Cirrus@Austlit

In regards to the future of children's literature, 'both its fiction and its scholarship' (5), Kerry Mallan considers three questions: 'How are new times impacting upon scholars in children's literature?; what new directions are offered by children's cultural texts?; what new tasks can we set ourselves [critics of children's literature] before they are set for us? (5). Mallan's main concern is that new skills are needed to navigate a course through 'the turbulent seas of research priorities' and 'appear relevant to new students and university administration' (6). In her discussion of how Internet fiction has 'contributed to the demise of traditional narrative authority and opened up new formulations of the role of readership in narrative' (10) Mallen refers to a number of International and Australians texts, including Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing (2000) and Gillian Rubinsteins' Space Demons (1986) and Sky Maze (1989). For Mallan, it is imperative that scholars in the field of children's literary criticism 'find new ways of making its presence felt both within the academy and outside of it' without adopting a 'defensive position'(14) however, she concludes by drawing attention to the 'lure of new texts, new technologies, new readings, new readers' suggesting it is equally important to consider just what exactly makes us always desire the 'new' over the 'old' (14).