Author: Campbell, Abigail.

Title: From looking glass to spyglass. A consultation paper on children’s literature.

Source: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/downloads/information/consultation_childrensliterature.pdf [12.05.2004]

Published with kind permission of the author.

Abigail Campbell

From looking glass to spyglass

A consultation paper on children’s literature

Preface

Arts Council England is the national development agency for the arts. From 2003 to 2006 we will:

• prioritise individual artists

• work with funded arts organisations to help them thrive rather than just survive

• place cultural diversity at the heart of our work

• prioritise young people and Creative Partnerships

• maximise growth in the arts

Underlying all of these priorities is our central belief that the arts have power to transform lives and communities, and create opportunities for people throughout the country.

We recognise in particular the transforming power of the arts in relation to children and young people and the role the arts can play in developing confident, creative and articulate individuals. Our spending plan for 2003-6 announced major increases to national youth organisations and we welcome the increased investment in the Creative Partnerships initiative, a high priority across the organisation. We see children’s literature as the touchstone for a healthy and sustainable literary culture. Children’s writers and illustrators reach readers at their most dependent and travel with them through to young adulthood and beyond. This reading is among the most important – transforming – undertaken in any reader’s life. It affords the means by which children can ‘dialogue with their futures’¹, not only through the printed word, but also through children’s literature’s intimate connections with the visual arts and design, film and television, theatre and new technologies. Its value is private and public, cultural and artistic, and also social and economic. Children’s literature firmly belongs, as Philip Pullman notes, ‘with the rest in the general field, in the general market place for books and in the general conversation about books’².

Summaries and questions

Writers and illustrators

The high visibility of children’s literature does not mean that the sector is in good health. The economic context for children’s writers and illustrators is difficult and this has an impact on the creative environment, specifically on the opportunities for new writers and illustrators to experiment or for established writers and illustrators to develop their work over time. Children’s writers from abroad are hardly represented and the role of translators is largely unacknowledged. Public readings and workshops are increasingly becoming a requirement rather than an option for children’s writers.

• What are your views on the position of writers and illustrators of children’s literature?

• How do you think Arts Council England could best develop its work to support writers and illustrators of children’s literature?

Publishers and booksellers

There are opportunities for strategic development in children’s publishing and bookselling, independently and in partnership. Work to diversify what is being published, to support those making reading choices (both parents and carers, and children), and to reach more readers is vital to the long-term health of the sector.

• What are your views on the children’s publishing and bookselling industries?

• How should Arts Council England work with publishers and booksellers to ensure the future stability and diversity of the children’s literature sector?

Readers and libraries

Children’s reading seems both more and less evident than ever before. Sales and borrowing statistics (which indicate declining trends) do not represent the whole picture, and nor does the Harry Potter phenomenon. Public libraries lie at the heart of a thriving young reading culture. Greater opportunities need to be created for more children to have more positive, meaningful reading experiences within them.

• What are your views about children’s reading and the role of libraries?

• How should Arts Council England work to encourage new and existing young readers and to support the library network?

Promoting children’s literature

Children’s literature promotion is a vast and active field in which valuable work often takes place in a rather fragmented and piecemeal way. There is scope for more collaborative activity and a more structured approach to gathering evidence and sharing information, not least to be in a stronger position to engage and direct support from the media and tourism sectors.

• What are your views of the work currently being done to promote children’s literature and to develop children’s reading?

• How can Arts Council England best support this work?

Education, training and research

The complexity of the position of children’s literature in education should not be a reason for confusion or inaction. There is good reason to articulate the uniqueness of children’s literature’s role in sites of learning, and to invest in its future in terms of resources, training and research. Otherwise there is a risk of compromising learning and development across the curriculum and of diminishing the status of books, writers, school libraries and teachers.

• What are your views on the position of children’s literature within Education?

• How can Arts Council England work to support the creative teaching of children’s literature?

Funding context

In the minutes of the Arts Council of Great Britain’s Literature Advisory Panel in 1979 a discussion is recorded on the subject ‘Do children’s books need Arts Council support?’ The discussion took place after a conference held to review ‘state support for children’s literature’ staged by the National Book League (now Booktrust) in 1978.

The context was compelling: in 1979/80 hard-back sales of children’s books had declined by 16 per cent, at the end of a decade which had seen turnover in children’s publishing drop by one-fifth in real terms.

The outcome of the debate was positive. A number of practical recommendations were immediately taken forward, such as including children’s illustrators in the Arts Council’s Writers in Schools scheme, and children’s writers in the Writers on Tour scheme. Soon afterwards a children’s book specialist was invited to join the Literature Advisory Panel of the Arts Council.

Other, longer-term recommendations were frustrated in 1984 when the subsidy available for literature was halved, on the following basis: ‘English literature, on the other hand, is sustained by a large and profitable commercial publishing industry. It is a basic ingredient in the school curriculum. It is available to the public through the public library system. In these circumstances, the impact of the Arts Council’s subsidy for literature other than poetry is highly marginal’³.

In succeeding years, literature officers worked to redefine the Arts Council’s relationship with the literature sector, moving beyond the individual writer to reach the reader. And it is perhaps this development more than any other that advanced support for children’s literature. By the late eighties, the Literature Advisory Panel was defining its work to encourage children to create and maintain a life-long habit of reading as ‘valuable as an end in itself’.

At the same time, the Arts Council’s relationship with the public library service, already a strong performer in the promotion of children’s reading and children’s literature, was further developed. Young Book Trust emerged from the children’s book room at the National Book League in the late eighties. Children’s literature summer schools were supported at Westminster College, Oxford in the early nineties. The Arts Council funded young readers’ promotions and writers in schools projects across England through the National Year of Reading in 1997-98. And in 2001 the Children’s Literature Summer School at Roehampton was founded and funded, now a biennial event.

Literature officers throughout the organisation work to support and develop a thriving creative writing and reading culture. Central to that work today are writers for children and their readers, and those who bring them together, both in education and through publication, distribution, performance and debate.

Purpose of this consultation

Twenty-five years on from our first review of our support for children’s literature, and at the start of our work as one organisation, (one which prioritises young people), we have an opportunity to look again at the status of children’s literature, its creators and consumers, and what is being done to support it. The context is as compelling as it was in 1978: although the visibility of children’s books has certainly increased, sales and library issues are once again in decline.

This paper is informed by an initial mapping exercise of current activity in the children’s literature sector. It lays out the territory, providing an overview of what appear to be the key, determining issues. It also profiles some of the work Arts Council England is currently undertaking in this field. We invite responses further to inform and structure our future strategy.

This consultation paper will be widely distributed and made available on Arts Council England’s website (www.artscouncil.org.uk). We seek contributions from all those who make up the children’s literature sector: writers, readers, teachers, librarians, parents, carers, promoters, publishers, booksellers, the media and academia. Discussion groups will be held around the country during the autumn of 2003. Following consultation we will publish an analysis of our findings and key recommendations for taking forward our work to support and develop children’s literature from 2003 to 2006.

