If you don’t have young readers in your life, chances are you might miss out on some of the most novel, wise and delightfully humorous new reads around. Not to mention the small works on art that can be found on many a picture book’s pages.
The multi award-winning UK – and yes, children’s author – Katherine Rundell once penned an entire essay on Why You Should Read Children’s Books Even Though You Are So Old and Wise, stating: “Children’s novels, to me, spoke, and still speak, of hope. They say: look, this is what bravery looks like. This is what generosity looks like. They tell me, through the medium of wizards and lions and talking spiders, that this world we live in is a world of people who tell jokes and work and endure.”
With the recent announcement of finalists for the 2024 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. listener.co.nz put the question to some of them to find out why you’re never too old for a children’s book.
Tessa Duder: Young Adult Fiction Award finalist for The Sparrow (Penguin Random House NZ)
I’ve always felt so sorry for grown-ups who believe themselves above reading books written to be accessible by children and teenagers. (“I’d never read Margaret Mahy,” a post-modern poet once told me, “she’s only a children’s writer.”) Happily, there’s fewer of these lofty souls around now than in the early 1980s when I began writing. Irrefutably, in the literature for the young there’s much treasure and pleasure to be found.
I read picture books by Mahy, Lynley Dodd, Gavin Bishop, Joy Cowley, Maurice Sendak, for their wit, simplicity and joyful inventiveness. (Also to admire the sophisticated artwork and design). Junior fiction by Roald Dahl, David Hill, Leonie Agnew, Stacy Gregg, David Walliams, JK Rowling, for their precision, insight and humour.
Young adult fiction like Mahy (again), Philip Pullman, Kate De Goldi, Mandy Hagar, Fleur Beale, for their straightforward narrative drive, lack of literary pretension and sympathetic insight into the teenage mind. And non-fiction for the clever compression of even complex topics, providing content I can trust as well-researched and attractively presented.
It’s often said the best children’s books empower the young reader: through story, they impart hope, knowledge, insight, optimism. Now, especially, I suggest that’s an empowerment we all need.
Gavin Bishop ONZM (Tainui, Ngāti Awa): Elsie Locke Award for Non-Fiction and Russell Clark Award for Illustration finalist for Patu: The New Zealand Wars (Penguin Random House NZ)
In general, children’s books appear to be straightforward. For example, the story in a picture book may seem to be simply stated and spare, but this can be deceptive. The writers of this kind of book are faced with many restrictions. First there is the number of pages, 32. All ideas, character developments and plots have to sit comfortably on this set number of pages, determined by the fact that 32 pages can be printed on one large sheet of paper, 16 pages per side.
The words are only part of a picture book story-telling process though, and must leave plenty of room for the pictures to introduce complementary ideas and thoughts. It is a very challenging and underrated art form, easy to underestimate and belittle.
But, the best picture books, supposedly written only for children, can be as rich and nuanced as the finest piece of poetry written for adults, a piece of storytelling that offers more and more each time it is read and re-read.
Josh Morgan (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Te Whānau-a-Kai): Finalist for the Picture Book Award and Russell Clark Award for Illustration for Dazzlehands written by Sacha Cotter (Huia Publishers)
Adults should definitely keep reading children’s picture books and not deny themselves the richness of this brilliant artform. They are entertaining, escapist, nostalgic, profound, playful, moving, silly, challenging and everything in between.
They can make you laugh out loud and then tug at the heartstrings in the turn of a page. They open up doors to different cultures and perspectives and reaffirm our common human experiences. Often, their childlike point of view can be the perfect vehicle to approach big themes, such as love, loss and grief.
I love picture books, and love collecting them, because they are often beautiful objects, and works of art in themselves. I think as an adult you can really appreciate the craft that goes into the books. They combine the best in design, typography, and illustration, with perfectly formed language. They are like tiny films in the way they combine words and images; a joining of forces where magic occurs, and the full story is brought to life. If a picture can tell 1000 words, I reckon a picture book could probably tell about 32,377 words …a novella’s worth!! … that alone is bang for your buck!
Stacy Gregg (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Pūkeko, Ngāti Maru Hauraki): Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Junior Fiction Award finalist for Nine Girls (Penguin Random House NZ)
If you want to read a pacey, page-turning novel then middle grade delivers because as writers for the super-demanding 8-12 age group we’re utterly aware that everything in the book must serve the story.
