Children’s Reading

[greenilex]

To go back to dovers’s argument: can we consider the two Alice books?

LC is writing about all sorts of things, mathematical and other, which young children couldn’t care less about. But they (or at least I at the time) identify very strongly with Alice and the events of her story-dream. Gradually, as repetition of words and Tenniel’s images sinks into long-term memory banks, we begin to wonder what the Prof was actually on about.

[doversoul1]

That elusive 'quality' …

Yes, there must be some 'story', but some fictional works are billed as 'page turners' - not something that would sell them to me, any more than 'ripping yarns'. Not really thought about this as much as I could, but I think I would regard the story or plot as the surface of a novel. I don't think young children would go deeper than that.

Bach’s original audience

Many children can cope and deserve contemplative novels but as these novels don’t lend themselves easily to classroom discussion, they don’t often get mentioned by teachers and many other ‘concerned’ adults.

Dave 2002

Isn't all fiction story telling, or is there something special about story telling?

I think it’s the other way round: there is something special about fiction/literature. Kafka isn’t telling a story about a man who turned into an insect. That is not his primary purpose for telling this particular story (or is it ).


ferneyhoughgeliebte

In the best writing, "page turning" goes in both directions -

I think a page-turner does mean the forward movement, as ff says 'ripping yarns'. It’s an idiom and not a common verb or noun.

It’s not easy to say why someone is a good storyteller but it is fairly easy to say why someone isn’t a good storyteller although the person seems to like telling stories. When you hear him/her, you are often left feeling like saying ‘yes, but what about it?’. This is because s/he lists the facts but does not communicate to the listener why the story is worth telling.

greenilex
I’ll come back to it later. Chores piling up.

[doversoul1]

To go back to dovers’s argument: can we consider the two Alice books?

LC is writing about all sorts of things, mathematical and other, which young children couldn’t care less about. But they (or at least I at the time) identify very strongly with Alice and the events of her story-dream. Gradually, as repetition of words and Tenniel’s images sinks into long-term memory banks, we begin to wonder what the Prof was actually on about.

Charles Dodgson was one of those people who told and wrote stories from young age, and he was a mathematician. He found an excellent audience in the Liddell children, especially in Alice and Alice story (Through the Looking Glass was more constructed) simply poured out from his mind and brain. Tenniel was one of many illustrators who were available at the time.

I like to think that this was all there was to the books and any implications, analysis, or speculations heaped upon the author and the books have been produced by the latter-day academics who needed to publish papers. The real value of the Alice books is, in the late Humphrey Carpenter’s words (he was also an accomplished academic of children’s literature)

...the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland marks the liberation of children’s books from the restraining hand of the moralists (1984).

[greenilex]

Thank you for elucidation. I used to enjoy Humphrey Carpenter’s programmes and have a signed postcard from him.

LC was certainly more than a moralist, and I tend to think probability and time and size are his interests, but there is surely more...

[doversoul1]

Thank you for elucidation. I used to enjoy Humphrey Carpenter’s programmes and have a signed postcard from him.

LC was certainly more than a moralist, and I tend to think probability and time and size are his interests, but there is surely more...

He certainly made an excellent use of his other resource as good story tellers do. The point is, I think, Charles Dodgson didn’t set out to write a book for children (let alone to impress adults) which in general (often), how modern writers for children do. The Alice story was made into a book by Alice’s request. He certainly had no intention of liberating children's books form moralist etc (the book would have been dead boring if he had). It was purely the result.

[doversoul1]

Mr GG often fumes about prizes and praises in education given to big names and fancy schisms ignoring many who are working hard but quietly. This looks to me an equivalent in children's reading.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/21/philip-pullman-wins-jm-barrie-lifetime-achievement-award

Pullman produced one best-seller that attracted a huge adult readership. Prior to this, he had written a few quite good books for older readers but his one children’s book Scarecrow and his servant published after the best seller was/is deeply pretentious and patronising to the child readers. He is a useful mouthpiece for the media for certain issues but nothing that seriously touches the questions about children and reading.