Social and cultural context

There were 12.1 million children aged under 16 in the UK in 2000, (6.2 million boys and 5.9 million girls) a fall of around 5 per cent since 1996. In 2001-02, a third of the ethnic minority population were aged under 16, compared with a fifth of the white population⁴.

While a declining birth-rate means falling numbers of younger children, in another sense the youth sector can be seen as enlarging. ‘The transition from childhood to adulthood now lasts longer than at anytime in history. Young people could be described as being in an extended period of youth’⁵ The term ‘kidult’ has been coined to describe this demographic, meaning both a child who looks or behaves like an adult, and a middle-aged person who continues to participate in and enjoy youth culture, for example its literature. The ‘cross-over’ book, which finds an audience amongst both adults and children, is one of the most widely discussed literary developments in recent years.

And it’s not only our definitions of ‘youth’ which seem to be much more fluid. ‘Far more of us now than ever before have both living grandparents and living children. Intergenerational relationships are literally all in the family… [looking ahead] it is vital that intergeneration solidarity is maintained and fostered. One way to do that is to break down stereotypical views of both youth and age, so all can contribute to the full. Healthy intergenerational relationships are created by the natural interaction of old and young. They develop organically in families. At a societal level, they may need fostering. In making policy in areas such as housing, planning, education and employment, we must ensure that the worlds of young and old can interact in positive, life enhancing ways’⁶.

The future health of children’s literature depends to a significant extent on the current attitudes and activities of adults: parents, carers, grandparents, teachers, librarians, publishers, booksellers, and writers. Though children’s literature is an unusual artform in largely being defined by its audience, it’s hardly a standalone genre and requires mediation by adults at many stages.

Although children are not the demographic exhibiting the greatest growth, adults can clearly not afford to look away. The appointment of a minister for children, the proposed establishment of a young people’s lottery fund⁷, the integration of children’s services, and the launch of Hear by Right, a set of benchmarking standards by which local authorities can measure their performance in involving young people in local democracy: all these recent, fundamental developments in central and local government indicate that young people are possibly higher and more prominent on the adult agenda than ever before.

Arts Council England views this consultation exercise as an important opportunity to examine how children’s literature is represented on a cultural agenda.

Writers and illustrators

Writers and illustrators of children’s literature in England are producing work exciting international interest and respect: telling big and important stories, whether their backdrop is the Miltonic, magical or mundane. When Anthony Browne won a Hans Christian Andersen medal in 2000, presented biennially by the International Board on Books for Young People to an author and an illustrator whose work has made a lasting contribution to children’s literature, it was the first British win since 1956. In 2002 both medals went to the UK, when Quentin Blake and Aidan Chambers were successful.

But are writers and illustrators receiving appropriate support and recognition closer to home? Is their status equal to that of their counterparts producing literature for adults?

Writers

The stellar profile of a handful of children’s writers such as J K Rowling gives the impression that writing children’s literature is a high-flying and lucrative profession. In addition, recent forays into children’s literature by celebrity figures have made it something of a fashionable pastime: a recent article in Vogue magazine described it as the ‘Prada of the publishing industry’.

This perception might have some value in terms of inspiring some young writers. But it isn’t accurate. Many children’s writers and illustrators of all ages are widely treated as if they are the charges of an arts nursery, insufficiently developed to expect the investment, the returns and the profile of adult culture, as Posy Simmonds’ cartoon (page 16) deftly illustrates.

In 2000 the Society of Authors published its first survey into the income of writers and illustrators for adults and children since 1981. Basic earnings were comparably poor with 70 per cent of children’s writers and illustrators, and education and general fiction writers earning under £20,000 (close to the national minimum wage at the time of the survey). But only 25 per cent of children’s writers received advances of more than £5,000, compared with 55 per cent of general fiction writers. One children’s writer received advances of over £50,000, compared with 42 general fiction authors.

This finding is symptomatic of a marketplace that is driven to a significant extent by the front-list of a small number of high-profile writers. Mid-list children’s authors’ advances are particularly paltry and income from backlists is also falling away. High discounting to retailers such as supermarkets has also had a direct impact on children’s writers’ income from royalties.

The sustainability of the children’s book market is a concern if it continues to be dominated to such an extent by the front-list and the fast-track, pulling away from ‘slow build’ writers, with extensive backlists, who may be exhibiting more steady – rather than stellar – growth. Such a concentration of money and influence will also make it more difficult in the long-term for new writers to gain a toehold in the market from where they can be nurtured. There are long-term cultural implications here, as the children’s writer and chair of the children’s group of the Society of Authors makes clear:

‘Children’s publishing is the jewel in the crown of British publishing. Because writers have been able to make a living out of writing and bided their time to do their best work, it has created this great pool of talent. Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson have both been writing for a long time. In 30 years’ time, will writers of that quality have been able to serve the same sort of apprenticeship? Not unless they can make enough money to live’⁸.

Children’s writers and illustrators from abroad face even greater challenges in the British market. While much British children’s literature is exported to other countries to high acclaim, British children’s experience of international literature, when it happens at all, is in danger of halting with Tove Jansson’s The Moomins and Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking. This is not because books of similar quality aren’t being published abroad now, just that they aren’t crossing borders. The percentage of books published in translation in the UK each year for all ages is concerning (around 2.5 per cent) but it’s a particular concern in the context of children’s reading and how it shapes their early perceptions of the world and its cultures. When Aidan Chambers learned of his Hans Christian Andersen Award, he ‘couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was… to receive the only international honour for writers for the young when I belong to a nation that pays so little attention to books produced for the young in other languages’⁹.

Translators of children’s literature play a vital creative role in its production and have a major impact on the diversity and vitality of the sector. They also have a powerful ambassadorial role in underlining the parity of children’s literature with that for adults – a translator is rarely a ‘children’s literature-only’ translator: the highly respected Anthea Bell has, for instance, translated Asterix books, W G Sebald, and Hans Enzensberger’s Where were you Robert?.

Public Lending Right (PLR) data shows that of the 12 authors who garnered up to one million or more library loans in 2000/01, four were children’s authors. £4.5 million in loan payments was distributed to authors in February 2002 and approximately £1.3 million of this went to the authors of children’s books. Around two-thirds of the 127 authors who receive PLR’s maximum payment are not ‘bestsellers’ outside the library sector and many of these are children’s writers and illustrators¹⁰. The payments awarded by PLR – a statutory right hard-fought for by writers and their supporters – are set to become the most significant source of income for many children’s writers in the current climate.

Illustrators

The combination of text and illustration, the verbal and the visual, in many children’s books make them a unique narrative medium and a vital forum for many fine and graphic artists. Their work is playful, sophisticated and challenging, and has no direct counterpart in adult texts. As the first educators in art, design, storytelling and literature, ‘artists and illustrators are in the driving seat in children’s encounters with books’¹¹.

