Wider reading

OK,  judging by the poll, you’re either ready to read far more for this course; or you really enjoy reading for it

Well, not really; obviously I can’t draw any such conclusion from it. But if you are open to some wider reading / inspiration, try Write 4 Children. Here are some snippets from its second issue.

Michael Rosen, An Apology for Poetry:

Much of children’s lives are circumscribed by explicit and implicit rules. These come ultimately from all the adults around them. No matter how hard we as adults try, we find it very difficult to grant children autonomy over parts of their own lives – even when there is no justification in an argument for health and safety, or psychological danger or whatever. I look at our new kitchen and realise that at present we’ve put a lot of things out of reach of the children. Is there any reason why children’s shouldn’t be able to get a bowl or a cup by themselves? Why have we built in dependence even into our kitchen?

Laura Atkins, White Privilege and Children’s Publishing:

I have been disturbed by the recent controversy over the cover of a book called Liar, written by white Australian author Justine Larbalestier. In this case, American publisher Bloomsbury put a white girl’s face on the cover of her book, even though the author has stated in her blog post about the cover that she meant the girl to be black…..Recently there has been another controversy as Bloomsbury once again published a book featuring a young woman with ‘dark skin’ using a photograph of a very white-looking girl on the cover (Magic Under the Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore). And again, after an outcry developed on the blogosphere, they have decided to change the cover. The same has happened with another book, The Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stuart and published by Little Brown. In this case a mixed-race boy was illustrated as white on the front cover, and Little Brown have said they will change the covers. A new Facebook group, ‘Readers Against Whitewashing’ was founded in January 2010, bringing together blog postings, articles and news on the subject. So that’s three times in the last year that publishers have changed covers based on blogger response. What seems to be missing is a clear and transparent response from people who work in publishing.

Bridget Carrington, Many Leagues Behind: researching the history of YA fiction for girls:

Throughout the century and a half I examined [1750-1890], those novels which, through the heightened reality of their plots, and the engagement of their female protagonists, realistically explored the complexities of life-choices for their young audience were the YA fiction of their time.  These works were the ‘crossover’ novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as assuredly as Salinger, Cormier, Pullman and Burgess are of the twentieth and twenty-first.

Virginia Lowe, I Love Monsters – Pretend Monsters in Books:

Young children are constantly underestimated. Cognitive psychologists work towards an average so that one can make some clinical study of each child. This naturally differs from analysis and discussion of adults and adult material. No one would dream of saying ‘thirty-six year olds will find this aspect difficult’ or ‘no one under fifty understands that other people have minds’ – ultimately, some will and some won’t, it’s acknowledged as a personality thing. Whereas with children, it tends to be taken as axiomatic…. And the findings of the psychologists, average as they are, grossly underestimating children at the peak of their ability, have often not made their way to the children’s literature critics, who then, and even sometimes now, seem ignorant of the fact that neonates can recognise photos of their mothers, for instance – that they can clearly interpret pictures (Barrera and Maurer).

How time changes things

Julia Eccleshare claims in today’s Guardian that time has robbed Swallows and Amazons of its universality.  I’m not sure that middle class children having a holiday sailing adventure  in the countryside, fortified by loving parents and a knowledge of Robinson Crusoe, was ever universal; but she makes a clear statement that is in line with many of our course ideas:

Attitudes to children, interactions between adults and children and especially wider social attitudes change swiftly, and books sometimes get left behind.

She also discusses realism and fantasy:

Fantasy has an additional attraction for authors as it allows them to write about children being unsupervised and taking risks. In real life, children are no longer able to do this, and authors are strongly warned away from showing children in potentially “risky” situations. Authors also need to avoid situations in which a child talks to a stranger. In other words, “real” stories ­reflect the very proscribed and watched state into which we have ­corralled children. To counter this, contemporary novels often begin with a child losing a mobile phone, freeing them from outside interference. In fantasy and ­historical fiction this isn’t an issue and the child can be bold, brave, cowardly or sensible. But, of course, there are good stories set in the real world.

I think her column – if ‘book doctor’ continues’ – may be a fund of sensible ideas.

She’s  certainly right that time changes things. Check out today’s lovely Guardian photo with one showing her earlier haircut

Hot topics

Course materials are being despatched! I haven’t got mine yet  but fortunately I do have early access to the course website.

