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“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” As an elementary school librarian who is very much involved every day in reading and telling stories to children as well as helping them to select books to read for themselves, I must take exception to Mrs. Cameron’s assessment of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the criticism of which I feel is both heavy-handed and unfair. Charlie is fantasy, a modern fairy tale. As such, it should not be exhorted to weigh itself down with the woes of the real world. It bears no responsibility for in-depth character development, any more than The Phantom Tollbooth or Alice in Wonderland do. These are fantasies that rely more upon verbal wit, imagination, and action than upon characterization to carry them off. We need not spend any more time agonizing over the exploitation of the Oompa-Loompas than we do over that of the poor peasantry in fairy tales. To my mind, the only valid objection Mrs. Cameron raises is the one concerning the origins and characteristics of the Oompa-Loompas as first depicted in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1964. She will undoubtedly be pleased to learn, as I was, that this objection has been heeded and acted upon in a new 1973 printing of the book. In this edition, the Oompa-Loompas are little men with long hair who come from Loompaland and bear no resemblance to any known racial group. Apart from her criticism of his book, Mr. Dahl has good reason for “protesting” Mrs. Cameron’s article. In reading over her October essay several times, I am surprised to find that it does indeed appear as if she is making negative insinuations concerning his personal character based solely upon her low opinion of his book. Unfortunately, this is an emotional approach lacking in substance, fairness, and veracity. I’d “protest” too! As for another of her statements, I am not overly thrilled by Mrs. Cameron’s assumption that those of us who are reading Charlie to children have no idea what we might be reading to them instead. Nonsense! I introduce my students to a wide variety of titles every year including several that Mrs. Cameron mentions. I also recommend Charlie and James and the Giant Peach and other Dahl titles. There’s no reason why we can’t enjoy them all. Each one brings to us something special in its own way; particularly those tales of fantasy, which help children to appreciate the magic of an imagination set free. As Eleanor Cameron herself says of fantasy, it is “a little pool of magic” existing within the every day world and “possessing a strange, private, yet quite powerful and convincing reality of its own.” (See her The Green and Burning Tree: On the Writing and Enjoyment of Children’s Books. Boston: Little, Brown, 1969, p. 17.) This to me describes many delightful works of fantasy, of which Charlie is one. Children recognize this magical quality immediately and take Charlie into their hearts without hesitation. He bubbles over with good humor (a valued commodity in children’s literature and always in short supply). While other “classics” become “dustcatchers” you will seldom, if ever, find Charlie sitting on the shelf. Mr. Dahl is right when he points out that many of the titles we cling to so tenaciously as exemplifying the best in children’s literature have had their hour and are now of interest to only a limited few who will read them. As self-appointed caretakers of children’s books, we adults in the field are apt to assume that youngsters, left alone, will never discover and learn to appreciate works of quality or enchantment and that they need us to guide them out of the wasteland of mediocre reading materials through which they seem content to wander. This is, I fear, an unfortunate exaggeration on our part. Children themselves are not devoid of taste and judgment and to assume so is to do them a great disservice. Yet, when they embrace a book we do not fully appreciate ourselves, we merely point to that as further evidence of their own inability to select wisely. We hate to admit, until many years later, that they might have uncovered a gem we passed over. By no means are children incapable of making strong literary judgments. They do it all the time and it’s about time we began to listen to them. They have chosen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and, like it or not, they will keep him no matter what adult literary arbiters have to say. MRS. ELLEN CHAMBERLAIN
The author’s reply to Mrs. Eleanor Cameron’s review of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a most vindictive piece of writing. There must be hundreds — yea, thousands — who will agree there are better books (than his) to read aloud to students. Methinks the author protesteth too much! RUTH OLIVER
“Mystique of James and
