eventually living out the rest of the seventeen-year dictatorship in exile, the enchanting animation and melancholic soundtrack transport the viewer to a familiar historical milieu as lived through a child's innocence. The whimsical and nostalgic tone of the short film confronts directly the horrific human-rights abuses, still a divisive ground regarding collective memory and the complexities of forging ahead as a unified nation.
Continuing with the same modus operandi, contemporary representations in literature and popular culture embrace the child narrator as a unique interpretive voice for reflecting on times of dictatorship. The works rely on the perspective of the child to address the preoccupations of adult audiences. In a similar vein, children's literature treats real historical and societal rifts, oftentimes masked in imaginative magical plots. When approaching children's literature, philosophers and scholars remind us of the latent agenda of the genre. Perry Nodelman, in The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature (2008) warns, “claiming that anything any child ever reads is children's literature is a seriously counterproductive move” (3).
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- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021