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  • The Making of Modern Children’s Literature in Britain: Publishing and Criticism in the 1960s and 1970s by Lucy Pearson
  • Caroline Webb (bio)
The Making of Modern Children’s Literature in Britain: Publishing and Criticism in the 1960s and 1970s. By Lucy Pearson . Farnham, Surrey : Ashgate , 2013 .

In the field of children’s literature, the intellectual ferment of the 1960s and ‘70s was manifested in earnest debates about the goals of writing for children in the face of the changing shape of Western cultures and their assumptions about children. Lucy Pearson charts the development of that “second golden age,” at least in Britain, through a study of its publishing history. She focuses on two key figures: Kaye Webb, editor of Penguin’s Puffin imprint from 1961 to 1979, and Aidan Chambers, himself a novelist, who initiated and edited Macmillan’s smaller Topliner imprint. Pearson takes their projects as exemplary of two contrasting approaches to children’s literature: Webb’s, the production of “quality” literature that would lead children to the reading of good adult literature; and Chambers’s, the engagement of teenagers in reading through the development of books designed specifically to appeal to their tastes and concerns.

The book manifests Pearson’s immersion in archival research as well as in contemporary critical scholarship, but it is not merely a record of events or even a documentation of influences. Rather, Pearson’s goal is to illuminate the contrasting practices of Webb and Chambers and locate these within the changing culture of children’s literature and its scholarship. The introduction highlights the various ways in which the period has been retrospectively characterized, as well as how critics at the time, such as John Rowe Townsend, articulated its debates. Townsend’s observation of the argument between “child people” and “book people” is central to Pearson’s discussion. However, she is careful not simply to assign Chambers and Webb to opposite sides of the debate; her analysis of their activities indicates that their ideas of the young reader were themselves very different.

Pearson provides an absorbing chapter on the “children’s literature scene” of the period. She discusses the significance of postwar attempts to strengthen peace by promoting what Paul Hazard had called “the republic of childhood,” which not only led to the establishment of the International Board on Books for Young People, but also brought about the publishing in translation of key works of European children’s literature. Her listing of various contemporary surveys includes a brief analysis of the assumptions behind critical accounts such as Mary Thwaite’s From Primer to Pleasure, and of how these assumptions emerged in novels of the time. Pearson’s comments on individual novels are precise and perceptive. The chapter moves easily between ideas, as discussion of such writers as Susan Cooper and Lucy M. Boston leads to consideration of the early 1960s view that fantasy is a “natural” genre for children’s writing, and so on to analysis of the psychological and social concepts manifested in 1960s children’s fantasy. Pearson’s discussion of how ideologies surrounding topics such as empire and class emerged in contemporary realist fiction, as well as [End Page 438] in fantasy or historical fiction, is particularly illuminating. She charts the increasing expectation that children’s literature be realistic in its depiction of social diversity—especially class diversity—and didactic in its approach to “problems” faced by young people.

The subsequent chapters on Kaye Webb’s career as editor of Puffin and Aidan Chambers’s argument for and editing of the Topliner books for teenagers similarly manifest Pearson’s awareness of the cultural scene and its importance. Webb worked to expand Puffin’s list, with the view that the ephemerality of paperbacks made them suitable for wide production, and with the aim of providing choice to child readers. However, Webb’s attempt to create a community of readers was socially limited, especially as the level of literacy required was less readily achieved in the working-class environments of the time. Her concern with the reading of “good” literature involved a focus on the “reading child.” Despite establishing the Peacock imprint for older child readers almost immediately after her arrival...

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