I HAVE BEEN AMUSED by the signs of a growing
parental revolt against that little horror 'Noddy' —culminating in a powerful broadside from Mr. Colin Welch in this month's Encounter, in which Noddy is even accused of being the moving spirit behind the Suez enterprise! Mr. Welch feels that it is the essence of good children's books that they should be enjoyed, albeit on a different level, by adults. Good children's books, perhaps, but surely the bulk of children's reading, at least for the past half-century, is trash—comics and the like? Does Noddy really represent any falling off from the standards of, say, 'Tiger Tim'? The difference, I would suggest, is not in the reading matter, or in the children, but in father, who now feels he has to read books his children want him to read—where of old we listened to what father wanted to read to us. It would never have occurred to us to suggest he should read `Tiger Tim'; and I doubt, if father were firmer, that it would occur to the present generation of children to insist that he should read to them from 'Noddy.'
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