What's So Funny?
Wit and Humor in American Children's Literature
There was nothing funny about this book, nor even anything interesting. Its cultural relevance has passed.
The author references books and series of which I've never heard (though, he writes as though they are on every bookshelf across the nation - and perhaps they were at one point in time), and which mean nothing without pre-existing knowledge of the characters.
The book is laden with examples to illustrate Cart's point, but actually serve to overshadow it.
Beyond these outdated references, the underlying principles upon which Cart is basing the entire premise of the book are unclear. For example, Cart tries to prove to his readers that animals can be funny (again, with examples from long forgotten books), yet doesn't tell us why they are funny, or what makes them funny.
My impression was that this book would provide an overview of humour in “Children's Literature” but, sadly, it only goes so far as to cover this topic within a limited capacity, and doesn't generalize well across a broader framework.
There was nothing funny about this book, nor even anything interesting. Its cultural relevance has passed.
The author references books and series of which I've never heard (though, he writes as though they are on every bookshelf across the nation - and perhaps they were at one point in time), and which mean nothing without pre-existing knowledge of the characters.
The book is laden with examples to illustrate Cart's point, but actually serve to overshadow it.
Beyond these outdated references, the underlying principles upon which Cart is basing the entire premise of the book are unclear. For example, Cart tries to prove to his readers that animals can be funny (again, with examples from long forgotten books), yet doesn't tell us why they are funny, or what makes them funny.
My impression was that this book would provide an overview of humour in “Children's Literature” but, sadly, it only goes so far as to cover this topic within a limited capacity, and doesn't generalize well across a broader framework.