SIR,—To judge books for children surely one needs standards rather
different from those one applies to discriminating between cleaners or car-hire firms?
I have been reading Helen Bannerman's books to my children over the last five years, and our enjoy- ment of them has never waned. Of course we all have our hearts in our mouths: indeed, my little boy of four takes the precaution beforehand of asking me to say 'Bang!' very softly when we get to it. But isn't it just the mark of the best and most long-lasting of children's fiction that it conducts the child safely through the fantasy experience of fears, of depriva- tion, betrayal, loss, assault, menace? These are all familiar enough emotions already in the child's everyday life: to meet them satisfactorily resolved in the work of imagination helps him to cope with his fears in reality. Hence the undying popularity of nursery rhymes and folk-tales, many of which are very disturbing.
Helen Bannerman's laconic, sparse text, the rapidity of incident, and the child-like quality of her drawings provide that the fear aroused shall be allayed, and her scarifying situation 'placed' as fan- tasy. known as 'only a story.' She seems to me a most valuable experience for the child, which it would be perverse to deprive him of—as perverse as to deny him Punch or nursery rhymes.
Leslie Adrian omits the climax of the Little Black Quibba story, which shows the mother made well and strong by the mangoes he has so bravely found for her. In these books the fantasy exploits often culminate in such a positive achievement by the child protagonist.
As for 'moral confusion being introduced by showing animals as deceitful and evil,' what did Mr. Adrian read in childhood? Has he never heard of Foxy Loxy, Red Riding HOod's Wolf, the Walrus and the Carpenter, the Minotaur, Europa's Bull, the Fox in Ieminia Puddleduck? Would he prefer children to be subjected only to the tepid innocu- ousness of Little Noddy? Shall life for children be wrapped in polythene and sterilised, or isn't it part of their growing to have some stirring imaginative nourishment, from decent literary hands?
Isn't it also rather amateur of the Spectator to pass from shoe repairs to children's reading matter in a breath? Mr. Adrian should perhaps stick to his own most useful last.—Yours faithfully,
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