Illustration also bears comparison with translation in an economic context: each brings to the original text, besides a vital illumination of the reading experience, an additional cost. The printing of full-colour picture books normally requires the involvement of at least one major co-edition partner. America, historically an important ally here, has cut back significantly on its UK imports. In consequence ‘it is much tougher for authors and in particular illustrators to find homes for picture books unless their style is an established international success or known to be of a type that appeals internationally’¹². For writers and illustrators alike, there is increasing pressure on the possibility of difference and diversity, experimentation and risk.

The Children’s Laureateship is funded directly by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, with support from a number of publishers, booksellers, trusts and foundations. It is an unusual and important public statement about the equal status of writers and illustrators in children’s literature, and about the importance of children’s literature to culture generally.

Quentin Blake was the first Children’s Laureate and his Tell me a picture exhibition at the National Gallery was a great visual exposition of the reading story, mixing illustration with pictures by old masters, visited by over a quarter of a million children, parents and teachers in four months. The British Council also collaborated with Quentin Blake to put together an exhibition of the work of other British illustrators of children’s books in 2001, including Emma Chichester Clark, whose Blue Kangaroo illustration appears on the cover of this publication. It was first shown at the Laing Gallery in Newcastle and then at the British Library, where it attracted 4,000 visitors a week, the first ever visual arts exhibition to be held there. It is now on a tour of 30 countries, where it is attracting even higher visitor numbers.

Prizes

There are over 40 national and regional prizes specifically for writers or illustrators of children’s literature in England, a figure which compares favourably with other artforms. They have diverse funding sources – from Blue Peter to Nestlé, from the Guardian newspaper to the University of Central Lancashire – and a diverse array of judges (writers, librarians, young people and parents), as befitting the diverse audiences which children’s literature engages.

A few prizes, such as the Fidler Award, are directed at previously unpublished writers. Most however recognise and promote publication rather than directly support the process of writing or illustrating. There is only one national award for children’s poets (the Signal Prize, recently revived by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education). Prizes currently available total an estimated £50,000 in prize money for the winning writers and illustrators, the total value of the Man Booker Prize for (adult) fiction. Mark Haddon’s appearance on the Booker longlist in 2003 was possible because of its ‘cross-over’ status: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is published jointly by Cape and David Fickling.

The respect and acknowledgement that comes with winning prizes is clearly worth a great deal, affording a major fillip in writers’ confidence and development. But is there any reason why the prize money available to children’s writers should be lower than that available to writers for adults? Indeed is there any reason why more prizes currently only targeted at writers for adults should not also be made available to writers for children?

Writers for young people resident in the north of England are eligible to apply for the £60,000 Northern Rock Foundation Writer’s Award. And, as Philip Pullman demonstrated, just a year after the winning book of the Whitbread Children’s Award was allowed to go forward as a contender for Book of the Year, children’s writers can win the Whitbread Prize. The in-out history of the Children’s Book of the Year Whitbread Prize (it has been awarded since 1972, in 1996 was set apart from the general field, in 1999 it was back in) in itself says something about the ambivalence with which children’s writers are viewed.

The sales benefit to writers of prizes is harder to quantify across the board, though undoubtedly the higher profile prizes do have an effect. Philip Pullman’s Whitbread win in 2000 is estimated to have triggered 700,000 sales of the Dark Materials trilogy over the year. Following their Blue Peter Book Award wins, Geraldine McCaughrean’s A Pilgrim’s Progress was reprinted several times and Alan Gibbons’ sales of Minotour exceeded those of his other books to the extent that he was able to work part-time in his employment as a teacher.

Performers

Many writers for children (like writers for adults) supplement their income by giving readings or running workshops as ‘visiting writers’ or ‘writers in residence’. These take place in schools, libraries or other environments, and can be supported by the institution, the local education authority, an arts funding body or publisher.

While many writers enjoy this direct contact with their readers and believe it develops their work, for others it is a distraction from the business of writing. Whatever its merits, it is true that writers who are not comfortable or confident with such a public role – and there is no reason why a writer should be a natural performer or teacher – will find it more difficult to achieve awareness of their writing.

Summary

The high visibility of children’s literature does not mean that the sector is in good health. The economic context for children’s writers and illustrators is difficult and this has an impact on the creative environment, specifically on the opportunities for new writers and illustrators to experiment or for established writers and illustrators to develop their work over time. Children’s writers from abroad are hardly represented and the role of translators is largely unacknowledged. Public readings and workshops are increasingly becoming a requirement of rather than an option for children’s writers.

Current funding activity

Children’s writers, illustrators and translators across England are eligible to apply to the grants for the arts for individuals programme, which supersedes the regional bursary schemes that supported children’s writers and illustrators unevenly across the country.

Arts Council England has increased investment for many of its regularly funded literature organisations, national and regional, which work to develop opportunities available to writers. These include the Arvon Foundation, which runs creative writing courses for children’s writers and the National Association of Writers in Education, which offers writers working in education training, mentoring and resources.

Since 1998 Arts Council England’s Writers’ Awards – designed to ‘buy time’ for writers to write – have earmarked at least one award each year for a writer of literature for young people, and a writer for children (or critic) has been represented on the judging panel.

The additional award made by Arts Council England to the winners of the David Cohen Prize (for a writer’s lifetime achievement), is earmarked for an organisation or individual promoting young people’s writing or reading, making an important association between established, high-profile writers and writers of the future.

Arts Council England contributes towards the Marsh Award for children’s literature in translation. The award supports the winning writer and translator and also works to advance more work in this area. Since the inception of the prize in 1996, there has been a year-on-year increase in entries submitted and a wider range of languages represented.

Arts Council England funds literature-training, a consortium of literature agencies working to support writers, for instance in developing their practice in performance. Arts Council England maintains links with membership bodies such as the Society of Authors, the Writers’ Guild, and Action for Children’s Arts, all of which offer invaluable services to children’s writers.

Questions

• What are your views on the position of writers and illustrators of children’s literature?

• How do you think Arts Council England could best develop its work to support writers and illustrators of children’s literature?

‘Literary Life’, reproduced by kind permission from Posy Simmonds

Publishers and booksellers

Publishers

Government initiatives in the late 1990s (explored further in the section on Education, training and research) gave schools significant extra book-spending power, and the children’s publishing industry a welcome boost. Following the end of the National Year of Reading, The Bookseller reported that the ‘slump in backlist sales towards the end of 1999 and into 2000 caught many publishers and retailers by surprise’. As we have seen, backlist sales are still vulnerable and the general diversity of writers currently being published is also an issue, both in terms of the range of writers at different stages of their careers, and writers from a variety of cultures and countries.

