On Your Marks... by Alan McClure

 

Okay, children’s writers, listen up! It’s a tough world out there, and only the strong survive. If you’re to build an audience you have to pummel the competition into submission, and that’s not just other writers – it’s online gaming, bingeworthy box-sets, social media and Hollywood blockbusters. Stop pontificating and get to the good bits! Quick! You’re losing your audience with those pesky adjectives, that unnecessary character development, that ambitious vocabulary and those challenging concepts! Action! Action! Action! Words of one syllable, characters of one dimension, events with one interpretation – it’s your only hope! The modern child can’t be trusted with nuance or depth – who has time for that? Unfamiliar words? They close the book! Complex relationships? Boooring! If you’re not producing the literary equivalent of a strobe-light then those flighty young rascals will abandon you in a flash!

 

Oooft. And, breathe.

 

Poor kids. Their alleged inability to handle stories of the same interest, depth and complexity as the ones we all enjoyed as youngsters is used by bandwagon-jumping industry types to justify the worst possible practices. If there is an epidemic of deficient attention (which I heartily dispute), it would not be best addressed by making books ever shallower, more flippant or throwaway. We certainly don’t help to cure social media addiction in youngsters by making the experience of reading our books as superficial as the experience of scrolling through a newsfeed, nor do we wean them away from video games by plotting inexorably towards the inevitable end-of-level baddie. If writing that way is your bag then great, I’m sure it can be exciting and lucrative; but there has to be room for a different kind of experience in that magical relationship between writer and reader.

 

We have, in books, the astonishing luxury of space. A reader can fly through a book or savour every word, so let’s give them words to savour. The world is created in their mind, unique to them, using our wee marks on paper. I love movies and recognise video games as a genuine art form but they are much more prescriptive in terms of consumer experience than books in that they tend to leave little to the imagination. Not only that, but they are the product of dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of minds – a busy committee approach which for me depersonalizes the conversation between creator and audience.

 

I am daily heartened by the continued appearance of children’s books which take full advantage of the limitless possibilities of the medium; which respect young readers’ judgement and take seriously a writer’s responsibility to present bigger worlds than a reader’s own daily experience might provide. Many such books are penned by fellow members of this esteemed society! I fear, though, that such authors are continually forced to swim against the tide, to apologise for doing their jobs properly, to justify the passion they bring to an art form which some see purely as a business opportunity. I begrudge no-one the right to make a living, but seeing children’s literature as a commodity which must pitch itself against other unrelated artforms is to completely miss its value, its power.

 

If I were a tennis player eager to win over a set of football fans, I would attempt to do so by playing tennis to the absolute best of my ability, not by substituting the tennis ball for a football. We are not in the same game as directors, tech companies or games designers and we are under no obligation to try to mimic their media. We make books, and we should unapologetically proclaim their challenging magic and ensure that it is there to be found by those with a will to seek it.