Books have been accused of reinforcing 'harmful' gender stereotypes. Photo / Getty Images
Books have been accused of reinforcing 'harmful' gender stereotypes. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
Last weekend, I picked up The Falcon's Malteser by Anthony Horowitz, the first in his popular Diamond Brothers books for children, about two hapless gumshoe detectives. Amid a madcap plot, the characters include a "vertically challenged" man referred to as the "dwarf", a skinny chap known as The Fat Man and a female charlady.
Wittily spoofing the hardboiled noir of Raymond Chandler, it's riotously irreverent and a compulsive page-turner. The prolific Horowitz is a particularly beloved children's author: his Alex Rider books about a reluctant teenage spy are masterclasses in plot-driven, white-knuckle storytelling. As such, you'd think Horowitz would be a highly-prized member of any publisher's stable.
Apparently not. Recently, Horowitz told an audience at the Hay Festival that he had been "shocked" at the feedback he received from Walker Books on "what he could and couldn't say" in his latest Diamond Brothers novel, Where Seagulls Dare. He said it was all the "usual isms" and that they had asked for extensive rewrites.
"Children's book publishers are more scared than anybody," he said. "Writers should not be made to do things because we're so scared of starting a storm on Twitter."
Whatever edits Horowitz's publishers suggested – they haven't responded to a request for comment – it's hard to imagine they asked Horowitz to make his book more exciting for children to read. From the novelist's account, it sounds like another triumph for those bent on making the wonderland of children's literature as joyless as possible.
Enid Blyton is one of the most popular children's authors. Photo / Etsy
Rarely a month now goes by without a beloved classic being attacked by activists and academics for its questionable world view. The Tiger Who Came to Tea, for example, has been criticised for reinforcing "harmful" gender stereotypes. Enid Blyton – adored by children the world over – gets it in the neck for featuring families with cooks and girls who clear up the picnic things.
More recently, an academic argued that Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a structurally innovative preschool text that has sold 55 million copies around the world, promoted child obesity – reportedly leading some nurseries in the UK to ban it. And earlier this year, OUP pulped the Biff, Chip and Kipper primary school staple The Blue Eye after its depiction of Muslims was accused of being Islamophobic.
At the same time, modern children in fiction seem to lead increasingly sanitised lives. Hachette recently published a sequel to Enid Blyton's The Magic Faraway Tree, written by Jacqueline Wilson. In Wilson's version, the parents – far from being almost entirely absent, in the tradition of all great children's stories, while the kids go off on marvellous adventures – were keen to repeatedly vocalise their concern for the youngsters' wellbeing.
Wilson has fine form in books featuring children such as Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather, who learn to navigate the world alone in ways that quietly teach their readers about resilience and independence. I can only conclude that this eagerness to ensure no one could accuse the parents of negligence wasn't Wilson's own idea.
A selection of children's books in a book shop. Photo / Getty Images
So where does this leave the children themselves? Are we raising a generation of children so stifled by conformist messages that they're unable to think critically?
Josephine Hussey, a primary school teacher in Cambridgeshire, thinks we might be. "There's certainly a push in modern publishing to avoid controversy by taking out what publishers see as 'problematic' themes and words," she says. "But it makes children's reading experience shallow. It casts children as blank slates who just believe what they read and are encouraged to mindlessly act as a result, rather than being able to distinguish between the real world and fiction. If a problematic issue arises in a story, it's better for children to be able to discuss it."
It's important here to distinguish between the message and the packaging. Good books invariably reflect a certain moral outlook: what, for instance, is Black Beauty if not a polemic about animal welfare? One London teacher to whom I spoke praised the rich variety of texts now available for children: Benjamin Zephaniah's Windrush Child left her pupils enthralled. I recently admired My Moms Love Me by Anna Mebrino, a preschool picture book that uses elegant rhyming couplets to explore diverse family set-ups.
The Tiger Who Came to Tea and the Hungry Caterpillar are some books that have come under criticism. Photo / Getty Images
But some publishing houses appear to be succumbing to a tick-box mentality, sacrificing good storytelling to signal moral virtuousness. Forget engaging imaginations with flawed and messy characters: too many children's authors hammer home ideological orthodoxy.
Re-gendered fairy tales in which princesses are no longer passive females rescued by princes might sound inoffensive – until you open the appallingly written Power to the Princess by Vita Morrow, and wince at the condescending and (yes) reductive way in which Cinderella and The Little Mermaid are reborn as social activists.
"There's a lot of formulaic stuff around gender coming out now," says the children's author, poet and special-needs teacher, Rachel Rooney. "It's not only bad for literature, it's bad for children. If you hit children over the head with didactic beliefs, it gives the child no room to grow."
Many educators warn against using the essentially escapist realm of storytelling to press home complex adult theories on young minds. "It's very difficult and controversial – you are encouraging quite political, strong thoughts in very young children," says one London primary school teacher, who was shocked when her local borough suggested Race Cars, a children's book, for inclusion on Key Stage 1 reading lists.
The book, which facilitates "tough conversations about race, privilege and oppression", is about an annual car race in which the rules are rigged by an apparently all-white committee to prevent a black car from winning. "No one is saying these theories aren't worth exploring at secondary-school age – but we're talking children aged five to seven."
Anthony Horowitz has been shocked by what he now can and can't say in his books. Photo / Getty Images
Some believe the blurring of activism and literature around trans identity can be dangerous. Earlier this year, an educational resource company Pop 'n' Olly sent 800 primary schools a copy of its book, What Does LGBT+ Mean?, which argues that gender is a feeling. "I've seen so many picture books now aimed at children aged three and upwards sending them the message that they might not be in the right body," says Rooney.
Moreover, authors who believe in biological essentialism are effectively being silenced. In 2019, Rooney, who argues in favour of evidence-based teaching around trans issues for children, published a book for three- to six-year-olds called My Body is Me! aimed at encouraging disabled and non-disabled children to feel happy within their own bodies. It was vilified by trans activists on Twitter, and she became the target of a sustained hate campaign.
Hussey warns against alarmism, pointing to the vast numbers of children who still read Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, the Charlie Higson adventure stories and, yes, Anthony Horowitz. Moreover, as many a parent knows, children are wise to political messaging that merely masquerades as a bedtime story. At the slightest hint of an instructive moral, they turn off.
"The best stories address all the big issues around identity and equality and the world in which we live – but without it being in your face," says one teacher. Let's hope Horowitz's publishers are listening.
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