Beverley Pennell Beverley Pennell i(A68497 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 'I Don't Like Your Kind of People' : Cultural Pluralism in Odo Hirsh's Have Courage, Hazel Green Beverley Pennell , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature , December vol. 17 no. 2 2007; (p. 50-58) Beverly Pennell argues that 'children, nation and race' are inextricably linked through disourses that position children as 'the nation's most valuable asset' and 'the key to social advance', and that the significance of multiculturalism within children's literature lies in its ability to enagage the child reader with textual representations of cultural pluralism (50). She draws attention to critics who argue that representations of multiculturalism in Australian children's fiction lean more towards the 'superficial and cosmetic' in dealing with issues of cultural diversity and that 'the mulicultural context is often 'taken for granted' at the expense of the plot' (50). In contrast, she argues that Odo Hirsch's Have Courage, Hazel Green 'proposes that children's acculteration into an officially multicultural society generally devolves into assimilationist and integrationist practices that efface cultural differences ... and exposes policies of tolerance as an unsatisfactory basis for egalitarian social relations' (50). Her close reading of the text concludes that Hazel Green speaks to the importance of minority rights and to the due recognition of culture...and enables child readers to see why the circumstances of multiculturalism are far from straightforward' (57).
1 Allan Baillie's Secrets of Walden Rising as Critical Dystopia : Problematising National Mythologies Beverley Pennell , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature , December vol. 15 no. 2 2005; (p. 31-39) "Allan Baillie's Secrets of Walden Rising (1996) is a novel about 'the politics of history' (Fernandez 2001, p.42) and an examination of the text's significant challenges to the dominant historical stories of its time seems appropriate as Australia's 'history wars' continue. In this paper [Pennell] examines the critical dystopian strategies employed in Secrets of Walden Rising to subvert some of the utopian national mythologies of white settler Australia."
1 Ozzie Kids Flee the Garden of Delight : Reconfigurations of Childhood in Australian Children's Fictions Beverley Pennell , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature , August vol. 13 no. 2 2003; (p. 5-14) Beverley Pennell examines how late 20th Century Australian children's fictions have contributed to transforming the Western concept of childhood.
1 Leaving the Men to Drown? Fin de Siécle Reconfigurations of Masculinity in Children's Fiction Beverley Pennell , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Children's Literature and the Fin de Siécle 2003; (p. 179-187)
1 Shifting Versions of Masculinity in Australian Children's Literature, 1953-1997 Beverley Pennell , 2001 single work criticism
— Appears in: Bookbird , vol. 39 no. 2 2001; (p. 6-11) Pennell encountered significant change with regard to the concept of 'masculinity' in Australian realist children's fiction. She decided a major outcome of her research would be a literary sociocultural map of the shifting paradigms of gendered social relations in Australian society.
1 'You're a Failure as a Parent, Joe Edwards!': Reconfiguring the Male Parent in Australian Realist Fictions for Children 1966-1986 Beverley Pennell , 1999 single work criticism
— Appears in: Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature , April vol. 9 no. 1 1999; (p. 31-40) Pennell argues that 'within the constraints of their historical contexts, both The Min-Min and All We Know allow us to trace that desired shift in focus of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity from insisting upon dichotomy and domination in gender relations to foregrounding a concern for the best interests and aspirations of girls and women' (40). She posits that in the context of the time in which they were written, they may be read as subversive and progressive in their problematization of 'hegemonic masculinity as privileged by Western patriarchy' (31), particularly in their reconfiguration of 'gendered social relations' in the domestic sphere' and the representation of male parents and parenting (31). This she considers as no easy task considering 'the traditional configuration of Australian masculinity is antithetical to all that is deemed 'feminine'' (31).
1 Post-Colonial Resignification of Domestic Spatiality in Australian Children's Fiction Beverley Pennell , 1997 single work criticism
— Appears in: Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature , August vol. 7 no. 2 1997; (p. 38-48) Pennell examines 'some of the changes and tensions in the Australian cultural context which have been influential in altering the ways that domestic settings, or spatial frameworks, are represented in [recent] realist fiction' (38). She focuses on Simon French's All We Know as an example that represents 'the suburban domestic settings as the normal site for Australian children to grow up' rather than the more traditional and dominant image of 'real Australians as people of the land, or the bush' (38). Pennell argues that the dominant spatialized images of Australia, the Bush and the city, sets up a dialectic between two paradigms of spatiality based on the dominant, patriarchal paradigm of binary opposites. Pennell argues that urban/suburban spatial frameworks are extremely under-represented in Australian fiction but the work of Simon French has been influential in 'leading children's literature in Australia way from representations of childhood settings as either pastoral idyll/adventure or outback disaster adventure' (39). Arguing that French's novel 'represents the plurality of spaces in the Australian suburbs' (46), Pennell views All We Know as an influential marker regarding Australian texts which foreground the experiences of children growing up in suburbia (47).
1 Ideological Drift in Children's Picture Books Beverley Pennell , 1996 single work criticism
— Appears in: Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature , August vol. 6 no. 2 1996; (p. 5-13) Pennell discusses the ideological assumptions regarding reality in four children's picture books, The Widow's Broom by American writer, Chris Van Allsburg (1993), Beware, Beware by British author, Angela Barrett (1993) and two Australian texts, Drac and the Gremlin (Jane Tanner and Allan Baillie, 1988) and Mr Nick's Knitting, (Dee Huxley and Margaret Wild, 1988). Pennell examines the interdependent relationship between text and illustrations arguing that the collaboration between author and illustrator produces 'ideological tensions between the visual and verbal text' (5). Pennel claims that all four picture books may be seen as 'progressive' in their overt attempts to address sexism and reconsider 'the issue of gender roles and male /female relationships' however she argues that it is only in Beware, Beware that the reader will find a progressive feminist ideology. In relation to the other texts, the ideological underpinnings of the narratives reflect 'unconscious cultural assumptions' which function implicitly to reinscribe a patriarchal world view' (5). Pennell refers to this as the ideological 'drift' and argues that there needs to be 'consistency of the levels of signification in the verbal and visual texts' to ensure that this 'drift' does not occur in works which aim to demonstrate progressive social attitudes (12).
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