After Alice [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Irresponsible Writers and Responsible Readers Victor Watson Is it possible to identify good writing for children? There is no approved 'poetic' for describing children's books, there are no agreed criteria for assessing them, and no one - as far as I know - has convincingly defined the 'literary' quality which some books are thought to possess. Good books have no hallmark - and, if they had one, children would probably disregard it. Even if we could avoid the ambivalences involved in the evaluation by adults of books written for children, we are left facing the further problem that in our culture 'children's literature' is usually perceived as occupying a humble and perhaps ignominious position on the margins of 'English literature'. Furthermore, we now understand that the concept of 'literature' is itself composed of ideological and educational assumptions which have a great deal to do with power and privilege. 'Literature' and 'children's literature' are such uncertain concepts, and the excellence each may demonstrate is so elusive, that to seek a defined literary quality in a children's book is to go in search of an ambiguity in an equivocal relationship with a chimera. Yet librarians, parents and teachers, believing that it matters for children to read good books, continue to address the issue of quality. And for those educated in a tradition of practical criticism, it is hard to relinquish the belief that the close and collaborative consideration of a poem or prose extract can reveal its essential qualities. Take, for example, this account of a boy's arrival at his grandmother's house in the country near Cambridge: Evidently Mrs. Fitch had seen the bus, for she was coming down the stairs as Grandpa and Ben came through the front door. The front door opened straight into the living-room, into which the stairway also descended. Ben had a rear view of his grandmother in a black dress with litde purple flower-sprigs on it. She was climbing down the stairs backwards and very slowly, because of stiffness in the knees. As soon as she heard the front door open, she called, 'Don't let that dog bring all the driftway in on its paws!' Tilly stopped on the threshold, sighed, and sat down. Mrs Fitch reached the last stair-tread: 'I've laid the tea, as you see, (pn