Daddy,or serendipity

Philip Pullman grew up in what was then Southern Rhodesia, in Australia and in North Wales. He took an English degree at Oxford, and taught in middle schools in that city for thirteen years. He now divides his time between writing and lecturing at Westminster College, Oxford. His novelThe Ruby In The Smoke, the first part of a trilogy, won the International Reading Association Children's Book Award in 1988, and the other parts both made the ALA Best Book for Young Adults list. He has also written two illustrated novels for younger readers, books for teenagers and an adult novel.     

The Cay Theodore Taylor

Cle continues its series of accounts of classroom practice with books that teachers have found successful as class readers with their students.Stephen Wicks is Head of the English Department at Camborne Comprehensive School in Cornwall. He has chosen an American novel, Theodore Taylor'sThe Cay, which he reads with classes of thirteen-year-old boys and girls drawn from the whole ability range.Barbara Hall is in her second year of teaching at The Woodrush Comprehensive School, near Birmingham. She teaches Stan Barstow'sA Kind of Loving to classes of average ability who are taking the Certificate in Secondary Education in English Literature.     

Jack London'sWhite Fang

The UK editors were delighted when the distinguished writer Robert Westall accepted an invitation to contribute to our continuing series on Books Remembered from Childhood.Robert Westall taught for twenty-eight years, ending that phase of his career as Head of Art and Head of Careers at Sir John Deane's College, Northwich, Cheshire, in the United Kingdom. He was born in the northeast of England, where several of his novels are set, including his first published book, the Carnegie MedalwinningThe Machine-Gunners (Macmillan, 1975). Since finishing teaching, he has been an antique dealer, with a particular interest in clocks, but now concentrates full time on his writing.     

With a straight eye: An interview with Charles Causley

Charles Causley is one of the most distinguished contemporary British poets. He was born in Launceston, Cornwall (in South-Western England), where he still lives. During 1940–46 he served on the lower deck in the Royal Navy, an experience which still influences his poetry. In 1967 he was awarded the Queen's Medal for Poetry. In 1977, he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Exeter and, in addition to awards for different collections of poetry, he was further honoured (in 1986) by the Queen for his services to poetry. He is an experienced and very popular performer at poetry readings. Much of the following interview, recorded in December, 1987, grows out of his long experience as a teacher of young children in his home town.Brian Merrick teaches English and Drama in the School of Education, Exeter University. He is coauthor (with Geoff Fox) of the widely circulated article, Thirty Six Things to do with a Poem,CLE, 12(1), Spring 1981, and coauthor (with Jan Balaam) ofExploring Poetry: 5–8 (NATE Publications, 1987).     

P. C. Wren'sBeau Geste

Ronald Stuart Thomas was born in Caerdydd (Cardiff) in 1913 but was brought up in Caergybi (Holyhead), where he attended the local secondary school. He graduated from the University of Wales at Bangor and then proceeded to St. Michael's Theological College, Llandâf, to train as an ordinand. He was ordained priest in the Anglican Church in Wales in 1937 and retired in 1978 to a cottage on the Lln peninsula, where he still lives. His first books of verse were published privately, but in 1955 a collection called Song at the Year's Turningwas published by Rupert Hart-Davis, London. Since then he has published some eighteen books of poetry in English and also a couple of prose works in Welsh, with another of the latter due out in 1990. The editors of Children's Literature in Educationinvited Mr. Thomas to contribute to our series in which eminent writers recall a favorite book of childhood. We were delighted when he chose to write about P.C. Wren's Beau Geste. P.C. Wren was born in Devon in 1885. After graduating from Oxford, he served in the French and Indian armies and subsequently in the French Foreign Legion. He drew on this experience in several best-sellers, of which the most popular was the subject of this article, Beau Geste.Wren died in 1941.     

