Like most children’s writers I have a day job. My job doesn’t take me away from children’s writing, though. On the contrary, as an academic who specializes in children’s literature I find myself looking at the world of children’s books all over again in the daylight hours – peering through the other end of the telescope, as it were. Next week, teaching resumes after the summer break, and I’ll be greeting almost a hundred students who have signed up for my course on “Children’s Fantasy Fiction Since 1900.”
The students I teach are sometimes surprised to find that children’s books can be studied at university at all. “Aren’t they too simple for that?” they ask. “After all, even a child can read them!”
It’s a natural enough question – but they don’t ask twice. By the time they leave my course (gaunt, shuffling figures, trembly from too much late-night Derrida) they’ve learned that children’s literature can be just as challenging as the adult variety. There’s nothing simple about Peter and Wendy, or The Wind in the Willows, or Where the Wild Things Are, or The Owl Service, or Fire and Hemlock. These are all vastly sophisticated, not to say tricksy, texts, that can be interrogated with at least as much rigour as anything by Margaret Atwood or Ian McEwan – and it’s a pleasure (if at times a mildly sadistic one) to watch this realization dawn.
But even books that are, on the face of it, simpler, demand a different kind of reading from what most students are used to. They’re accustomed to seeing themselves as part of an audience of literate adults and understanding their own reaction to a book as that of a (if not the) typical reader. With children’s books, they discover they’re not part of the target audience at all – or not straightforwardly so – and they have to find a way of dealing with that. They may, for example, imagine how a child might react to a book, and place that reaction alongside their own. But which takes priority? And what is “a child reader” like, considering that there are billions of children alive today, each one different from the rest? Should children’s books be discussed using the same criteria as adult ones, even if children and adults want and need different things? Do children’s books have a special responsibility to teach their readers, or is that just a hangover from a more didactic age?
None of these questions has an easy answer, but by the end of the year I hope my students will at least be able to find their way around the territory. I hope even more that they’ll leave with an enhanced love of, and respect for, the work that children’s writers do.
There’s nothing simple about it.
There’s been a lot of ink spilt recently on the subject of the best way to teach children how to read (or more accurately to decode) written English, and how large a role phonics should play in that process. I’m not going to enter that fray today, except to point out that long before phonics there was another system that promised to get children up and reading in super-quick time. Its name was ITA, or the Initial Teaching Alphabet.
ITA was invented by a member of the Pitman family, whose shorthand system has underpinned the work of secretaries for generations, and like shorthand it relied on the sounds of words rather than on their spellings. Since English sounds don’t correspond to letters, at least in a consistent way, Pitman was obliged to create new characters for children to learn, producing books for five-year olds that looked like the example above. (Being Englished, the text reads: Paul said to his mother, “Jet has taken the meat. Oh look, Jet has eaten the meat.” Paul said to Jet, “Bad dog, Jet.”) The idea was that, once children grew confident in reading using ITA, they would graduate smoothly to standard English spelling.
ITA flourished in the 1960s, when it was taught to many of my own generation (although not to me). Did it work? That it is now a historical curiosity suggests not, and a quick straw poll of my peers reveals that many feel it badly affected their ability to spell in later life. Others, however, are more sanguine, so who knows? Did you learn using ITA - and, if so, how was it for you? I cite it here simply to offer a long perspective on present controversies. We have always had trendy reading schemes to deal with, and children have generally muddled through despite our best efforts. If that's not a positive message, what is?
For all the trouble it causes, I’d be sad to lose the strange system that is English spelling, just as I was sad to lose imperial weights and measures, and pounds, shillings and pence. Like these, English spelling offers a window onto our past and those who lived there. Each word is like a stone that breaks to reveal a fossil, a sudden glimpse of a world in which "k-n-i-g-h-t" really is a phonetic spelling. What is ugly when seen in two dimensions, in four may be a thing of beauty.
Thought for the day:
Though you plough thoroughly through the rough, you should expect the odd hiccough
Someone whose posts always make me stop and think, Charlie - who now writes and posts as Cathy Butler - clearly gave a lot of us food for thought with this, our fourth most viewed post, on how privilege comes in many forms, and can shape both our writing and our world-views without our realising:
Number 3 will be here at 4.00!
Today's Ten Most Viewed posts were set up in advance, but I've just checked the stats, and we have a new entry!
