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Paul McGuire SCMP 7 June, 2000 Copyright

Growing Pains Next month sees the publication of the fourth in the series of J K Rowling's phenomenally popular Harry Potter books. Normally sane adults as well as children are already placing orders and trying to contain their excitement. This is not just about hype and an efficient publicity machine. Strange things are happening in the world of publishing. In March, the late Roald Dahl and Rowling were named as Britain's two favourite authors of all time, ahead of colleagues catering for adults. By beating literary giants past and present, they reinforced a fast-growing tendency to re-evaluate the role and status of literature written for younger readers. The poll, a major survey of readers marking World Book Day, followed the controversy surrounding the award of this year's Whitbread Prize. When Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf only narrowly pipped Rowling's Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, the world of adult literature looked nervously over its shoulder. Anthony Holden, one of the judges, threatened to resign should Harry Potter win. In his view it would have sent a message to the world that Britain refused to grow up. By beating literary giants past and present, they reinforced a fast-growing tendency to re-evaluate the role and status of literature written for younger readers. He is not alone. In his pamphlet "Signs of Childness in Children's Books", Peter Hollindale, retired Reader in English and Educational Studies at the University of York, quotes philosopher Mary Warnock's reaction when she saw an undergraduate reading Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden for entertainment. "One feels inclined to ask how they can be so intelligent if they are so ready to switch their minds off when they are not actually working," she said. Holden and Warnock are tilting at windmills. Distinctions between writing for readers of different ages began blurring in the 1970s in the United States, when the likes of Paul Zindel (author of A Begonia For Miss Applebaum and Raptor) and S E Hinton (The Outsiders) began producing material based on the reality of contemporary life. Out went the comfortable and comforting images of safety and security intended to reflect an ideal childhood. In came broken families, alcohol and drug abuse, and problems with racial and gender confusion, prejudice and identification. Though the trend has continued, not everybody has grasped its significance. "There is still an extraordinarily patronising attitude to children and their reading material," says Rosemary Stones, editor of Books For Keeps, an influential children's books magazine. "It is ridiculous and insulting." She welcomes the Harry Potter phenomenon in particular. "The critical debate before this was very confined. But now children's books are starting to receive prominence and recognition. There is a new respect based on a bit more knowledge." "There is still an extraordinarily patronising attitude to children and their reading material." Publisher Barry Cunningham agrees. "It's an outrage that children's books are being called not as important as poets," he says, referring to the Whitbread imbroglio. Credited with discovering Rowling for Bloomsbury Books and now an independent publisher, he welcomes the high quality of contemporary children's work and the way it speaks to its audience. "Books now are about the things young people can relate to and understand. They should not be adult problems masquerading as children's." He notes that adults have a diminishing role in deciding what children read. "What with the Internet, new TV programmes and the number of channels," he says, "children can take more control as consumers of their media, and this is translating to books." Parents inevitably buy books for children. Often they hark back to their own childhood and choose what appealed to them back then. Sometimes this can be the right strategy. Classics retain their cachet. Others may serve a useful purpose. "Dr Seuss is quality stuff," comments Stones. "It is full of exciting wordplay; wonderful, zany. It deserves to survive." Enid Blyton is less appealing, but still plods on. It provides, in Stones' view, "great reading fodder to consolidate reading skills". The material is certainly dated, but in more recent editions there is, "less stereotyping and characters no longer come out of tunnels 'as black as Negroes'," she says. When it comes to identifying what makes a good children's book, opinions follow a consistent line. Rowling says children's books should be judged by exactly the same criteria as adult books. "My preference as a reader is for strong plotting and well-drawn characters, so that is what I try to write. The worst children's literature, in my opinion, is written by adults who have set pen to paper thinking, 'this is what children ought to read' or 'ought to like'." On this subject, Rowling says she often quotes the famous Russian writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936), who says: "You should write for children exactly the same way as you write for adults - only better." Cunningham quotes his own mentor, the founder of Puffin Books Kay Webb. Her advice is to tell one colossal lie and then make the rest coherent and normal. Children need rules of behaviour in