SOURCE: "Nightmares of History—The Outer Limits of Children's Literature," in Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 4, Winter 1983, pp. 20-22.

In the following essay, Bosmajian discusses the "historical nightmares" of slavery, the Holocaust, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as depicted in children's books, including Fox's The Slave Dancer.

In the last two decades the ironic mode—the depiction of the human condition as limited by realistic historical time and space—has made definite encroachments on children's literature, particularly in stories about familial or social trauma. Though reviewers often question if works about child abuse, family disintegration, sex, violence, drug addiction, and prejudice can still be called children's fiction, perceptive adults would agree that such works can both have therapeutic value for young victims and raise the consciousness of youngsters whose environment is stable. There is, however, another category of the ironic mode in young people's literature: literature...