Saturday's very witty post from Cathy Butler has had so many viewings already that it's now our eighth most-viewed post, so if you haven't already read it, here as a special Birthday Bonus is:
There'll be another post from Cathy, under her former name of Charlie Butler, later on today; and the next scheduled post will be along in a few minutes.
Here at ABBA we usually talk about children’s books, and sometimes about children. But what about adults? Not many people realise that adults have books written especially for them, too, and that it’s a thriving market. In order to learn about the world of adults’ books, I’ve asked Moira Skidelsky of The Square Grey Bookshop in Hampstead, a shop specializing in books for grown-ups, to say a few words about the often-mysterious world of adults and their reading...
Buying books for adults – it can be a puzzle, can’t it? Adults have such strange, changeable tastes. Things that seem hugely interesting to you may be matters of indifference to them, and vice versa. They’re passionate about the LIBOR rate one week, and before you know it they’ve moved on to the next “very important subject”. No wonder, then, that when it comes to birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, I have so many children consulting me about what and how to buy.
The first thing to remember is that adults are at an age when they’re trying to establish and maintain their own place in the world. They may like to give the impression of being independent and mature, but they always have one uneasy eye on what the next adult is doing, scared of standing out (too much!) from the crowd. So, it's a good idea to find out about the latest buzz books amongst the adults around you. Take a peek at what your adult’s friends are reading, or look at the posters in bus and railway stations. A word of warning, though. Crazes can be very intense, but they can also disappear with baffling rapidity, never to be seen again. Your adult won’t thank you if you buy them The Bridges of Madison County or The Da Vinci Code when the “in” crowd is reading Fifty Shades of Grey!
One question I always ask customers is: are you buying for a man or a woman? It’s important to understand that men and women like quite different things, which is why in my shop I have separate sections marked “Books for Men” and “Books for Women” – just as children's publishers sometimes have separate lists of Books for Boys and
26 Comments on Recommending Books for Grown-Ups - Cathy Butler, last added: 7/10/2012
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SO true! All of it. And that reminds me I need to finish my Book Vivisection post on The Tiger Who Came to Tea.
Is it an optional course you teach, Cathy? Or do all students have to study children's literature? Would be no bad thing.
It's an option, but I'm glad to say it's a very popular one!
I didn't know about your Book Vivisection site - I shall go and check that out now.
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I was deeply envious of a daughter who did a literature degree with a module on children's books. She did let me look at her notes.
What a wonderful course. The ones I took for my library science degree all focused on new books and disregarded the history. Do you have a recommended reading list that you would share?
Do check out Book Vivisection, Cathy - Anne's dissection of Not Now Bernard has to be one of my favourite book reviews ever (I think your review of Dubliners in the style of the Telegraph review of one of Kath Langrish's Troll books comes second).
Have to say, I'd love to come to some of your lectures. (Ooh! Sudden idea!) Would you consider doing a talk for the Society of Authors some time?
Very good post! I think this kind of course ought to be part of Teacher training too. Too many teachers have not had the time or opportunity to read children's books. It's a shame!
Ms Yingling, the texts vary from year to year, but this year we're studying the following (in chronological order):
J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
Alan Garner, The Owl Service
Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock
John Burningham, Time to Get out of the Bath, Shirley
Philip Pullman, Northern Lights
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
I may as well mention, since this has already assumed something of the look of an advertising pitch, that I work at the University of the West of England.
John, I'd love to give a talk at the SOA! You know where I am. ;)
I got to do a children's literature module last year and it was the best decision I ever made - it was such an awesome course, I loved studying it and I think it's fascinating. And definitely helped with my own writing too. x
I'll put it to the committee at once!
And of course I meant to say that Stroppy Anne's look at Not Now Bernard is my absolute number one all-time favourite review, not just one of them.
I did an MA in children's lit at Roehampton some years ago. It was a wonderful course. Lucky you teaching it!
I would love to hear your analysis of Fire and Hemlock. It's got to be one of the most meta-textual children's books I've ever read... Sounds like a great course.
I did publish an essay that was primarily on *Fire and Hemlock* a number of years ago, in a volume called Diana Wynne Jones: An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom. But the best essay on that book, if you're interested in its intertextual aspects, is undoubtedly her own "The Heroic Ideal", recently republished in her posthumous book of essays, Reflections. It's fascinating.