Michelle Magorian: An Enduring Children’s Author

[dropcap]C[/dropcap] hances are you have at some point in your childhood caught a few snippets of the ITV adaptation of Michelle Magorian’s Goodnight Mister Tom. Faithful to the book, brusque John Thaw takes the role of endearing Mister Tom, and ITV indulge in a suitably quaint ‘Chocolate Box’ setting to fill their Bank Holiday family drama slot.

It is true, that Magorian’s work has all the ingredients of a twee idyll; superficially the narratives are quintessentially British, harking back to a lost age of Blyton-esque Summer holiday larks. They follow the antics of an eclectic troupe of bright-eyed children decked out in colourful home made knits, cagoules and sturdy gumboots (often with a disheveled but lovable pet in tow). There are the necessary malevolent characters integral for a compelling romp, frequently in the form of adults in positions of authority, threatening childhood glee. True to tradition, the novels feature an abundance of fluffy cakes and buttery crumpets, mugs of hot cocoa in front of a flickering open fire. These are all tropes of children’s fiction rooted in a world that has ceased to exist. So why has Magorian’s work survived the onslaught of criticism that has rendered Ransome and Blyton outdated in our culturally diverse and technologically advanced society?

Magorian’s propensity to pander to a child’s set of emotions certainly builds readership. The young reader follows the protagonist’s self-discovery; sympathizing with their successes, and then noisily protesting at their misfortunes. The timeless childlike passions of jealousy, fear and injustice feature heavily in Magorian’s stories; classroom bullies and nightmares of men in white coats. Magorian accurately illustrates children’s potential for cruelty; her depictions of bickering between conniving girls in a female boarding school in Back Home are entirely relatable.

Equally there are instances of great kindness; be it a community of actors taking wayward Ralph under their wing in Cuckoo in the Nest, or the good will of the villagers in Goodnight Mister Tom. Indulgent though it may sound, both instances make for heart-warming reading. This idea of community, coupled with Magorian’s employment of benevolent elderly characters befriending the young, are reminiscent of Blake’s ideals of harmonised society.

This may all seem naively credulous, yet bitter realism is intrinsic to Magorian’s work. Without reading like a set of direful Danielle Steele misery novels, Magorian has used a pastiche of harrowing issues such as rape, incest and paedophillia. Anne Fine recently commented “realism has gone too far in literature for children”, to an extent I agree. However with the immediacy of media and the increasing accessibility to technology, it is obvious that books are not responsible for the premature sexualisation of children. Magorian subtly weaves these issues into her plots, they appear seamlessly alongside other obstructions to childhood happiness, such as bullying, puberty and the 11 plus.

In my opinion Magorian’s greatest achievement is the role of her books in informing impressionable young readers of their not too distant social history.  Nearly all of Magorian’s books are set in dreary, bleak and broken post World War Two Britain. A far cry from The Famous Five, her stories deal with the under documented fall out of World War Two, notably the complications for families e.g. shell shock, alcoholism, absentee husbands and fathers. It is a topical issue, as a society we are anticipating the death of WWII survivors, first hand stories of this conflict will no longer be a casual discourse between generations.

Zach’s death in London’s Blitz from Goodnight Mister Tom is vastly meaningful because the gravity of injustices experienced as a child is so acute. Magorian is familiarizing history for young readers, offering a human face for a statistic. It is for this reason alone that Michelle Magorian’s stories will successfully survive generations.