Posted by Duncan on June 25, 2014 at 03:04:40 user Duncan.
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:
I think there's space for both. A lot of classic older children's stories (folk tales and fairy tales, etc.) are gloriously dark. But they have the advantage of being fantastical, so children can delight in the peril and the darkness without it finding too real an echo somewhere in their own lives. AR wrote "realist" fiction in one sense - apart from PD and ML in that they are all quite plausible (given a certain set of circumstances)but they are also escapist in the sense that "native concerns" are carefully removed (although not always entirely absent).
The current trend seems to be for realist, dark stories. I think they can be good for older children/young adults (although I do think that there should be some hope there - not necessarily a fully-resolved happy ending) but I generally think that most children have a mix of happy and miserable things in their life, and don't necessarily need to see echoes of the misery in the books they read. The exception is if that echo is helpful and educative in some way. If it is just "life is awful" then I don't think children need a book to confirm this. Reality isn't all awful, and children's books can tell the truth without being depressing.