Mitchell Kalpakgian - The Mysteries of Life in Childrens Literature: Books that Inspire a Love of Life

Copyright 2014 Mitchell Kalpakgian

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Published by Neumann Press, an imprint of TAN Books. Originally published in 2000. Revised edition with color corrections, cover design copyright 2014 Neumann Press.

ISBN 9781618906731

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Neumann Press

Charlotte, North Carolina

www.NeumannPress.com

2014

Dedication

T O ALL my beloved Armenian family members who provided me an authentic childhood of play, innocence, and wonder; who instilled in me a love of life, a love of family, and a love of God; who made me feel special, loved, and the apple of their eye; who showed me by their example that loving children is the great business of life; whose generosity, hospitality, and kindness formed my heart; and who taught me how to savor the simple pleasures of life: delicious, home-cooked food, conversation at the dinner table, visits to friends and relatives, the bonds of true friendships, the love of learning, the mirth of games and sports, and the wonder of hearing stories of the miracles of Divine Providence in each persons life.

To my wife Joyce and my five childrenGregory, Aram, Mark, Tanya, and Peterwho cured me of intellectual abstraction and theoretical speculation; who brought me down to earth in contact with dirty diapers, hungry stomachs, argumentative temperaments, and chaotic households; who drew my attention from gazing at the stars to real persons, existential situations, particular problems, financial exigencies, and the real nature of things; and who made it miraculously possible for me once again to be a child by becoming a father who loves to play games and sports and read stories as much as any child.

Acknowledgements

O NE of my great teachers in graduate school at the University of Kansas, Dr. Franklyn Nelick, once observed, When something is truly intended for you, it will come your way more than once. The opportunity to study childrens literature came to me more than once. The first time I said no without fully realizing what I was refusing. Having been granted a sabbatical for the spring semester in 1985, I thought of applying for a post-graduate seminar entitled Evil in Image, Experience, and Ideaan interdisciplinary study funded by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation with a handsome stipend for the participants. The logistics of uprooting my children from school, looking for a home to rent for a family of six for just five months, and leaving my home in Iowa vacant for the cold winter season when pipes can freeze discouraged me from filling out the application papers which I had received.

On the day of the application deadline, I received a telephone call from the director of the seminar inquiring about my decision: if I were still going to apply for the Mellon fellowship, late applications would be received. (Perhaps there were not enough applicants for all the available places in the seminar?) In short, I was assured that my chances for acceptance into the seminar were excellent if I completed the formal application forms and returned them as soon as possible. I began to realize that this was meant to be. How often does a college professor on sabbatical receive a telephone call urging him to fill out some papers which will qualify him for an Andrew W. Mellon fellowship and receive a $9,500 stipend? At that time I had taken out a second mortgage on my home to pay for an addition on the house to accommodate my growing family. This gift seemed to fall from heaven. I reconsidered my decision, changed my mind, applied for the grant, and learned that I was accepted for the seminar at the University of Kansas where I had completed my M. A. degree in 1965. All the logistical problems I imagined as obstacles to my sabbatical leave were illusory. A former graduate professor, Dr. Dennis Quinn, who learned of my semester at Kansas, volunteered to look for homes to rent and quickly found one that was ideal for our needsclose to the university and across the street from the Schwegler Elementary School which our children would be attending. If something is truly intended for you, the most complicated dilemmas seem to disappear quickly.

Officially enrolled as an Andrew W. Mellon fellow participating in the seminar on evil, I discovered that the class met only a few times during the week. Even though I wrote a thirty-page paper for the seminar and attended all the guest lectures and paper presentations, I enjoyed the leisure of pursuing other academic interests and desultory reading. Coincidentally (providentially) Dr. Quinn was teaching a class called Literature for Children which immediately piqued my interest and motivated me to audit this classa subject that had aroused my curiosity because of our young children and our regular habit of reading aloud to them. It did not take long before I realized that the study of childrens literature became a labor of love, a subject of far greater fascination for me than the study of evil. All of my spare time that semester was spent reading books that I had never before encountered in my childhood or in my undergraduate and graduate education. What enchantment! Books like Little Women , Little Men and Tom Browns School Days are as heartwarming, delightful, charming, and illuminating as any of the classics that are normally taught in college-level courses. C. S. Lewis once remarked that not to have read the great books was like never having drunk wine, never having swum in the ocean, and never having been in lovein short, not to have lived in a deep, human way. Not to have read the classics of childrens literature, likewise, is to miss one of lifes great experiences and to bypass a treasury of lifes richest wisdom. That a scholar as erudite as Dr. Quinn, a man of immense learning who regularly teaches the great books of Western civilization, could teach these childrens classics with such vibrant enthusiasm and genuine insight, affirmed the profound importance of the formative power of literature in shaping the mind, heart, and conscience of both child and adult alike. As he explained so perfectly in class one day, one of the best ways to understand the mystery of life is to study something as simple as a cell rather than some complex organism like a whale; one of the best ways to learn the truth is to study something as simple as childrens literature rather than something as sophisticated as James Joyces Ulysses . It was meant to be that I study Literature for Children under a master teacher like Dr. Quinn, a person who inspired my vocation more than any other person. Here I was, a forty-four-year-old man and professor of English, auditing an undergraduate class and marvelling at the breadth and depth of Dr. Quinns extraordinary teaching. It was meant to be that I have another chance to learn the things which had escaped me in the past.

The chance to study childrens literature was truly intended for me, and it came my way more than once. I have been teaching it and loving it ever since, and, like everything playful that we do and enjoy for its own sake, for the pure fun of it, it overflows as Cardinal Newman says of liberal education. It has overflowed from auditing a course to reading widely on the subject to teaching classes on childrens literature to writing this book on The Mysteries of Life in Childrens Literature . When something is truly meant to be, it comes from the wisdom and love of God whose Divine Providence orders all things for the good of all.