Introduction: Looking Back

Abstract

When the Little Red Hen in The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (Scieszka and Smith, 1992) comes across a blank page in the story she asks: ‘Why is that page blank?’ She attempts to bring order to the narrative with cries of: ‘Where is that lazy narrator? Where is that lazy illustrator? Where is that lazy author?’ This iteration draws attention to the traditional constructors of a conventional picturebook narrative and points the finger squarely at those the Little Red Hen deems responsible for the fact that this book does not conform to the structure of conventional narratives. The narrator has lost control of some of the characters and the author and illustrator contradict each other on any number of occasions. Little Red Hen is becoming increasingly strident as she fears the loss of order and coherence within the narrative. She can perhaps be regarded in the light of a ‘priest’ who, according to Geyh’s (2003) definition, represents traditional literary scholars who pass on and interpret the ‘sacred texts’ and see themselves as ‘keepers of the flame of culture’. In the above context Little Red Hen is insistent on keeping, not necessarily to the sacred texts themselves, but to the sacred processes of narrative, particularly that of the authority of the Author. She attempts to stand outside her age by loudly objecting to the influence of postmodernism on the narrative in which she has found herself.

To attempt to reject postmodernism entirely is to endeavour to stand outside one’s age, to remove oneself from its everyday life and its cultural and intellectual currents. (Geyh, 2003, p. 6)

[W]riters and illustrators of picturebooks over the last thirty years have been doing no more than responding to the tenor of the times, either consciously or unconsciously importing the approaches, techniques and sensibilities of postmodernism into their work. (Lewis, 2001, p. 87)