Posted by Peter Hyland on June 25, 2014 at 00:27:05 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Children's books should not have 'patronising' happy endings posted by Elizabeth Jolley on June 24, 2014 at 16:21:22:
AR's endings seem to me to be 'happy' but not 'perfect'. AR was too much of a realist to end his stories with unalloyed joy. So in Pigeon Post, the children realise that they have not found gold after all, but they settle for copper and Capn Flint seems delighted at this. Sometimes AR ended on a poignant note, as in Picts and Martyrs, when Nancy is gleeful about "five whole weeks of the holidays still to go" - surely the most tantalising ending in the whole of children's fiction, because we never find out what happened. It's sort of 'happy' but not quite.