Former Children’s Laureate Anne Fine’s delivery of the Patrick Hardy lecture this year was on the theme ‘Too Many Books, Too Little Time’. Until 2002 the number of children’s books sold was increasing each year; in 2002, four million fewer children’s books were bought, although more money was spent on them¹³ (see table on page 20). This steadying in the number of books published is a positive sign as long as the breathing space – and shelf-space – it affords is used as an opportunity to work on the diversity of what is being published, rather than as an excuse to forestall it.

There is work to be done to look at the entry points for new writers, especially those from ethnic minority backgrounds who are currently poorly represented in the children’s publishing sector. It would be appropriate to look further at the work of independent presses successfully specialising in the work of Black, Asian and Chinese writers, for example MantraLingua (London), Barefoot Books (Bath), Tamarind (London) and Primary Colours (Huddersfield).

Egmont’s World Mammoth list and the commitment of publishers such as Milet Books and ChickenHouse to translated fiction are also positive models for development. The Egmont World Mammoth list, launched in 2000, emerged following a speech given by Philip Pullman at the presentation of the Marsh Award for children’s literature in translation, about the richness of his childhood reading of translated fiction.

Children’s writers and illustrators are usually published by a number of publishing houses as it is often difficult for one publisher to publish the full range of an author’s output. But this publishing pattern also makes it difficult for one publisher to invest heavily in promoting a writer or illustrator only partially represented by that house.

Commercial publishers promote books as a means of generating direct sales or of raising profile to generate future sales or return on investment. Their promotional function is focussed around publication dates and spend on promotion is linked to estimated turnover. Children’s literature that does not directly link to a sales function – for instance much ‘live literature’ – is less likely to benefit from the levels of promotion available for books.

Nevertheless, publishers of children’s literature are important supporters of writers’ work in libraries and schools. Many children’s publishers are also talking positively about exploring ways in which they can help support teachers directly, perhaps contributing in some way to literature teaching in teacher training colleges¹⁴. There is a good existing model in the ongoing collaboration between Puffin Books, Manchester Metropolitan University’s Institute of Education and Madeleine Lindley Books. There are some encouraging signs that publishers’ work to develop readers is becoming more collaborative and longer-term.

Magazines and journals

A small number of magazines are published with a focus on children’s literature, for example Books for Keeps, Carousel and Booktrusted News (the children’s magazine of Booktrust). They have a valuable role in promoting children’s literature to potential buyers and readers. There are even fewer publications that provide an outlet for new writing (though Carousel has recently published an anthology of contemporary children’s writing and illustration) or support the creative development of writers. The opportunities for new children’s writers to build up a profile or portfolio through publication in literary magazines or journals are far harder to come by than they are for emerging writers in the adult literature sector.

Booksellers

The point of sale for children’s literature could hardly be more diverse, for example supermarkets, video-rental shops, school book clubs, internet sites and specialist outlets, including the Poetry Book Society’s ‘Children’s Book Shelf’ scheme. The sheer plenitude of children’s books can be overwhelming, particularly for parents or carers making reading choices for their children. And the knowledge and expertise of booksellers, key in making meaning out of shelves of books, is spread more thinly in this expansive territory.

The role of the 30 or so specialist independent children’s bookshops – repositories of expertise, showcases of the full range of writing, back-, mid- and front-lists, venues for author readings and workshops – is more important than ever. Independent bookshops develop particularly strong links with their local communities through schools, libraries and reading groups. ‘The diversity offered by the independent sector is vital to the continuing health of literature in this country’¹⁵.

Children’s buyers in many of the major bookshops are still often the most junior staff whose depth and breadth of knowledge of children’s literature may not leave them feeling confident in giving specialist advice to parents. Only two bookselling groups, Ottakars and the former Hammicks chain (now part of Ottakars) offer specialist children’s bookselling training. W H Smith’s children’s booksellers receive training in education and a guide to educational books. There is an increasing awareness on the part of children’s booksellers of the importance of design and display, particularly for teenage fiction titles.

Summary

There are opportunities for strategic development in children’s publishing and bookselling, independently and in partnership. Work to diversify what is being published, to support those making reading choices (both parents and carers, and children), and to reach more readers is vital to the long-term health of the sector.

Current funding activity

Publishers and booksellers are eligible to apply for grants for the arts for organisations or for national touring.

Meerkat Books is an initiative supported by Arts Council England with the aim of bolstering independent bookshops within a network of joint promotions and developing their relationships with commercial publishers. A significant number of children’s booksellers and children’s publishers are taking part. Widespread publisher support demonstrates interest in the role independent bookshops can play in boosting new and growing authors and reaching a wider market with a broader range of books.

A number of small independent presses and magazines are in receipt of regular funding; none of them are specialists in children’s literature, and none of them currently publish significant amounts of children’s literature.

Arts Council England, London is leading on a research project looking at cultural diversity in the children’s publishing sector, funded through the decibel programme. The findings will be published early in 2004.

Questions

• What are your views on the children’s publishing and bookselling industries?

• How should Arts Council England work with publishers and booksellers to ensure the future stability and diversity of the children’s literature sector?

Readers and libraries

At midnight on 21 June 2003 the UK’s young readers appeared vast in number and thoroughly engaged (though 12.5 per cent of the 1.7 million copies sold on its first day of publication were purchases of the adult edition of Harry Potter). Yet through the rest of the year, and for several years in succession, Britain’s young reading public is showing signs of diminishing.

In libraries, patterns of declining use, both in terms of the proportions of children’s stock on loan and in the number of children’s books issued, have emerged since the late-1990s (mirroring a similar, longer-running decline in issues of adult books).

The children’s book market also appears to be failing to thrive, growing significantly less than the market as a whole between 1997 and 2002 (by 8 per cent compared with 14 per cent) and actually falling by around 11 per cent in 2002 (a year noticeable by Harry Potter’s absence).

¹⁶

Children’s book sales were boosted in 1998 and 1999 with extra Government funding of £47 million and £66 million respectively for the National Year of Reading.

Readers

It is inappropriate and unhelpful to suggest that the Harry Potter phenomenon has failed to save the children’s book industry, in the sense that J K Rowling hardly began to write with that ambition.

Nevertheless, it’s important to define the limits of its success. Not to do so fuels the complacency that has long dominated attitudes to children’s literature. It’s a highly complex market; and one full Albert Hall does not make a prom season. The Harry Potter books have contributed to a more positive reading culture amongst children and their families (an ICM survey commissioned by Powergen in 2001 found that more adults were reading to their children at bedtime, in part as a result of Harry Potter’s cross-over status). J K Rowling has helped to bring children’s literature into focus, made it a subject of popular and critical conversation, both here and abroad.

But neither Harry Potter nor J K Rowling on their own are enough to guarantee a generation of lifelong engaged readers, with diverse and independent reading tastes. There is some evidence that in bookshops young readers are transferring their allegiance from other authors, for instance R L Stine’s Goosebump series, to Harry Potter, without looking back. It is also suggested that the price of each Harry Potter volume inhibits parents from buying other books, and that the time it takes to read each volume discourages young readers from reading more widely.

