As Children See It

Abstract

Until recently, most first-person narrators in fiction for children were older men and women looking back on their younger selves. Such narrators, Geraldine LeMarchant, for instance, in Louisa Molesworth’s The Carved Lions (1895), or John Masefield’s Jim Davis (1911), speak easily and comfortably, addressing narratees of the age that they were themselves at the time of the events related. Many writers have used this technique; the gap between adult and child indeed is bridged most simply and naturally when the adult narrator, whether first-person or third-person, adopts a confiding and reminiscent tone in answer to the implied request, unspoken but nevertheless underlying the text, ‘Tell me the story of what happened to you.’ Both narrator and narratee have in this case clearly defined roles; and the communication by the voice of experience of lessons learnt during the events related is an essential part of the activity.