A Quilt of Many Colours

Contemporary Children's Books

By Annemie Leysen

The children’s book landscape of the Low Countries is particularly rich in variety. It resembles a patchwork quilt of tiny meadows and broad pastures, of busy sprawling cities and peaceful sleepy villages, of hilly regions and vast plains, of weed-covered ditches and turbulent streams. Upon closer examination the literary geographer will also notice a demographic distinction: a single language region with two dialects, two cultures, two historical backgrounds.

Until recently, duality also permeated Dutch and Flemish literature for children and young people. Different registers, spheres of interest, sensitivities and traditions led to clear differences in what was written for children in the North and the South. The Flemish spirit of Till Eulenspiegel seemed incompatible with Dutch Calvinism. The Flemish emancipation from the Francophones had little in common with the Dutch rebellion against the ingrained rigidity of a strict philosophy of life. For a long time the emancipated and subversive heroes of the 1970s found in the books of Holland’s Annie M.G. Schmidt or Guus Kuijer and in the poetry of Willem Wilmink or Karel Eijkman looked down pityingly on the virtuous moral crusaders who populated children’s books in the South.

Partly through a conscious policy of rapprochement, orchestrated by both governments, and through the blurred national borders, the gap seems to have been gradually closing since the 1980s. No longer do people peep enviously or disapprovingly across the border. Authors from both regions get together. This two-way traffic has encouraged the development of mutual appreciation. Flemish and Dutch children’s reading now tends to straddle the border.