The truth about kids’ books (Part One)

It’s a truth not universally acknowledged that children have no taste. Consider your childhood toys. I put it to you: did you really love and cherish and take to bed with you that hand-stitched, unbleached cotton rabbit your Aunt gave you? Did you not rather give your allegiance to a horrible, mass-produced pink-nylon-haired doll that had no style value whatsoever? I rest my point.

Likewise, when one looks at the range of children’s books available today; it becomes clear that the best-written books are not, by any means, the best-beloved. Children don’t seem to care a jot about style. All this adult moaning about the ‘terrible writing’ in Harry Potter goes right over their head. There are fantastically written books out there that children push aside fretfully in favour of novels that make adults wail “show not tell!”

So if great style can’t make a child love a book, what can? I was thinking about this the other day, and I came up with a tentative list of three ingredients for a book a child will love, rather than one he will be assigned for English homework:

1) deep empathy with the main character,

 2) a thrilling plot (Great Adventure), and

 3) a sense of humour.

This list will no doubt be subject to refinement as my research continues!

With the current list in mind, here are three new and forthcoming children’s books that all fulfil at least one of the criteria… 

HOOTCAT HILL by Lucy Coats (Age 9 +); Orion; 9781842556146; 3 March 2008 

Linnet is an ordinary teenager living in an extraordinary place: Wyrmesbury, in a kind of alternate England where magic and technology go hand in hand. When the Worldwyrm below the ground wakes up and starts eating people, she is summoned by five Guardians, some of whom turn out to be people she knows well in real life, to defeat it by finding the Chalice of Athyr. Thankfully she finds out that she has plenty of hitherto un-guessed at magical power to call upon to help her in this quest.

This is a richly embroidered, thoroughly traditional fantasy, fizzing at all corners with ideas and imaginatively-described scenes from Avallon (the world of the Fey). Linnet, interestingly, seems to be dyslexic, although unfortunately this and many other plot threads just did not seem thoroughly developed. On the whole, I felt that this Great Adventure needed far more space – it could have made an engrossing trilogy, but as it was I felt rather as if I was being hurried through Elfland by an impatient tour guide.

Okay, the style and delivery are not sophisticated, but what does shine through is the author’s honest love of what she’s writing about – no amount of great technique can make up for it if that is lacking. A child’s echoing love of magic could easily fill in the gaps, and make this a favourite with young readers.

Lucy Coats’ name may be familiar from the many retellings and anthologies she has written or edited; this is her first full-length novel. 

OLI AND SKIPJACK’S TALES OF TROUBLE: THE MUM SHOP by Ceci Jenkinson (Age 8 +); Faber; ISBN 9780571239504; July 2008 

We’ve all had those arguments, the ones that get out of hand and end up somewhere you never meant them to. Oli’s argument with his mum starts because she won’t let him watch the titillatingly-titled Real Blood Bath Murders. Everything gets a bit heated, and he ends up shouting that he wishes he had a different mum. Mildly, Mum retorts that in that case he had better take her to the Mum Shop. And she goes upstairs to pack.

Yes, there really is a swap shop for mums – and Oli realises pretty quickly that he has bitten off more than he can chew, as he finds himself stuck with a succession of alternative mums who are either mad as a hat rack,  or downright evil. Will he ever get his own Mum back? Yes of course he will. But lots goes on before he gets his happy ending.

This is a seriously funny book -  it veers between tongue-in-cheek, dead-pan humour and wonderful Blackadderesque descriptions (I long to quote them but I am reviewing an uncorrected proof and it says very firmly on the cover that it is not for quotation). I did feel that the humour was seen through an adult narrator’s eyes rather than a little boy’s, and now and then this uncomfortable sense of being talked to by an adult shook me out of the story, but it is so funny and Oli and his friend Skipjack are so likeable that I really don’t care at all. It will make a great summer holiday read for boys and a great alternative to Horrid Henry. 

PHILIPPA FISHER’S FAIRY GODSISTER by Liz Kessler (Age 9 +); Orion; ISBN 9781842551202; Out Now. 

Philippa lives in a world of everyday magic – her scatty, loving parents are children’s entertainers, and she’s a dab hand at magic tricks herself. But now she’s old enough to find her parents embarrassing and her best friend is moving away. She’s a day-dreamy girl, but far too sensible to believe in fairies. So when she picks a daisy and instantly feels that it is going to turn into a fairy at midnight, she tries to dismiss it as nonsense. She ends up throwing the daisy out of the window. Unfortunately, it does turn into a fairy – one in the shape of a girl her own age, with a remit to give her three wishes. And being thrown out of a window really hurts! So Daisy (the fairy) and Philippa do not start their acquaintance on the best of terms.

Worst of all, Daisy is stroppy, with a grudge against humans, and lets Philippa know in no uncertain terms that she’s only helping her because she has to. Daisy has to learn to be more compassionate and get over her anger (the result of a close friend’s death), and Philippa has to grow some courage and self-belief. A clash of personalities becomes a loving friendship.

Philippa’s unhappiness is really easy to empathise with. I felt at once that I liked her and cared what happened to her. Daisy is irritating, but you realise that her anger comes from having been hurt, and anyway, I love the idea that a fairy can also be an utter cow! All the characters, with the exception of the school bully, Trisha, are believable. The detail of fairy bureaucracy is very funny and original. I also very much liked the fact that there was a significant sense of menace in places. The real sorrow and real pain justifies the fairies, and gives the magic a reason to exist. Liz Kessler can also be very funny, for example, when Phillipa reminisces about her shock on discovering there was no Santa. “First the Tooth Fairy; now this,” she comments, bleakly.

Towards the end, I felt the book flagged. It was a little too keen to draw lessons from the story. Philippa has too many pat realisations about how she should behave. The reader should be finding these truths out for themselves, not being directed to them. And the bully finally veers over the edge into caricature. Yet the majority of children enjoy clear stories like this, with easily identified baddies and goodies. That accounts for the continuing popularity of Enid Blyton.

The illustrations, by Katie May, deserve more than a mention – they are really beautiful and suit the story perfectly. This is one of the happiest author-illustrator pairings I have ever seen. Such well-judged pairings can lift a book from ‘good’ to ‘beloved classic’.