The award has been quietly acknowledging the people who are worthy of the award but somebody must have decided that it needs big publicity.

https://www.childrensarts.org.uk/what-we-do/awards/

It’s not that I am against Pullman himself. He is a good enough writer but it’s the way in which the media uses him as a convenient answer for all for problems in children’s reading and Pullman seems happy to go along with it. Ah well, why not, I suppose.

[ardcarp]

Treading into the murky waters of social class, and the even murkier waters of how sociologists try to (or feel the need to) categorise it, I've always admired children's writers who try to buck the system. Here's an interesting article:

https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2016/feb/10/childrens-books-a-middle-class-ghetto

[doversoul1]

Treading into the murky waters of social class, and the even murkier waters of how sociologists try to (or feel the need to) categorise it, I've always admired children's writers who try to buck the system. Here's an interesting article:

https://www.theguardian.com/children...e-class-ghetto

Take no notice of it. This is one of those articles that reporters (and authors) write when they have nothing better to write about. It despairs me to find someone who calls him/herself a children’s writer who is concerned with/interested in working class stories to be allowed to publish an article without one word about David Almond, and loads of others for that matter. The article belongs to the same sort of articles about classical music being elitist. Remember our own (!) Ms.Klein writing about Ibiza Prom? They sell. If you are curious or interested in try Skellig and/or Clay by David Almond. Oh, and Allan Ahlberg’s Please Mrs Butler.

[ed.] The Owl Service by Alan Garner was published in 1967

[ardcarp]

I have to say, dovers, that I didn't see the article in quite the same way.

The following is probably not quite relevant to this subject, or indeed to anything, but here goes. I went to a posh direct grant grammar school which had boarders and was largely populated by middle-class kids from an affluent suburb of a big city, You know the sort of thing. However, this grammar school was unusual in reserving some free places for kids from another...largely working class....suburb of the city. The only stipulation was that they passed the 11+ and the school's own entrance test.They were bussed in. It was fascinating how these kids meshed in socially in spite of having backgrounds (and accents) that were different from the majority. I had one particular friend (called Geoff) who was nothing short of a genius. He excelled at everything, especially Latin, and our eccentric Latin master used to delight in rubbing our noses in Geoff's talent. He was one of those lads who walked around with his nose in a book, and I have to say his tastes in reading were far more advanced than mine, absorbing Jane Austen, Dickens, Hardy, E.M. Forster and Orwell when I had scarcely graduated from Arthur Ransome. He wasn't interested in music alas, but as we grew older his talent for repairing motor-bikes...especially mine which was always troublesome.... came in very handy.

I think the point of my reminiscence is that a brain and a good education might have removed Geoff from his working-class background. My own personal axe, which I grind frequently, is that anyone with a brain and a good education is somehow looked down on if he/she chooses some sort of technical working-with-hands career instead of becoming a teacher/doctor/solicitor. In Scandinavian countries especially it is not uncommon for a taxi-driver for instance to have a PhD.

So to continue my ramble, our sixth form had three years in it, the first two for normal A-levels and the third for Oxbridge entrance candidates.(Things were different in those days.) Geoff got three grade As at A-level after two years (which in the early 60s was astonishing) but despite being an obvious Oxbridge candidate, he left school to join the police force. I was a bit surprised because in those days joining the police meant starting off as a bobby on the beat. It was somehow not a career path that seemed appealing to most of us. Our headmaster was livid. But I guess Geoff needed to start earning money doing a 'proper job' rather than swanning around as a student for 3+ years. I completely lost touch with Geoff, but often wonder if there's a chief constable out there somewhere with a good grounding in English and Classical Literature.

Is any of this pertinent to the thread?.

[doversoul1]

I have to say, dovers, that I didn't see the article in quite the same way.

