Artful stories: biography and the picture book

We seek to know, through similarity and difference , what others’ life histories are, as part of a conversation, within and without us, of the individual in society and history. (McCooey, 1996, p.25) Life stories, biography and autobiography, are ambiguous and complex narratives. In them the distinctions of writer and narrator, researcher and subject, fact and fiction become blurred. The process of narrating also raises ethical problems (Malcom, 1994; Morrison, 1998) from the right to privacy to ownership pf one’s own, or another’s story. When notions such as there are applied to children’s literature they become more contentious. Memory is a fundamental aspect of children’s literature. Adults write for children and in so doing they rely on observations of children, what children may say about being a child and, most strongly, memories of their own childhood. The role of memory is one of dispute and intense debate, (Crews, 1997; McCooey, 1996) in disciplines from psychology and psychoanalysis to the historian and the biographer. Its functions become imperative and multiple in life stores written for children.