An interview with John Christopher

John Christopher is a well known, prize-winning writer. His adult novelThe Death of Grass was runner-up for the International Fantasy Award when Tolkien'sThe Lord of the Rings won first prize. Similarly his children'sTripods trilogy,The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, andThe Pool of Fire, were all runners-up to the Guardian Award, whileThe Guardians won the Guardian award for 1971. HisSword trilogy, The Prince in Waiting, Beyond the Burning Lands, and The Sword of the Spirits, has been reissued by Puffin in a single volume. Some critics, such as John Rowe Townsend (inWritten for Children), have accused John Christopher of an underlying pessimism, or of male chauvinism. Christopher has not replied to these criticisms. He prefers to let his books speak for themselves. Unlike other writers who keep a high public profile, he has not spoken at conferences on children's literature or published essays which present or defend his point of view.Early in 1983 I wrote to John Christopher. What began as a simple fan letter developed into a series of questions, which he was kind enough to reply to at length: from this correspondence, with John Christopher's agreement, I have compiled the interview which follows.He has published articles on C. S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles (Cle 25), Patricia Wrightson's Wirrun trilogy, and on aspects of language education. He recently completed a graduate diploma in children's literature.     

C. Walter Hodges: A Life Illustrating History

C. Walter Hodges first came to prominence as the author/illustrator of Columbus Sails in 1939, which the Junior Bookshelf hailed as The best book never to have been awarded the Carnegie Medal. Widely acclaimed for the treatment of its subject matter, its powerful narration, and accompanying dramatic line illustrations, Columbus Sails was the first of a number of vivid historical novels written and illustrated by Hodges, including The Namesake (nominated for the 1964 Carnegie Medal), The Marsh King (1967), and The Overland Launch (1969). He is internationally recognised both for his indispensable and learned books about the Elizabethan theatre (for which he gained the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration in 1964) and his vital illustrations to other authors' texts. This timely article is based on interviews and correspondence between the author and Hodges, and traces and celebrates the latter's life and career as a writer, book illustrator, teacher, and scholar.     

Sympathy for the Devil

Since Melvin Burgess published his first childrens book, The Cry of the Wolf (1989) he has had the reputation of being a powerful and challenging writer, discussing issues that many other writers have shunned. But it was with Junk (Smack in the US) in 1996 that he became a notorious media figure. This Carnegie winning novel showed teenagers not only taking drugs, but enjoying them, and sex, too! As a whole, though, this book also showed the dangers of hard drugs, and did anything but glamorise addiction. The book was also innovative in using multiple narrative voices, so that moral certainties are continually being challenged, shown to be but partial. Burgess continued this technique in Bloodtide (1999), which is undoubtedly his most powerful book yet (a second volume is on its way), updating the Icelandic Volsunga saga in a bleak, futuristic London. Lady: My Life as a Bitch (2001) and Doing it (2003) also brought much media attention, both dealing explicitly with teenage sex. These are the main books that Burgess talks about in his article. However, his range is far wider, and his other texts should not be forgotten: he has written several novels for younger readers, a picture book, The Birdman (2000) and an excellent novelisation of the film Billy Elliot (2001). His ability to write gripping, absorbing stories with memorable characters is always foremost, whatever other issues might be addressed.     

Problems with problem-centred knowledge

The author completes theInterchange symposium on Referent-Centred and Problem-Centred Knowledge: Elements of an Educational Epistemology by responding to the commentaries of Paul Thagard, Stellan Ohlsson, and Francis Schrag.     

What Katy Did

What Katy Didwas the second of more than twenty books written for children by Susan Coolidge, the pen name of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (1835–1905). Early in Sarah's childhood, the Woolseys moved from Cleveland to Connecticut, where she and her younger sisters and brother grew up. They and her relations provided the models for the fictional Carr family of the Katy novels, Sarah having much in common with Katy herself. What Katy Didwas published by Roberts Brothers of Boston in 1872 and is often compared with Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women,published very successfully by the same firm only four years earlier. Katy Carr was as immediately popular as Jo March, who may well have created an eager market for her. Elizabeth Jennings was born in 1926 in Boston, Lincolnshire, but since the age of six has lived mostly in Oxford. She was educated at Oxford High School and read English Language and Literature at Oxford University. Her first book,Poems (1953), won an Arts Council Award, andA Way of Looking brought her the Somerset Maugham Award in 1956. The latter enabled her to make the first of many visits to Rome, a city which has had a formative influence on her work. She has published fifteen volumes of poetry as well asCollected Poems (1986), which was awarded the W. H. Smith Award in 1987. She has also written two books of poems for children (now out of print) calledThe Secret Brother andAfter the Ark, has translated Michelangelo'sSonnets (reissued in 1988), has edited four anthologies, and has written four critical books, includingEvery Changing Shape andRobert Frost. Over the years she has received five Arts Council prizes or bursaries.CLE invited her to revisit a favorite book of her childhood.     

