Anthony Horowitz

In defence of modern children’s books

If you want children to love reading, don’t tell them what to read

A few years ago, I was surprised to open a newspaper and read that the head teacher of a London public school had decided to ban my books from his library. He described the adventures of Alex Rider, which have sold around 20  million- copies worldwide, in terms so derogatory that I have no mind to repeat them. Suffice it to say that the article quite put me off my cornflakes.

But the strange thing was that — once I had got past the sheer offensiveness of his language and a mindset that believed that banning books could ever have good connotations — I was actually quite sympathetic to his wider point of view. Everyone agrees that children benefit from reading, but we seldom discuss what exactly we would like them to read. I’ve always believed that a worthwhile children’s book should encourage young readers to raise their game; it should enlighten and illuminate as well as entertain. And that is what I hope I’ve written.

Last week newspapers reported that J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter series seemed to have fallen out of favour with secondary pupils, who were instead turning to titles such as David Walliams’s Gangsta Granny and Mr Stink. Personally, I find Walliams entertaining and I think Tony Ross, whose illustrations often take up most of the page, is a genius. If children like these books, it would be crazy to put them off buying them. But that said, Rowling reinvented modern children’s literature, created a fully realised world that ignited the dreams of millions, and proved that a book with 600 pages could still be manageable. I read this news with a heavy heart.

‘Can I swap this cow for those beans? I’ve just turned vegan.’

The question is, if you take against the ‘farting granny’ books (and there are plenty of other authors writing in this vein), if you reject teenage spies, vampires, ghosts and dragons, what are you going to offer young readers? Again I sighed when my own demon headmaster (there is an excellent series of that name, by the way, by Gillian Cross) suggested some of the titles he had read as a boy: Goodnight Mister Tom, Treasure Island, Just William, the Jennings series, Moonfleet

These are wonderful books.

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