Chambers and Ann Durell, in their articles celebrating the fiftieth anniversary year,
stress that the journal was at its inception a publicity device in the Newbery tradition
and was primarily intended to sell books. Although in its beginnings the journal was
consumer-orientated, rather than critical or scholarly, ‘by 1925 the magazine was
demonstrating an interest in authors and illustrators that was to make it a serious tool
for the study of children’s literature’ (Durell 1974:667). By the 1950s, The Horn Book
Magazine was publishing serious literary evaluations, more serious than those few that
appear in it today, perhaps because The Horn Book Magazine no longer accepts
unsolicited articles. At present, the middle section of every issue is devoted to detailed
one-paragraph reviews written by the editor and members of the editorial staff, and
much space is given over to award acceptance speeches, portraits of the award winners,
and bibliographical essays. Its focus, then, has returned to the selling of children’s
books. The Horn Book Magazine also publishes The Horn Book Guide, devoted solely to
reviews.
The first British journal dedicated solely to children’s book reviewing appeared twelve
years after The Horn Book Magazine. It was The Junior Bookshelf: A Review of Children’s
Books and, like The School Library Review, began in 1936. Six issues a year contain over
a hundred signed, critical reviews of new titles for children and of some secondary
literature. Since 1971 there have been one or two topical essays per issue.
By the beginning of the 1960s the situation of criticism in Britain had been much
improved. Margery Fisher’s bi-monthly journal Growing Point, founded in 1962, was the
first independent reviewing journal of books for children and young people directed at
parents rather than librarians. Although Growing Point did publish reviews by others,
Fisher wrote most of them herself and kept the journal going single-handedly for exactly
thirty years. Fisher died 24 December 1992 (see Children’s Literature Abstracts for the
many tributes to her). Growing Point was followed in 1965 by Anne Wood’s Books for
Your Children: The Parent’s Guide, which appears three times a year.
Critical JournalsNone of the British journals mentioned above answered the need for a forum for more
sustained critical discussion. In January, 1970, Nancy Lockwood Chambers, the former
editor of Children’s Book News, issued the first number of Signal, which appears three
times a year. Signal is a unique journal, unconnected to any educational or other
institution or to a publishing house, although Chambers works with teachers, librarians,
academics, and members of the book trade, and their ideas and comments appear in the
pages of her journal. Her audience is the general reader, and the articles she publishes
have interesting ideas, fluently expressed; the editing is brilliant. The influence of Signal
extends far beyond its relatively small subscriber base: two of its articles have won the
Children’s Literature Association literary criticism award, and the journal has been a
leader in the movement away from basal readers and back to real books. It is a rare
critical book or article now that does not cite material from Signal. Chambers has also
published the Signal Selection of Children’s Books and is building a list of books and
pamphlets derived and developed from Signal material.
484 THE CONTEXT OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE