Thursday March 31, 2005
The greatest stories ever told
JK Rowling and Jacqueline Wilson top the bestseller lists. Businessmen and teenagers alike devour Harry Potter and His Dark Materials. But that's just the tip of the iceberg, says Dina Rabinovitch - there is so much talent out there that this is a truly extraordinary era in children's literature
Even in a business that has seen Madonna, in top-to-toe Prada and perched on a swing, reading her tale The English Roses to mega-star-oblivious two-year-olds; even in a business where Jemma Kidd, superstar makeup artist, was hired by Harrods to highlight the features of tweenies in honour of children's author Meg Cabot; even taking into account the teddy-bear party hosted by Gordon and Sarah Brown at 11 Downing Street to launch a collection of children's stories - even among this crowd, mention of the party that the children's publishers Egmont organised for Michael Morpurgo can still cause strong businessmen to blanch.
Morpurgo is our children's laureate, and to mark the publication of his recent book The Sleeping Sword, the publishers threw a party that involved renting out the Scilly Island of Bryher. People arrived in helicopters, and the Duchy of Cornwall had to be placated. The original party budget was tripled and then some. But Egmont didn't even blink. That's because it, like other publishers of children's literature, has realised something of literary historical import, something that goes waybeyond the fact that grown-ups read Harry Potter on the tube. We are right in the thick of a golden age of children's literature.
What does it mean to call a specific period of literary endeavour "golden", without it being mere hype? What it doesn't necessarily mean is a golden age as accountants might understand the term (except in rare instances; Walker Books is popping champagne corks this week as it publishes 250,000 copies of Anthony Horowitz's latest Alex Rider story, Arkangel). Publishers mutter gloomily that while there are a huge number of children's books out there, there hasn't actually been a rise in the number of authors selling books. The market share for children's literature is stuck at 15%. What is happening is that a few (a very few) children's authors are selling loads; the names you know already - JK Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson, Philip Pullman.
Why, then, will publishers countenance huge spending on book launches when adult authors are lucky to get away with not paying for their own white wine in some fusty club? Why are celebrities falling over themselves to become children's authors - Madonna is already on her fourth title, while Paul McCartney's first tale of Wirral the Squirrel is being published this coming autumn. Why are even celebrated authors such as Jeanette Winterson (The King of Capri) or Elmore Leonard (A Coyote's in the House) also keen to get in on the act? Why is Horowitz, winner of the Bafta people's award for his adult detective TV series Foyle's War, best known for his teenage boy hero Rider?
Every once in a while - not at regular intervals, not even every century - one literary form comes to dominate. When that happens, all the other practising artists are pulled towards the dominant form. In Elizabethan and Jacobean England, drama became primary; in the 19th century, it was the novel. So strong were the writers in these fields that all other writing took on some of the qualities of the dominant genre; practitioners in other fields turned to playwriting, poets experimented with the novel. So in a decade in which Salman Rushdie has produced a children's book, the question is whether children's fiction is exercising that gravitational pull right now.
The answer has echoes in that previous time. What made Elizabethan England a golden age of literature? It was because there wasn't just Shakespeare - who raised standards higher than they'd been before - but the plethora of other brilliant playwrights (Marlowe, Middleton, and later Webster and Ford); authors who in any other age would be hogging the limelight all to themselves.
That is the situation in today's world of children's literature. Not just Rowling but several other names are at the top of their game: in no particular order, Lauren Child, Geraldine McCaughrean, Jerry Spinelli, Ann Brashares, Michael Morpurgo, Mark Haddon, Philip Ridley, Neil Gaiman, Joel Stewart, Eva Ibbotson, Michael Rosen. The talent out there is dazzling.
So how is it that these names aren't on the tip of every literary adult tongue? Where is the Granta photograph of the top 20 children's authors? Surely, in this instant information world, we pride ourselves on knowing what's happening? The books pages in the national press are sticking to their occasional round-ups of children's books; non-specialist TV and radio aren't interested either. "We are up against this kind of resistance," says Justin Somper, children's books publicist, "producers saying, 'It's a children's author, that won't be of interest to my audience.' I always know I have to compete with the latest Ian McEwan, which will definitely merit an interview."
It is a mark of these fertile times that the arts reviewing is lagging behind the news. I remember a Saturday lunch at our house some years back - 2000, I think - just us and one of England's top books editors with his wife. She, talking to my 11-year-old, mentioned that she had a review copy of the latest Harry Potter. Electric excitement around the table. The only person who looked bemused, and said, "Who? What?" was the editor. And this wasn't the first Harry Potter novel, it was the third. In children's books, it's been word of mouth that has spread the gospel. The arts media - so quick to name trends in adult literature - haven't spotted what is happening at knee height.