Block 1 introduces us to some of the major discussion areas: instruction/delight; popular/prestigious; realism/fantasy;  adult/child.

Activity 1.17 asks us to be aware of our own criteria for thinking about what are suitable topics for children’s books. As it says, these discussions are very emotive.

And here are a couple of emotive blog posts today discussing this very issue. Meg Harper quotes a teenage view that  ‘It’s a violent world – get used to it“  and wonders who is likely to buy or publish, let alone write, books for young children ‘about dodgy street gangs’:

It’s great that ‘Crossing the Line’ is out there. But where are the books for younger children reflecting our modern world? Is there a raft of books that I have missed? Who is going to publish them? Supposing they are published, which librarians will stock them and which teachers will be bold enough to read them to their classes? And, most importantly, who is going to write them?

If street-gang  violence is too edgy, what about a topic such as the Holocaust? If this is a suitable topic for children, what is the appropriate age to introduce it? Bookwitch today suggests that:

The Holocaust is probably one of the worst topics to discuss, because we automatically feel so bad about it. But I’m about to suggest that talking about an atrocity like that, is similar to letting your child know about sex or whether Father Christmas really exists. If you think it’s too early, it’s because you have already left it too late.

And co-incidentally I read yesterday a critique of children’s literature about Hiroshima, which argues that neither a sentimental, nor a horrified, response are sufficiently challenging representations of history:

Abstract Because the story of the destruction of Hiroshima is sensitive, Canadian Eleanor Coerr chooses to tell it to a North American audience through the eyes of a dying child in a version that neither interrogates nor critiques how the A-bomb could have been avoided. The absence of moral questions leaves open the wound of history painful to Japanese writers whose versions of Hiroshima more urgently insist that a repeat of such massive destruction is unthinkable. And yet, they too aim their message at a home audience and, as such, fail to challenge the official, popular histories recognized in both countries today.

Makito Yurita & Reade W. Dornan, 2009. Hiroshima: Whose Story Is It? Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 34(3), 229-240.

These discussions about what, and how, children are told – in fiction and of course elsewhere – will run and run.

Happy endings?

Anne Fine is reported in yesterday’s Times* as ‘[deploring the] ‘gritty realism’ of modern children’s books’:

In the Fifties, when a strong child was dealing with difficult circumstances, there was always a rescue at the end of the book and it was always a middle-class rescue.

The child would win a scholarship to Roedean or something, and go on to do very well. That was felt to be unrealistic and so there was a move away from that. Books for children became much more concerned with realism, or what we see as realism.

But where is the hope? How do we offer them hope within that? It may be that realism has gone too far in literature for children. I am not sure that we are opening doors for children who read these books, or helping them to develop their aspirations.

The article goes on, however :

Amanda Craig, who reviews children’s books for The Times, said…. that Fine was also capable of producing “utterly bleak” books such as Road of Bones, about a boy growing up in totalitarian Russia. The title of the book, which was shortlisted for a Carnegie Medal in 2007, refers to the bones of political dissidents who dared to oppose Stalin.

So just within the article there is evidence that Fine’s views are more nuanced than the reporting suggests. And a blogger who was also present at the Edinburgh book festival event where Anne Fine was speaking writes

I’m of the opinion that she spoke exactly those words that were quoted in the Times yesterday, but I didn’t feel then that she meant it quite as people are interpreting it. (Bookwitch)

Fine herself has written, on her website biography page:

I studied Politics and History at University, and the interest in political issues shows up in many of the books.

I don’t  believe that Fine’s views can be as simple as represented.

Mind you, I have An Interest. One of my favourite books is her Book of the Banshee (a breath of fresh air and sanity for anyone with teenage children). And I was thoroughly impressed by her when she turned up – years ago – at my tiny local library to give a talk.  She spoke eloquently and passionately to her packed audience for an hour, proving in so many ways her dedication to the public library service and to books for children.

I admit to warming to her particularly because – elegant as she certainly is – she started then by explaining “This is how I look without the makeup that those lovely publicity people at the publishers do for their ‘author photos’.”

* You might like to check out this article because it also quotes Melvin Burgess and Anthony Browne, authors on our set books list.