the Giant Peach “A book about a giant peach” — several years ago a book appeared among other new titles at the local public library (Los Gatos, California). Children began asking for the book, librarians had to put it on a “hold list,” and parents wanted to buy copies from the local book store. The title was stocked on request. Teachers heard about the story from children. How difficult it is to get children to want to read, and how rare to find books children want to read with no encouragement from adults. Both James and Charlie became popular without encouragement from adults. It was spontaneous. Children began to ask for these titles, and they were supplied because of popular demand. This is something of a phenomena; books that can attract young readers on their own merits. Of course they have been read by teachers and popularized, but it was started by spontaneous popular demand. How many children’s books have this distinction? There is no reason to stop reading these books just because children like them. Educators and children, too, do not stop with just these titles. They do go on to read other books — lots of them. However, the readers — children — should be respected and should be allowed to read books they like. The popularity of Charlie and James may not last forever, but there is a quality in them that should be considered with esteem. Mrs. Cameron’s critiques are thought provoking, but she must not be working directly with children, and is therefore missing a significant point. Those who work directly with children understand this missing point. Also no child, teacher, or parent reads just Dahl books and no others. They do read many books. The criticisms of the Dahl books are not a totally realistic picture of the situation. Comments about the Dahl books: From teachers: “Do you have anything else that will hold their attention as well . . . ?” From children about Charlie: “The songs are fun to read” Possibly there is a mystique here — and if Mr. Dahl knows the answer to this popular readability — then please use this talent to tell more original and creative stories that will “Hold their attention as well . . . ” Added information: a few other titles often requested Sounder You see how it is — children like variety and do accept quality books, too. MRS. PHYLLIS SCHWEITZER
Well, well . . . it seems the fires of controversy are raging? But, please, not over who is the more perfect parent. Objectivity and modesty are not the primary virtues of either Eleanor Cameron or Roald Dahl. On the whole I admire Mrs. Cameron’s critical work, and have used her book, The Green and Burning Tree, as a text in a graduate course in Children’s Literature, and will use it again. Nevertheless, I find that she does habitually use an irritating device — especially noticeable when one reads her criticism closely — of setting up a straw figure and beating the daylights out of it. It is a serious flaw and one she ought to have been aware of. It is such pontifical belligerence which tends to obscure her often brilliant insights because of the intense heat and light directed against a minor adversary. What difference does it make if children read and enjoy Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Personally I think it represents a relatively low order of creative imagination; but children read and like it, and a good teacher will find that useful. A good teacher will latch onto a child’s interest in and enthusiasm for this book and lead him on to more amusing, more engrossing, more totally committing fantasies. A book which delights a child, which hooks him, should not be regarded as an end, but a beginning. Roald Dahl, too, seems blind to the possibility of progress, and rather pompous in his self-praise. No doubt his 5,000 bedtime stories were entertaining and an act of love. But I can’t help thinking of how much more he could have done for his children by introducing them to the works of other writers. It doesn’t take a seer to pronounce that objective editing might have found some of the five thousand inferior to Charlotte’s Web, The Wind in the Willows, The Book of Three, Half Magic, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (the list of fantasies which might have been included here is necessarily abridged) — all of which, Mr. Dahl should be informed, children do read and love. MARION CARR
Let me add my congratulations to the many you must have received for your editorial in the February issue. Your last sentence was a beauty. Too bad, for Dahl, that somebody in authority didn’t tell him to omit his parenthetical sneer: “I had not heard of her [Mrs. Cameron] until now.” After that, there was no point in his telling what a fine and well publicized family the Dahls were. Will he now write a reply to Doris Bass of Random House, et al., whose letter in School Library Journal was an astonishing concession? I wonder how often a published book has ever been censored to suit the liberal rather than the reactionary mind. ALEXANDER L. CROSBY
After reading Ms. Cameron’s article, “McLuhan, Youth, and Literature”: Part III, in the 2/73 issue of Horn Book, I was compelled to respond to her accusations re: the faults of the current teen-age novel. First, may I say that I agree with Ms. Cameron, to a point: many YA novels are haphazardly constructed and poorly written; the characterizations are, at times, weak. However, a number of authors, writing primarily for the group in question, have produced some excellent works of fiction: Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret and Then Again Maybe I Won’t; Paul Zindel’s My Darling, My Hamburger and The Pigman. The list is a good deal longer, but rather than enumerate any further, allow me to discuss some aspects of the article with which I found fault. The author’s comparison of the various uses of idiom/slang/nonstandard English is, at best, inconsistent; at worst, prejudiced. I respect her right to air her opinion, but whether that opinion is pro or con, it should be logical. I fail to understand the difference between the use of idiom in His Own