The major turning point in children's literature was the publication of Alice in Wonderland in November 1865. The crux was that Carroll made the child central to the story, rather than the adult. A rule was broken, a new law established, and a first golden age of children's literature was inaugurated, ending, critics generally agree, in the late 1920s with AA Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh.
Barry Cunningham, the founder/publisher of The Chicken House and the man who famously signed JK Rowling to Bloomsbury, knows exactly when he first realised that this was a new creative boom. "This is the real thing," he says. "I worked for Puffin in the 70s, which was also considered to be a time full of talent, but there is a much broader span of achievement now. The barriers have all exploded, so there is harsh, realistic fiction being written for children, and fantasy - like Cornelia Funke's - that transcends international borders."
And the first inkling Cunningham had of what's going on? "I had the shock of my life when I saw young executives with Harry [Potter] propped on their laptops. I know exactly when it was. I was in an airport lounge in the States, walking through to the plane, and instead of reading thrillers, guys were reading Harry."
One of the markers of the first golden age was that a book written for adults, The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley, turned into a children's classic. This time around it's the opposite; books that are written for children but appropriated by adults. The classic example is Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which was being handed from adult to adult in children's publishing before most children had even seen it.
Cunningham says the statistics may show that market share of children's books has not increased, but he himself never looks at statistics. "My experience," he says, "is that we're selling to a much wider age group - an enormously expanded world reading children's fiction".
There is a catch though, for all those would-be children's authors. "Children's books," says Cunningham, "are being invaded by pseudo-children's books - books being produced with an eye to this burgeoning market." Writing children's fiction has to be done by those who've retained their childhood. "Otherwise," says Cunningham, "you're writing 'about' childhood."
Until the day we see the name Aaron "West Wing" Sorkin on the cover of a children's title, we cannot claim supremacy for children's fiction over that other monstrous reservoir of talent this early 21st century, American TV drama. But don't be surprised when it happens.
What's the story? Classics for every age
Age 0-5
Lauren Child 's picture books (I Will Not Ever, Never Eat a Tomato, What planet are you from, Clarice Bean, to name just two) are a mix of drawing and collage, with a style as vibrant as childhood. She is that rare talent: the words she writes are as good as the pictures she draws. Child is a perfectionist, and it shows: "I can't just hand my illustrations over [to publishers] and say, 'Whatever you do is fine.'" Her characters Charlie and Lola (from I Will Not Ever, Never Eat a Tomato) are about to debut on television.
Neil Gaiman (words) and Dave McKean (pictures) form the most distinctive partnership working in picture books (The Wolves in the Walls, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish). Scary stories, though no more so than your average fairy tale. Gaiman lives in America, McKean in Kent, and their collaboration is phone-based.
Joel Stewart cut his teeth illustrating others' stories; his version of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky brought new meaning to old words. Now he is writing and illustrating his own works, and Me and My Mammoth proves that his talent for telling is every bit as insightful as his line and ink drawings.
Age 7-12
Eva Ibbotson 's novel, Journey to the River Sea, is a childhood classic - one of those books that children mention as seminal to their childhood reading. Eighty years old this year, she is still writing, her work now coming from a different, darker source than the lightweight tales of witchcraft with which she made her name.
From the first sentence of a Michael Morpurgo book, you know you are in the hands of a natural storyteller. His latest, written during a period when he has been a very active children's laureate, is The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips.
Geraldine McCaughrean has just been chosen to write the sequel to Peter Pan. The only children's author to win the Whitbread Children's award three times, she remains surprisingly anonymous. Children happily stick with her books even though she takes a certain pleasure in using unfamiliar words. "I don't give any quarter on vocabulary," she says. "I reckon children are so close to acquiring their entire language, it won't stretch them enormously to work out what a few more mean."
Philip Ridley is, unusually, read as much by boys as by girls. He covers, via fantasy, the same territory as Jacqueline Wilson - depressive mothers, children who look after parents - but his writing is more sophisticated. He prides himself on getting dialogue sharp and distinct.
Age 12 +
Jerry Spinelli (Milkweed, Stargirl, Wringer) writes spare and beautiful stories about outsiders, and how they change the people around them. He creates profound emotions in his readers out of the most ordinary settings, as in the schoolyard, with Loser, and out of the most difficult backgrounds, such as the Holocaust, in Milkweed.
Jennifer Donnelly 's coming-of-age story about teenager Mattie, A Gathering Light, stands out as one of the best teen novels published. We are drawn into a drama of mysterious letters, a drowned hotel guest and much else.
Ann Brashares is on her third tale of the four girls who share a pair of trousers, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. Teen-lit material - love, parents, angst, clothes, friendship - but handled in a complex way. Brashares' theme is that clothing has the power to transform, and she has combined this quintessential teenage obsession with a bit of fairytale magic.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005