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The Child that Books Built by Francis Spufford
Do you actually remember what you read as child? Were there any books that seem to have made a particular impression?
I remember with particular affection, as does FRANCIS SPUFFORD in this literary memoir, CS Lewis's Narnia books. For me, as for Spufford, as well as for, I imagine, the millions of other children that read them, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and the others created what -- after the benefit of several teen years of reading science fiction (another passion I seemed to have shared with the author) -- I would now call a "parallel universe".
I was living in England at the time, in a country village. My best friend and his sister lived in an Elizabethan house with a secret passage (perhaps it was priest hole; I can no longer recall). We always hoped that just once it would lead somewhere else: to Narnia, in fact. It never did -- or perhaps it did after all, for I never forgot.
These parallel universes, argues Spufford -- although he does not call them that -- are powerful things, for they take children beyond the realm of what they can experience in the daily round of activities of brushing their teeth and getting pushed about in the playground. Spufford's own childhood seems somewhat reminiscent of that of Robert Louis Stevenson, except that in this case, it was his sister who was seriously ill. Spufford found refuge in books.
Also like me, Spufford used to hang out (he uses a more gentile term, of course) in the public library, an experience for which the Internet is a dry and sterile alternative. For me, the archetypal library book was Sigurd, a thick hardback of the Norse myth, sparsely populated with colour plates, which I refused to allow myself to look at ahead of time.
THE CHILD THAT BOOKS BUILT can be read in two ways: first, as an exploration of books and what they mean to us personally. If one is not familiar with the books that Spufford mentions, it might be difficult to relate to this: in Asia, it cannot be assumed that everyone has actually read Where the Wild Things Are. However, the book also serves as a more general discussion of the role that books play -- or might play -- in a child's development. Even if one has not partaken of exactly the same books, Spufford asks dozens of useful and interesting questions about children's books and the effect they have. The latter should be of great appeal to parents or educators trying to feel their way through the thicket of children's books that grow ever denser with each passing year.
It is a rather erudite discussion: Sendak with a side order of Piaget (the psychologist, not the watch) and Heinlein peppered with Wittgenstein.
But, underneath it all is the question: do books really build children? Or are the books merely reflections of what children would anyway otherwise be? I personally have a predilection for foreign and exotic places, history and culture, both actual and in my taste in fiction. Was Prince Caspian a cause of this or merely a symptom of preferences that were there anyway?
I rather hope that books don't have that much influence; if they did, I'd have to pay far more attention to what my children read.
I think that in the end, books don't build children but are, instead, the bricks with which children build themselves.
- Editor's note: Francis Spufford is visiting Hong Kong is September courtesy of the British Council.
Peter Gordon
03/09/2002
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Peter Gordon is editor of The Asian Review of Books. |
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