MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Kids’ literature does something special for kids: it takes them seriously as philosophers. Because kids’ lit is scaled to the kid experience, these authors produce spaces of discourse that not only speak to childhood, but speak for children as robust thinkers and philosophers. Louise Fitzhugh created the privileged and problematic child character Harriet who showcases the importance of kids’ minds to adults, but also to her kid readers. Using the posthumanism framework of object-oriented ontology (OOO) and carpentry, I argue that taking kids seriously—as thinkers and philosophers and theorists—offers a radical reconsideration of childhood as not a time of lack, but rather a time of accumulation and makership. Moving away from the metaphorical—and even literal—childhood as a time of adult-to-come, OOO makes the case that children practice in an idealized and romanticized space philosophers often yearn to return to, while simultaneously troubling that adult-made construction with real bodies, real production, real thoughtwork.