Children's Literature

V

The Golden Age of Children’s Literature

Foremost among British writers of magical fantasy were Mary Louisa Molesworth, Charles Kingsley, George MacDonald, and Lewis Carroll. Molesworth and MacDonald are now almost forgotten, although Molesworth’s The Cuckoo Clock (1877) has been televised and MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1871) has appeared in audiotape and animated cartoon versions. Kingsley’s The Water-Babies (1863), a rambling fantasy packed with philosophical arguments and social propaganda (it was instrumental in outlawing the employment of children as chimney-sweeps), has become a classic. However, the most famous books of this period are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by the Oxford cleric and mathematician, Lewis Carroll (the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). These books are extremely complex, full of logical, mathematical, and language games, and enthusiasts have found in them intricate codes (all of which may well be there) that suggest that the books are religious or political satire. Even the drawings of the original illustrator, Sir John Tenniel, a famous political cartoonist of the day, seem to be part of the labyrinthine design of the books. Whatever Carroll's obviously complex intention, the books are highly original, and in many ways anarchic: Alice moves through a world of mad adults, and is one of the earliest examples of a child who asserts herself in a repressive Victorian world. The books have been translated into most languages, and there were conferences and celebrations across the world in 1998, the centenary of Carroll’s death.

The period between the publication of The Water-Babies and World War I has often been called the “golden age” of children’s books (both in Britain and the United States), and many books have remained popular enough to be filmed, serialized, and rewritten. Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886), by Robert Louis Stevenson, brought psychological complexity to the boys’ adventure story; Long John Silver, though a murderous villain in Treasure Island, is the best-remembered character. Frances Hodgson Burnett, a transatlantic bestseller, whose books were often as much for adults as for children, wrote novels in the romantic tradition, which used fairy-tale, wish-fulfilment plots. The Secret Garden (1911), A Little Princess (1905), and, to a lesser extent, Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) remain popular.

Edith Nesbit helped to change the way in which writers addressed children, with domestic comedies such as The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), fantasies such as The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904, and televised in Britain in 1997), and a book with a serious underlying socialist theme, The Railway Children (1906), which was made into one of the most famous British films of the 1970s. The emphasis in all Nesbit’s books is on the family, and the way in which children, even if deprived of one parent, can help and support each other.

Probably the most outstanding and influential writer of the period, however, was Rudyard Kipling, whose The Jungle Book (1894) is a celebration of Empire, initiation, and codes of behaviour, and has none of the comedy of the highly successful Walt Disney film, which bears only the very faintest resemblance to the tone of the original. Kipling’s Just So Stories (1902) are generally regarded as the best examples of stories originally told by an author to his children and later transferred to print, and Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906), a series of historical stories set around Kipling’s Sussex home, is often thought of as his best work.

Probably the most famous “children’s book” of all—which some critics feel, in many ways, is not a really a children’s book—is The Wind in the Willows (1908; Kenneth Grahame). Although parts of this book were apparently written for Grahame’s son, Alastair, the book seems to be largely about adults retreating from a changing world. Grahame’s personal fears of political change, of the growing power of women, and the destruction of the countryside by the motor car all appear in the book. Even the anarchic character of Toad, which is commonly said to appeal to children, is ultimately repressed by the other characters.

One of the most famous characters in children’s literature, Peter Pan, first appeared in an adult novel, The Little White Bird (1902) by Sir James Barrie, and in various stage productions from 1904. There are two prose versions of the story, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906) and Peter and Wendy (1911), and Barrie changed the ending of the story several times.

Notable books from the United States included the “Uncle Remus” stories of Joel Chandler Harris (published between 1880 and 1906), in which he retold African folktales that had been brought to the Southern states with the slaves. While the adventures of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the rest have become part of modern folklore, the books have now become controversial for their alleged racism. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) by Mark Twain provides a lively picture of boyhood escapades in a Missouri town on the Mississippi River in the period when frontier life was still a recent memory. Its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), is a candidate for the title “the great American novel”, and its appeal goes far beyond the select audience of young readers. Perhaps the most famous American children’s book, although it is generally agreed that it is stylistically very pedestrian, is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, which gave rise to many sequels (some by other writers) and was made into an equally famous film in 1939.

