Stories, Pictures and Reality is a study of how children respond to books, based on Lowe's own children Rebecca, born 1971, and Ralph, born 1975, who are now “delightful, responsible, courageous book‐loving adults”. Lowe kept a journal, recording the books to which they had listened and, later, read, and their reactions and comments, until they were eight and then less frequently until they left home at 18.
She is not the first parent to have done this. Dorothy Neal White's Books before Five (1954), Dorothy Butler's Cushla and Her Books (1979), Prelude to Literacy by Hugh and Maureen Crago (1983) and The Braid of Literature by Shelby Wolf and Shirley Heath (1992) are earlier examples of detailed studies of children's reading, to which Lowe makes reference.
She also mentions the on‐going column in the British periodical, Books for Keeps – “Hal's Reading Diary” – by Hal's father, Roger Mills, a former teacher and now a psychodynamic counsellor. Interestingly, Hal has not been such a rewarding subject as those portrayed in the books – his father no doubt set out optimistically in the hope that Hal, like the children in the earlier studies, would take to books like a duck to water but Hal's progress show that children do not always live up to expectations. So, while encouraging parents to read to their children and to set a good example themselves, it's necessary to remember that even those children, who are surrounded by a wealth of books and committed adults, may have difficulties in establishing books as a central part of their lives.
Nevertheless Stories, Pictures and Reality is a fascinating exploration of children's reaction to books and provides plenty of thought for those who are involved in promoting children's books in a world where there are so many more attractions. Most of the books cited are familiar to me and as many of them have come to be regarded as classics since the 1970s many of them are no doubt still available.
Lowe's book is not presented as a straightforward reading journal. Instead the chapters are themed and each ranges widely in considering reality and pretence, the conventions of illustration, the concept of authorship, style, emotions and humour.
Of herself, Lowe says, “I learned to read easily, and was a compulsive reader from then on, moving from Enid Blyton to Charles Dickens almost seamlessly at 11”. It is interesting that she cites these two authors. Conducting a very rough and ready piece of research in an English Secondary Modern School in 1960, I asked a class of 11 year olds to write down the name their favourite author and these were virtually the only authors who were mentioned – I think things have probably changed by 2008 but only comparatively recently.
Later she says that both Rebecca and Ralph went through a phase of reading The Famous Five when they were still not ready to tackle more advanced novels alone, but Ralph at 11 said, “I hate Enid Blyton. She says perfectly obvious things again and again. As if the readers were babies”. Children do grow out of Enid Blyton quite naturally but it's also true to say that many adults pay tribute to her books for turning them into fluent readers. One cannot help feeling that Ralph's comment was influenced by his mother's attitude towards Blyton–Lowe, as an Australian, must have shared the general disapproval of Blyton's work that was felt in the latter part of the twentieth century.
In her concluding chapter, Lowe mentions the Harry Potter phenomenon, “which has revived interest in the printed word” and suggests what I have often thought, “many children, who will never read them [the Harry Potter books] have to own them”, although she does take a positive attitude towards this possibility – the child knows that it contains an exciting story and that many of his or her peers have tackled it – “despite its weight, it can't be so very difficult?”.
Rebecca contributes an “Afterword”, in which she comments on her mother's text and mentions two books where her comment at the time was, for various reasons, economical with the truth. One is Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, which was her favourite Potter. She was fascinated by the picture of Tom Kitten being made into a roly‐poly pudding because the illustration shows Tom already wrapped in pastry with Mr. and Mrs. Whiskers running the rolling pin over the top of him, which, to her, didn't make sense. She experimented with various inanimate objects but in the end took some play‐doh to her mother and suggested that they wrapped Ralph, then a baby, in it. Her mother persuaded her to try a nappy instead and put Rebecca's wish down to sibling rivalry. Rebecca says that sibling rivalry didn't enter into it, it was just a good illustration of the development of her scientific thinking – she went on to do a B.Sc.
As it happens this is the Potter I remember most clearly from my childhood in the 1930s. The book scared me but, perhaps being more domestically inclined than Rebecca, I assumed that they'd already rolled the pastry, wrapped Tom in the normal way and were just finishing the job off, perhaps in the hope that they could get the pastry to stretch over Tom's head and tail which are both still uncovered. I missed out on the other book she mentions, Tolkien's The Hobbit, in childhood, although I am now wondering whether I picked it off the library shelves and, having looked at it, promptly put it back, leaving it to be read for the first time when I was an adult. Rebecca thought it was boring but didn't like to say this so offered the opinion, which her mother quotes, “too many battles”. My opinion would have been the same as Rebecca's – I did read The Hobbit in due course but I've never managed to get through The Lord of the Rings.
Stories, Pictures and Reality has a foreword by Margaret Meek, the long‐established British expert on children's reading, and is well equipped with a list of the children's books cited, arranged alphabetically by title, a bibliography of the books about children's reading to which reference is made and a comprehensive index. There are illustrations from the books cited, including the one of poor Tom Kitten being made into a roly‐poly pudding.
Although I did not find it as mind‐blowing as I found Cushla and Her Books when I read it soon after publication – if books can do so much for a severely handicapped child, how much can they do for other children? – I found it equally thought‐provoking and worthy of attention.
