{"id":43578,"date":"2018-05-30T03:00:15","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T07:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43578"},"modified":"2018-05-28T10:48:17","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T14:48:17","slug":"characters-in-childrens-books-are-increasingly-the-victims-rather-than-the-heroes-of-their-own-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/05\/30\/characters-in-childrens-books-are-increasingly-the-victims-rather-than-the-heroes-of-their-own-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"“Characters in children\u2019s books are increasingly the victims, rather than the heroes, of their own stories”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Spiked<\/em>, Christopher Beckett<\/a> explains how children’s books are increasingly becoming “misery lit”:<\/p>\n

According to the judges of the Branford Boase Award, which is presented annually to an outstanding children\u2019s or young-adult novel by a first-time writer, fiction for young people is getting increasingly narrow and downbeat. Philip Womack, one of the prize\u2019s judges, told the Guardian<\/em> that around one third of this year\u2019s entries were domestic dramas, all with a \u2018very similar narrative\u2019: \u2018There\u2019s an ill child at home, who notices something odd, and is probably imagining it, but not telling the reader. They\u2019re all in the first person, all in the present tense, all of a type.\u2019 Such books were, he added, \u2018so enclosed, so claustrophobic, so depressing and formulaic\u2026 It does make for a rather depressing children\u2019s literary landscape\u2019. Adventure stories, he says, seem to be on the way out.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we shouldn\u2019t be so surprised. Children\u2019s worlds have become smaller and more claustrophobic over recent decades. They have become less adventurous: they spend less time outside and more time under the watch of their parents. Children are also now more likely to be found glued to smartphones, tablets, computers and videogames rather than books. The escape they get from everyday life and parental supervision comes largely from tracking the lives of Instagram and YouTube celebrities, and immersing themselves in gaming adventures. But neither of these mediums leave space for the imagination to flourish \u2013 for play and interactions with others.<\/p>\n

Worse still, kids\u2019 lit today seems to reflect an unhealthy obsession with the private sphere and family life. Julia Eccleshare, co-founder of the Branford Boase Award and children\u2019s director of the Hay Festival, writes in the Bookseller<\/em> that more and more children\u2019s books are now dealing with \u2018family breakdown, accidents, deaths [and] mental-health problems\u2026 all of which it will be impossible for a child to resolve as the issues are insurmountable\u2019. Characters in children\u2019s books are increasingly the victims, rather than the heroes, of their own stories.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Spiked, Christopher Beckett explains how children’s books are increasingly becoming “misery lit”: According to the judges of the Branford Boase Award, which is presented annually to an outstanding children\u2019s or young-adult novel by a first-time writer, fiction for young people is getting increasingly narrow and downbeat. Philip Womack, one of the prize\u2019s judges, told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[374,968,547,593],"class_list":["post-43578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-children","tag-family","tag-smartphones","tag-socialmedia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bkS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43579,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43578\/revisions\/43579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}