Interest in reading has been shown to decline significantly beyond Key Stage 2: 72 per cent of girls and 71 per cent of boys say the read fiction ‘often or very often’ at Key Stage 2; at Key Stages 3 and 4 only 38 per cent of girls and 18 per cent of boys say the same¹⁷.

It is a timid culture that does not respond either to these quantitative or qualitative findings. We are in a position neither to rest on our laurels nor to throw our hands up in despair. The phenomenal achievement of J K Rowling is a cause for celebration. But the wider context merits specific interventions (particularly in terms of the availability of time, space and choice for young people to read) to underpin it so that more readers, now and in the future, enjoy not only her success but that of other British writers and illustrators. Not to intervene is to exhibit a lack of faith and confidence in the quality of their work, and in children’s appetite for creative reading.

The average upper limit in length of a children’s fiction title before Harry Potter was 30,000 to 40,000 words. This was a limit determined by adult perceptions of children’s shortening attention span and by economy. While public discourse is becoming increasingly instrumental and brief, unfolding in little words and short phrases, headlines and bullet points, Harry Potter readers are affirming their ability to read at leisure and at length. The next step is to find ways to encourage, support and sustain the investment of time and effort that avidity demands, in school, in libraries, at home, and in all the spaces and places in between.

Children’s appetite for wider reading is compelling, where they are given the opportunity and encouragement to indulge it and to read around. Around a third of the BBC’s Big Read Top 100 books are children’s titles, a mix of current bestsellers, classics and books from authors’ mid and backlists – all of whose sales have been rejuvenated following the Big Read promotion.

Illustration reproduced from The Laureate’s Party, Quentin Blake (Red Fox, 2002), by kind permission.

Libraries

Within the public library system, where children have free access to the entire repertoire of authors’ work, not just that which is in print or in the news, R L Stine and children’s authors other than J K Rowling are holding their own (R L Stine is number 2 in the most borrowed author’s listing, and J K Rowling number 15).

There are 34 million registered library borrowers out of a population of 59 million and of all those library members who borrow a book at least once a month, 0 -14 year olds make up 24 per cent of all loans. According to Public Lending Right data, 29 per cent of loans in 2000-01 were children’s fiction and non-fiction titles. Children’s writers have continued to be well represented in the most-borrowed authors’ listings and in 2002, for the first time since records began, Catherine Cookson was toppled from the most-borrowed title post, by J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

86 per cent of young library users surveyed in 2002 said they rated the books in their local library as good and 87 per cent rated the library staff as good. The future of public libraries lies in the developing importance of children’s services ‘as libraries prove themselves as safe havens for children in both the physical as well as the electronic public domain’¹⁸.

Specialist staff who are equipped with the skills, confidence and time to enable existing and future young readers to make best use of the public library service are vital. So too are books, resources and spaces within the library that accommodate different reading levels, different interests, different cultures and backgrounds, and different access requirements (for instance, audio, tactile, electronic text or large print).

Many library authorities report that they have begun to observe an increase in young users, particularly boys, following the implementation of the People’s Network and for some this has translated into increased issues¹⁹. Libraries are at the vanguard of a creative, non-oppositional relationship between new media and books, as proved by the success of the first online World Book Day festival in 2002, delivered by libraries through the People’s Network.

Online resources for young readers with a disability, for example, such as the National Library for the Blind’s ‘Fiction Café’, which holds a browseable database of books and includes Calibre and Talking Books services, are a valuable means of enhancing choice and enjoyment for young readers with visual impairments. The public library service is the largest outlet for large print volumes, though there is currently no central provision of large print (24 pt) books for teenagers.

Summary

Children’s reading seems both more and less evident than ever before. Sales and borrowing statistics (which indicate declining trends) do not represent the whole picture, and nor does the Harry Potter phenomenon. Public libraries lie at the heart of a thriving young reading culture. Greater opportunities need to be created for more children to have more positive, meaningful reading experiences within them. Some of the ways that is already happening and might happen are discussed further in section on promoting children’s literature.

Current funding activity

Arts Council England supports The Reading Agency, in partnership with the Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals, to work with libraries to develop readers. Much of their work is focused on young readers.

Arts Council England also invests in Their Reading Futures, a supportive framework for planning young people’s reading services in libraries. This framework parallels the Branching Out programme for adult services and there may be scope to look at the levels of integration between the two programmes in the future.

Arts Council England is in the process developing, with Resource, a number of initiatives to develop professional development opportunities for librarians, including children’s specialists, with the aim of validating librarianship as a creative profession.

Questions

• What are your views about children’s reading and the role of libraries?

• How should Arts Council England work to encourage new and existing young readers and to support the library network?

Promoting children’s literature

There is a vast workforce of individuals and organisations engaged in developing children’s reading experiences and in promoting children’s literature, in the arts, in the media and through tourism.

Arts

Young readers have a national champion in the form of the Children’s Laureate (currently Michael Morpurgo). Children’s literature has a national home (the Centre for the Children’s Book, based in a converted corn mill on the banks of the Tyne), a ‘powerhouse’²⁰ in the public library system; and a national research centre (at the University of Roehampton).

The annual calendar of major national promotional events to encourage children’s reading has few windows:

Above and beyond these national initiatives exists much important, specific regional and local activity – readings, performances, competitions, and reading groups. 95 per cent of public libraries in the UK offer seasonal or holiday reading events²¹.

Reader development work takes place across the country with children in and out of school hours, in hospital and with some of the 58,000 children currently in care; with young people at risk of offending and young offenders; with early years and teenagers; with parents (including some of the 125,000 parents who are in prison) and grandparents.

There are a number of specialist children’s literature festivals in England. These include the Young Readers UK Festival in Birmingham, the Cheltenham Book It! Festival, and Imagine: Writers and Writing for Children, run biennially at the Royal Festival Hall in London, (all taking place in October); the Institut Français Youth Festival of French and British children’s writers and illustrators (November) and the Northern Children’s Book Festival, celebrating its 20th anniversary in November 2003. Some literature festivals primarily aimed at adult audiences are increasing and enhancing what they programme for younger readers – for instance the Oxford Literary Festival and the Ilkley Literature Festival.

The density and diversity of children’s reading promotion and development is impressive, but brings with it certain challenges for those charged with making it happen.

In project evaluations teachers, librarians and other professionals engaged in the sector consistently report on the lack of time available to plan and to integrate new initiatives into existing programmes and timetables. They also reveal their lack of confidence in selecting, from the vast number of posters, toolkits and packs produced, the most appropriate resources to support them. Many of these professionals also indicate uncertainty about how to access writers, plan and evaluate events, and about the potential support available from the arts funding system, from publishers and other sources.

A large number of literature festivals still display reticence or reluctance about programming children’s literature events. This might be due in part to a concern amongst promoters that children’s authors won’t draw a paying audience, but also to a lack of confidence in how and who to programme for a younger reading audience, for particular age-groups or for families. As a result children’s literature events at major literature festivals can often only be found in hidden-away venues at odd times of the day. Alternatively, programming for children is represented only by outreach work in an educational context.

