Children’s Reading

[ardcarp]

A much overlooked writer of children's books was Eric Linklater, best known as a 'serious' novelist, historian and poet. However The Pirates of the Deep Green Sea is a rollicking fantasy adventure where two brothers magically become able to live underwater, befriend an octopus and meet Davy Jones. The Wind on the Moon (which IIRC won a prize for children's literature) is about two sisters who turn into kangaroos to rescue thir father. So no shortage of imagination there, and IMHO, very beautifully written.

[Pulcinella]

Mind you, Enid Blyton (oh so un-PC) got many kids on thr road to reading. One thing children love is stories which are 'away from parents' and maybe a bit anti-authority, something that even Ms Blyton managed and Roaldk Dahl excelled at.

Changing the subject slightly, I remember reading so-called 'classics' such as Lorna Doone, Kidnapped, Coral Island, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, etc at quite a young age. Nowadays the language and density of text is very difficult for kids to grasp, even if such books are read to them. Strange how in just a couple of generations things change so much. Question: Is J.K.Rowling the new Enid Blyton?


PS. I read Black Beauty, Swiss Family Robinson and even......Heidi.

One of the struggling readers I work with is enjoying Five go to Kirrin Island.
And don't forget that 'George' is quite a tomgirl (is THAT a PC expression these days?).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And don't forget that 'George' is quite a tomgirl (is THAT a PC expression these days?).

? Always referred to as a "tomboy" when I was a kid.

[doversoul1]

Mind you, Enid Blyton (oh so un-PC) got many kids on thr road to reading. One thing children love is stories which are 'away from parents' and maybe a bit anti-authority, something that even Ms Blyton managed and Roaldk Dahl excelled at.

Changing the subject slightly, I remember reading so-called 'classics' such as Lorna Doone, Kidnapped, Coral Island, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, etc at quite a young age. Nowadays the language and density of text is very difficult for kids to grasp, even if such books are read to them. Strange how in just a couple of generations things change so much. Question: Is J.K.Rowling the new Enid Blyton?


PS. I read Black Beauty, Swiss Family Robinson and even......Heidi.

IMHO, that goes to Jacqueline Wilson. She is a genius for writing escapist stories (nothing wrong with them in themselves) that look as if they were genuinely concerned with the important and pressing social issues yet always end with a happy end* of one sort or anther. Soap for children in the best sense. They just can’t get enough of her books.
* this may not be correct with her more current books as I am rather out of touch.

As for reading classics (most of those were not written for children, by the way), there were practically no ‘quality’ books written for children after the classics such as Alice, Pooh, and The Wind in the Willow, and before the late 1950s. The children who were ‘bookish’ read what was available and those who weren’t simply did not read books until they were old enough (if they did read then). Swallows and Amazons came out in 1930 but it wasn’t exactly every child's taste.

ferneyhoughgeliebte

? Always referred to as a "tomboy" when I was a kid.

There are no actress these days. They are all actors.

[oddoneout]

Mind you, Enid Blyton (oh so un-PC) got many kids on thr road to reading. One thing children love is stories which are 'away from parents' and maybe a bit anti-authority, something that even Ms Blyton managed and Roaldk Dahl excelled at.

Changing the subject slightly, I remember reading so-called 'classics' such as Lorna Doone, Kidnapped, Coral Island, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, etc at quite a young age. Nowadays the language and density of text is very difficult for kids to grasp, even if such books are read to them. Strange how in just a couple of generations things change so much. Question: Is J.K.Rowling the new Enid Blyton?


PS. I read Black Beauty, Swiss Family Robinson and even......Heidi.

For some reason I missed reading most of those. I didn't choose them at the library and we didn't have them at home. We did have a good few of my mother's childhood books such as Rudyard Kipling, A A Milne, Arthur Ransome, and also other rather less well known ones such as The Isle of Wirrawoo, and At the back of the North Wind. I also read a lot of Enid Blyton, much to the disgust of both sets of grandparents for some reason. I was a precocious and voracious reader and was allowed the run of the bookcase so often read adult books rather than children's. Perhaps the oddest result of that access was reading Grantly Dick-Read's book on Natural Childbirth at about age 8...

[Pulcinella]

? Always referred to as a "tomboy" when I was a kid.

I think you're right: a PC over-correction.
I did wonder as I was posting.

[ardcarp]

Someone mentioned Arthur Ransome. Many kids absolutely adored his books...and I blame him for my rather expensive hobby. He wrote great stories (very much in the 'kids away from parents' genre) and his characters (John, Susan, Titty, Roger, Nancy, Peggy, Dick and Dorothea) were given clear personalities. Strangely his writing style doesn't read aloud well (in my experience) but kids who get hooked on reading them just have to read them all....several times over. One book, Missee Lee, was most unusual involving kidnapping in a foreign land and an uneasy relationship with adults. It's been described as 'metafictional', whatever that means.

