Beyond the Secret Garden: Taking Series Seriously
In the latest in their series examining BAME representations in children’s literature, Darren Chetty and Karen Sands-O’Connor dive into series fiction and non-fiction.
The series book has long been denigrated by multiple sectors involved with children’s books: literary scholars, librarians, educators, and often, even parents. As Rod McGillis wrote in his discussion of series books, ‘A book so popular as to demand a sequel and then sequels must be suspect from a literary point of view’ (“Series Books” 162). But popularity has not precluded a certain kind of series book from winning prizes. The Carnegie medal had as its inaugural (1936) winner Arthur Ransome’s Pigeon Post, sixth in his Swallows and Amazons series; and in the 1950s recognized C. S. Lewis’s final book in the Narnia series, The Last Battle and Rosemary Sutcliff’s concluding Roman trilogy novel, The Lantern Bearers. But these have been exceptions, and more recent British series, including Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses sequence, have been passed over by the Carnegie.
The initial book in Blackman’s series did win awards in its debut year, but these were all judged by young people (Noughts and Crosses won the Lancashire, the Sheffield, and the Red House
Children’s Book Awards), suggesting that children were seeing something in the book that adult judges were not. Noughts and Crosses highlighted a group of children that rarely appear as main characters in any British children’s literature, and particularly in series fiction: BAME children. Blackman, who has throughout her career attempted to alter stereotypes about Black children and reading, has series for younger readers as well, including the Betsey Biggalow and Girl Wonder series. These both feature young Black children as protagonists.
Blackman’s books are not the norm in the world of British children’s literature. In most series books, if Black characters appeared at all, it was traditionally as sidekicks, foils, or opponents of the main white, middle-class British child. Nineteenth and early twentieth century Empire-based series, for example, by authors such as G. A. Henty and Bessie Marchant, used secondary characters to indicate the difference between good (obedient and subservient to white characters) BAME characters and bad (rebellious, sneaky) ones. C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle shows the white Narnians fighting ‘the dark-skinned Calormenes . . . who bear a clear affinity to the fearful Saracens’ according to Alison Searle (Fantastical Fact, Home or Other 11). These series were aimed at middle-class readers, and were written by authors who felt that readers needed to learn about Britain’s values and accomplishments in the books they read. Whether historical or fantastic series, they valorized white characters and the British landscape over BAME characters or foreign landscape.
More recently, books in Alex Wheatle’s Crongton series, and Zanib Mian’s Planet Omar series (originally published as The Muslims) have both been award-winners. More formulaic series (such as mystery series, for example) tend to flatten out characters to a limited number of characteristics. This is especially true for secondary characters. Thus any BAME presence in such books has often been reduced to stereotypes. Enid Blyton’s various series, including the Famous Five, the Secret Seven, and the Noddy books, were and still are popular; yet, as Sheila Ray points out, they ‘have continued to be attacked for their racism’ (The Blyton Phenomenon 104). However, using a formulaic template (the mystery, the school story) does not preclude positive depictions of BAME characters. Robin Stevens’ Murder Most Unladylike series concerns a detective agency run by two girls at a boarding school, Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, set in the 1930s. Both English Daisy and Hong Kong-born Hazel who narrates the stories see Daisy as the lead detective; Daisy in fact refers to Hazel as ‘Watson’ from time to time, referencing Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick. But Hazel’s methodical nature is crucial to the success of the detective agency, and she therefore functions as more than a sidekick in the narrative, despite the seeming leadership of Daisy.
Sharna Jackson’s High Rise Mystery is the first in a new middle- grade detective series about two sisters, Nik and Norva Alexander who live on a South London housing estate. Events stay very local – the Tri Estate – and a sense of place emerges mostly through the language used by the characters. The book’s cover depicts two Black children, but in the story itself their ethnicity is only implied. Jackson has been quoted as saying, ‘My thinking was that if a character is black it doesn’t occur to them that they are. That is just the default.’
16 Books for Keeps No.236 May 2019
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