Children’s literature promotion risks cultivating a toolkit-heavy, short-term and inward-looking culture, shaped by ‘pilot’ projects serving small groups of potential readers for short periods of time, or the same groups of readers time after time, and involving intricate and unstable patterns of partnership. The Audit Commission’s recent review of public library services found that ‘although there is promotional outreach work occurring… there is not a co-ordinated or planned approach to promoting the service to non-users’²².

In the dedication to making children’s literature an entitlement to enjoyment, there is a danger that promotion can become all fairweather and froth. Children’s literature development will never have a long-term and sustainable impact on children’s reading and on the profile of children’s literature if it is undertaken as a sideshow, a top-up or add-on activity. National ‘weeks’ and ‘days’ must be integrated intelligently and imaginatively with local and regional needs and networks.

Promotional and developmental activity in the area of children’s literature will be frustrated without serious joined-up thinking at regional and national levels, and also across agencies and services. Childhood is not just a preparation for life, but part of it, and children’s development in reading clearly doesn’t happen in a vacuum, independently of their development or experience elsewhere. It’s equally inappropriate to approach children’s literature always as an emergent or temporary artform, and libraries, as the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s new strategic framework for the public library service makes clear, as ‘standalone services’²³.

Some of the most successful reading initiatives have evolved through partnerships which have meaning to parents and children and which have evolved a strategic national and regional programme of delivery.

Bookstart is a multi-agency partnership of libraries, health services and publishers, managed by Booktrust. Since 1992 over one million babies have received a Bookstart pack of reading materials at their 7– 9 month health check. It is estimated that the scheme currently reaches around 90 per cent of babies in the UK.

Bookstart is funded by an annual grant from central government and by local support from library services, Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships, Sure Start, health authorities and others. Toddler packs (Bookstart+), dual language book packs, and packs for babies with visual impairments (Booktouch) have also been developed. Local schemes are working with health visitor training colleges, with speech and language therapists, and with social services. Initial research has indicated that Bookstart babies are more advanced than babies who did not receive a pack on entering school, and at Key Stage 1. The same research also finds that Bookstart parents are more aware of the role reading can play in speech and language development and that they are themselves more confident readers and library-users:

‘Most libraries in Leicestershire hold monthly Bookstart sessions where a librarian with specialist children’s knowledge will share rhymes and stories with young children and be available to offer advice on such issues as book selection. These sessions are so popular that parents often request that their children’s birthday parties are held at the library’²⁴.

85 per cent of library authorities take part in the Summer Reading Challenge, coordinated by The Reading Agency. Half a million children between four and 11 join in the scheme, reading and reflecting on six books. Over the four years in which the scheme has been run, it has generated 30,000 new library members and £550,000 new book sales. Eight out of 10 participating children consider themselves better readers as a result, 66 per cent of children read authors new to them and 77 per cent read a book they wouldn’t normally read.

Media

There is a major role for the media, broadcast and print, in the promotion and development of children’s literature.

Children in the UK have one of the highest levels of personal ownership of television sets in Europe. Uniquely, among their European peers, children in the UK are as likely to have a television set in their bedroom as they are to have a shelf of books²⁵. There has been a dramatic rise in the amount of children’s programming on television over the past five years, but a move away from drama and factual genres. Children’s viewing of children’s programming is, however, decreasing²⁶.

Interviews with children indicate that book-based dramas (such as The Worst Witch and The Queen’s Nose) were very popular with the under-10s but whilst older children still watched them, given the choice they would prefer more ‘grown up’ programming. Nevertheless, Broadcasting Audience Research Board figures show that of the 10 children’s programmes attracting the highest viewing figures in 2002, four were adaptations of children’s books. A dramatisation of Stig of the Dump (Clive King) attracted 353,000 viewers, ahead of The Ghost Hunter (Ivan Jones), The Cramp Twins (an animation of Brian Wood’s graphic novel) and The Story of Tracy Beaker (Jacqueline Wilson).

Far less time is available for children’s literature on BBC Radio, compared to that available for writing for adults. Digital radio has created much more programming space for children, for instance the digital channel BBC 7 which offers four hours of children’s programming a day, including readings from and interviews with children’s authors (Jacqueline Wilson was one of the very first guests). Oneword digital radio programmes 23 hours of children’s programming each week, mostly made up of children’s book adaptations.

When Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights did make it onto BBC Radio 4’s Book Club, only the second children’s book – after Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – to feature on the programme, the book sales increased more than twice as much as adult books that had previously been discussed. And when BBC TV’s Blue Peter asked any viewer who might like to be a judge for the Blue Peter Book Awards to send in a review of a book they had recently read, 19,500 reviews were sent in within the next week.

The space allocated to general reviews of children’s literature in print media is growing, though from a modest base, and not in proportion to the number of titles published. In 1980 John Rowe Townsend observed: ‘The assessment of children’s books takes place in an atmosphere of unparalleled intellectual confusion”²⁷. Today much more knowledge is in evidence, especially by a number of respected children’s literature editors on national newspapers. However, much of the coverage of children’s literature is still seasonal, sometimes sensational and often in the form of round-ups of information on recommended books rather than extended reviews or serious features and profiles. There are still only a small number of children’s writers who would be guaranteed reviews in mass-market print media outlets.

Audiences (of adults and children) for serious and stimulating children’s literature promotion in broadcast and print media are clearly in evidence. There is an opportunity for a more creative and considered approach to collaboration between arts and media sectors, which moves the debate on from the relative status of the book and television.

Tourism

For many people across the world the UK is seen as one of the original homes of children’s literature, a perception of enormous economic and cultural value. Tourism was worth approximately £75.9 billion to the UK in 2002 and the UK is the fifth largest tourist destination in the world. ‘Culture and heritage’ are cited as reasons for visiting by around 60 per cent of visitors and research has indicated that these people tend to stay longer and spend more than the average visitor.

Promotion of the value of children’s literature in terms of cultural tourism has been patchy – often very strong and successful at a regional or local level, but understated nationally and strategically. The literature sector in general is often not perceived as having a significant building-based infrastructure (beyond the public library network) and has not profited hugely from capital lottery funding (the Centre for the Children’s Book in Newcastle being a significant exception).

In fact, the country is a treasure trove of substantial archives and collections, of writing environments and inspirations, a great proportion of which relate to children’s literature, acknowledged in reference to ‘the looking-glass world of literary tourism’²⁸. The World of Beatrix Potter attraction in Bowness is one of the most frequently asked about UK attractions at the British Tourist Authority office in Japan. Almost without exception the six cities shortlisted to be European Capital of Culture in 2008 made strong play of their connections with children’s literature, its writers and locations, for instance Philip Pullman and C S Lewis in Oxford.

