other. But as soon as you start thinking in terms of catering—a word I particularly
detest—for a special readership, then I think you are heading for disaster.
Wintle and Fisher 1974:239–240Therefore, although there is a very distinctive market, authors are generally cautious
about writing directly ‘for’ it. Ivan Southall, in a striking diatribe, castigated bad writers
who ‘do not judge themselves by the best; they shut their souls to that; they read the worst
and say “I can do better than that” (Haviland 1980:87). He distinguishes between the
‘honest’ second-rate and the ‘blatantly commercial second-rate’. ‘We are giving them
what they want is the alleged doctrine of these people. I believe they do not want it for a
moment and would never miss it if it were not there’ (90). C.S.Lewis was equally
scathing about ‘manufacturing’ a book: if your story sprang from telling a story to an
individual child,
There is no question of ‘children’ conceived as a strange species whose habits you
have ‘made up’ like an anthropologist or a commercial traveller. Nor, I suspect, would
it be possible, thus face to face, to regale the child with things calculated to please
it but regarded by yourself with indifference or contempt.
Lewis 1966:23And he goes on to observe that the only way that he can write stories ‘consists in writing
a children’s story because a children’s story is the best art-form for something you have
to say’ (23).
Thus you must write for children, not covertly for two different audiences. As Roald
Dahl observed: ‘What narks me tremendously is people who pretend they’re writing for
young children and they’re really writing to get laughs from adults. There are too many
of those about. I refuse to believe that Carroll wrote Alice for that little girl. It’s much too
complex for that’ (Wintle and Fisher 1974:110).
He is not alone. The artist John Burningham said: ‘I think there’s a horrendous
movement of people who think there’s a formula: “let’s draw everybody in party hats”,
but really they’re appealing to adults while the children are actually bored’ (Heaton
1988:2).
Of course, not everyone agrees. W.E.Johns, who wrote over a hundred books about
his flying hero, Biggles, was clear about his aims:
I give boys what they want, not what their elders and betters think they ought to
read. I teach at the same time, under a camouflage. Juveniles are keen to learn,
but the educational aspect must not be too obvious or they become suspicious of
its intention.
Trease 1964:80All writers for children must, naturally, find themselves in a position of teaching, and our
perception of what constitutes authorial intention changes. For example, William
Makepeace Thackeray wrote in 1846 in Fraser’s Magazine,
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