Where, which the author condones, and the use of slang in contemporary teen-age fiction, which the author condemns. If nonstandard English indicates regional flavor, insight into an ethnic, racial, or religious group, and/or character traits, does not teen-age slang represent these also? Is language not a product of the times? Is not literature a vehicle of language and vice versa? Every book, no matter how poorly written, no matter how it succeeds or fails to succeed in its purpose, whether that purpose is overt or inferred, is a product of the culture from which it stems. Each slice of life, regardless of how inaccurate it may seem to the reader, is valid to the author. In short, everyone has the right to produce a poor novel; the choice of reading it or not is up to the individual. In basic philosophical terms, nothing can exist without its opposite. If there were no badly written books, how could we recognize the “good” ones? Without this comparison, how could we, in Ms. Cameron’s words, educate the ear, give it a chance to become fine-tuned, expand its experience of word play, or provide the reader any opportunity to reach into subtle cornprehensions or to grow aesthetically. I do not fancy myself a champion of YA fiction, but I do maintain that some “good” teen-age fiction is being written today, and even those book which fall below the pseudo-standards of this nebulously defined genre have a merit, however circuitous, of their own. If I champion any cause, that cause is the freedom to read, to read anything. All literary criticism is opinion, some more educated than others, but opinion nonetheless, and I cannot sit idly back while a person of Ms. Cameron’s influence pontificates from her mid-Victorian dais. The making of value judgments is a function of day-to-day living, but we all must learn to make them for ourselves. I suggest Ms. Cameron read, or re-read, Joan Aiken’s article in Children’s Literature in Education, 11/72. Ms. Aiken states among many other salient points, that your language must suit your purpose. Read on, Ms. Cameron. In conclusion, may I say that I read with fiendish glee Ms. Cameron’s self-satisfied definition of the purpose of literature. Greater minds than ours, Eleanor, have wrestled with this issue for centuries. May I suggest that you re-evaluate your definition and your standards of judging, if judge you must, today’s young adult fiction. . . . C. M. KLEIN, B.A., M.L.S.
I read with considerable interest Eleanor Cameron’s “McLuhan, Youth and Literature.” Although Mrs. Cameron’s criticisms were generally good, she did go too far, and Roald Dahl was justified in taking exception to her statement “. . . three kinds of goodness in fiction . . . the goodness of the writer himself, his worth as a human being. And his worth is always mercilessly revealed in his writing,” and the implications that follow. I do not know Mr. Dahl personally, but he is a public figure about whom much has been written, and there can be no doubt about his worth as a human being. On the other hand, Mrs. Cameron refers to the early influence of Shakespeare’s works on young Dylan Thomas and never questions the worth of Shakespeare as a person. Certainly, we all should strive for a more evolved state of personal development. But how do we determine where worthiness begins? Does it commence only when we have attained total evolvement? Do we wait to produce until we reach absolute spiritual evolution? If we wait until that time, my friend, NOTHING would ever be written OR produced. We would be totally denying our reason for existence. So impossible would it be that we would be discouraged from even trying to do anything — much less our best. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we are ALL worthwhile — at least in the eyes of God — for we are ALL children of his creation. And I do agree with Mr. Dahl that Mrs. Cameron “would be howled out of the classroom” if she tried reading aloud to a class of today’s children such “classics” as Little Women. In the February issue of The Horn Book you found it necessary to print on page 15 an item titled “In Protest.” You defended yourselves inappropriately for having printed Mrs. Cameron’s article. You, too, revealed emotionalism — just as surely as the person who ripped out the pages of The Horn Book and sent them to you “in protest” graffiti not withstanding. You did indeed take advantage of your position, assumed the airs of an authority, and revealed an attitude of righteous indignation as well as other emotions we reserve for when we are “dead wrong.” You at The Horn Book should have questioned Mrs. Cameron’s statement before printing it rather than defending it, or at least added your own footnote “view of the author’s only.”. . . BETTI JOHNSON
In a critical journal, like The Horn Book Magazine, it is not necessary for the editor to defend the publishing of an article dealing with the literary criticism of children’s books. Nor is it necessary to add in a footnote “view of the author’s only.” A critical journal tries to present varying points of view and cannot afford to indulge in imprimaturs. For example, “Children’s Books: A Canadian’s View of the Current American Scene” by Sheila Egoff (Horn Book, April 1970) presented a personal point of view that did not necessarily reflect the Horn Book point of view. But it was certainly an article worth reading and thinking about. paul heins |
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