Not one child enjoyed City of Gold, and in fact we received criticism about the way
the stories were re-told in the book... Surely one of the most important
characteristics of a book put forward as a contender for the Carnegie award is that
it should be stimulating and enjoyable for children to read?
Bonfield and Hopkins 1981:441[On City of Gold] As regards the awards in general, why does the committee so often
choose something that no ‘ordinary’ child will read? Every year there are books
really offering something new and fertile which give children opportunities for
growing; every year they are passed by.
Taylor 1981:540But who or what is this ‘ordinary’ child so often mentioned by critics of prizewinners?
This would appear to be one of the most fundamental issues in selecting quality
material for young people by adults, whether as award-winning books or for their normal
reading matter? As John Rowe Townsend notes: ‘It has been pointed out time and time
again that children’s books are written by adults, published by adults, reviewed by
adults, and, in the main, bought by adults. The whole process is carried out at one, two,
three, or more removes from the ultimate consumer’ (Townsend 1980:194). So should
adults dictate their own preferences and prejudices to children? Or should they try to
encourage young people to stretch their imaginations and vocabulary further than they
would normally wish to do?
The ramifications of this argument have seen dramatic changes since the
establishment of the Newbery and Carnegie medals. At that time the wildly held view
encapsulated Walter de la Mare’s ‘only the best is good enough for children’ view as well
as C.S.Lewis’s dictum that a good children’s book is one that is worth reading by an adult
as much as by a child. In the 1990s children have changed as much as their literature.
Their attention span is said to be much shorter (due, it is argued, to new technologies
and the influence of television which imposes much quicker response rates on their
participants than reading traditionally does). There is a much stronger emphasis on
egalitarianism and anything which rises above the norm is often regarded as tainted in
some way. So is the ‘only the best’ viewpoint still valid?
Of course other prizewinners are criticised for the ideology of their books. A famous
essay by Jason Epstein tackles a Newbery Medal winner, Elizabeth George Speare’s The
Bronze Bow, which seems to preach the virtues of conformity:
It is thickly pious and its factitious historical setting is presented in language so
drab and abstract and even, occasionally, illiterate, that it is impossible to adjust
one’s ear to it (‘Prodded on by weary drivers, the camels swayed slowly’. ‘The
morsels of food had not begun to whet his hunger’.) But the trouble is less with the
book’s prose or even with its fake historical and religious paraphernalia than with
the smugness of its doctrine.
Epstein 1980:80508 PRIZES AND PRIZEWINNERS