Are we getting there?

This blog posting is my 50th. We’re now half way through the course. I wonder if I’ll make it to 100?

I’m still enjoying the blogging. I often wonder what I’ll find to write about but there’s something about just getting started on a posting, however randomly, that piques my interest and leads me on.   To misquote any number of writers (EM Forster? Saul Bellow?)  ‘I don’t know what I think till I see what I say.’

As the first option for the next assignment involves thinking about ‘growing up’, I started to wonder how this Block’s child protagonists are shaping up.  Here are a few quotations from The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature which might yield some ideas.

Swallows and Amazons: Peter Hunt comments

There is much practical advice and little emotional life, but the characters do grow and mature across the series

Now there’s a chance to disagree with Peter Hunt – ‘little emotional life’?

Tom’s Midnight Garden:   Maria Nikolajeva comments

The novel explores the tension between Tom’s desire to stay forever in the childhood paradise of the garden and his acknowledgment of the necessity to grow up and return to real life.

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry:  Nagueyalti Warren comments:

Cassie’s movement from innocence to awareness to bitterness and disillusionment enables readers to experience vicariously these feelings

And how are you getting on? Are you feeling more like Cassie or Tom?  Are you a tad bitter about the critical approach  and feel it’s destroying your pleasure in children’s literature (as you may have worried at the start of the course),  or are you enjoying the childhood aspect yet now ready to view it all with a more knowing perspective?

Choose your family

Here’s a thought-experiment about ideas of childhood and growing up. If you found yourself wandering lost among children’s literature, orphaned and alone, which literary family would you choose?

Do we all want to be Weasleys? Freedom to be yourself, unconditional love, excitement and fun, with the prospect of growing up into a responsible adult with decent values.

I don’t want to stay with Peter Pan – there’s no growth (though I kind of like the idea of no weight…)  Wendy’s childhood is playful but she has to cope with a lot of nonsense from John about boys being better. I really don’t want to camp out with the Swallows or the Amazons – my imagination wouldn’t take me past the discomforts (yes, I’m a duffer); couldn’t abide Tom and his brother Peter as siblings or their stifling ordinariness (too much like my own); Cassie’s family have it tough and  Mama and Papa dole out punishment too.  Lyra’s guardians allow her an enchanting freedom but she doesn’t seem to be much cared for…

Susan Einzig, illustrator

I’ve found over the last few months that The Guardian is a rich source of Children’s Literature news and discussion. On Tuesday there was an obituary for  children’s book illustrator Susan Einzig, best known for her illustrations of Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958).  Here’s a little  insight into both how she got started,  and a technical innovation of the time:

After the war she began to receive illustration commissions. “There was an upsurge in work and no one to do it,” she told me. “I didn’t feel that I could do it either but I was on the crest of a wave of optimism.” Her first commission, in 1945, came from Noel Carrington and his Transatlantic Arts publishing venture. Norah Pulling’s Mary Belinda and the Ten Aunts was illustrated by drawing directly on to lithographic plates for each of six colours. Carrington had pioneered the use of this process, known as autolithography, using it with his hugely successful Picture Puffin series. Einzig recalled the sense of privilege that she felt as she was sent to the special “artists’ room” at Cowell’s printers in Ipswich, where a team of skilled lithographers were put at her disposal in the production of this charming little book.

I have Einzig’s illustrations inside my copy of Tom’s Midnight Garden, just not on the cover. Here is her illustration for Chapter 9 ‘Hatty’.  There is an illustration at the start of each of the 27 chapters (and the obituary records Einzig’s comment that she was paid ‘just one hundred pounds’ for all the work). The illustrations appear to me as overworked and dark – perhaps compressed for the page – and for me only some of the figures and faces work, but when they do they are touching.  I enjoy most the accompanying details – the bedside table lumbered with sickbed paraphernalia in Ch13, the wrought-iron chair that Hatty skates with in Ch20.

I haven’t bought the course’s set book edition – does that have the Einzig illustrations inside? No illustrator is listed.

(Edit: looking through the Amazon ‘Look inside’ feature it appears that it does – I do hope Einzig is credited somewhere).

Wiki wake up call

Thank you to those who’ve noticed my poll (on the sidebar) and ‘voted’.  It seems to be working.  Please click there, if you haven’t already. Much appreciated.

I am now delighting in reading my group’s assignments  That hasn’t stopped me going off to play a little, meanwhile,  with the course wikis (restricted access: they need an OU login).  One is called ‘events, resources, reviews’ and I’ve just added a link on the resources page to a Times story yesterday about a new Noddy book. The other wiki provides a ‘timeline’ and I’ve noticed some neat reviews of books there. Take a look at the review of Pilgrim’s Progress – it’s a hoot!

Have you had any fun with the wikis yet?

‘Any student can edit a page, or add a new page to the wiki ‘ say the instructions.  There is a preview facility; and  it’s OK to learn to use it by using it, as any errors can be fixed.

So far it seems to me that student attention is (understandably) elsewhere, but the wikis could be a great resource.

And here’s another reminder of how much fun it is to read others’ reviews of books: a link to a 9 year old’s blog where he reviews Tom’s Midnight Garden. Brilliant!