(Roald Dahl’s Matilda – and quentin Blake’s famous illustrations for Dahl – pastiched wonderfully by Aaron Renier)

“The issue for me boils down to this – just because your audience is children, doesn’t mean they’ll accept any old crap. Some comics are written solely to keep kids happy – they set up, they hit with a punchline, they tell you to come back next week. In between there are mildly diverting shapes and colours, but in the end it’s a one-sentence joke dragged across a page as if it were roadkill spelling out BORING with its entrails. The artist isn’t taking this opportunity to embrace the gloriously surreal, the rich silly heritage of cartoons, the irreverence of their characters. They’re assuming the audience are idiots.

They’re patronising them.”

He’s quite right, of course – as a writer or artist, treating your reader with a lack of respect is the disastrous road of the lazy hack, be they writing for adults or children. And anyone who’s worked in children’s publishing or bookselling knows that in fact kids are often far more demanding than adult readers, more openly critical and more honest about what they want and what they enjoy reading. Which actually means that a lot of the time working in kid’s books, prose or illustrated, can be an even harder slog than writing for adults. It’s a bit like the way good comedy is often perceived as being ‘easier’ than creating good drama, when actually it is the former that requires even more thought and commitment; ditto books for kids.  And with kids you also have the added responsibility of engaging a restless young mind with the magic of reading – put them off at a young age with bad books and chances are we see another kid who will grow up rarely looking at books, a whole universe largely ignored by them.

(Jamie’s take on Desperate Dan for the Dandy, by Jamie Smart, Dan is (c) DC Thomson)

Jamie again: “Children want original ideas as much as adults, more so! They want their imaginations filled, enriched and provoked. They want to be swept away and carried along, they want characters, beauty, humour and story. This is why the rich intertwining darkness of Harry Potter caught everyone by the curlies, or the loveable Spongebob ended up in everyone’s home. They weren’t made to keep children distracted, they were grown from seeds and given the right space to grow.

I think this is important. And I tell anyone who asks. You want to create things, you do it for yourself. And from yourself. You build your own little world up, and you get lost inside it, until you and it are almost the same. Your characters are part of you. You don’t write them, they talk for themselves.”

Okay, I will stop quoting Jamie here because you should go over and read his whole blog post – it is relevant to any writer or artist and also of interest to parents, teachers, librarians and booksellers too, I think. And I appreciate the fact that Jamie, rather than simply tear into the lazy cartoonist whose work so provoked his ire, has taken a very mature and reasoned approach to this whole debate rather than simply having a go at certain creators, it’s a positive, constructive piece and you should go and read it.

Steve at the Oxfam charity bookstore in Reading tells us that they are going to be holding a science fiction spectacular from the 10th to the 24th of March, in conjunction with some other SF and comics stores in the area. Acclaimed author Brian Stableford did an event with that fine chap Dave Langford in the shop a couple of years back and they’ve stayed in touch since. In fact when Brian had to streamline his personal library he got back in touch with Oxfam and very generously donated some 5000 items, which will form the core of the books that will be on offer (Steve tells me the Reading store actually keeps a pretty impressive SF&F section during the rest of the year too). If you’re in the area then check it out and see if you can offer them some support (and maybe pick yourself up some fine SF books and mags into the bargain) – you can find more details online here.

In this day and age, it would seem, literacy is the number one item on the agenda when it comes to education.  Not just the technical ability to read, but also the sheer fun of reading, and the ability to gather knowledge and experience from it, seem to be under constant threat from television, videogames and the internet.  Publishers try to help schools to at least overcome the financial “barrier” that many pupils encounter when finding stuff to read (I mean, who would think of going to a library) by offering cheaper editions of well-known books in schools-only series.  That way at least everyone in class has the same books.

One such publisher, the French Ecole des Loisirs, takes it one step further.  In its collection, Mille Bulles, it presents reasonably priced, pocket-size editions of only the best comics that are specifically aimed at kids.  Together with nearly all the big publishing houses, they try to create a collection that is at once representative for the variety that is available in kids’ comics today, and also entertaining in its own right.  After all, as they say themselves, comics “have never ceased to attract the most fertile authors, and the most imaginative readers”.

So far,the collection includes my personal favorite all-ages title, Ludo, by Bailly, Mathy and Lapière (see also here), the quite magnificent Hyper L’hypo by Morvan and Nemiri (will somebody finally pick this up for translation), and Max & Zoe by Davodeau and Joub.  Every season, the collection grows with six more titles, each priced at about 6 euros.

On their website, Ecole des Loisirs also tries to present teachers with tips and hints on using the comics in the classroom, while kids are invited to come up with their own cartoons and strips in a regular competition.  Now there’s an example for other publishers !

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvnPSLSA_bA