Fox Be Latent: James Marshall and the Easy Reader Tradition

  • Shannon Ozirny University of British Columbia

Abstract

The often overlooked easy reader genre offers some of the most enduring characters, and subtle authorial constructions, in children’s literature.  In his 9 Fox books, James Marshall plays a never-ending game of hide and seek with readers, in that every encounter with the texts consistently reveals something previously unnoticed.  This seeming bit of magic is due to the vast amount of latent or implicit content in the books.  An analysis of this latent content will follow a brief background of the Fox series and its hilarious mammalian protagonist.  An analysis of the series’ history, hero, and hidden gems will serve to finally articulate Marshall’s true contributions to the easy reader tradition.

Author Biography

Shannon Ozirny, University of British Columbia
Savid Beagley is Lecturer in Children's Literature and Literacy at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, Victoria, Australia, where he teaches units in Genres, History, Australian and Post-colonial children's literature. He has previously taught in secondary schools, and has been a school and university librarian.
Issue
Vol. 13 No. 2 (2009)
Section
Emerging Voices
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