The Harry Potter books and films have done much to kickstart this work, quite literally putting children’s literature on the map (VisitBritain has produced a guide to the top five Harry Potter-inspired locations ‘in which to read the book undisturbed’). Many of the locations used in the Harry Potter films have seen a dramatic rise in the level of visitors. Alnwick Castle in Northumberland (Hogwarts) has seen visitor figures double in the last two years. And Christ Church college in Oxford, whose Great Hall was used as the location of Hogwarts’ dining hall, has seen the number of literary tourists visiting, already attracted by the college’s Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland connections, swell further.

The Harry Potter books and films have been awarded a tourism ‘Oscar’ for their Outstanding Contribution to English Tourism: ‘Thousands of people have been inspired by the British actors and venues of the Harry Potter films and the magical descriptions on each page of every book. On behalf of the entire travel industry we wanted to recognise and honour that influence’²⁹.

In Stockholm, an entire museum (Junibacken) is devoted to bringing the books and background of just one writer, Astrid Lindgren, and her character Pippi Longstocking, to life. Greater advocacy, investment and imagination is now required to make other children’s literature resources more accessible to visitors from Britain and abroad, both for learning and for leisure.

Summary

Children’s literature promotion is a vast and active field in which valuable work often takes place in a rather fragmented and piecemeal way. There is scope for more collaborative activity and a more structured approach to gathering evidence and sharing information, not least to be in a stronger position to engage and direct support from the media and tourism sectors.

Current funding activity

Grants for individuals, for organisations and for national touring are available for children’s literature development and promotional work.

Through its grants for national touring, Arts Council England has supported a number of projects designed to support the work of writers and illustrators: a national touring exhibition of Japanese picture books; a number of tours of children’s storytellers; and the Children’s Book Roadshow, a tour of children’s writers to literature festivals across the country through October 2003.

Through its grants for organisations, Arts Council England funds a number of national and regional literature promotions which have a focus on children, for instance National Poetry Day and World Book Day.

A number of literature development agencies which promote children’s reading and children’s literature are in receipt of regular funding, for example Booktrust, The Reading Agency, Apples and Snakes, New Writing North, National Association for Literature Development, and the National Association of Writers in Education. Booktrust has received funding to develop the post of children’s literature development worker nationally from 2004.

The Children’s Literature International Summer School held at the University of Surrey, Roehampton, has been supported by Arts Council England since its inception. Funding is confirmed for the next two summer schools, in 2005 and 2007.

Arts Council England has collaborated with the British Film Institute and King’s College London School of Education in a research project to determine how working with a writer and animator can change teenagers’ attitudes to reading. The results will be published later in 2003.

Arts Council England has published guidance for individuals and arts organisations on child protection issues, and on devising policies and procedures to protect children, young people and vulnerable adults involved in arts activities. Keeping the Arts Safe is available to download on www.artscouncil.org.uk

Questions

• What are your views of the work currently being done to promote children’s literature and to develop children’s reading?

• How can Arts Council England best support work in this area?

Education, training and research

Education

The place of literature in children’s education has been held in a creative tension almost from the beginning of public education. The usefulness of reading and writing – their application across and beyond the curriculum – has an impact on literature’s status as a creative artform, across and beyond the curriculum, especially on how children’s knowledge and experience of it is assessed. ‘Positive relationships exist between reading literacy and employment opportunities, work satisfaction, income, longevity and health’³⁰. But at the same time reading can also be the most private and personally thrilling of childhood experiences – ‘This was the world and I was king’³¹. Literacy and literature, core subject and art, skills for life and creative endeavour: ‘The act of reading has never been just one thing; and what goes on when we read has never stayed the same for very long’³².

Children’s literature has certainly profited directly in the course of its development from the education system. The education reform acts of the late 19th century did much to stimulate the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of children’s literature. More children becoming more literate stoked an appetite for creative – as opposed to instructive – reading which writers, artists and publishers were quick to feed. In 1880 only 12 per cent of inspected schools in England and Wales had their own libraries, but by 1900 the proportion was up to 40 per cent³³.

Today, market intelligence indicates that education is still, in principle, ‘the single most important driver to growth in the books market’³⁴. The launch of the National Literacy Strategy in 1998 was, for example, quickly followed by the National Year of Reading initiative, through which the Government invested in many projects that put children’s literature in the spotlight and directed an unprecedented £115 million in books for schools.

The strategy goes on (63 per cent of 11 year olds achieved the expected standard in literacy for their age in 1997 compared with 75 per cent in 2002, 5 per cent below the government target) and in 2001 it was extended to Key Stage 3.

But the children’s book market, as we have seen, is static. And international research measuring ‘reading literacy’ puts British 15 year olds low in the scale of ‘engaged’ readers (defined by time spent reading for pleasure, time spent reading a diversity of material, levels of motivation and interest in reading, all closely associated with performance in reading literacy)³⁵. A number of children’s writers have been voluble in their concerns about the way children’s reading and writing is being assessed, the lack of time and resources available for extended reading and writing, and the cultivation, largely through tests, of an atmosphere of ‘anxiety’ around reading literature.

Reading resources within schools are under considerable pressure. Primary schools’ spending on books per head in England is now at the lowest level since 1996/97 (£12.31). Researchers determined a ‘discrepancy between the value placed on books by headteachers and the priority they are given in budget planning’ and found pupils’ feedback dominated by comments about book shortages and the need to share³⁶.

The percentage of local education authority pupils served by the Schools Library Service, ‘a crucial bridging agent between schools and libraries’³⁷ is also in decline. 16 local authorities are without formal provision for school library support. No two schools library services offer the same combination of services to the same range of schools .

Yet still the National Literacy Strategy embraces literature within its definition of literacy. It asks that children ‘be interested in books, read with enjoyment and evaluate and justify their preferences through reading and writing, develop their powers of imagination and inventiveness and critical awareness’ through a ‘rich experience’ of reading ‘challenging texts’. The Key Stage 3 strategy states specifically the vital cross-curricular role the school library can play in enriching and enhancing learning.³⁸

And through the key stages, the National Curriculum for English (reading) requires a diverse range of literature to be taught. The fiction range includes stories, plays and poems by significant children’s authors, stories and poems from a range of cultures (KS1); long-established children’s fiction; a range of good quality modern poetry; classic poetry; texts drawn from a variety of cultures and traditions (KS2); plays, novels, short stories and poetry from the English literary heritage; recent and contemporary drama, fiction and poetry written for young people and adults; drama fiction and poetry by major writers from different cultures and traditions (KS3 and 4)³⁹.

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES), the National Literacy Strategy and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority have agreed, with Arts Council England and the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, a ‘Literature Entitlement’: ‘Every child has the right to read and write creatively and we believe that creativity should become a central part of formal education. This enriches the curriculum for the foundation stage and in schools’.