The following is probably not quite relevant to this subject, or indeed to anything, but here goes. I went to a posh direct grant grammar school which had boarders and was largely populated by middle-class kids from an affluent suburb of a big city, You know the sort of thing. However, this grammar school was unusual in reserving some free places for kids from another...largely working class....suburb of the city. The only stipulation was that they passed the 11+ and the school's own entrance test.They were bussed in. It was fascinating how these kids meshed in socially in spite of having backgrounds (and accents) that were different from the majority. I had one particular friend (called Geoff) who was nothing short of a genius. He excelled at everything, especially Latin, and our eccentric Latin master used to delight in rubbing our noses in Geoff's talent. He was one of those lads who walked around with his nose in a book, and I have to say his tastes in reading were far more advanced than mine, absorbing Jane Austen, Dickens, Hardy, E.M. Forster and Orwell when I had scarcely graduated from Arthur Ransome. He wasn't interested in music alas, but as we grew older his talent for repairing motor-bikes...especially mine which was always troublesome.... came in very handy.

I think the point of my reminiscence is that a brain and a good education might have removed Geoff from his working-class background. My own personal axe, which I grind frequently, is that anyone with a brain and a good education is somehow looked down on if he/she chooses some sort of technical working-with-hands career instead of becoming a teacher/doctor/solicitor. In Scandinavian countries especially it is not uncommon for a taxi-driver for instance to have a PhD.

So to continue my ramble, our sixth form had three years in it, the first two for normal A-levels and the third for Oxbridge entrance candidates.(Things were different in those days.) Geoff got three grade As at A-level after two years (which in the early 60s was astonishing) but despite being an obvious Oxbridge candidate, he left school to join the police force. I was a bit surprised because in those days joining the police meant starting off as a bobby on the beat. It was somehow not a career path that seemed appealing to most of us. Our headmaster was livid. But I guess Geoff needed to start earning money doing a 'proper job' rather than swanning around as a student for 3+ years. I completely lost touch with Geoff, but often wonder if there's a chief constable out there somewhere with a good grounding in English and Classical Literature.

Is any of this pertinent to the thread?.

I’m sorry but I don’t get your point in relation to the article. Your story is nothing new or unusual. Our old friend Beefoven was, if I remember his comment correctly, one of those boys. And when those who have brain choose to do ‘lowly’ jobs, they tend to be completely unconcerned with what others think, and usually find the way people treat them quite amusing.

The point I was making in my previous post was that anyone who wants to make a comment on the subject such as of this article should do their homework. There are a long list of excellent children's books set in the background that is far from typical ‘middle class’ lives. In fact it is probably hard to find the 'typical middle class' in the post 1960s children's literature.

[ardcarp]

I think I confessed to a certain irrelevance in post #129 ! However, it would be helpful, dovers, if you would write a short list of 1960s chidren's books and their authors. Not being in the world of education, I probably missed out; in fact I have a gap between those I read in my childhood and those which I began to read to (or bought for) my own children and now grandchildren.

[doversoul1]

I think I confessed to a certain irrelevance in post #129 ! However, it would be helpful, dovers, if you would write a short list of 1960s chidren's books and their authors. Not being in the world of education, I probably missed out; in fact I have a gap between those I read in my childhood and those which I began to read to (or bought for) my own children and now grandchildren.

A Dog So Small by Philippa Pearce and A Parcel of Trees by William Mayne will be a good start.

These are not ‘about’ lives of working class children. It’s simply that the settings of the stories are not what many modern authors and teachers perceive as ‘middle class’. Elider by Alan Garner is another. And as I mentioned earlier Skellig and/or Clay by David Almond although these are much later books.

[ardcarp]

Thanks! I think we have A Dog So Small, but I haven't read it. Will try to get the others.

[DracoM]

Alan Garner is ALWAYS worth it.

[greenilex]

William Mayne to be approached with caution, alas...