John Rowe Townsend > Quotes

“Another danger is that—as is already happening to some extent—authors and editors run scared and go to absurd lengths to avoid giving offence. (An American editor rejected Polar, a picture book about a toy polar bear which is published in England by Andre Deutsch, on the ground that the text, written by Elaine Moss, states explicitly that the bear is white). A demand to avoid stereotypes can easily become in effect a demand for a different stereotype: for instance that girls should always be shown as strong, brave and resourceful, and that mothers should always have jobs and never, never wear an apron. And books written to an approved formula, or with deliberate didactic aim, do not often have the breath of life. Some members of women’s groups in North America have published their own anti-sexist books, featuring such characters as fire-fighting girls or boys who learn to crochet. Good luck to them; but those I have seen are far below professional standard.

("Are Children's Books Racist and Sexist?" from Only Connect, 2nd ed., 1980)”
― John Rowe Townsend

“It is natural if you feel as strongly as most decent people do about racial discrimination to welcome books that give it short shrift; but to assess books on their racial attitude rather than their literary value, and still more to look on books as ammunition in the battle, is to take a further and still more dangerous step from literature-as-morality to literature-as-propaganda—a move toward conditions in which, hitherto, literary art has signally failed to thrive.

("Didacticism in Modern Dress" from Only Connect (2nd ed., 1980).”
― John Rowe Townsend

“Kate, like many other people, found herself a fascinating topic, and when encouraged was very willing to hold forth.”
― John Rowe Townsend

“Wonderland has no obvious formal structure; its incidents follow each other quite casually, like a dream sequence. Looking-Glass is based on the very tight pattern of a game of chess.”
― John Rowe Townsend, Written for Children: An Outline of English-Language Children's Literature