Book Smart

Joanne Cantor, professor emerita of communication arts, “Teddy’s TV Troubles,” Goblin Fern Press, 2003.

Something nasty on television has upset Teddy Bear, but, being a little guy, he doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe it.

Fortunately, Mother Bear has it all together. She’s been there herself, having been scared as a cub by TV shows.

“Words don’t work with young children,” says author Cantor, the nation’s leading authority on the effects of televised violence on children. Her previous book, “Mommy I’m Scared: How TV and Movies Frighten Children and What We Can Do To Protect Them” (Harvest Books/Harcourt, 1998), dissects children’s fears and outlines possible antidotes to media-induced terrors.

“There are so many parents who need this information but never would have time to read a 250-page book,” she says. “It occurred to me that a storybook with pictures would be very useful to help a frightened child.”

Cantor says “Teddy” is firmly grounded in research, drawn from some 20 journal articles and “Mommy,” distilled to this 500-word children’s picture book, which has been test driven on children at Heritage Elementary School in Waunakee.

While “Teddy’s” target audience is 2- to 8-year-olds, parents ideally will enter into the experience with their children — and before an actual need arises, she hopes.

“Then parent and child will know in advance what to do if the child gets scared, and can refer to the book again,” she says. “Or they can read it at bedtime. I’ve heard from parents who say it really works to help the child go to sleep happily. “That’s why I call it a storybook, an activity book and a going-to-bed book rolled into one.”

For information on “Teddy’s TV Troubles,” including television tips for parents, visit http://www.joannecantor.com/teddypage.html.

Michael Bernard-Donals, English and Jewish studies, and Richard Glejzer; “Witnessing the Disaster: Representations of the Holocaust and the End of Memory,” UW Press, 2003.

Bernard-Donals contributed the essay “Beyond the Question of Authenticity: Witness and Testimony in the Fragments Controversy” to this collection he edited with Glejzer. Together they wrote the introduction and co-authored the essay “Teaching (after) Auschwitz: Pedagogy between Redemption and Sublimity.”

The essays in “Witnessing the Disaster” move past the notion that the Holocaust as an event defies representation. They look at specific cases of Holocaust representation and consider their effect, structure and authenticity, and the kind of knowledge they produce. Taken together, they consider the tension between history and memory, the problem of eyewitness testimony and its status as evidence, and the ethical imperatives of Holocaust representation.

— Barbara Wolff