Scribbles,scrawls, and scratches: Graphic play as subtext in the picture books of Ezra Jack Keats

Conclusion Although Keats works in a two-dimensional medium, his illustrations are fully three-dimensional in both geometric perspective and narrative intentionality. Using collage technique that floats planes of color on a sea of textural richness, Keats is able to maximize his voice, or voices, as he speaks to us through multiple images—personalities—embedded within his illustrative frame. Keats's technique, paradoxically, runs counter to the historical development of collage as a form of antiaesthetic criticism used by early surrealist painters. Whereas such painters as Duchamp, Arp, Schwitters, and Ernst strike out against traditional aesthetic categories, Keats embraces them, focusing upon the achievement of a certain rhythmic unity in his work. In this sense, he achieves the height of picture book art by dissolving the thin line between text and illustration, and he does so primarily by playing with various graphic images as subtexts that both clarify and extend his main narrative intentions.He is past recipient of the Ezra Jack Keats Fellowship, de Grummond Collection, University of Southern Mississippi, and the author of several books for children includingNight is Coming (Dutton).     

From rejection to ‘renuwel’ to renewal: Chairperson,faculty, and the research imperative

Faculty renewal can be better understood and implemented when the resonant meanings of the term renewal are more fully appreciated. The essay integrates an etymological history of that word with several concrete programs that a Chair and Department can undertake to increase the production of quality faculty research. The shifting and multiple definitions of this term since the time of Chaucer suggest its dynamic, varied applicability today in any practical attempt to increase our colleagues' productivity. The essay also describes four archetypal examples of faculty in need of research renewal, and each example is related to the development of literary history, to various psychologies of success and failure, and to the unusual workings of a research committee.Peter Balbert received his graduate degrees from Cornell University. He is currently professor of English and chair of the English Department at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. The author of three books on D.H. Lawrence, his essays on modern and contemporary fiction and on university administration have appeared in many academic journals and anthologies.     

The Language and Metaphor of Jean Piaget

The English translations of Piaget's work often miss qualities of his writing that distinguish his organismic model of psychology from more mechanistic models. This paper is a comparison of the English translations of Piaget's The Origins of Intelligence in Children and The Construction of the Real in the Child with the French originals. Three substantial differences between the French originals and the English translations are discussed: (a) many of Piaget's biological metaphors are altered in favor of more mechanistic ones, (b) some of Piaget's metaphors are entirely eliminated, and (c) Piaget uses metaphors to construct links between similar ideas. I conclude that the French originals offer more support for the assertion of Piaget's organismic model, and that the reader's understanding of Piaget is hindered by the exclusion of Piaget's metaphors from the English language texts.     

Twenty-four things to do with a book

During a summer workshop course, a group of teachers in British Columbia recently considered ways of encouraging the response of readers in their classes. Time was limited, and their ideas reflect a sustained brainstorming session rather than an attempt to produce a definitive list. More-idiosyncratic ideas which depended upon the peculiar skills of individual teachers have been omitted, as have highly specific illustrations relating to particular books. A dance drama version ofWatership Down, for example, was not seen as a readily transferable classroom activity.The suggestions below are for individual work, for work in pairs, groups, or with the whole class. The Canadian teachers were concerned to confirm a climate in which books were readily handled, shared and exchanged as a central and regular practice of the class.Geoff Fox has taught in secondary schools in both England and America. He has been Visiting Professor at Harvard University and the University of British Columbia and is on the staff at Exeter University. He has collaborated on several books, both for the classroom and for teachers, and is Secretary to the U K Editorial Committee ofCle.     

The way ahead

The following paper, a Sidney Robbins Memorial Lecture, was read at the Federation of Children's Book Groups' celebration of their eighteenth birthday in April, 1986, at Durham, England. The Federation is a parent-based organization which works to bring children and books together both locally and throughout the U.K. In 1965 Anne Wood sowed the seeds of the Federation when she launched her magazineBooks For Your Children, and the first group was started. By 1968 the movement had grown, and The Federation of Children's Book Groups was officially formed. There are now seventy-five member groups, each organizing book-related events for children and adults, author visits and book fairs. In the U.K., the Federation speaks with an increasingly powerful voice on issues affecting the world of children's books. It organizes the Children's Book Award, an annual award for which children choose the winning book, and it promotes National Tell a Story Week.Robert Leeson's twenty-five children's books since 1973 includeThird Class Genie, It's My Life, Silver's Revenge, Candy for King, and five Grange Hill books. He received the 1985 Eleanor Farjeon Award for services to children and literature. His latest nonfiction work,Reading and Righting (Collins, 1985), assesses the past, present, and future of fiction for the young.     

