What We Read Then......

Growing up in working class North Kent after the war there were very few books in our house when I was a child, with the exception of those I brought home from the library. We owned probably three books; one was called something like `The Home Doctor’ and my mother consulted it when I developed a cough or a rash. Another was called `Peoples of the World in Pictures’ and had a disgraceful photograph of a totally naked Aboriginal family in uncivilised and far off Australia somewhere near the centre which I was not allowed to contemplate for more than a second or two. The third I no longer remember. When I was seven my father suggested that I join the library and from that moment on hundreds of titles made their way past the front door of 28 York Road, Northfleet. When Molly from down the road also signed up to the library service, we visited twice weekly and compared thoughts and opinions. Not coming from households where pre-schoolers were introduced to bedtime stories or stories at any time, we first of all fell upon picture books such as Helen Bannerman’s `Little Black Sambo’ series and of course the tales produced by Beatrix Potter. We very soon discovered, however, the joys of Enid Blyton starting with titles like `The Magic Faraway Tree’ and progressing swiftly to the far more sophisticated `Secret Seven’ series. As she was so hugely prolific we stayed by Blyton’s side for several years reading and re-reading and finally advancing to the more classy and cutting edge adventure and school stories. To her credit, the children’s librarian made several attempts to wean us away from Enid and into a different direction but we treated her first suggestion of trying Angela Brazil’s school books with scorn. To be honest we were slightly disconcerted by the more complex sentence structure and the proliferation of what seemed like long and unfamiliar words. When Enid Blyton became unfashionable later on and we heard murmurs that her stories were both racist and sexist we were mystified. We had never experienced Little Noddy because when he was created we were already ten or eleven years old and although the covers were tantalising, by that stage the Northfleet Children’s Library had developed a section for under sevens and Noddy remained out of reach inside it. We were slightly intimidated by the idea of pushing our way through the group of much smaller children and their mothers to grab Noddy from their grasp. So his experiences with bad golliwogs when they waylaid him to steal his little car did not impinge upon the way we saw the world or influence our feelings towards the new immigrants from the Caribbean. Strangely the middle class mind sets and attitudes of the Blyton adventure story protagonists also passed us by and we found it more than easy to empathize with the characters in the books we read. It did not seem odd that there were often cooks and maids in the households we read about, or that large cars drove the children to and from the starting points of their current escapade. When Enid Blyton’s heroes described a gypsy child as dirty and possibly a thief we agreed with them wholeheartedly. It was with a great deal of satisfaction that Miss Seamark, the librarian, produced Eve Garnett’s `The Family From One End Street’ and told us that it was a milestone in children’s literature. What she really meant was that it was a truly working class story and the opening sentence left the reader in no doubt about that - `Mrs. Ruggles was a washerwoman and her husband was a dustman…..’ A story by a middle class author for the deserving poor, children like me and Molly! We read the book with a degree of detachment and suspicion, enjoying the struggles of the family that was so like our own but delighted to get back to the more middle class fare we were now accustomed to. And we went on to find Richmal Crompton’s William books both amusing and vastly more satisfying than anything the unfortunate Ruggles family could offer. Replete from William we threw ourselves into the Noel Streatfield sagas, `Ballet Shoes’, `White Boots’, `The Circus Is Coming’, `Curtain Up’, all concerning families of the one servant poor variety and all of which we loved. `The Children of Primrose Lane’ again offered by the well meaning Miss Seamark as a story `more about children just like you’ we enoyed a little less because it had decidedly working class nuances with not a daily maid or even a cleaning woman in sight. As we grew into our teens we came across Pamela Brown’s theatre stories which were thrilling because we were at the stage where we both so very much wanted a successful career in the theatre, or in Molly’s case in Hollywood. Then Monica Edwards’ books, and we were once again unhindered by any problem relating to easy identification with the middle class characters who now all owned their own ponies. Our final favourite author before we totally outgrew children’s literature and progressed to women’s magazines and Mills & Boon, was Lorna Hill who wrote enthralling stories about characters who either came from the North of England to the Sadlers Wells Ballet School or alternatively rode their ponies along the length of Hadrian’s Wall and found solutions to local community problems as they did so. I now wonder if the boys of the nineteen forties and fifties were reading as voraciously as we were, and what they read. Who were their favourite authors? And how about today’s children? I am now totally out of touch with juvenile reading matter but it is possible that in the ensuing years J.K.Rowling is not the only writer who has emerged to capture a dedicated generation of readers.