REVIEWERS IN THIS ISSUE BfK


Brian Alderson is founder of the Children’s Books History Society and a former Children’s Books Editor for The Times. Gwynneth Bailey is a freelance education and children’s book consultant. Clive Barnes, formerly Principal Children’s Librarian, Southampton City is a freelance researcher and writer. Jill Bennett is the author of Learning to Read with Picture Books and heads up a nursery unit. Rebecca Butler writes and lectures on children’s literature. Jane Churchill is a children’s book consultant and UK editor of Gallimard Jeunesse. Katie Clapham runs specialist children’s bookshop Storytellers, Inc. in Lancaster. Stuart Dyer is an Assistant Head Teacher in a Bristol primary school. Anne Faundez is a freelance education and children’s book consultant. Janet Fisher is a children’s literature consultant. Geoff Fox is former Co-Editor (UK) of Children’s Literature in Education, but continues to work on the board and as an occasional teller of traditional tales. Ferelith Hordon is a former children’s librarian and editor of Books for Keeps Margaret Mallett is a team editor for the English Association’s journal English 4-11 and author of What Shall We Do Next?: A Creative Play and Story Guide Matthew Martin is a primary school teacher. Sue McGonigle is a Lecturer in Primary Education. Jana Novotny Hunter is an author and editor. Margaret Pemberton is a school library consultant and blogs at margaretpemberton.edublogs.org. Val Randall is Head of English and Literacy Co-ordinator at a Pupil Referral Unit. Andrea Reece is a marketing consultant and Managing Editor of Books for Keeps Sue Roe has been working as a Children’s Librarian in various public libraries for a number of years. Elizabeth Schlenther is the compiler of www.healthybooks.org.uk Lynne Taylor works on The Reading Agency’s children’s programmes, the Summer Reading Challenge and Chatterbooks Nicholas Tucker is honorary senior lecturer in Cultural and Community Studies at Sussex University. Sue Unstead is a writer and publishing consultant Ruth Williams is a children’s book editor and publishing consultant.


Children’s Literature HH


Pat Pinsent, Palgrave (Readers’ Guide to Essential Criticism), 220 pp, 978-1-1373-3545-6, £19.99


Being an online journal, Books for Keeps can have no reliable record of its readership. Presumably it includes people from all walks of


have a strong or a passing interest in children’s literature, so that a dauntingly-titled Guide to Essential Criticism by a senior Research Fellow at Roehampton


presents problems for the magazine’s reviewer. Indeed, Pinsent admits at the start that ‘children’s


University


studies have been dominated by what might be termed “theory people”’ and that her book points such readers (how many BfK ones?) towards ‘some of the most significant critical writing of the present period’. What she does not say however,


literature life who


and what may be of significance to all readers of this journal, is how her pointing can possibly be accomplished in a volume of 189 text pages plus 13 pages of Notes. If her contention holds, that the arrival of theorists has brought children’s literature into the academy to be treated on a par with adult literature then surely her publisher should have treated the subject’s ‘essential criticism’ on a similar par with what occurs in the rest of the series. (I notice that Tom Sawyer is the subject of a single silly remark on page 135 of the present book while Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn are given a whole volume to themselves elsewhere in the series, but no other


reviews Books About Children’s Books


children’s books or writers thereof are present. Memories are aroused of old Francelia Butler in the ‘Editor’s High Chair’ complaining about ‘the great excluded’.) Regular readers of BfK will know


its extraordinarily comprehensive structure – in the last issue for instance: Windows on Illustration; the regular Authorgraph; the long-term coverage of children’s own responses to to


translation – which seems a popular subject


reviews of 66 current books and minor aspects as well. All these feed into over 200 previous issues of like coverage which comprise a whole history of contemporary publishing for children which must amount to a huge ground-base for contemporary criticism. (For earlier decades one could say the same for the reviews and discussions in Margery Fisher’s Growing Point and the sustained brilliance


Nancy Chambers’s Signal.) But, alas, it seems that this immense resource receives hardly a peep from the Research Fellow even though the well-indexed BfK is freely available on-line, and Signal has a 159 page classified guide – not in Pinsent’s list of sources).


