International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature

From de la Mare I derived early the idea that one must at all costs tell the truth to

children, not so much about mere physical pain and fear, but about the really

unanswerable things—what Thomas Hardy called ‘the essential grimness of the

human situation’.

Adams 1974:92

David Martin:

People in the children’s book world ask...‘Is it suitable?’ ‘Is it the right age level?’ ‘Is

it about a contemporary problem?’ These are important questions, but not of

primary importance. The primary question should be ‘Is this a good book?’, or ‘Is

this a good writer, writing a good book?’

Nieuwenhuizen 1991:173

Yet you can be optimistic, as is John Rowe Townsend:

I don’t think one ought to worry too much about corrupting children, so long as

one’s books are honest. It has always seemed to me (and this may sound unduly

inspirational) that what is honestly intended, and done as truthfully as the author

is able to do it, cannot intrinsically be regarded as harmful. On the whole I am

inclined to think that children will pass unharmed over what they do not

understand. The objection to the heavy sex novel is not that it is going to corrupt

them, but that it is going to bore them stiff—by elaborating on experiences that are

beyond meaning for them.

Wintle and Fisher 1977:245

But reality does bite. C.S.Lewis made what he saw as limitations into advantages:

Writing ‘juveniles’ certainly modified my habits of composition. Thus it (a) imposed

a strict limit on vocabulary (b) excluded erotic love (c) cut down reflective and

analytical passages (d) led me to produce chapters of nearly equal length, for

convenience in reading aloud. All these restrictions did me great good – like writing

in strict metre.

Meek et al. 1977:158

Out in a less cloistered atmosphere, Jean Ure, an accomplished and committed writer of
teenage novels, gives the example of using ‘four-letter-words’ in her book One Green
Leaf, and its fate in the USA:

I finally made a stand... I gave the good and defensible reasons, heard no more, and

thought with smug satisfaction that here was one author who couldn’t be bullied into

submission.

Poor innocent fool! On receiving my advance copies from the States, what did I

find? In the face of my bold authorial intransigence, the whole speech had been

wiped out entirely.

554 THE CONTEXT OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE