Geata Póeg na Déanainn

Depth and quality to keep every child happy June 27, 2023

This post is part of a series of articles that I previously published in various Australian newspapers when I was working as a reviewer between 2001 and 2012. The vast majority of these do not exist in digital format, and I’ve decided to reprint them here for digital preservation. Much of what is said in these republished reviews does not represent my current thinking, but rather my understanding at the time of writing and original publication. The titles of the posts are the titles that were given to the articles by subeditors upon publication.

With Christmas and the long summer holidays ahead there’s no better time to think about some new books for that avid young bibliophile — or even reluctant reader — in your life.

The bookshops will be offering, as usual, almost too much choice and it’s tempting to reach for the latest novel that’s been turned into a movie (A Series of Unfortunate Events) or a book with ‘bum’ or ‘fart’ in the title. A little searching through the back catalogues of some established children’s writers might yield some more imaginative choices.

Emily Rodda is arguably one of Australia’s most popular and successful children’s authors. Her ever-expanding Deltora Quest series has a cult following among the eight to twelves. She is a prolific author who has been writing for children since 1984, but it was Rowan of Rin, which won the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award for Younger Readers in 1994, that really saw her hit her stride.

This now five-part series follows the story of young Rowan, an ordinary boy destined, despite his fears and self-doubt, to save his people from destruction. Rowan is mostly unappreciated by his fellow residents of the village of Rin: where they are active and athletic, he is shy and contemplative, and is viewed as a bit of a weakling. In each story he reconfirms his bravery, triumphing not only over the perils of the quest, but over his own terror.

Rodda wants to tell the reader that the brave person is not necessarily one who has no fear. The Rowan of Rin series demonstrates that it’s possible to fuse a strong moral message with a satisfying story.

Gillian Rubinstein’s Space Demons trilogy was written just as home computers entered our lives — in the late 1980s and early ’90s — and is built on the dreams and possibilities of this technological dawn. It is written for slightly older readers — probably late primary school to early high school — and deals with the challenges of adolescent life. However, it does so in the context of a richly imagined virtual reality inside computer games. These games are definitely not brainless shoot-’em-ups: they force their players — Andrew Hayford, Ben Challis, Elaine Taylor, Mario Ferrone and, in the fanl book, Shinkei, Midori Ito and Toshihiro Toda — to confront their prejudices and anxieties, and re-examine their aspirations.

They are adventure stories, but the action, in a sense, takes place in the characters’ own minds. The stories accurately portray the adolescent perception of the world as a confusing place where the struggle for self-understanding is of supreme importance.

This psychological quest becomes literal in the world of Space Demons: the protagonists must physically battle demons of hate, flee from the dark clouds of terror, and rescue their idealistic dreams from teh exploitation of greedy entrepreneurs and manipulative authorities.

In contrast to the books of these two Australian writers, The Story of Holly and Ivy, by Rumer Godden, is a book for a particular kind of reader — one who also enjoys The Secret Garden and A Little Princess — stories set in a quaint and gentle past. This is a Christmas book, ‘a story about wishing,’ which draws together the stories of Ivy, an orphan girl, Holly, an ownerless doll, and Mrs Jones, a childless old lady. In Dickensian fashion, all ends happily, with philanthropy and fortuitous meetings saving the day. This is a simple yet beautiful story, suitable for either young children beginning to read alone, or for parents to read aloud.

In rereading these excellent and very different books, I was struck by their shared qualities. Most importantly, they are all ‘plot-based,’ that is, story and characterisation are central, in contrast to the now more common (and unpleasant) trend in children’s fiction which makes themes the focus of the book.

This is not to say that Rodda, Rubinstein and Godden do not have ‘messages’ in their books — they certainly do. It is just that their messages are not rammed down their readers’ throats — and the ideas are the stronger for that.

Rodda’s central doctrine that people who overcome fear are braver than those who were never afraid in the first place, Rubinsteins empathetic understanding of the emotional world of teenagers, and even Rumer Godden’s simple message of compassion and yule-time charity, shine clearly through their well-crafted and interesting stories. But that is the point — the quality of the story and the believable characters not only give the books a moral subtlety, but make them good to read. What more could the Christmas shopper ask of a book?

This article first appeared in the 11 December, 2004 issue of The Canberra Times.