Tony Mitton
I could spend aeons deliberating over this. I don’t think I could nominate 5 top reads as an absolute category. What I can do is to give 5 titles and say why I think they’re great children’s books, why I think they can (and have, in my experience as a parent and a teacher) work well as books for children.
I shall pick:
- A novelty book
- A picture book
- A younger short novel or novelette
- An older, longer novel or prosework
- A poetry book
That should make a good all round balance.
Novelty book
A Cheese and Tomato Spider by Nick Sharratt
This is a wonderful example of how a book can be a source of hilarious fun. I used to use this book when I taught primary children with literacy difficulties. For such children books and reading can be a laborious process, even when managed sensitively. I am talking about children with specific literacy difficulties who may not manage print as readily as the majority of children. Nick’s book is built on the tops-and-tails games principle. Each page is split half way so that the top of any page can be paired with the bottom of any other page. So you end up with, for example, a cheese and tomato spider which has a slice of pizza for a top and a grinning hairy spider for a bottom. Other variants are ‘Wow! A deep-sea ice cream’ and ‘ ‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello! A police granny’. The fun principle in this book is so strong that all reading stresses drop away as the captions are simple, memorable, and quickly suppliable by an accompanying adult or another group member if the book is being shared. It’s great for group reading nb.
Picture book
Mr Magnolia by Quentin Blake
I love the spry exuberance of this picture book first published in 1980 by Jonathan Cape Ltd. The author-illustrator plays on repeat rhymes with the word ‘boot’ (there are plenty) and this gives him scope for a wonderfully frivolous romp with imaginative possibilities which give free rein to his swift, expressive drawing which has so much energy and movement in it. For me this book is quintessence of Quentin. It really doesn’t matter (are those publishers out there taking note?) that this book has little or no plot. Well, just the whisper of a momentary narrative at the end, perhaps, if you must. But really it’s a piece of light verse taking the shape of a picture book, which of course someone with Quentin Blake’s brio can bring off. With one of my primary classes I once wrote a sequel called Mrs Magnolia, in which…. “Mrs Magnolia has only one shoe…” as we discovered that ‘shoe’ has as many, if not more, viable rhymes than does ‘boot’! The children loved making that book.
Younger short novel
Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown
This book was a joy to read aloud to my primary school class back in the early 80’s. Gosh, I see that it was first published in Great Britain in 1968! But it codes to me as an American text and the Tomi Ungerer policemen in it have distinctly American uniforms. But the story unrolls with a strange blend of surreal weirdness and social and emotional truth. You could read it as a rewrite of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, where, instead of Gregor waking up as a giant cockroach and having to cope with that as a reality, Stanley wakes to find he has been squashed flat by a large bulletin board that has fallen on him in the night. In all other respects he can still function normally. The result is a seamlessly written account of his adventures and eventual restoration to normality. This enables Jeff Brown to tease his characters with a wonderful poe-faced satire on the way people behave and ‘are’. Some of the incidental exchanges are a scream, especially when children are exchanging with adults. If you can get hold of a copy of this book, do. It’s a short, joyous read. Try it. Read it to a child, if you have one handy.
An older, longer novel or prosework
The Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
This is memoir/autobiography rather than novel, but to an older child it will carry all of the imaginative reward of a good story, albeit mainly, or based on, fact. This is the first of the three main titles of The Little House on the Prairie series which my daughter, between the ages of 5 and 11, absolutely adored and re-read several times at intervals. I think they became comfort reads for her as they evoked a kind of idyllic family life in the past that she could imagine occupying. To this day (she is now 28!) she calls my wife and me ‘Ma and Pa’ rather than ‘Mum and Dad’. I think our titles changed through the influence of the books. This book gives a vivid account of life in the Big Woods, in a log cabin, with all of the excitements and at times dangers that such a life entails. There is even a close encounter with a large bear at night and a panther that grandpa had to shoot in order to save his horse. This is fine, vivid, clear prose making a pioneer way of life imaginatively available to modern young minds.
A poetry book
This choice is my completely selfish and unashamed personal choice. It’s the Collected Poems for Children by Charles Causley and illustrated in pen and ink by John Lawrence. It was Causley’s lyric poetry for children that mainly persuaded me that to write poetry ‘for children’ could be a worthy and rewarding exercise. It’s possible that some of his work may not sing to today’s child so much, but it has to be acknowledged that his work is like a gathering up of earlier writers of poetry for children. There are echoes of Stevenson, de la Mare, A.A. Milne, Eleanor Farjeon and James Reeves. And, like me, he was many years a primary teacher, so knew children’s ways and minds. Some individual poems are classics, gems, as is ‘My Mother Saw a Dancing Bear’, so poignant in its simplicity. While ‘Colonel Fazackerley’ gives us a witty comic ghost story which winks sideways at us and reminds me of another fine (but now forgotten) poet for children E.V.Rieu whose Sir Smashum Uppe this seems to relate to. Causley’s texts are fine and crafted and bear lovely echoes of folk and country lore and idiom. Perhaps not today’s fare for many, but these things have timeless values which will run quietly on and to which the culture will return from time to time, I suspect.
These may not be the 5 best books ever. I didn’t intend my list in that way. But I do think they are all very good reads, tried and tested by me and some others whose judgements I trust, not least my own children and my pupils of the past.
