Philip Nel
Philip Nel is University Distinguished Professor of English and Director of Kansas State University’s Program in Children’s Literature. His most recent books are Crockett Johnson's Barnaby Volume Two: 1944-1945 (co-edited with Eric Reynolds, 2014), Johnson's Barnaby Volume One: 1942-1943 (co-edited with Reynolds, 2013), a double biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (2012), Keywords for Children’s Literature (co-edited with Lissa Paul, 2011) Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature (co-edited with Julia Mickenberg, 2008), and The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (2007). He also blogs at www.philnel.com and tweets as @philnel.
Address: Dept. of English, 103 ECS Bldg.
1612 Steam Place
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-6501
U.S.A.
Address: Dept. of English, 103 ECS Bldg.
1612 Steam Place
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-6501
U.S.A.
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This critical biography examines their lives and careers, including their separate achievements when not collaborating. Using correspondence, sketches, contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, archived and personal interviews, the book draws a compelling portrait of a couple whose output encompassed children’s literature, comics, graphic design, and the fine arts. Their mentorship of now-famous illustrator Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) is examined at length, as is their work's appeal to adult contemporaries such as Duke Ellington and Dorothy Parker. Defiantly leftist in an era of McCarthyism and Cold War paranoia, Johnson and Krauss risked collaborations that often contained subtly rendered liberal themes. Indeed, they were under FBI surveillance for years. Their legacy of considerable success invites readers to dream and to imagine, drawing paths that take them anywhere they want to go."
Philip Nel attacks the notion of tremendous and sudden change in artistic understanding and literary practice. Instead, in The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks he proposes that a series of small but far-reaching changes drew understanding from modernism to postmodernism.
What bonds these two periods together? The constant agent of change, Nel argues, was the avant-garde. Tracking its influence on novelists, popular culture figures, and children's authors, this book re-evaluates how twentieth-century culture has been traditionally divided into "modern" and "postmodern."
Suggesting that a modernism and postmodernism division prevents accurate evaluation of a work, Nel realigns our conceptions of twentieth-century literature, art, and music. Focusing on eight figures--Nathanael West, Djuna Barnes, Dr. Seuss, Donald Barthelme, Don DeLillo, Chris Van Allsburg, Laurie Anderson, and Leonard Cohen--as representative, The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks examines works along a spectrum of political involvement.
This first book to analyze postmodern children's literature revives the radical Dr. Seuss by reading him alongside avant-garde artists. Nel argues that Chris Van Allsburg speaks the internet generation's vernacular, using a surrealist idiom to pose questions that linger beyond his picture books' final pages.
The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks is a nuanced and wide-ranged re-reading of how postmodernism displays art's ability to imagine a better world."
Books, Edited
The long-lost comic strip masterpiece by Crockett Johnson, legendary children’s book author (Harold and the Purple Crayon, The Carrot Seed), collected in full and designed by graphic novelist and Barnaby superfan Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Wilson). Vol. 2 collects the years 1944-1945 of 5-year-old Barnaby Baxter and his Fairy Godfather J.J. O’Malley’s misadventures. The cigar-chomping, bumbling con-artist and fast-talker O’Malley takes Barnaby on a trip to D.C. to serve his term in Congress. Also, Gus the Ghost and O’Malley follow the Baxters to their seaside cottage, enlisting Barnaby to join them on a treasure hunt. Plus Wall St., Ermine hunters, soap salesmen and more! Adored by all ages, Barnaby’s deft balance of fantasy, timeless humor and elegant cartooning will delight even the most sophisticated reader (Chris Ware (Building Stories) loves it), much as it did in its original run, attracting fans as diverse as Dorothy Parker, Charles Schulz, W.C. Fields, Gardner Rea, Milton Caniff, Rockwell Kent and Louis Untermeyer. Black & white with 32 pages of full-color.
Following the growth of his or her word, each author traces its branching uses and meanings, often into unfamiliar disciplinary territories: Award-winning novelist Philip Pullman writes about Intentionality, Education expert Margaret Meek Spencer addresses Reading, literary scholar Peter Hunt historicizes Children’s Literature, Psychologist Hugh Crago examines Story, librarian and founder of the influential Child_Lit litserv Michael Joseph investigates Liminality. The scope, clarity, and interdisciplinary play between concepts make this collection essential reading for all scholars in the field. In the spirit of Raymond Williams’ seminal Keywords, this book is a snapshot of a vocabulary of children’s literature that is changing, expanding, and ever unfinished."
Rather than teaching children to obey authority, to conform, or to seek redemption through prayer, twentieth-century leftists encouraged children to question the authority of those in power. Tales for Little Rebels collects forty-three mostly out-of-print stories, poems, comic strips, primers, and other texts for children that embody this radical tradition. These pieces reflect the concerns of twentieth-century leftist movements, like peace, civil rights, gender equality, environmental responsibility, and the dignity of labor. They also address the means of achieving these ideals, including taking collective action, developing critical thinking skills, and harnessing the liberating power of the imagination.