Australian children’s literature began to emerge from the shadow of British books in this period, with Seven Little Australians (1894; Ethel Turner) and Mary Grant Bruce’s A Little Bush Maid (1910), the first of 15 novels set on the Outback sheep station, Billabong. In Canada, Sir Charles G. D. Roberts’s Red Fox (1905) and Ernest Thompson Seton’s Grizzly (1900) joined Anne of Green Gables to make a notable trio.

A few non-English-language classics have become naturalized into English; among them are Heidi (1880-1881; trans. 1884) by the Swiss writer Johanna Spyri, whose heroine is a spirited little girl living in the Swiss Alps; The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883; trans. 1891) by the Italian writer Carlo Collodi, whose hero is an irrepressible wooden puppet; and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (trans. 1907) by the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf, whose main character is a boy who rides over Sweden on the back of a goose.

A

Illustrated Children’s Books

Illustrated texts have their own history. As printing techniques developed, so more subtle colour became available. The three most famous 19th-century British artists were Walter Crane, whose first series of toy picture books was issued between 1865 and 1873, Kate Greenaway, whose stylish (and fashion-setting) children appeared in a series of Almanacs from 1883 to 1897, and Randolph Caldecott, whose four-volume set of deceptively simple line drawings, illustrating favourite nursery rhymes and works such as The Diverting History of John Gilpin, Three Jovial Huntsmen, and Come Lasses and Lads, was published between 1878 and 1885.

Among other outstanding British illustrators was L. Leslie Brooke, best known for the humorous, detailed animal drawings in his Johnny Crow’s Garden (1903). The small, intricate “Peter Rabbit” books of Beatrix Potter, which treated small children with respect (she is witty, ironic, and does not avoid taboo subjects like death), have become part of world folklore. The character of Peter Rabbit was adopted in stories written by Thornton Waldo Burgess, the American author of children’s books on animals and wildlife. Also in the United States, the retelling of English legends The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883) and The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903), by Howard Pyle, had immediately recognizable illustrations. The quasi-photographic style of Maxfield Parrish was equally famous.

B

Children’s Magazines

In the United States, magazines for children were very important in the development of children’s literature. Youth’s Companion, founded in 1827, and St Nicholas, founded in 1873, continued their influence into the early years of the 20th century. The contributors included Kipling, Louisa May Alcott, Howard Pyle, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mark Twain. In Britain, several attempts were made to counteract what was seen as the pernicious influence of the “penny dreadfuls”, the cheap, sensational texts that were the successors to the chapbooks. The Boy’s Own Paper was founded by the Religious Tract Society in 1879, and within ten years had a print run of 250,000. It was joined by other “healthy” magazines such as Young England (1880), The Girl’s Own Paper (1879), and Chatterbox (1866). The Girl’s Own Paper was hugely successful, and, despite a flirtation with fascism in the 1930s, survived until 1967.

VI

20th Century

A

1900-1950

After World War I, children’s literature moved towards fantasy. The “Dr Dolittle” series (from 1920) by Hugh Lofting, and the phenomenally successful books of poems When We Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927) and generally gentle, domestic fantasies, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928), all by A. A. Milne, display the retreatism of the period. Childhood was seen by many as an idyllic period, and children were regarded sentimentally. The antidote to this attitude, William, created by Richmal Crompton, an untidy, anarchic child, was very successful, and William appeared in over 300 stories. The first books, beginning with Just William (1922), were written for adults. Other major British classics were the “Mary Poppins” stories (1934-1963) by Australian-born Pamela L. Travers (the Walt Disney film, one of the most popular of all time, catches some of the acid nature of the central character) and The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien, which achieved cult status in the 1960s, and has become one of the best-selling children’s books. In the United States, this period saw the first “Superman” comics, and the wild illustrations and addictive verses of Dr Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel) with And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street (1937). In Australia, May Gibbs’s Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (1918), The Magic Pudding (1918) by Norman Lindsay, and Dorothy Wall’s Blinky Bill, the Quaint Little Australian (1933) established a strong vein of whimsical humour.