[greenilex]

The whole question of piracy as approached in Missee Lee is pretty important just now. Fabulous book.

[Richard Tarleton]

Changing the subject slightly, I remember reading so-called 'classics' such as Lorna Doone, Kidnapped, Coral Island, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, etc at quite a young age. Nowadays the language and density of text is very difficult for kids to grasp, even if such books are read to them. Strange how in just a couple of generations things change so much.

Indeed. Kidnapped - "written as a boys' novel and first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886" - has a very complex plot, set against a background of real events and real people who, it may be assumed, might have been better known and understood by a younger readership in the late 19thC. I read it much too young, without understanding the background of slavery in the Carolinas, the '45 and its aftermath, the iniquity of the Campbells , etc. etc.. I came across a reference to the murder of the Red Fox (Colin Campbell of Glenure) by Allan Breck Stewart only the other day, in one of the books I've been reading about the Jacobites - Campbell was on his way to evict a number of Stewart tenants

The murder of the Red Fox, as Glenure was called, was never solved, but James Stewart, a half brother of [Stewart of Ardshiel in Appin] was arrested and tried as an accessory, and Allan Breck Stewart was accused of the crime but escaped to France. James Stewart was tried before the Duke of Argyll , chief of the victim's clan, and a jury packed with eleven Campbells , so the verdict was a foregone conclusion: Stewart was hanged.

The Appin Murder caused great anger among Jacobite clansmen and government ministers, but for different reasons. Highlanders believed an innocent man had died, but the Hanoverians were determined to make an example of James Stewart, a recalcitrant Highlander. The murder sent a shiver down the spine of King George himself to think that the Highlanders dared to perpetrate such a crime against one of his representatives.....

Much was written at the time, and afterwards, and the mystery of the Appin Murder entered Highland legend and Scottish literary history when Robert Louis Stevenson used the story for the plot of his novel, Kidnapped. The fate of Allan Breck Stewart, who escaped, is as great a mystery as the murder itself. James Mohr Macgregor [son of Rob Roy Macgregor] who was spying for the British government in France at the time , attempted to kidnap him , but failed, and Allan Breck simply vanished - creating another legendary character in the post-'45 story. - Jacobite Spy Wars, Hugh Douglas - my emoticons

This was mostly lost on me at the time.

[ardcarp]

I should also mention that I loved Tom Sawyer and especially Huckleberry Finn, though as Richard says above, without necessarily understanding their social and political background. OMG, they're all flooding back.....Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies too.

A really excellent young teenage book written recently is Holes by an American, Louis Sachar. It starts off when a young kid is falsely accused of stealing a pair of sneakers (trainers to us) and is sent to a boot camp. It nears the end in a splendidly fanciful way (IIRC) with a donkey eating onions up a mountain. It's engagingly written and a real page-turner. And most UK kids don't find any problem with US words or dialogue.

[Barbirollians]

I remember when I was a child in the 1970s and about 10 Leon Garfield was the author we all wanted to read . Edward Blishen who had collaborated with him and as later for many years the presenter of a A Good Read on Radio 4 came to talk to my Year 6 class in modern parlance as he was a friend of our teacher . He held us transfixed for an hour a brilliant speaker who did not talk down to us at all .

[greenilex]

Screen time however riveting to the addict cannot compete with real writers and storytellers going into schools. Where budgets are squeezed and school libraries left unstaffed it gets harder and harder to arrange these memorable real-life encounters.

[MrGongGong]

A really excellent young teenage book written recently is Holes by an American, Louis Sachar. .

Which seems to be on the tables of every school I visit in multiple copies

[ardcarp]

Oh dear. That'll wreck its popularity then.

[doversoul1]

I remember when I was a child in the 1970s and about 10 Leon Garfield was the author we all wanted to read . Edward Blishen who had collaborated with him and as later for many years the presenter of a A Good Read on Radio 4 came to talk to my Year 6 class in modern parlance as he was a friend of our teacher . He held us transfixed for an hour a brilliant speaker who did not talk down to us at all .

Great to hear a name of post-1960s author. Yes, the publication of The God Beneath the Sea with the great Charles Keeping’s illustrations was (so I hear) quite an event in children’s literature.

ardcarp

A really excellent young teenage book written recently is Holes by an American, Louis Sachar

As I have not read this, this is not about this particular book, but the problem with a lot of recent young adult books are that (almost) any amount of sex, violence, drug etc. are allowed in the story that are never allowed in books for children, but because they are for ‘kids’ after all, the solutions to the problems are often something that you’d not take seriously in books for adults. You could say they are collectively modern Enid Blyton for teenagers, even for adults too.

If you (not you in person) are happy as long as kids are reading, all is well but if you’d like to see children’s mind nourished, you'll need to be quite choosey.