Study Guide ||| WEEK – 15 |||
The importance of the real
Activity 4.1 / P.162: Children’s
book publishing
R1: Nicholas Tucker
“Twentieth-century British
publishing”
•
Tucker reviews British
publishing for children between 1914 and 1945, then contrasts this with
developments in Children Literature in period from 1950s to 1990s.
What kind of picture does Tucker
give of Children Literature in mid-twentieth-century Britain?
In what ways does he suggest that
concept of ‘a good children’s book’ then began to change?
What does the chapter tell you
about values that Tucker himself places on different kinds of books, and how
far would you agree with these?
-
According to Tucker’s assumption the good children’s books should appeal
to adults.
-
He clearly values literature that reflects real lives of ordinary
children and social and ethnic diversity of contemporary life.
-
Children’s fiction should be socially representative.
-
Books with a narrower social setting or fantasies can equally deal with
moral complexity and appeal to a wide audience.
-
In this respect Tucker’s failure to mention famous fantasy fiction
written for children between 1950s and 1970s by authors like Philippa Pearce,
is striking.
***Notes on the Swallows and Amazon in relation to realism:
This
is through its natural approach with true-to-life dialogue.
-
Everyday
activities and ordinary children in a realistically represented setting
(sailing, camping, cooking).
-
The map even if
it is in childish style.
-
The specific
vocabulary used to describe the actions (technical terms associated with
discourse of sailing\language).
-
Free indirect
speech to portray the events from one child's perspective (narrative
techniques).
***Constructing
the "real:///Peter Hunt(The Lake District novels):
-
Bildungsroman\
offers a reality sense to the characters.
-
The reaction of
the children/characters.
-
The
relationships between adults and children (family).
-
Narrative
techniques
READ THE PARAGRAPH
UNDER THE ACTIVITY 4.6 IN P.166
Study Guide ||| WEEK – 16 |||
The power of the fantastic
Activity
4.10: The Fantastic and the Real
Definitions
of fantasy \ p169: important
The
relationship between fantastic and real in children’s books:
•
Fantasy has to be
defined in relation
to reality, but the nature of this relationship is more controversial.
------------
Fantastic
has been a more acceptable and sometimes highly valued feature in children
literature:
•
This is because it can be
appreciated both as pleasurable play in relation to a romantic conception of childhood and also in more pedagogic
terms, as metaphorically conveying important insights that
contribute to child reader’s development and
preparation for adulthood.
___________________________________________
Time-slip fantasy: Tom’s Midnight
Garden
Activity
4.11
One of the
challenges for writers of fantasy: To persuade readers to suspend disbelief and accept that,
within terms of constructed world, characters and events are believable:
•
Tom is not the narrator; but
he is the focaliser.
-
We know little
of the thoughts and feelings of
the Kitsons, Peter or Hatty.
-
We need to see
and feel through his eyes and
sensibilities for
the story to work.
-
Characters and
places are presented from his perspective.
E.g: Peter as valued
playmate; Uncle Alan as morose and sarcastic; Aunt Gwen as fussy &and
over-attentive. Significance of nursery bars and freedom of midnight garden are
also presented from Tom’s point of view.
-
Pearce often
uses free indirect discourse to
convey Tom’s thoughts.
-
This colouring
of narrator’s voice with Tom’s feelings
strengthens reader’s identification with him.
·
Through focalization,
reader accepts Tom’s experiences in garden as
believable within the framework of Pearce’s constructed world.
------------
What
is real and
fantastic is
relating to the
treatment of time
------------
Childness: a body
of feelings and beliefs about childhood manifest in a story and in the way it
addresses an implied audience.
------------
Activity 4.14: Metaphors for growing up
Relationship
between fantasy and reality in the book:
• Both Natov and Rustins suggest that Pearce uses fantastic to comment
metaphorically on reality, with the story
finally expresses healing (Natov), and the ‘deeper truth’ of fantasy that
enables loving communication between adults
and children (Rustins).
• There were more critical views of book’s ending and in
particular, the suggestion that Tom and Hatty’s relationship is the result of
dream telepathy.
-
Peter Hollindale finds this ‘it was all a dream’ conclusion inconsistent with evidence provided by Tom’s
discovery of stakes in his own time, and argues that it breaks rules of fantasy, damaging artistic integrity of
story.
-
He suggests that Pearce’s
sense of her child audience slips at the end, shifting towards a more rational adult perspective that detracts from ‘childness’ that he sees as essential to children's
literature.
------------
Activity
4.15: Linear & mythic time
How dose time function?
-
Nikolajeva suggests that in Tom’s
Midnight Garden, a place - Never Land or the garden –
metaphorically symbolizes time of childhood.
-
She points out that this
particular chronotope (a typical
configuration of time and place in a literary genre) is associated in
Christian ideology with Paradise.
-
When Tom and Hatty step into the garden,
they enter mythical time (kairos) which does not obey rules of
ordinary linear time (chronos); but is instead evoked by Mrs. Bartholomew’s
fragmented memories of her childhood.
-
For
Tom home means ‘order, linearity, and growing up, and He is tempted by, but
resist, desire to stay in mythical time for ever.
-
Nikolajeva directly tackles
mystery of time that Pearce said was central to book, her discussion of interplay between
chronos and kairos in story could be
seen to add a further dimension to other critics’ discussion of metaphors of time and
garden, and of struggle involved in moving out of childhood.