Realistic writing was influenced for the rest of the century by Arthur Ransome, with his “Swallows and Amazons” series. Set in the English Lake District, these 12 volumes (1930-1947) were “probable” books, set in school holidays. The children learn to sail, fish, camp, and explore, but nothing they do is beyond the abilities of real children, and everything is surrounded by the security of middle-class families. A similar tone was struck by Edith Howes in New Zealand, with her Six Little New Zealanders (1917) and Uncles Three at Kamahi (1926), and by perhaps the most famous books to emerge from the United States at this period, the “Little House” series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Beginning with Little House in the Big Woods (1932), Wilder described her childhood as one of a pioneer family, and, again, the virtues of family life and independence are stressed.

The American Library Association increasingly helped educational organizations in the selection of reading material for children; the annual Children’s Book Week began in 1919. Annual prizes were established: the Carnegie Medal (Britain) and the Newbery Medal (United States) for the best children’s books, and the Greenaway Medal (Britain) and the Caldecott Medal (United States) for the best picture book. Children’s books slowly began to be noticed in newspapers, and in review journals such as Junior Bookshelf (Britain, 1936) and the Horn Book magazine, established in Boston in 1924.

Notable picture-book artists of the period were Wanda Gag, Edward Ardizzone, Ludwig Bemelmans, and Roger Duvoisin.

B

1950 to the Present

World War II provided material for “popular” fiction, notably for British heroes such as Captain W. E. Johns’s “Biggles”, but was largely avoided as a subject by other writers. Production of all books in Britain, including children’s books, was severely curtailed by paper shortages. The only writer to maintain and increase her output was Enid Blyton, whose popularity had been growing through the 1930s. After the war, with series such as “Noddy” (from 1949), “The Secret Seven” (from 1949), and “The Famous Five” (1942), she became a dominant force in children’s books, producing over 600 books by her death in 1968. Blyton’s books, which are very child-centred, were accused of limiting children’s imagination and reading skills, but, although little known in the United States, she has a worldwide following. In the 1990s the rights to her books were sold by the Blyton family company, and her books and associated products are now being marketed strongly worldwide; new titles are appearing under her name.

But Blyton was soon challenged for, after the war, children’s literature experienced a second “golden age”. Children's books became very important commercially, and in Britain and elsewhere in the world most publishers established children’s lists. Led by publishers such as the Oxford University Press, high-quality children’s books were produced in great numbers. As before, fantasy was popular, outstanding examples being the Christian allegories of C. S. Lewis set in Narnia (beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950), The Borrowers (1952 and sequels; a new film version appeared in 1997) by Mary Norton, Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958) by Philippa Pearce, and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) by Alan Garner. From the United States, where fantasy was less popular, came E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952), Natalie Babbit’s Tuck Everlasting (1975), and a major fantasy by Ursula Le Guin, “Earthsea Quartet”, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968). The quartet is notable for its fourth volume, Tehanu (1972), which deliberately attempted to construct a female, rather than a male, hero-fantasy. In Britain, there have been excellent examples of historical novels, such as The Eagle of the Ninth (1954) by Rosemary Sutcliff and the rather more eccentric work of Leon Garfield, who created a highly coloured 18th- and 19th-century world in books like Smith (1967).

The most-successful post-war writer, and, after Blyton, the most successful of the 20th century, was Roald Dahl, whose violent, anarchic, and sometimes vulgar books caused great controversy. The first, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), is an old-fashioned moral tale in which unpleasant children are gruesomely punished, and the poor and innocent hero rewarded. Dahl maintained that he was closely in touch with the real feelings of childhood, and that he was writing the equivalent of pantomime. Many of his books have been successfully filmed, and he routinely tops popularity and sales polls.

