Someone once wrote, and I can’t remember who, that the dead giveaway for most dud novels was when the author’s name was significantly bigger than the title. Airport fiction abounds in suchlike: not the enjoyable light fare, but stodgy white-sliced-bread stuff like Danielle Steel’s or Barbara Taylor Bradford’s. Reassuringly, Eoin Colfer’s name is dwarfed by the title on the cover of the third book of his series of novels set in a world of technologically advanced leprechauns and a juvenile criminal mastermind. But there are honourable exceptions: Terry Pratchett’s name blazoned large on the cover of a book is a signal to his diverse fanbase that what is inside will be worth the money.
A more reliable guide to dudness is the publisher-created rather than author-created series. Children’s literature is full of such products. Empty of wit, written to formula and vocabulary lists: Goosebumps, The Babysitters’ Club, Sweet Valley High and others. All these are by multiple, almost-anonymous writers with a single narrow focus more connected to marketing targets than to imagination and delight. Much more connected to publishers’ than to readers’ demands.
Imagination and delight: who has them? We all want them when we read. The fact that J.K. Rowling had the first Harry Potter book rejected by 11 publishers might indicate that the people whose jobs it was to discern what people (young or old) actually want to read were caught napping—flagrantly, spectacularly.
When children (and most grown-ups) read, they want a story that is going to get them truly wondering and caring what happens next. They need a main character that they can love or hate (more usually love). They like to laugh a bit, even if the humour serves only to break unbearable tension in a dark tale, like the Porter scene in Macbeth, while in comedy they need to see some sharpness and warmth, some dryness that hints at common sense. Colfer and Pratchett do this admirably. And children’s novels’ ethics need to be sound without being simplistic. Again, Pratchett and Colfer both have that gift of great storytellers, to place their characters in a world whose choices and problems are very like our own.
The Wee Free Men is not counted in Pratchett’s adult Discworld series, but works within that universe. Like the previous novel, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, it aims at a younger audience but succeeds as adult reading. The protagonist is a nine-year-old