I’ve got a lot out of doing this blog but it’s turning into a link-blog, rather than my own comments.  So I’m ending here. We have reached the end of the teaching on the course; it’s ‘just’ the final assignment and the 4,000 word End of Course Assessment now.  And my time is about to get swamped again with marking. And I need some time away from the computer, and the sun is shining…

I’d hoped to write 100 posts – just as a round number – and perhaps would have if I’d continued to the end of May. But this is no.86.  I’ve had 156 comments (maybe half of those are me, though, commenting on yours).  And thanks for your feedback via polls as well. I’m guessing that I’ve had around 60 regular readers, though reader numbers have soared on occasions and average monthly views have been between 1500 and 2000. I’ve been visited particularly when mentioned in a student message in the OUSA forum or the EA300 Facebook site; ‘search’ information tells me I’ve most been found by the terms ‘ea300 tutor blog’ but  the searches have sometimes been hopefully specific around essay-writing time.

I’d love your feedback: please leave a (kind-and-constructive) comment.

As you’ll have noticed, I think Children’s Literature is an endlessly rich, enjoyable and stimulating area to study. I hope you have found it so, too.

Best wishes

Cathy

“It’s interesting that the eight titles that really stood out for us buck the current trend for escapism and the paranormal in young adult fiction,” comments Margaret Pemberton, Chair of this year’s CILIP Carnegie Judging Panel. “Their writers have been brave with their choice of subject matter and have confronted some very real issues, but the quality of the writing carries each and every story. Whether the setting is a graveyard, another planet, a fantasy version of our own planet, the suburbs of a German town, a mental asylum or deep in the history of slavery, each offers a vivid and compelling narrative, whether for children of nine and over, or for young adults.”

Greenaway shortlist here

Picture Book Report is an extended love-song to books. Fifteen illustrators will reach out to their favorite books and create wonderful pieces of art in response to the text that has moved them, shaped them, or excited them. From sci-fi to children’s books to fantasy to serious novels, we’ll cover them all. For three weeks out of every month there will be a new illustration every day from one of us along with our thoughts, process, anything we can come up with. Together we will try to excite readers both new and old and capture some of that magic of storytelling.

Hunt identifies the sameness of children’s stories, as for example vulnerable character / times are changing  / the world is a jungle. So there’s the abacus frame.

Then Hunt discusses variables. These are the rows  in my abacus.   On the ‘father’ row, does a story place its bead at the ‘father is near God’ end of the row, or ‘father is toxic’ end? What other rows are there? I spotted:

• girls submit ——– girls centre-stage
• closed endings ——— more open endings (beads falling out the frame?)
• ‘British superiority’ ———the empire talks back, and social issues generally
• writer speaks down to child ——— writer more in tune with child sensibility
• writers create ———– publishers commission.

Well, it may be weird but it made sense to me.

Actually I believe technology can be an enormous force for good; I think it has improved our lives immeasurably, and most of the problems it throws up can probably be solved by the further application of technology. On the other hand, sci-fi stories are generally more interesting if the technology goes a bit mad and eats the cat or something. [...]

Nowadays, of course, the threat of all-out nuclear war seems to have retreated and eco-catastrophes have become the apocalypse-du-jour….

I found the interview through a link from a publishers’-eye view of what teens want – a survey of keen readers, not ‘reluctant readers’, which asked how teens chose their reading. Friends and family influence them more than teachers or librarians; and while bookshop browsing comes out top, website browsing is nearly as influential. Also, the publishers’ report comments:

Since teens read adult titles in significant numbers, it would make sense for adult publishers to reach out to them and for bookseller and librarians to cross promote titles.

Or is that (in our course terms) more a case of what adult writers like to provide for teenagers?

22.2% of young people aged eight to sixteen say they enjoy reading very much and 28.4% say they enjoy it quite a lot. 39.2% say they like it a bit and 10.2% say they do not enjoy reading at all.

The Trust also comments on ‘Parents reading with their children”:

• Parents are the most important reading role models for their children and young people. 71% of young people say that their mothers are their most important role model for reading and 62% say their fathers.
• One in five parents easily find the opportunity to read to their children, with the rest struggling to read to their children due to fatigue and busy lifestyles. Of the parents that read to the children, 67% are mothers compared to just 17% of fathers.
• Recent research has shown that the likelihood of fathers reading to their children is linked to their socio-economic background. Fathers with higher incomes are more likely to read to their children, for example, 21% of dads in £40-50k income homes are the principal reader, compared to just 11% in homes with an annual income of £10-15k.

© National Literacy Trust Literacy: State of the Nation 30 March 2010

There are some relevant comments for us in a review by Christina Hardyment in The Independent:

Thomas Coram’s legendary London Foundling Hospital “for the education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children” has now been blessed with its second excellent children’s novel. But nothing could be more different from Jamila Gavin’s 2000 Whitbread award-winning Coram Boy than Jacqueline Wilson’s first excursion into historical fiction, Hetty Feather. Gavin’s somewhat gothic teen novel brought in every issue under the sun abuse of women, double standards, a lost heir, slavery, even George Frederic Handel. Wilson, writing for the 8 to 12 age group and setting her story a century later when the hospital was much more mercifully run, sticks to simpler muttons: the inner world of one penniless orphan girl.

…

As always with Wilson, innumerable subtle add-ons touch on the issues closest to her readers’ concerns: best friends and physical appearances, shyness and insecurity. The final message is both uplifting and improving. Indeed, Hetty Feather is interestingly akin in its naughty-children-see-the-light-theme to that delightful and genuinely 19th-century romp Holiday House by Catherine Sinclair.

Wilson’s style is given colourful period flourishes Hetty asks for the privy, is “galvanised into action” and “fervently hopes”. A good deal of modern slang slips in she is also “suddenly in a funk”, and “so totally alike” the circus rider she worships. But it never does to over-egg the period vocabulary when writing for modern children, and Wilson’s swift-moving narrative doesn’t miss a beat.