First Page Excerpts [please, note that italics and other formats are not reproduced in this excerpt] ---------------------------------------------------------- The Signal Poetry Award 2001 to The Oldest Girl in the World by Carol Ann Duffy (Faber & Faber) Peter Hollindale & Margaret Meek 79 From World Republic to World Market: Emer O'Sullivan on Comparative Children's Literature Gillian Lathey 105 Books about Children's Books 2000 Sheila Ray 112 Brethren's Child (Part Two) Ethel Talbot 131 Contributors 151 ****************************************** The Signal Poetry Award 2001 to 'The Oldest Girl in the World' by Carol Ann Duffy (Faber & Faber) PETER HOLLINDALE & MARGARET MEEK The Signal Poetry Award for work published during 2000 has gone to The Oldest Girl in the World by Carol Ann Duffy (Faber & Faber). The most important aspect of this annual award is the selectors' writing about the winning book and other poetry published for children and young people during the given year. The booklist appears on pages 103-4. Peter Hollindale writes: The opening chapter of Jane Gardam's A Long Way from Verona describes the inspirational effect on the heroine, then aged nine, of a visiting writer to her school. Mr Arnold Hanger, a man of unpromising mien, is transformed when he begins to talk. He had a lovely voice and he had brought a lot of books with him and bits of paper stuck in to mark the place, and he kept picking up first one book and then another and reading bits out--long, long bits and sometimes very short bits. Poetry and all sorts . . . He kept on--book after book after book that I'd never even heard of, poems and stories and conversations and bits of plays, all in different voices. And I sat so still I couldn't get up off the floor when it was all over, I was so stiff. I was reminded of Mr Arnold Hanger as I read the books for this year's Signal Poetry Award. Nearly all of them implicitly enlist the services of Mr Hanger, or someone like him: they imply, expect or require a speaking voice. Quite rightly, since poetry is essentially a vocal art, like drama. But I was also aware of a broad difference between two kinds of writing, linked, I believe, to two kinds of performance. There is poetry which lives on the page, causing the eye to alert the ear, and the ear to tell the voice it has enjoyable work to do. This is the poetry which would interest Arnold Hanger. And then there is the poetry which seems to have drained on to the printed page from a voice and a public occasion, and lies limp and enfeebled without the audio aids of poet-as-performer. These two kinds of writing seem to me to be on divergent paths. The very success of 'performance poets', who now regularly tread .... *************************************************** Margaret Meek writes: In the late 1950s, that unsettled post-war, pre-television time, James Britton edited four sequential, handsomely produced Oxford Books of Verse for Juniors. In the Teacher's Companion he wrote to accompany the series there are notes on the poems and a selective subject index. From these we can discern his passionate conviction about the importance of poetry in the years of schooling and his understanding of the power and responsibility that accompany any kind of adult selection. My concerns have always been closely related to those expressed here. It might have seemed, even then, that there was enough poetry for children for Britton to choose from. Walter de la Mare, Eleanor Farjeon and A. A. Milne had successfully linked poetry with childhood. Certainly Palgrave's Golden Treasury still lurked in many a school desk. Britton wanted something more 'to move the imagination' of children, something that could 'not be done by jingles'. He says, 'We cannot afford at any stage to ignore the creative writers of our time.' But James Reeves's collection Prefabulous Animiles (1957), one of the first 'modern' books of poetry for children, was not yet available. Britton's choices were mostly lyrics, the result of his wide reading and his belief that children become enthusiastic about poetry when they hear it read aloud. In the early stages, as indeed in the later ones, rhyme, rhythm and wordplay lift the poem from the page into the echo chambers of the listening ear. The meaning lies in wait. Half a century on, we may have reasons to think differently about children reading poetry. Certainly they encounter verse in many places outside the classroom. But hearing verse read aloud is still the most likely route to enjoying it, and the presence of poets in school has made a difference to children's views on poetry in general. Poetry has to be enjoyable, memorable, readable and available if the listener-reader is to believe it is worth bothering with. Now, more than ever before, children have access to a wide range of books of poems. Poets deliberately seek them as an audience and this award is conferred on books that are likely to earn their keep. Judges are enlisted to encourage selected reading at a moment when time in school for continuous reading is limited. Their opinions have no special authority, except that their choices, made public, can be scrutinized and their standards examined. Therefore, as my letters patent, I borrow this empowering statement of Seamus Heaney, quoted many times in sundry places, but here apt for my purpose: .... *************************************************** From World Republic to World Market: Emer O'Sullivan on Comparative Children's Literature GILLIAN LATHEY What is comparative literature and why does it matter? When Germaine Greer is introduced on one of her regular TV appearances as Professor of English and Comparative Studies at Warwick University, do viewers give the latter part of her title a second thought? Probably not. Comparative literature is a neglected area of study in the UK, partly because of a deep-seated reluctance not just to learn other languages but to make the 'inner adjustment' (Sebald) to another language that is essential to reading across different literatures. It has also proved difficult to legitimize comparative literature as an academic discipline. Definitions of what comparative literature might be reflect the extent of the enterprise. Susan Bassnett's statement that comparative literature 'is concerned with patterns of connection in literatures across both time and space' offers a relatively modest starting point, while George Steiner makes claims for comparison as a mode of aesthetic judgement: 'every act of reception of significant form in language, in art, in music, is comparative . . . We see to understand, to "place" the object before us--the text, the painting, the sonata--by giving it the intelligible, informing context of previous and related experience'. To pursue influences across national and linguistic borders, to trace the manipulation of stories as they travel, and to place texts from different cultures side by side, can be the most illuminating approach to literary studies. Emer O'Sullivan, in Kinderliterarische Komparatistik, applies the insights of a comparatist to books