Living in the Past: Some Revisionist Thoughts on the Historiography of Art and Design Education

There is a ‘dominant’ history of art and design education in Britain. This has been established by five books published in the 1960s and 1970s. They are Quentin Bell's The Schools of Design (1963), Gordon Sutton's Artisan or Artist?(1967), Richard Carline's Draw They Must(1968), Stuart Macdonald's The History and Philosophy of Art Education (1970), and Clive Ashwin's Art Education: Documents and Policies 1768–1975 (1975). They all offer a substantially corroborative account of the history of art and design education based on their predecessor. This is particularly evident in their explanation of the origin of public art and design education in Britain in the early nineteenth century. After a gap of thirty years Stuart Macdonald's book is to be republished. The news is a cause for celebration but also for concern, in that its reappearance may well further entrench the dominance of the collective voice of these five books. In an attempt to keep historical research alive and kicking in the field of art and design education, this article challenges the explanation offered by these authors for the introduction of public art and design education in the 1830s.     

Religion and literacy: observations on religious education and the literacy strategy for secondary education in Britain

The target for the year 2004 is that 70% of all 14-year-olds should achieve Level 5 English. This figure rises to 85% for 2007. ‘Schools that are beginning to work on literacy across subjects … are asked to prioritise objectives from the Framework for teaching English: years 7–9’ (Department for Education and Employment, 2001 Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (2001) Key Stage 3 National Strategy. Literacy across the Curriculum Ref DfEE 0235/2001  [Google Scholar], p. 3). When Literacy Across the Curriculum (LAC) is introduced in these terms, the implication is that all teachers should assist English in improving its standards. Even in the model lessons that appear in official documents, there are signs that religious education is expected to yield its learning objectives to English. This paper, however, is about LAC not for the sake of English but for the sake of religious education. It proposes an approach to literacy beyond the narrow conceptions of some LAC strategists, such as the collection and classification of subject-specific vocabulary.     

The maieutic approach: The plan of a new educational centre at Partinico

The writings of Danilo Dolci have been translated into many languages; he himself has lectured around the world on his theories and activities. In a number of countries organizations have been formed for the sole purpose of supporting and extending his programme.Born in the north of Italy, Danilo Dolci has identified himself with the lot of the poor peasants of Sicily. Faced with the power of the Mafia, supported by a number of politicians, he has endeavoured to organize the peasants in co-operatives which might successfully resist those who exploited them. As a consequence, he has encountered the hostility of local authorities and has been imprisoned on several occasions.One of his best-known books is entitledThe Man who Plays Alone (Chi gioca solo), a reference to a Sicilian proverb: The man who plays alone never loses. Danilo Dolci had to fight not only against the Mafia and their allies but also—he affirms—against this Sicilian tendency to go it alone, to avoid all social entanglements except for the immediate family. He has succeeded to a great extent, and a number of Sicilian co-operatives are now functioning successfully. One striking accomplishment has been the building of a dam which is helping to irrigate the farms over a wide area.The keynotes of his activity are co-operation and dialogue. In the preparatory phase of the new centre which he is in the process of creating in Partinico, he has not only consulted educators and psychologists; he has brought together for group discussion the children themselves, and also their parents, so that the school might meet the needs and desires of those most directly concerned by the educational process, rather than merely accepting the decisions by outsiders who know what is best for the children. Among his numerous publications are: Conversazioni, Chi gioca solo, Inventare il futuro, Chissà se i pesci piangono.     

English with day release classes

‘We may assert that thought is possible without language, but that the educator would be well advised to assume that it is not.’

(From Thought and Language, P. B. Ballard.)

‘A man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.’

(From A Defence of Poetry, P. B. Shelley.)

‘A school's motto might well be: “To hell with thought! How do you feel?”’

(From Hearts not Heads in the School, A. S. Neill.)