bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1986) — Fall 1986 // Automne 1986, pp. 24–25
Michele Landsberg’s Guide to Children’s
Books, by Michele Landsberg. Pub-
lished by Penguin, 1985. 272 pp. $12.95.
Let it be said at the outset that I approached Guide to Children’s Books with what are commonly known as “grave doubts”. Guidebooks, I thought, are either for the hopelessly timid or for those who are already converted and seek only to have their taste publicly affirmed.
Furthermore, the market abounds with handbooks to children’s literature: there are manuals which trumpet the joys of reading aloud, pre-school primers to help children master “literary skills”, “best book” lists, how to’s and scholarly surveys aplenty. Canada even has some well-respected writers in the field — the redoubtable Sheila Egoff, to name but one. The odds were against Landsberg outdoing the old pros or finding a new angle. Nor were my misgivings quieted by the publisher’s hype of the frontispiece: “Michele Landsberg,” says Penguin, is “one of Canada’s best loved and most widely read columnists.” With no slight intended to Landsberg or her colleagues I cannot think of a single Canadian columnist I can classify as Somewhere along the way, however, I caved in. Landsberg’s book is persuasive and charming and I recommend it to parents, librarians, students of children’s literature or anyone who likes a good read about books. I can easily explain why I succumbed. Landsberg combines the two ingredients necessary to any good guidebook
– experience and taste.
On the first point, experience, Landsberg has plenty of competition, as noted above. Without the usual academic credentials or other traditional experience in the field of kidlit, she might be working at a disadvantage. Landsberg, however, is a parent, a lifelong and obviously voracious reader and a voluble communicator who readily expresses her delight or distaste.
Our guide has done her homework, extending her personal reach by consulting with children, librarians and teachers to produce a “treasury” of more than 350 great children’s books. The treasury is an annotated bibliography, roughly classified by age and/or reading level (Landsberg never suggests, by the way, that the two will always neatly correspond), with brief annotations and notes on availability for each entry. This is supplemented by ten chapters in which Landsberg sorts the corpus of children’s literature into developmental or conceptual lumps – picture books, fantasies, stories to accompany the prepubescent quest for identity, and so on.
Much of the conventional wisdom on the psychological basis to children’s writing (e.g., the now widely held theory that fairy tales, with their violence, sibling rivalry and Oedipal behaviours, offer a vicarious and therefore healthy outlet to children experiencing similar trials in real life) has been absorbed and is ably communicated Landsberg also acknowledges recent Canadian children’s books and the development of non-sexist, non-racist literature, while adding that no book, even if politically correct and popular, can stand on that basis alone. Only excellence, she says, makes a book worth publishing and reading.
Landsberg never writes as a polemicist, scholar or clinician. More typical is a mood in which she uses rich language and imagery to recreate liberating moments of past literary discovery, to grasp the unique and memorable qualities of an outstanding title. The “passionate dependencies” of the preschool years are recalled, as is the “spacious and rich” prose of Kenneth Grahame, the “earth-shaking” utopian vision of E. Nesbit, the brilliant, dreamy illustrations of Maurice Sendak.
All of which brings me to Landsberg’s second, and perhaps more valuable, quality
– taste, otherwise defined as style or conviction. What, after all, is a literary guidebook without a strong personality to animate it? Just so many titles strung together. If comprehensiveness is all that is desired, one should simply buy Childrens’ Books in Print. Far better the lively, developed and decided opinions of Michele Landsberg. If an unwary but well-meaning parent picks up the Guide with the vague perception that Johnny has been watching rather too much television lately, that parent will shortly be made into a believer, a witness to the life-affirming and enhancing quality of good books. On the other hand, Landsberg does not mince words when it comes to the less than literary, if hugely popular works, by authors such as Judy Blume and Roald Dahl. These books, she says, are mindless, cruel and just plain trashy. Landsberg is somewhat less convincing, however, when suggesting ways to wean avid young consumers of Blume et al away from pap and onto more nourishing fare. What, she asks, shall we do about the junk and the poor reader? This, indeed, is the question that will prompt many parents to pick up the Guide in the first place. While noting that children, like adults, appear to require a certain amount of “bulk” reading, and while admitting that there are no easy answers, Landsberg seems to think that a good parental example and a reticent “mmhmm” response when confronted with junk will go a long way toward eliminating these problems.
I am less certain. Concerned parents, professionals, and interested others, expect an uphill battle. But if you wish to arm yourselves, try the Guide. It is as knowledgeable a work as any, and far better written and researched than most. And if Michele Landsberg, by virtue of her sympathy and conviction, wins over a few hard cases to the cause, well then, so much the better.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1986) — Fall 1986 // Automne 1986, pp. 24–25. Read the rest of this issue →
