Let Children be Children in Children's Books pleads Griselda Heppel

My heart leaps up when I behold 

     A rainbow in the sky: 

So was it when my life began; 

So is it now I am a man; 

So be it when I shall grow old, 

     Or let me die! 

The Child is father of the Man; 

And I could wish my days to be 

Bound each to each by natural piety. 

William Wordsworth, British School,
By anonymous - Art UK, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/
index.php?curid=97545046

I know, I know, I don't usually begin my post with a Wordsworth poem but today I couldn't help it. That wonderful line, one of the poet's most famous, keeps going round and round in my head (for reasons which will become clear if you stay with me). 

But first, how does this Child is father of the Man idea even work? No child can beget (if anyone uses that word anymore) his or her parents, that's just nonsense. Yet in the context of this delightful poem it’s clear Wordsworth’s meaning is both simpler and deeper than that. Whatever we are as children, whatever we feel and endure, marks us in adulthood, whether it’s the joy of beholding a rainbow or, conversely, trauma and cruelties suffered that shape how we see the world ever after.

My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky. Photo by James Wheeler: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ crop-field-under-rainbow-and-cloudy-skies-at-dayime-1542495/

Pondering what motivates people to behave the way they do, I’ve often thought how beautifully Wordsworth summed up the issue; a lifetime of experience captured in just seven words.

But that's not why the line is occupying my mind right now. 

I’ve just read a recently published children’s book, one festooned with rave reviews, in which I’d swear the author has taken Wordsworth’s line literally. The heroine is strong, purposeful, tough and aggressive, using her fists liberally to defend those she considers weaker than herself, viz:

1. Her cold, pathetic, heartless, childish and unloving father. 

2. Her wet, babyish teacher, who can’t cope when a boy in the class hides his - the teacher's - teddy bear. No, I am not making this up. 

3. A dog, kicked by a grown man in the street. Fair enough, poor dog… but does that justify breaking the man’s nose? 

While the book has a clever plot, it’s this extraordinary, topsy-turvy world that bothers me. A world in which children must parent their parents and protect their teachers. The heroine is a throwback to an old stereotype I thought had long been out of favour, of the warrior hero who solves all arguments by beating people up. Just because it’s a girl and just because she is righteously defending the 'vulnerable' because all the adults are too weak to do so ... is that meant to make such disproportionate violence OK? The child is not the father of the man. Adults should not renege on their responsibilities and 12 year-olds should not be the grown-ups in the room, even – in fact especially – in storybooks.

Seized by a longing for Down With Skool
by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle.

I was seized by a longing for the skooldays of Geoffrey Willans’s and Ronald Searle’s Nigel Molesworth, in which children were allowed to be children, Uterly Wet and a Weed teachers were fair game, and no boy worth his salt would have left that teddy alone. 

I am all for children’s novels having assertive main characters, who have to deal with emotional issues as well as danger, excitement, mystery. My own books show that. But there seems to be a trend nowadays for the child heroes to do increasingly heavy lifting, taking on parental roles instead of escaping to have their own adventures. Where’s the fun in that? This book is chockful of helpless, emotionally damaged adults and the onus is on a 12 year-old girl, equally damaged, to save them. Not fair.

And not what Wordsworth had in mind at all.

OUT NOW 

The Fall of a Sparrow by Griselda Heppel

BRONZE WINNER in the Wishing Shelf Awards 2021 

By the author of Ante's Inferno  

WINNER of the People's Book Prize

www.griseldaheppel.com