How books help

Jay Heale

In his introduction to The Child and the Book, Nicholas Tucker states: “Having originally studied both literature and psychology, I have always been aware of possible connections between the two."

For myself, I’ve never studied child psychology, though I have spent many years studying children. Through my experience as a teacher and as a self-styled children's book specialist, I am increasingly convinced that books are vital in children's lives. (And by “children” I mean anyone not fully equipped to face an adult life. There are, of course, books for adults as well!) So I offer some unskilled, unscientific observations on this relationship.

Books don’t answer back
A book never says “I’m too busy just now" or “Shouldn’t you be getting on with your homework?" or “you’re not my friend anymore". In the same way that a child hugs a teddy-bear physically and pours confidences into its ear, so a child can hug a book (metaphorically) and share a chosen conversation. “Tell me that funny bit again", the child is saying, or “Let me stay a little longer". So I see every reason for introducing children to books and stories which they can love – and ensuring that those books stay within reach. For a favourite book to have to go back to the library within a fortnight is putting a constant, cruel limit to a friendship.

Books offer happy endings
I became vividly aware of this when I found an intelligent Grade 7 boy reading an Enid Blyton book – and when he could have been watching his first XI cricket team in action!

Later, I discovered that his family was going through a particularly ugly divorce. I firmly believe that he went back to Enid Blyton for reassurance. Call it “escape” if you like “books wisely offer hope in a world which can seem hopeless. You can relax inside a book. From the South African bookshelves, I would commend the easier tales of Jenny Seed, The Always-Late Train, The Corner Cat, etc., the light adventures published so economically by Daan Retief with such authors as John Stamps, Kay Esnouf and Alix Prettejohn, or animal stories such as Chummy and Nqalu, The Mouse with no Whiskers. Animals are always reassuring!

Books face problems with you
From Nicholas Tucker again: “Children sometimes need stimulation in their literature to help them move away from certain lazy, immature ways of thinking." Life isn’t always full of happy endings. Books help children to grow up by showing them some of life’s problems perhaps before they have encountered them. “Safe” inside the pages of a book, quarrels, jealousy, fear, insufficiency can be encountered and considered – and even prepared for.

Books can show children how other children live. Though I don’t hold in using books totally as therapeutic vehicles, I am highly aware of our lack of sheer knowledge (certainly within this country) of how other people live. While we are not allowed to visit freely the less privileged areas, then books such as The Strollers and Sidwell’s Seeds will help us understand, respectively, the homeless children in Cape Town and the rubbish dump dwellers of the Cape Flats. I’m not convinced that books about divorced homes help children whose parents are divorced, unless they are used like textbooks by child care workers. All divorces are different. Both parents don’t always love the children, as so many books cosily insist. But such books can and do help children to sympathise with others whose lives have disintegrated through divorce, adoption, death or just lack of love.

Our growing South African children's book list already includes several books with themes useful for consideration, and those in other countries may wish to contribute ideas for a list. Day of the Giants shows children (and animals) uprooted by war; Love, David has petty crime on the Cape Flats induced by poverty; Ben's Buddy makes a hero of a boy with a speech defect; Crow Jack looks at the problem of adjusting to a malformed limb (as well as an ex-alcoholic); Hear the Rainbow Sing explores the emotions of a musician gone deaf; Some of us are Leopards, Some of us are Lions is an easy reader looking at a black boy’s educational insufficiency.

All of these are good books in their own right. These social problems are included as part of strong storytelling and the understanding of character. It is the book which the child needs. What he gets out of it will always be more than we expect.