Didactic aims

In the meantime the duel in the arena of children’s fiction continues unabated. More than ever the wearying bickering over what defines a good narrative book is at the top of the list: delightfully suspenseful adventures or literary and aesthetic narratives; a vehicle for a didactic message or a masterpiece of language and composition.

In the Low Countries, as elsewhere, the entire discussion produces a rather partitioned landscape. Suspenseful stories about be witched masters, abducted dogs, wandering ghosts, mysterious hotels and mischievous children or animal clubs are always popular. But here too the cybernetic revolution is gaining a foothold. The good old monsters have now often become computer horrors. The bad guys are polluters or drug dealers. Authors like Carry Slee, Marc de Bel, Jacques Vriens, Paul van Loon and Karel Verleyen remain good choices for accessible, children-friendly adventures for a larger public.

Others have didactic and moral aims to fulfil in their children’s books: historical information and moral issues are presented with a novel’s sugar coating and eagerly swallowed. The form or the style in which this takes place is of secondary importance. Nevertheless, the literary children’s book seems to have been gaining ground in the past few years. Many authors are becoming more concerned with producing youth literature in which literary form is important, paying marked attention to the language structure, composition, the maintenance of tension and characterisation.

Guus Kuijer paved the way with humorous and professionally written stories. Dutch author Rindert Kromhout combines all the ingredients mentioned above in his latest stories. A setting in southern Tuscany is but one of the charms of Vreemde vogels (Strange Birds, 1995), a commedia dell’arte thriller about a touring animal theatre company. Kromhout’s ingenious composition brings the diverse storylines together in both time and space. Besides being exciting and funny, Vreemde vogels is also brilliantly written and composed.