Putting Children First

Abstract

In twentieth-century fiction for children, it has become the norm for adult narrators to speak directly to child narratees, although, of course, some manage to do it more unobtrusively than others: fine modern writers such as Mary Norton, Lucy Boston and Philippa Pearce on the one hand, and much read though less substantial writers such as Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl on the other, have continued what Nesbit and Burnett began. While the early work of many writers of the last twenty or thirty years shows that the problems of finding a suitable voice in which to address children are real and continuing, the general competence in the area of narrative stance reflects the influence of those writers who, in the years between 1910 and 1950, experimented with and extended the use of single address.