Some of the authors and illustrators are familiar, including Lucille Clifton, Syd Hoff, Langston Hughes, Walt Kelly, Norma Klein, Munro Leaf, Julius Lester, Eve Merriam, Charlotte Pomerantz, Carl Sandburg, and Dr. Seuss. Others are relatively unknown today, but their work deserves to be remembered. (Each of the pieces includes an introduction and a biographical sketch of the author.) From the anti-advertising message of Johnny Get Your Money’s Worth (and Jane Too)! (1938) to the entertaining lessons in ecology provided by The Day They Parachuted Cats on Borneo (1971), and Sandburg’s mockery of war in Rootabaga Pigeons (1923), these pieces will thrill readers intrigued by politics and history—and anyone with a love of children’s literature, no matter what age."
Articles & Chapters
This critical biography examines their lives and careers, including their separate achievements when not collaborating. Using correspondence, sketches, contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, archived and personal interviews, the book draws a compelling portrait of a couple whose output encompassed children’s literature, comics, graphic design, and the fine arts. Their mentorship of now-famous illustrator Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) is examined at length, as is their work's appeal to adult contemporaries such as Duke Ellington and Dorothy Parker. Defiantly leftist in an era of McCarthyism and Cold War paranoia, Johnson and Krauss risked collaborations that often contained subtly rendered liberal themes. Indeed, they were under FBI surveillance for years. Their legacy of considerable success invites readers to dream and to imagine, drawing paths that take them anywhere they want to go."
Philip Nel attacks the notion of tremendous and sudden change in artistic understanding and literary practice. Instead, in The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks he proposes that a series of small but far-reaching changes drew understanding from modernism to postmodernism.
What bonds these two periods together? The constant agent of change, Nel argues, was the avant-garde. Tracking its influence on novelists, popular culture figures, and children's authors, this book re-evaluates how twentieth-century culture has been traditionally divided into "modern" and "postmodern."
Suggesting that a modernism and postmodernism division prevents accurate evaluation of a work, Nel realigns our conceptions of twentieth-century literature, art, and music. Focusing on eight figures--Nathanael West, Djuna Barnes, Dr. Seuss, Donald Barthelme, Don DeLillo, Chris Van Allsburg, Laurie Anderson, and Leonard Cohen--as representative, The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks examines works along a spectrum of political involvement.
This first book to analyze postmodern children's literature revives the radical Dr. Seuss by reading him alongside avant-garde artists. Nel argues that Chris Van Allsburg speaks the internet generation's vernacular, using a surrealist idiom to pose questions that linger beyond his picture books' final pages.
The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks is a nuanced and wide-ranged re-reading of how postmodernism displays art's ability to imagine a better world."
The long-lost comic strip masterpiece by Crockett Johnson, legendary children’s book author (Harold and the Purple Crayon, The Carrot Seed), collected in full and designed by graphic novelist and Barnaby superfan Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Wilson). Vol. 2 collects the years 1944-1945 of 5-year-old Barnaby Baxter and his Fairy Godfather J.J. O’Malley’s misadventures. The cigar-chomping, bumbling con-artist and fast-talker O’Malley takes Barnaby on a trip to D.C. to serve his term in Congress. Also, Gus the Ghost and O’Malley follow the Baxters to their seaside cottage, enlisting Barnaby to join them on a treasure hunt. Plus Wall St., Ermine hunters, soap salesmen and more! Adored by all ages, Barnaby’s deft balance of fantasy, timeless humor and elegant cartooning will delight even the most sophisticated reader (Chris Ware (Building Stories) loves it), much as it did in its original run, attracting fans as diverse as Dorothy Parker, Charles Schulz, W.C. Fields, Gardner Rea, Milton Caniff, Rockwell Kent and Louis Untermeyer. Black & white with 32 pages of full-color.
Following the growth of his or her word, each author traces its branching uses and meanings, often into unfamiliar disciplinary territories: Award-winning novelist Philip Pullman writes about Intentionality, Education expert Margaret Meek Spencer addresses Reading, literary scholar Peter Hunt historicizes Children’s Literature, Psychologist Hugh Crago examines Story, librarian and founder of the influential Child_Lit litserv Michael Joseph investigates Liminality. The scope, clarity, and interdisciplinary play between concepts make this collection essential reading for all scholars in the field. In the spirit of Raymond Williams’ seminal Keywords, this book is a snapshot of a vocabulary of children’s literature that is changing, expanding, and ever unfinished."
Rather than teaching children to obey authority, to conform, or to seek redemption through prayer, twentieth-century leftists encouraged children to question the authority of those in power. Tales for Little Rebels collects forty-three mostly out-of-print stories, poems, comic strips, primers, and other texts for children that embody this radical tradition. These pieces reflect the concerns of twentieth-century leftist movements, like peace, civil rights, gender equality, environmental responsibility, and the dignity of labor. They also address the means of achieving these ideals, including taking collective action, developing critical thinking skills, and harnessing the liberating power of the imagination.
Some of the authors and illustrators are familiar, including Lucille Clifton, Syd Hoff, Langston Hughes, Walt Kelly, Norma Klein, Munro Leaf, Julius Lester, Eve Merriam, Charlotte Pomerantz, Carl Sandburg, and Dr. Seuss. Others are relatively unknown today, but their work deserves to be remembered. (Each of the pieces includes an introduction and a biographical sketch of the author.) From the anti-advertising message of Johnny Get Your Money’s Worth (and Jane Too)! (1938) to the entertaining lessons in ecology provided by The Day They Parachuted Cats on Borneo (1971), and Sandburg’s mockery of war in Rootabaga Pigeons (1923), these pieces will thrill readers intrigued by politics and history—and anyone with a love of children’s literature, no matter what age."