Picture books

Brian Alderson

In all the arguments and counter-arguments about children and literacy one claim generally stands unquestioned: that it is highly desirable for children to be 'surrounded by books.' Educational pundits (one of whom chose those three words for a manual on primary school libraries) are carried away by the thought of school classrooms and corridors crammed with books, believing that the very presence of such things induces a desire to read; sociologists support them by correlating statistics for illiteracy and bookless homes; publishers, authors and library suppliers dwell with pleasure on the prospect of the expanding market that such a philosophy must foster.

Nobody pauses all that long however to say 'what books?' and nobody seems to have considered the implications of the original claim. Few, for instance, would want the child to be surrounded by Migne's Patrologia — unless of course by way of an infant fortification — and few (I hope) would subscribe to his total immersion in Ladybird Books to the exclusion of all else; but how easy it is to . find a middle way? For in recent years it has become increasingly obvious that the emo

tional appeal of 'surrounded by books' is not strong enough to encourage sensible action or produce lasting results. The slogan is negatived by the sheer quantity of the goods its seeks to promote.

Consider picture books. In the September issue of Children's Book Review the listing of forthcoming titles showed that no less than eighty-seven picture books (new or reprinted) were scheduled for publication in September and October this year — and this figure, which excludes most of the, criticallyspeaking, contemptible merchandise goods, quite probably needs to be doubled. With how many of these, say, one hundred and fifty books is the child to be surrounded and what guiding lines are we offered for judging them? How do they compare with the hundreds that are already available and how many, in that context, are really necessary?

In answering these questions it is helpful to put the saturation theory into reverse gear. Instead of all those books round all those children, imagine one child wrapped around one book. Imagine one child in the desert island of Harlow or Hoxton with John Burningham's Mr Gumpy's Outing (Cape), or with the Watsons' Father Fox's Pennyrhymes (Macmillan), or with Zolotow and Sendak's Mr Rabbit and the Lovely Present (Bodley Head). These picture books of recent years are fit to stand among the, greatest; they are books whose denial to children amounts to a kind of 4eprivation. How many of our hundred and fifty should take precedence over them?

The answer, of course, is none, and for the critic to make some sense of the task of seasonal reviewing the terms of reference have to be widened (even desert islands affording a modicum of hospitality) but only an awareness of the best that we have enabled us to see the many new books in perspective: , Aingelda Ardizzone's The Night Ride (Longman, E1.45), for instance, classically illustrated by her father-in-law*, and having a tempered sweetness that is one of the characteristics common to the three books mentioned above; or Harve and Margot Zemach's Awake and Dreaming (Longman £1.50) 'suggested by a

Tuscan legend' — a picture story with something of the nostalgic quality of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, a book for delicate spirits, who are likely to feel at home with its delicate wash illustrations; or, at the other end of the

scale, Raymond Briggs's Father Christmas (Hamish Hamilton, £1.10), twenty-eight pages

of heavily coloured pictures and strip car toons, depicting the rather irascible old gentleman's own chilly 'night ride,' his tussles with intractable chimneys, and his homecoming to the solid but lonely creature comforts of 'a good bath,' lovely grub' and a bottle of cognac from 'good old Fred.'

As to the o'therx picture books however, it is difficult to single out distinctive qualities that

make them any more commendable than many that we already have. Comparatively speaking, it is of course possible to say that

Charles Keeping's The Nanny Goat and the Fierce Dog (Abelard-Schuman, £1.35) sustains his reputation as one of our most original and

dramatic picture-book artists; or that if you must have the completely natural oral art of Hans Andersen converted into picture books

then Gaynor Chapman's version of The Jumping Match (Hamish Hamilton, £1.50) is a lot better than a lot of recent highly mistaken

endeavours; or that if you regarded Graham

Oakley's The Church Mouse as one of last year's more exciting books then you ought to be dismayed by its sequel The Church Cat Abroad (Macmillan, £1.50) which vulgarises a notable talent.

But aside from these ventures, which at least must have justified themselves as pros pects, we are lumbered with a dead weight of unnecessary picture books, boring in their repetition of old formulae, gimmicky in their

exploitation of trendy graphic styles, or frankly didactic or moralistic in the spirit of the children's books of the eighteenth century. So far from adding to the child's enjoyment of picture books, their quantity, serves to obscure the merit of truly creative work. Surrounded by them is to be a prey to slick and often expensive distractions.