Something that's been discussed on here for a while.
Speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Ms Fine said: '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?
Gwendoline lay down, angry. She determined to make herself miserable and cry.
Presumably (I'm not from the UK, and have never visited there) even today there are still respectable numbers of middle-class British children, plus a smaller but not insignificant number of upper-class children. Could it be that to the PC brigade these youngsters are seen to be living in an unreal world, which supports outdated values which must not be allowed to pollute the only acceptably realistic world for British children - that which has grown out of working class experiences and values from the past. Who knows?
I think most people in the UK, regardless of class, would find more to identify with in an Enid Blyton novel than they would in a misery memoir or angst novel. Are the working class experiences and values of the past that much different from Blytonesque ones - as you say, 'they' might think so, but I would doubt it! It almost fetishises people - certainly objectifies them, to suggest that suffering, alienation and pain encapsulate working class life more effectively than ordinary family life and comradeship.
But I'd defend anyone's right to write anything! I'm not surprised that more traditional 'middle-class' fiction like Harry Potter or Philip Pullman still sells so well though. Actually, I'm not well placed to comment - I've a life long aversion to so-called 'improving' childrens books that date from the 70s onwards. I do like Josephine Kamm's 1960s stuff though.
Gwendoline lay down, angry. She determined to make herself miserable and cry.
An Australian writer that is often criticised for being too gritty and too bleak is John Marsden. Yet his books are hugely popular with young readers and I think they actually do find them empowering, eg, his most famous series is about a group of young people who go out camping and when they come back they find that Australia has been invaded by a foreign power. It is a bit like the Famous Five in that the young people get up to all sorts of adventures without the interference of adults and actually defeat adults on a lot of occasions. It is much more violent though and the endings of the separate books in the series much more downbeat, eg, the young people may have won a particular battle but it is very clear that their struggle is not over. These books are aimed at an older readership than the Famous Five but I know my nephew loved both series at different stages of childhood(really only a couple of years apart). I think if children are wanting to read the bleak stuff, then obviously there is something appealing about it. I remember really enjoying a series of books set in Northern Ireland (by Joan Lingard) when I was about 11 or 12. They were pretty bleak but I thought they were amazing books.
I don't think grittiness or realism is all bad by any means. Where it becomes unpalatable is if there is endless misery and despair for the characters with no real hope. That said, one of my favourite books is Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, which is not a very cheerful sort of novel, and has a decidely depressing ending. And I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the movie Once Were Warriors, which is set against a bleak urban landscape and has a great deal of bad language and domestic violence. However, I think maybe the secret is good storytelling, so if the writing is skilled enough, and if there is a strong enough message and some memorable characters, then even a very bleak story can still be satisfying.
Roald Dahl once said that you can write anything for children if you include humour, and maybe that is one element lacking in some of the bleaker children's books of today. That, and perhaps the writing just isn't good enough to make the stories compelling anyway.
Best Regards
ROWAN M.
A room without books is like a body without a soul - Cicero
RDMorrell wrote:Roald Dahl once said that you can write anything for children if you include humour, and maybe that is one element lacking in some of the bleaker children's books of today.
Good point, Rowan. *Thinks of his heroine, Miss Trunchbull, who certainly sorted a few bad boys out, in her gloriously un-pc style...*
anything! I'm not surprised that more traditional 'middle-class' fiction like Harry Potter or Philip Pullman still sells so well though. Actually, I'm not well placed to comment - I've a life long aversion to so-called 'improving' childrens books that date from the 70s onwards. I do like Josephine Kamm's 1960s stuff though.
the new Auckland