of the commentaries in


deal sufficiently in chronotopes or schema poetics. Since the Guide is obviously for students, Pinsent’s book exhibits a tremendous amount of


on her part (a typical single page, chosen here at random, contains ten diverse references to works on


I suppose they did not reading down Roehampton way);


books; a sustained Awards


(including attention


attention to


‘Visual Texts’1


for deftly summarising the contents of the many works that come under her peers in the academic trade). How many institutions in Britain run courses


What is the level of reading knowledge of the students at the start of their courses (they may not have read any children’s books since they were themselves children)? What are the curricula within which their learning takes place and how do the students cope with Pinsent’s multiple, perhaps obscure, references? Her treatment of


is profoundly children’s book section on Genres defective,


historiography and


such matters (deserving of theory?) as adventure


animal stories, school stories, pony stories etc, etc, to say nothing of the multiple genres within the picture- book field, including, say, alphabet books and movables. She pays no tribute to that almost vanished tribe of


preceded either


children’s librarians who


research activities. on


university teachers in Nothing is said


or the growing field of manuscript studies (the yield from many major research libraries around the world is not mentioned). If this is the level at which children’s books are celebrated in the academy, BfK all on its own has a great deal more to offer – and all for free. BA


1. I notice however, that,


what she believes to be two ‘significant contributions’, she fails to mention much more significant ones by Quentin Blake and Barbara Bader


in isolating bibliographical research long


leaves out critical stories,


her on Children’s Literature? ) and she also has a gift


Under 5s Pre – School/Nursery/Infant Goodnight Everyone HHHHH


Chris Haughton, Walker Books, 32pp, 978-1-4063-5232-0, £12.99 hbk


If you don’t induce sleepiness in your audience, or indeed yourself, after reading this one, I’d be surprised: it’s ideal bedtime reading and a true delight. We drop in on a glowing forest


as the sun sinks over the animals, most of which are already feeling sleepiness coming upon them. The mice yawn, so too do the hares, the deer and Great Big Bear;


all ready for some shut-eye. Not so Little Bear though; he’s wide awake and wanting someone to play with. But finding a playmate at such a late hour soon seems in itself to induce a feeling of sleepiness in the little fellow. After an enormous stretch just he cannot stop himself from giving a great big yawn whereupon his patient parent lifts him up and carries him, past the already snoring mice, hares and deer, and safely to bed – at last. The stars shine and the moon shines on a sleeping animal world. Zzzzz ssssss.


they’re


shadowy, blockish images stand out beautifully


background used for much of the story, a story that starts with pages cut in keeping with the size of the animals hidden behind them and set against white. The whole thing has a gently unfolding cinematic feel to it as the artist moves us forwards, with whole page and smaller framed strips, towards the dark of the


world. And to add another dimension to the whole thing, the end papers show the southern and northern night skies – respectively.


JB Plenty of Love to Go Round! HHHH


Emma Chichester Clark, Red Fox, 32pp, 978-1-7829-5148-3, £6.99 pbk


In her always-glowing colours and sensitive text, Chichester Clark has introduced us to her own dog Plum in a previous book, Plumdog, and in this sequel, we meet Plum again, this time with a problem. The problem is next door’s new cat, Binky. ‘I’m not keen on cats,’ he says.


sleeping


Chris Haughton’s characteristic from the magenta


is jealousy because everyone thinks Binky is very special indeed, and up until now, Plum has been the only special one in the neighbourhood. Binky absolutely adores Plum, though, and follows him about everywhere, even to the park, where Plum meets his dog friends. What to do?


when Binky saves him from being locked in a shed overnight he still resents his presence and believes him to be ‘a show off, clever-clogs cat’. When he takes his revenge, he learns that Emma and Rupert, his ‘mummy and daddy’, take a dim view of what he has done. Emma explains to the penitent Plum that ‘There’s room in our hearts for him and for you!’ Of course dogs do express jealousy when a new animal appears in a family, but so do children, and this could certainly be interpreted as happening to a family with a new baby. An older child also needs to learn that parents have ‘room in their hearts’ for both children.


is a lovely way to make that point, and Chichester


His real problem outstanding as always. ES Clark’s illustrations Books for Keeps No.221 November 2016 19


This picture book are


Even


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