KIDDY LIT DISSED — PULLMAN DISTRESSED

From: YaleBooks

“‘We love great literature,’ it said. ‘We are excited by writing that changes the reader, and ultimately – even if it is in a very small way – the world. We love writing that is full of ideas, but that is also playful, funny and affecting. You won't write mass-market thrillers or children's fiction on our programmes. You'll be encouraged to look deep inside yourself for your own truth and your own experiences, and also outside yourself at the contemporary world around you. Then you'll work out how to turn what you find into writing that has depth, risk and originality but is always compelling and readable.’
     By the time I saw this, a number of children's writers including Philip Reeve had already protested. At first, the University couldn't see the problem. I tweeted the screenshot so everyone could see it and judge for themselves. It was picked up by the Guardian Children's Books feed, then by writers such as Patrick Ness and Michael Rosen, and is still being retweeted every few minutes, often accompanied by expressions of outrage and dismay.”

Earthsea, by Ursula LeGuin, is
considered one of the best books ever
written for young adults.

— Philip Pullman, The Guardian (Books Blog)
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Here’s a list of classic children’s literature…

Buy all or any of them here...

Noble Advocate

"By the time Malorie Blackman read a work of fiction featuring black characters, she was 23. The book was Alice Walker's The Colour Purple, set in the American south in the 1930s, and its impact on her was huge. Blackman was then working as a computer programmer, having given up her childhood dream of becoming an English teacher after the careers adviser at her London grammar school put her off. But she still read children's books, and in her spare time began to write her own, and imagine they might one day be published….
     This week Blackman, now 51, was named the eighth children's laureate, a position she inherits from mega-selling Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson and will hold for two years. At the announcement of her appointment in London on Tuesday, a few days before publication of her latest novel for teenagers, Noble Conflict, she looked delighted. 'I think younger children have been incredibly well served by the laureates we've had, but maybe teenagers haven't had as much of a look-in, so I'm looking forward to redressing the balance,' she said.
     Blackman is also the first black laureate and a forceful advocate for black and ethnic minority children's needs and rights. In making up her mind to write about black people in 1980s London, she grabbed a baton previously held by African-American pioneers including Alice Walker and Maya Angelou, who in the 1970s and 80s did so much to popularise writing about black people's lives."
— Susanna Rustin, The Guardian
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Buy all of Marjorie Blackman's books here...