4 July
Dear Jacqueline Wilson,
I read your books widely as a child and teenager, and they were very impactful in helping me grow up. Now an adult, I’m a musician and artist, and was struck recently by the development of ‘Poptimism’ within music criticism, and wondered whether a similar movement is needed (or perhaps is even developing outside my field of vision) within literature.
Poptimism is essentially a change that has occurred in music criticism and culture to view pop music as worth of serious critical discussion and accolade. I have a distinct memory from my childhood of hearing a librarian say to my mum upon hearing that I loved your books, ‘oh some people don’t like that kids are reading those, but I say anything that gets them to read is great!’ I didn’t understand this at the time, but as I grew older I began to understand that what she was suggesting, was that I was not reading ‘classics’ or the ‘canon’, or something of that nature. Now that I have been a musician for some years and written my own material, this strikes me as distinctly similar to the sort of response that many people once had to pop musicians; an attitude of, ‘sure, it’s okay but it’s not proper music’. Now, having also studied literature for my undergraduate degree, I also think that it is a suspicious coincidence that the ‘canon’ in both literature and music, is heavily male-dominated, to the point that when people challenge my tastes in pretty much any medium now, I find myself asking whether they simply associate male creators and perspectives with critical credibility.
I have always viewed your books as extremely important for young girls — they not only contain female protagonists, but offer a safe place for girls to explore feelings, growing pains, family issues, and many other things without judgment or limitation. They are an incredible vehicle for the imagination and emotional development of girls, and more so I think because they are written in accessible and fun language — much more accessible and fun language than is found in the books I was assigned to study in school at the same time, however much I later came to love Dickens.
So, with the context of male-dominated canonisation in mind, do we need a similar cultural change to that of music to happen in literature? Though I don’t dispute the importance of ‘the classics’, I am also not sure why it is necessary to sniff at the taste of children or young adults, particularly at books for these age groups written by and aimed at young women and girls. It is vitally important that girls develop with books that speak to them in their own language, about things they are actually experiencing, and I also think that we would all learn a great deal from books such as yours (and those of many other children’s authors) were considered more critically and seriously. Art has a complex and feedback-style relationship with the times it is created in, and opening the floor to discuss what children’s fiction might have to teach us about the experiences and challenges of our younger generations would surely be a fruitful pursuit.
More generally, this could also bring about the additional consequence of making our adult fiction canon less limited to the old, the white, and the male. The ‘canon’ should surely be an ever-evolving thing, open to constant addition so that we may appreciate the long line of storytelling developing even while we are living beside it. It shouldn’t be viewed as a static, historic entity that has already been decided and which is an open and shut case. I would therefore really like to hear your thoughts on whether you think throughout your career there has been any change in critical reception or debate to reflect anything I am musing on. Are we more open as a culture to children’s literature, to teenage stories, to writing about girls and women by women? I have felt throughout my young adulthood, a real change in music in this regard, with pop criticism now being a subject in itself, and female artists forming their own communities and critical dialogues to offset the more stereotypically male critical oeuvre. I would love to know if you have seen anything similar happen in literature, or whether you think there is still an attitude of looking down on ‘popular literature’ as if it was lesser than the classical books more commonly left on the shelf.
Yours sincerely,
Eleanor
Eleanor