reading of Beatrix Potter’s stories in which he shows how she dealt with complex ideas
relating to childhood fears, including ideas about pursuit, and children’s anxieties about
being preyed upon, through pastoral settings and humanised animals.
A fine example of the ways in which anxieties can be contained, domesticated and
turned into fine literature for children from 4 to 7 are Russell Hoban’s stories about
Frances the badger. With her mother and father, baby sister and her best friend, she
goes through experiences that are familiar to young readers. Occasionally the parents’
patience wears thin, and Frances has to learn that some things have to be accepted for
the way they are. Bedtime for Frances (1960) in which she is constantly awoken by
imagined sounds, shapes and stirrings, is a superb example of a story which shows how
fears can be articulated and dealt with.
At this age, family relationships usually remain central to a child’s preoccupations.
Sensitive writers help children with the serious business of dealing with adults, who, in
the main, set the boundaries and devise the rules. As children do not have a great deal
of power or control over their lives, there is often a great appeal in ‘miniaturised’ stories.
They will enjoy stories such as Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (1952 and sequels), or
Patricia Cleveland-Peck’s The String Family At Home (1986). The appeal of these kind of
stories is not hard to see. Societies of people who are small and at the mercy of adults,
offer possibilities for modes of behaving and surviving the whims of the powerful.
During this stage, ‘bridging books’ are particularly important: those where the
pictures are still a vital cue to understanding, but where the text becomes more central.
Several innovative series are worth noting here: in Britain, Jan Pienkowski and Helen
Nicholls’s Meg and Mog Stories (1972 on) and in the USA Harriet Ziefert’s stories about
the Small Potato Club (1986 on) are good examples. The role of the collaborative adult,
supporting and modelling reading is still crucial. Adults are still important as a physical
presence, discussing stories, helping children relate them to their own lives, considering
alternative versions and making judgements—all this in the role of partners in the
telling, two-thirds of the triangular relationship adult, child and author (Dombey 1988).
Seven to TenThe most potent change that comes about between these ages in Western society, is that
children have an extended and more diverse relationship with the social world. Friends,
teachers, groups or gangs, clubs or societies have an increased importance to them.
They develop more sophisticated modes of thinking, experience a wider range of emotions.
Their stamina in terms of literacy and literary competence increases. Children’s own
social groups become much more important to them. These groups, evolve their own
myths, rituals, passwords, formulaic games and rhymes. Many significant writers have
skilfully integrated the jokes and superstitions within children’s games and culture into
stories and poems. The work of the British poets Michael Rosen and Allan Ahlberg are
good examples of demotic language meeting mainstream literature.
From the 1970s onwards, writers for this age group have explored sometimes complex
aspects of young children’s lives. The dynamic nature of friendships is well caught by
such American writers as Beverley Cleary—who began her long series of domestic stories
with Henry Huggins (1950) and Louise Fitzhugh (with the rather more complex Harriet
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