In this year’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Narrative (CIRN) lecture, Brandi Estey-Burtt, part-time professor with the English department at St. Thomas University and an associate with CIRN, delivered the lecture titled “How to Eat a Book: The Monstrous (Autistic) Child and Children’s literature.”
During the lecture, Estey-Burtt explained the powerful metaphor of children ‘devouring’ books and how parents and society get cautious about whether their children are consuming “morally nutritious” stories or those “causing brain decay.”
“We chew on ideas. The concept of eating and appetite comes to instead be associated with desire, what we’re hungry for in the stories we encounter,” Estey-Burtt said. “But given the potency of this metaphor, it’s fair to say that stories can also cause indigestion.”
“Sometimes there’s worry about getting heartburn or a stomachache from what they read.”
The CIRN is hosted annually by STU in the honour of John McKendy, a beloved and respected member of the university community and a major funding member of CIRN until his passing in 2008.
During the lecture, she said storytelling is a powerful tool for the development of children. Children’s literature often aims to portray moral values and correct behaviours in society.
However, Estey-Burtt argues that may not be the path to follow, especially for underrepresented children groups like those who are on the autism spectrum.
She said there are two ways she sees autistic children represented in literature: depicted as people who have appetites because they do not have emotional depth, or as kids who are unruly, subject to their appetites and lack self-management.
Both of these depictions, Estey-Burtt said, “position the child as monstrous and non-normal.”
“I’ve seen the language in too many books to count,” she said. “Maybe [autistic children] don’t use spoken language and so people assume that they’re not intelligent, they’re not listening and they’re not capable of empathy.”
Since Estey-Burtt specializes in children’s literature and neurodivergence, she wants to advocate for these groups of children. She has published in academic journals, books and public media. Her recent projects as a creative writer focus on middle-grade novels featuring neurodivergent characters.
Estey-Burtt pointed out that both eating and reading are crucially tied to issues of agency and representation in shared experiences and because of that, it should be done critically.
She argued that many adults try to shield children from ‘adult concerns’ to protect kids’ innocence. However, this ideology often exhibits a deep discomfort with the idea that children’s identities could be diverse and complex, which leads to suppressing stories that offer more positive representations of kids who are different. For example, think of the banned books list and how many are banned for simply having any sense of diversity in terms of race or gender under the messaging of ‘protecting the children.’
Estey-Burtt said that society does not give children enough credit to understand different subjects and explore their curiosity. She said kids should be able to “embrace their own differences, agency and monstrosity,” so that they are shown as having their own desires rather than deviant.
“Parents should be there as a guide, not to moralize, but to teach them critical thinking, to walk with them through these texts.”
