WHAT DO CHILDREN LIKE?
Si,—I never write letters to papers on general principle, but I cannot bear to let Quentin Blake's review of the reprint of At the Back of the North Wind pass.
Mr. Blake, you are quite wrong. I read this book when I was a child, and I have since passed my copy to my godchildren. We all agree in our admira- tion and love. I think you underestimate small children. I think you must suffer from a Blyton complex in believing that the young like honest, clean, simple fun, without any burden to the imagination. They don't, you know. If you cast your mind's eye over the children's classics, such as The Wind in the Willows, The Water Babies or, more up- to-date, The Borrowers, you will perceive that moralising mingles with a strangeness near to terror. Children like this. Children do not mind preaching or sentimentality, provided there is also this night-
de-la-Marishness that the book you despise has throughout its pages.
I believe that parents find Noddy easier to under- stand, themselves, and so bequeath this horrid, harmless little puppet to their offspring who probably sneak upstairs to read of censored witches and goblins under their pillows.
CHARITY BLACKSTOCK
Flat 4, 618 Bland ford Street, WI
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