to reduce and increase the size of characters, objects and landscape and the camera has
followed the action in a much more active, less reverential way.
The history of children’s programming on the radio is more fitful. In America it was
often seen as part of populist, family listening with a strong use of American folksong,
with performers such as Burl Ives. In Britain, Children’s Hour was placed on the Home
Service network, and was dominated by speakers, ideas and tones of the middle and
upper classes. It was as if the nation’s children could only be entrusted to such people—
popular entertainers (frequently working-class in origin) were not thought to be suitable.
That said, the programmes offered up a variety of classic serials, newly written dramas,
information programmes, quizzes, and paternalistic chats. Children’s Hour was taken off
the air in 1964, unable to compete with television, it was claimed.
The dramatisation of children’s books continues apace, however, with educational
output of radio and television, occasional slots in the mainstream programming, and
now, more importantly in cassette tape form. Sometimes in part-work form, bought each
week from supermarkets or local newspaper stores, sometimes packaged in with the
books themselves, sometimes free-standing, and sold by virtue of the fame of the name
(Peter Pan, Enid Blyton), children’s tapes are now very widely available. The companies
making the tapes do not have the resources to produce full-scale dramatisations so
what is usually on offer is a reading performed by someone with a range of voices with a
variety of electronic music and noises accompanying. It is an interesting case of the
technology (the portable cassette player) reviving what many had thought was a near
extinct artistic form. It will have been seen that it is not easy to pluck what we call
children’s literature out of what is transmitted as children’s television and radio, or
distributed as film or sold as videos and tapes. In spite of all that is written about
television and film being visual media, it is always worth bearing in mind that most of
what we see and hear on television and films has started as words on a page; children’s
programmes are, much more often than is acknowledged, derived from the totality of
children’s literature. Equally, with the use of song, poetry, puppets, story-telling, story-
reading and short dramatisations, there is often a two-way feeding of literature into
television and television into books. In Britain the figure of John Cunliffe has proved to
be one of the most successful with the invention of such characters and series as
Postman Pat (1981 onwards) supported by merchandise such as hardback, paperback
and mini-books, puppets, games, clothes, mobiles, friezes, stamps, posters, annuals,
model vans, soft toys, pencils, rubbers, pens, keyrings, notebooks, notepaper and so on.
It is of course impossible to predict the future relationships between these media and
the printed page. It is possible to see a future for the CD-ROM that integrates the
printed word, still visual images, moving images and sound and which can be accessed
in new sequences (but at present, not in unlimited ways). There does not appear to be
any reason why either the children’s literature of the past or the future should not be
adapted and shaped within this format. Will children in a few year’s time be walking
about with small portable CD-ROM players, reading, viewing and listening to a musical,
choose-your-own-adventure version of Peter Pan? Will it be possible for them to integrate
themselves with the use of micro-cameras and sound-equipment into such adventures—
Peter Pan Meets Me? Whatever happens, children’s literature will flow into the new
technologies just as it has always done, partly because children are seeing, feeling,
530 RADIO, TELEVISION, FILM, AUDIO AND VIDEO