This entitlement underpins the work of the Writing Together partnership (comprising these agencies with Booktrust, the Poetry Society and the National Association of Writers in Education), funded in 2003-04 by the DfES to run a third series of conferences across the country giving teachers access to information and support about working with writers in schools.

It is also being fulfilled through Creative Partnerships, a national programme funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. By 2006, 88 neighbourhood renewal areas will have taken part in this programme, which links schools with artists and arts organisations. Libraries are affirming their status as major cultural venues in many of the Creative Partnership areas (in Slough, schools, school and public libraries, a local bookshop and a children’s graphic novel writer are working together).

The ambition for a nation of creative, engaged readers is evident within in the education system. The resources required to make that happen in a structured and sustainable way are pressured but must be made more available. ‘Measures to improve engagement (in reading) cannot be seen as an add-on to curriculum reforms, but must be seen as central’⁴⁰.

Training and development

The 1999 report on cultural education, All our Futures, states ‘From the beginning of primary school, English should include the teaching of literature’. But literature is neither detailed as an artform, alongside music, drama or dance, nor identified as a training need for English teachers.

There is in fact still no statutory requirement of trainee teachers to study children’s literature. There are only a handful of colleges where children’s literature is a part of the teacher training course. These include the University of Surrey, Roehampton and Westminster Institute of Education. Yet research commissioned by the Teacher Training Agency shows the most effective literacy teachers were those who contextualised what they taught and made language features meaningful, building on a sound basis of knowledge of children’s books⁴¹.

The world of children’s books is constantly changing and developing, introducing new authors, causing contention, challenging commonly held opinions. Teachers require ongoing opportunities for training and development, with access to advice, books and writers.

Strong school libraries and librarians, confident in their status within their workplaces, have a unique role here. The advocacy programme School Libraries: Making a Difference, designed by the DfES with the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, the Association of Senior Children’s and Education Librarians, and the School Library Association, is a valuable aid in promoting the services school librarians offer to teachers and pupils and in providing opportunities for librarians’ own professional development. The Inspiring Learning for All project managed by Resource, working to develop effective ways of measuring the outcomes and impact of learning in museums, galleries and libraries, is a further important development tool for librarians to make their contribution to learning better defined and more widely known.

The new Teacher Training Agency’s professional standards do require that newly qualified teachers a) understand the contribution that support staff and other professionals make to teaching and learning; and b) are able to improve their own teaching, by evaluating it, learning from the effective practice of others and from evidence; and are motivated and able to take responsibility for their own professional development⁴².

In a one-year study of the recipients of Arts Council writers’ awards, 49 per cent of all applicants had taught at some level in the education system⁴³. Many children’s writers today started their careers as teachers – including Eoin Colfer, David Almond and Philip Pullman. Research carried out into the value of writers working in schools⁴⁴ found that some of the most significant developments in pupils’ attitudes and achievement came about in those classes taught by teachers who had watched a writer’s workshop and interpreted it (a ‘cascaded’ model): the writer and teacher together made the difference. The success of the Write on Too! project, based in Birmingham, which offers pupils and staff equal opportunities to work with a creative writer to develop their own creative writing is notable.

The international research which assessed 15 year-olds’ reading literacy also found that UK students rated the support they got from teachers more highly than did students in any other country assessed. The creativity of teachers needs to be more widely recognised, supported and nurtured, and their knowledge enhanced and regularly refreshed.

Research

Just a handful of universities in England offer MA courses in children’s literature: Nottingham, Reading, Roehampton, Warwick, Sunderland and Newcastle (which has developed links with Russian universities teaching British children’s literature in translation).

The National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature (NCRCL) at the University of Surrey, Roehampton is at the vanguard of the research field and the Centre for the Children’s Book in Newcastle will provide an important focus for interest in the study of children’s literature.

In a recent study of university English departments, respondents were asked to identify what substantive changes they hoped to see in their department in five years’ time. Broadening provision in response to demand was a key response, and children’s literature appeared there as a hope, but not as an expectation.⁴⁵ Uncertainty remains about the value of children’s literature as an artform and subject; this must be dispelled in order for it to develop at every level.

Summary

The complexity of the position of children’s literature in education should not be a reason for confusion or inaction. There is good reason to articulate the uniqueness of children’s literature’s role in sites of learning, and to invest in its future in terms of resources, training and research. Otherwise there is a risk of compromising learning and development across the curriculum and diminishing the status of books, writers, school libraries and teachers.

Current funding activity

In Arts Council England’s annual statistical survey of regularly funded organisations in 2000/01, 11 per cent of the core funding awarded to literature organisations was spent on activity in an educational context (within the year group 4-19). This is an increase of nine per cent since 1997-98, and compares with an average across the artforms of three per cent⁴⁶.

Regular funding is directed towards a number of organisations who work to develop and support teachers’ creativity, as well as pupils’, including New Writing North, the National Association of Writers in Education, the Arvon Foundation and the Poetry Society.

Arts Council England supports the Creative Reading Initiative in Yorkshire, through which a reader in residence works with teachers, librarians and young people to develop creative approaches to reading. This is a flagship project, shaped by regional needs, managed and promoted at a national level (by Booktrust), and delivered regionally.

Arts Council England commissioned the University of Birmingham to undertake a research project to investigate and evaluate the effectiveness of writers working in schools. The research published in 2001 showed that all pupils who worked with writers developed more positive attitudes towards both reading and writing.

Arts Council England is working with the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, and Resource to assess the potential of developing a programme of initial teacher training in children’s literature, delivered by the Schools Library Service.

The National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature’s major research project, Young People’s Reading Habits, last undertaken in 1996, has been funded by Arts Council England in 2003. This will provide a major piece of in-depth research about the quality and content of children’s reading today.

Questions

• What are your views on the position of children’s literature within education?

• How can Arts Council England work to support the creative teaching of children’s literature?

Illustration reproduced from The Laureate’s Party, Quentin Blake (Red Fox, 2000), by kind permission.

Acknowledgements

The origins of this paper lie in the work of the Children’s Literature Steering Group at Arts Council England. Its members shared their knowledge, experience and time with enthusiasm and commitment.

• Liz Attenborough

• Jonathan Douglas

• Julia Eccleshare

• Prue Goodwin

• Elizabeth Hammill

• Gillian Lathey

• Miranda McKearney

• Elaine Mcquade

• Michael Morpurgo

• Phillip Pullman

• Kim Reynolds

• Mary Tapissier

Liz Attenborough produced a vital interim report, A Spotlight on Children’s Literature, on which this paper draws.

Jonathan Davidson was commissioned to prepare that report for publication by Arts Council England and this paper incorporates his valuable work.

This paper was compiled by Abigail Campbell, Arts Council England, national office with support from Jane Stubbs, Arts Council England, Yorkshire.

This work, and any part of it, is copyright. Putting any part of this work to any unauthorised use is a punishable offence and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproduction, translation, copying, micro-filming, electronic storage or any other electronic re-working.