Our nation excels at children's literature, yet a foreigner could be forgiven for thinking that we have little interest in our children’s writers, says Children's Laureate Julia Donaldson.
Performers as Mary Poppins
during the London 2012 opening
ceremony
On 27 July last year, I was one of millions who watched an army of Mary
Poppinses defeat a monstrous inflatable Voldemort, and listened entranced to a
passage from Peter Pan: “Of all delectable islands, Neverland is the snuggest.”
Like every children’s writer, I was delighted that the opening ceremony of
the Olympic Games celebrated “the glories and magic” of children’s literature.
After all, our nation excels at it: we produced the Jungle Book, The Wind in the
Willows, Alice in Wonderland, The Railway Children, Winnie the Pooh, Just
William, Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The
Northern Lights, Dogger, The Tiger Who Came to Tea... I had better stop there
for fear of exceeding my word count, but those are just the tip of the iceberg.
Yet on any other day of the year, a foreigner reading our newspapers,
listening to our radio or watching our television, could be forgiven for getting
the impression that we have little pride or interest in our children’s writers
and illustrators. How could they guess that children’s books account for nearly
one in four of all book sales, when far less than a fortieth of review space in
printed papers is dedicated to them? Perhaps they might imagine that we have a
dearth of parents, grandparents and teachers when they listen to “A Good Read”
on Radio 4: of the 48 titles the programme has featured since that memorable day
last July, just one is a children’s book, namely the ubiquitous US export, The
Hunger Games.
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Children's Laureate Julia Donaldson at Hay Festival (Jay
Williams)
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I don’t know if we’re the only country whose media doesn’t take children’s
books seriously, but certainly the situation is different in Germany. My
publisher there often sends me double-page articles devoted to the work of just
one children’s author or illustrator. America also appears more enlightened. I
recently read a long serious article in The New York Times about British
author-illustrator Rebecca Cobb’s Missing Mummy, a book about parental loss
which received not one single print review in a British national paper.
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