Picture books have become highly inventive, and their artistic and literary potential, not only for small children, has been increasingly appreciated. Where the Wild Things Are (1963), In the Night Kitchen (1970), and Outside Over There (1981) by Maurice Sendak were in the forefront of this movement. Among the most original have been Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s The Stinky Cheese Man (1992), David McKee’s surrealistic I Hate My Teddy Bear (1982), and the multi-dimensional The Jolly Postman (1986 and sequels) by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. Chris Van Allsburg’s Jumanji (1982) became a successful film in 1996.

Around the turn of the century, there have been two major trends. The first is the commercial dominance of “series” books, usually written by teams of writers. They include teenage romances (among them “Sweet Valley High”, and “Point Romance”), horror stories (“Point Horror” and “Goosebumps”), and animal books (“Animal Ark” and “Animal Alert”); even the British pony books have seen a revival. Effective marketing (often in association with television, film, and video), together with the dominance of a small number of large bookselling chains in Britain, the United States and elsewhere, has meant that relatively few titles are widely sold, and it has become more difficult for original writers to find a place on the shelves.

A second trend has been towards “realistic” novels, which gradually came to face the radical changes in childhood in the final decades of the century. Landmark books in the United States were Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War (1974), a bleak novel in which the honest schoolboy “hero” is finally (and bloodily) defeated by the school mafia, and Forever (1975; Judy Blume), which was the first book designed for “young adults” to describe, unsensationally, but explicitly, teenage sexual intercourse. These books, and many others like them, have been censored (especially in the United States), but children’s books have continued to extend their range. Picture books such as Toshi Maruki’s Hiroshima No Pika (1980), about the dropping of the first atomic bomb, or Christopher Galloz and Roberto Innocenti’s Rose Blanche (1985), about the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, deal with subjects that would have been unthinkable 20 years before. Books concerned with traumatic experiences—divorce, war, disease, death, sex, violence, and drugs—have become common despite the reservations of many adults who might wish to see the “innocence” of childhood preserved. Many of these books have been of very high quality, such as, in the United States, Cynthia Voight’s “Tillerman” series, beginning with Homecoming in 1981, in which a family of children are suddenly abandoned by their mother, or Kathleen Paterson’s The Great Gilly Hopkins (1978) about a child in care. In Britain, The Machine-Gunners (1975) by Robert Westall, set during World War II, established new standards of realism; in the 1990s, some of the most popular books were by Jacqueline Wilson, with her stories of displaced children such as The Story of Tracey Beaker (1991). In 1997 the British Carnegie Medal was awarded, amid much controversy, to Junk by Melvin Burgess, which chronicles the descent of two 14-year olds into drug addiction and sexual degeneration. It was adapted for the stage in 1998.

Children’s books with conventional “literary” standards are still being written, by authors such as Jan Mark, William Mayne, Jill Paton Walsh, and, in New Zealand, Margaret Mahy. However, the fashion in the early 21st century is for writers who deal with “issues” in a more direct way, notably Anne Fine and Dick King-Smith.

Despite the overwhelming pressures of commercialism, advanced, experimental fiction is being produced by writers such as Aidan Chambers in Britain and Gary Crew in Australia. Meanwhile, socially and politically committed writers like Michael Rosen, John Agard, and Grace Nichols are increasing the appeal of children’s poetry in Britain.

The revival of fantasy marked by Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials—Northern Lights (1995), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000); the latter was the first children’s book to win the Whitbread Book of the Year—has been consolidated by the phenomenal success of J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” novels, well on their way to becoming the best-selling children’s books of all time. Harry Potter’s career at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he is a key figure in the fight against the ultimate evil of Lord Voldemort, is contrasted with the life of dull “muggles”—human beings with no magical powers. This arrangement allows Rowling to deal with the ordinary problems of adolescence, as well as serious issues such as death, within the context of a spectacular blend of familiar children’s book structures (such as the school story) and original effects (such as the Quidditch games). The series creates an extremely complex world, and gives a sharp 21st-century twist to traditional ingredients. Not only are the books playing some part in reversing the general decline in book-reading among children, but they have raised the profile of children’s literature in general. Many critics, and many writers, now regard it as the most innovative and challenging of literary modes.