Sentiment vs. Significance

 

In the article titled Sentiment and Significance: The Impossibility of Recovery in the Children's Literature Canon or, The Drowning of the Water-Babies, Deborah Stevenson (1997) discusses children's literature and divides in two parts Canon of Sentiment vs. Canon of Significance.  One of Stevenson's (1997) purposes is to explain the difference between the Canon of Sentiment, and the Canon of Significance.  In her explanation, she states that "academic canon exists to justify, document, chronicle, or explain, [whereas] the canon of sentiment exists to preserve the childhood of those adults that create that canon and to preserve the affection those adults feel for the books within it". Stevenson (1997) further explains in her article the differences, by writing that "the sentimental canon, then, is formed largely on custom: it favors books that comfort over books that challenge, books that reinforce the status quo over books that attempt to change it; it renders all books safe by their inclusion therein"

 

According to Stevenson’s standards of sentiment versus significance, I would determine Lois Lowry's Number the Stars, is a book of significance. If the sentimental cannon, as Stevenson puts it “favors books that comfort over books that challenge, books that reinforce the status quo over books that attempt to change it,” than Number the Stars does not belong in the canon of sentiment.  The book is significant because it reveals the Danish Resistance and their rescue of the Jews from the Nazis out of the 7,000 Jews living in Denmark only 481 were unable to escape.  In Number the Stars Lowry introduces children to the horrifying acts of war, children read about how families were ripped apart and neighbors who were never seen again all from a child’s point of view.    Number the Stars challenges the reader constantly, for example while reading the book the reader must question whether they could be as brave as Annemarie or Ellen?  Would the reader join the Resistance or turn a blind eye to the event and hope that nothing bad happens to them? In this way Lowry never stops challenging the status quo.  Therefore I believe without question that Number the Stars belongs in the Canon of Significance.