stories they will recognise from their own daily routines. Talking down to children is the most common mistake authors make. "The worst thing is condescension," Cunningham says. "Good books appeal and endure when they address universal issues and lessons and not those that adults think youngsters should learn." For example, the ever-popular Charlotte's Web, written by E B White in 1952, is essentially about death, accepting separation and loss. Bookshops are full of tales dealing with divorce, relationships, bullying and the stresses of life in school. Not all of them use kid gloves. Virginia Walter's 1998 book Making Up Megaboy, published by Dorling Kindersley, for example, tells of a 13-year-old boy who calmly walks into an inner-city grocery store and kills its elderly Korean owner. Nobody can figure out why he shot a complete stranger. Francesca Lia Block's I Was A Teenage Fairy, published in the same year by Joanna Cotler Books, addresses paedophilia by showing how a teenage model is lured into a world of drugs, sex and alcohol. "You should write for children exactly the same way as you write for adults - only better." In real life characters do not always live happily ever after. So how far should publishers, authors and booksellers protect children from the darker side of life? At a seminar in Antwerp in March, Flemish author Anne Provoost argued writers should abandon self-censorship and not shield children from negative emotions and the sense of futility. She told the seminar: "This may result in the politically incorrect a children's book that reacts against monogamous love, a children's book that repudiates self-sacrifice and mocks the keeping of promises, and probably `worst of all' a children's book that propagates intolerance." As books veer away from safe, traditional themes, parents, teachers and responsible adults are faced with challenging choices. Just what is suitable and appropriate? Censorship is still alive and well in Britain's schools. Carol Rockwood, a primary school head teacher in Chatham, Kent, recently banned Harry Potter books in her school because she says they go against the Bible's teachings. Librarians do monitor reading levels and the age-appropriateness of materials. For example, in Hong Kong's Christian International School, librarian Philip McBrayer withdrew a set of paperbacks from the elementary library. "They were written for teenagers who had a lower reading level," he says, "and the issues they dealt with were teenage issues, dating and so forth." Sometimes the emotional level and the reading level do not match up. The controversy surrounding the Harry Potter books extends into the world of literary criticism. Critics say popularity should never be confused with literary merit. US columnist William Safire does not worry children will be lured into belief in witchcraft, or that poor children will be corrupted by tales of life in upper-middle-class English boarding schools. He simply feels the books are too derivative and shallow to be regarded as classics. Philip Hensher concurs. Writing in The Independent newspaper, he worries about the "infantilisation of adult culture", and mocks the idea that Rowling's tale of wizardry can even begin to compare to Ursula K Le Guin's "marvellous" Wizard Of Earthsea series. But who cares? A book is only as good as its readers say it is. When pupils rush from schools in Britain and the US to queue for the new Harry Potter book on July 8, that will be as powerful a statement as any intellectual argument or moral judgment. When their parents sneak into the bedroom to borrow it, that will be another. Fantasy is the hot trend, but it never really goes out of fashion. In Hong Kong, the sales of children's books have held up even during the recent recession. In terms of moving books off the shelves, "Harry Potter books and Pokemon books are outdistancing the rest by quite a long way," reports Mathew Steele, of Dymocks, "and sales are beginning to grow." With 15 per cent of total sales, it is a market difficult to ignore. That is good news for local children's author and illustrator Gavin Coates, who will be speaking at the Foreign Correspondents' Club tonight at 6.30pm about his experiences with Hong Kong publishers. "Children are often under-estimated," he says. "Sometimes adults think kids are not ready to face global issues and often they are." Author of The Last Nut, Pinky The Dolphin, My Life, My Chopstick, among others, he maintains children's authors should write things that are really meaningful and not what they think children want to read. "I actually do not write specifically for children. I just write what I want to write," he says. "Children are concerned about the issues I raise and they ask pertinent questions." And children know exactly what they want. Tatum Summers, a primary three pupil at a local international school loves reading books, "because when I read a story, it feels like it's really happening in my head and because some books help me learn things". But the final word must go to the primary six girl who must remain anonymous. She has read and loves all the Harry Potter books released so far, despite her father's objections. "My dad doesn't want me to read them because of the witches and wizards and stuff," she says, "because he thinks it will rot my brain." She knows better.

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