written for the young, making connections and investigating case histories that cause her reader to take a fresh look at the international history of children's literature. Though not yet available in English, her book raises broad questions of general interest and so warrants a brief report. First, to indicate why this book is both a scholarly and a state-of-the-art contribution to the field, a word about its origins. The text is that of O'Sullivan's Habilitation, a post-doctoral thesis required of any German academic who wishes to become a professor. A historical tradition of academic freedom and independence of thought in .... *************************************************** Books about Children's Books 2000 SHEILA RAY In some years the academic study of children's literature and the popular interest in children's books seem to move closer together. This thought was already forming as I considered the material for the present survey when, in mid January 2001, Signal 94 arrived. It includes the text of Jacqueline Wilson's conversational Patrick Hardy Lecture, the authoritative essay by a respected Australian academic on David Rudd's book about Enid Blyton, and a brief introduction to Ethel Talbot together with part of her previously unpublished memoir of childhood--each of these might appeal to readers in either camp. The chances of being a popular author in your lifetime and of your books remaining in print for succeeding generations seem to be considerably improved if your work appeals to that large and significant group of young readers, girls of about nine to thirteen, which is exactly what Jacqueline Wilson's books do. Although Enid Blyton always claimed to write for both boys and girls, the fact that her school stories are read by girls long after boys have grown beyond her work is one reason why her books are still widely read. Her tales of Malory Towers, a delightful girls' boarding school in Cornwall, constitute one of the three series at which David Rudd looks in his book. Even to me as a school girl in the 1940s, Enid Blyton's school stories seemed modern compared with those of other writers such as Ethel Talbot, born only seventeen years earlier than Blyton, who was one of the hundreds of writers who produced girls' school stories to meet an apparently insatiable demand in the early twentieth century and who are now celebrated in The Encyclopaedia of Girls' School Stories (with a companion volume on school stories for boys, forming The Encyclopaedia of School Stories edited by Rosemary Auchmuty and Joy Wotton). This comes from a specialist academic publisher and is the result of extensive research by academics who are also enthusiasts. The compilers have sometimes had to admit defeat and include an entry with only a name and a few book titles. This work is undoubtedly my favourite book of 2000 and one I shall consult frequently in years to come. Throughout much of the last century the girls' school story, phenomenally popular in the 1920s to 1940s, was not only despised but almost completely .... *************************************************** Brethren's Child (Part Two) ETHEL TALBOT Signal 94 (January 2001) carried the first ever publication of the opening six chapters of Ethel Talbot's fictionalized memoir, Brethren's Child. This issue publishes some major extracts drawn from a further seven chapters. In the September Signal a third set of extracts from the remaining chapters will appear. In the January 2002 issue I aim to write about Ethel Talbot's books and family. In this second part of Brethren's Child some key themes from Ethel's early childhood are reinforced, as she attends Mrs Terry's school: the conflict between the dullness of Brethren life and the occasional glimpses of a different world in stories and poems; the love of words and music; the infatuation with people who are friendly and the fear of her older siblings; the contrast between home and school. Here we see Ethel (that is, Helen) attempting to write, and we have a more detailed account of the major Sunday morning Meeting of the Brethren, with its class distinctions of the Saved, in front of the Board, and the servants and children behind it. David Grugeon Chapter Eight There were no books to read at Mrs Terry's. None, except lesson-books, and, if one read on ahead in the reading-books, that was not fair. There had been books at home, but even though Papa had allowed Helen to bring some of them to School, they were taken away. "No. Mrs Terry must keep these books," said Miss Terry. "Story-books are not allowed." Helen found herself looking through the shelves of lesson-books to find something to read. There were only lesson-books and tracts, which seemed like an extra Bible reading all over again. They usually started with something that pretended to be a story, but the pretence story which began them was only meant to make one want to read the rest. It soon stopped and all the Bible part began. Helen grew very tired of the Bible, although at Mrs Terry's she would have felt ashamed to say so. But she did find Macaulay's Life and Letters in the book-shelf, and even that was more interesting than the Bible. Because it seemed real to read. And bits of it were really interesting. "What are you reading, Helen?" asked Miss Elizabeth Terry, coming along. "This. It was in the lesson-shelf," said Helen, feeling that nothing .... *************************************************** CONTRIBUTORS Signs of Childness in Children's Books by Peter Hollindale (Thimble Press, 1997) has been translated into Japanese for publication by Kashiwashobo Publishing, Tokyo. Margaret Meek has recently edited Children's Literature and National Identity (Trentham Books, 2001), a collection of papers given at a colloquium held in London in the autumn of 1998 under the aegis of the European Institute for the Development of Potential in All Children. Gillian Lathey has a long-standing interest in translation and cross-cultural influences in children's literature; she is administrator of the Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation on behalf of the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature at the University of Surrey, Roehampton. Sheila Ray is the author of The Blyton Phenomenon: The controversy surrounding the world's most successful children's writer (Deutsch, 1982). A brief account of the background to the Ethel Talbot memoir is provided by her great-nephew, David Grugeon, in the January 2001 Signal. MICHAEL HARVEY In the New Year's Honours List Michael Harvey was awarded an MBE for Services to Art. Michael has designed the front covers of every Thimble Press publication since 1975, an association of which we are extremely proud. An article about his work, 'Man of Letters', by Judy Taylor appeared in the May 1988 Signal. *************************************************** COPYING SIGNAL The material published in Signal is protected by copyright law. This means that multiple copies may only be made with permission and on payment of an appropriate fee. 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