Jul 09 2009
Assessing children’s literature
I’ve been carrying out appraisals of manuscripts of children’s books. You might think, because the style of writing, the marketing and the themes and the apparent intended functions of children’s literature that are so different to those of adult books, that some different skills or approaches or considerations apply. And, I suggest, you’d be wrong. Here’s why …
A story is a story. Whether it is told in 200,000 words in a classic novel, an equal mix of images and text in a graphic novel, a handful of rhyming couplets in an illustrated book or in a book with no text at all, what is important is the story we are hearing.
The questions are only: What is happening? Who does it happen to? How are they changed or not changed by the experience? How does the book construct us as its readers and how might we feel about what we see is happening in the story? What do we learn about the culture that informed or is created by the text? About our own culture? Does the story remind us of our earlier selves, or make us think of what we might one day become? Or is it an escape, a fantastical journey into a story that could never happen to us?
These questions can be asked of every story, and the good ones answer them clearly. Yes, writing elements like genre, language, style, point-of-view, framing, tense and time, balance of dialogue and description, etc, are all important, but only insomuch as they are means by which the story is told. What really counts is the story we see before us and how well it satisfies our deep need for narrative.
Children’s literature is a genre in its own right, at least according to some theorists, and certainly many participants in the industry think it is completely different to adult writing — but at heart a story is a story and the good ones work, whatever age group they might be written for.