I think Catherine Chidgey writes very much like a middle-grade writer in this sense, and I mean that as the highest form of compliment. Times have changed, attention spans have dwindled and modern middle- grade writers understand that we compete with TikTok. If we are doing our job right then we will deliver more in a chapter than some adult novels do in an entire book.
And for us, it’s never about just writing “a story for kids’” Nine Girls is literally history 101 of the Tainui Wars, the Springbok tour and Bastion Point protest. It’s about colonisation and cultural identity, pain and grief. I wrote it with 1970s and 80s details that speak to my own generation, and I have been thrilled to see adults picking it up – it was never intended to be just for kids.
Feana Tu’akoi: Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Junior Fiction Award finalist for Lopini the Legend (Scholastic New Zealand)
Good books are good books, no matter where they are positioned. When researching a new topic, I often begin with children’s non fiction, as it contains high-quality information, reduced to its essence. This provides a framework for understanding and a springboard for inquiry.
Children’s picture books are places of distillation, philosophy, wonder and joy. The artwork is as storied as the text and the whole is magically elevated above the sum of its parts. The great ones are visual poetry. They leave room for the reader, speak through the generations and are imprinted directly onto the heart.
Children’s novels are deep, but deceptively simple. Often fast-pasted and filled with playful, interesting language, they cut through complexity and speak to our deepest desires. They tap into the wonder of childhood and help us see the world in new and hope-filled ways. They remind us to have fun!
Children’s books are freedom. Freedom to be who we are, think what we think, find magic in the world and see the impossible as doable.
Children’s books are taonga. Why wouldn’t we read them?
Michaela Keeble: Picture Book Award finalist for Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai (Gecko Press). The book’s illustrator Tokerau Brown is also up for the Russell Clark Award for Illustration and in the running for the NZSA Best First Book Award
Sometimes on the drive home, I stop at Waitohi – the library named after the great leader of Ngāti Toa Rangatira. For the time it takes to charge the car, I pull a handful of kids’ books off the shelves and rest and read. I’m looking for something. A book written by an adult but worthy of a child of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Stories by Māori writers and illustrators are the place to start, but the book doesn’t have to be about Aotearoa or even by an Aotearoa artist. It does need to do more than centre mainstream linguistic or cultural concepts. I’m looking for stories that celebrate the belly laughter and bone-deep reckoning of critical thought. I want to be challenged to think, feel, react and act differently.
Kids accept such challenges easily, if they’re allowed to, if we haven’t already groomed them into compliance. Language delivers culture into our eyes and ears and brains and kids’ books are part of the process.
The UN has accepted a long-standing recommendation to include Israel in the list of parties to armed conflict committing grave violations against children. It’s no surprise that research into Israeli children’s literature finds it filled with humiliating, negative descriptions of Palestinians.
Grown-ups should read kids’ books of all kinds, from all places, to understand the culture we live in, the messages we’re giving our kids, and the stories we ourselves accept as true.
Rachael King: Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Junior Fiction Award finalist for The Grimmelings, (Allen & Unwin)
I hesitate to use the word “should” in relation to reading, but I can point you to Katherine Rundell’s excellent essay Why You Should Read Children’s Books Even Though You Are So Old and Wise. She refers to children’s books as “literary vodka”, with all the essence of life in them.
There are no boring bits in a middle-grade book. Most of us can relate to them because we were children once or we have children, and they almost always end on a hopeful note. If you need a page-turner you can pick up a Lee Child, or you can pick up a children’s novel and feel rather better about humanity. Some of the most beautiful writing that stares into your soul can be found in the work of David Almond.
Reread the books you loved as a child if you want a jolt of recognition and an understanding of what made you. Books are the building blocks of our values, our ideas, our perception. Often, we’ve dealt with life’s traumas better because we first experienced them through reading and were given a road map for the real thing. They gave us tools and helped us see the magic in the world that, if we’re lucky, we still carry with us. We just need reminding sometimes.
For the full list of NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults click here. The ceremony to announce the winners is at Pipitea Marae in Wellington on the evening of Wednesday, August 14.