If you have read about books
in the newspapers recently, you will probably know by now that the
bestselling author Anthony Horowitz has criticised other authors such
as David Walliams for what he calls “dumbing down” children's
books. He was quoted saying that Walliams and other authors like him
are writing “books that are witty and entertaining but nowhere near
as ambitious” and that they should “write up for children, not
down to them”.
As a keen reader and aspiring
author myself, this is a personal issue for me as well as a universal
one, so in this post I will be exploring Horowitz's argument in
further detail. In the past, the language in children's books used to
be very sophisticated and formal, with more challenging words and
phrases such as “make an exhibition of myself” instead of “make
a fool of myself”. Nowadays, simpler and less formal words such as
“farting” are making their way in, much to the disgust of people
who don't like that sort of thing. It could be argued that this is
because of the introduction of social media and texting, which has
placed limitations on the use of language, formality and structure
and is now creeping into children's books in an attempt to
“modernise” them.
It's not just the language in
children's books that is being dumbed down though. The topics seem to
be getting simplified as well, with many books focusing on either
comedy or drama rather than both. Moreover, the books that focus on
comedy tend to focus on the toilet variety, rather than the
“intelligent” type featured in older works. For example, you are
likely to find children's books with words such as “poo”, “fart”
and “bogeys” mentioned in the title along with a picture
involving said word. This understandably puts off some parents and
even children who aren't into this sort of thing already.
I can see why Horowitz would
be worried about this. If the themes are getting dumbed down along
with the language, this would mean that the children would have a
limited array of books to read. They would all have the same plots
and be of the same genre, which makes them much less interesting.
This applies to the language too, such as the reading books that you
find nowadays that seem to be copying “Janet And John” instead of
being more ambitious like the works of Dr Seuss and Roderick Hunt.
This makes the writing appear to be stale and dull and as a result,
it prevents the readers from being engaged as well as learning how to
read.
Of course, if the children are
finding these books easy to read as well as fun, then maybe it
doesn't matter if they're being dumbed down at all. Recently, I have
discovered “The Clumsies” books by Sorrell Anderson, which is a
comedy series overall. The writing is very simplistic compared to
other books that I have read, but the plotline and characters were so
engaging and entertaining that I could not put them down. This is
coming from a reader who has moved onto more complex reading in
general, so if a similar reader can also be entertained by these
types of books, can the same not can be applied to children
themselves? Plenty of the plotlines and characters in these books
also tend to be much more appealing for a wider audience than ones in
books aimed for older readers, such as “Twilight” and
“Divergent”, rather than the other way round as is sometimes
suggested.
Whilst Horowitz complains
about this supposed “dumbing down” in children's books, we still
overlook other factors that serve as an even bigger problem. This
mainly links to the publishers, who chase trends rather than look for
quality in a book. For example, when “Diary Of A Wimpy Kid” was
released, hundreds of diary-formatted books followed such as some of the blatant cash-ins. The same goes for
teenage books, with horror romances being released in the wake of
“Twilight” and dystopian novels being released following the
publication of “The Hunger Games”. Perhaps this is the main
reason why the topics in children's books are being dumbed down,
rather than the writers themselves doing it.
There are even still cases in
which books are promoted for a specific gender, with pink books about
cupcakes and fairies being promoted for girls and blue books about
footballs and robots being promoted for boys. This is evident with
the covers released for the books, which feature illustrations and
colours suited for one gender rather than the plain and neutral
covers that used to be around. Whilst this certainly makes them
eye-catching, it also risks putting the other gender off the books
before they actually read them. Research also shows that toys that
parents give to their children affect the way that they grow up and
whether they become girly or boyish. Could this be the same for the
books that we give them? Furthermore, there seems to be the belief
from publishers that boys won't read a book if it has a female
protagonist, though the success of “The Hunger Games” proves this
belief wrong.
Personally, I feel that a good
book is one that is entertaining and gets children reading and
thinking at the same time. Never mind whether the words in them are
challenging or not, if they're well written and the kids enjoy them,
they're still good. In fact, what we should be worrying about today
is the marketing of children's books by publishers, whether they are
being shoehorned into a specific gender or cashing in on other books
of a similar theme. Maybe it's time for them to stop worrying about
quantity and start worrying about quality.
Author: Polly Faber
