Art Of The Story Jeller

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31143, 20 August 1966, Page 21

Art Of The Story Jeller

(Specialty written tor "The

Press’* by

JANE MORSE)

Children’s Book Week brings to everyone interested in books and reading the unusual opportunity to see many of the best children’s books, both old and new. Each year books appear that can be for children living experiences. With this thought in mind, and remembering that among this wonderful display of colour, size, shape, and content, never once did anyone of the committee lose sight of the children for whom these books were written and then chosen. I offer a few sugtions for reading selection. After the viewing comes the reading, and in the reading is the living experience. In choosing a book there is no better guide than the four tenets that the ancient storyteller used, the tried and true formula which we find in fairy tale, and myth: A beginning which arouses interest. Plot and character development which grow to a successful - climax. A climax which occurs at the right time. An ending which satisfies. Hundreds of well told stories fulfil these demands. All of us can think immediately of favourites which we have enjoyed thoroughly because each contained the storyteller's art. My pleasure has been the joy of discovering New Zealand books by New Zealand authors. There aren’t many. But it is quality we want, not quantity; well told stories, not pages of print. The books I have chosen are for children from eight to twelve, because it is within this age span when most children read voraciously. Never again will they have the time to read so widely and so well. A beginning which arouses interest: “There’s something on the Three-Mile that may some day be more valuable than gold.” “ . . . a humming that grew louder and louder until it was a low-pitched moan, enormous, meaningless, unspeakably terrifying. Then began a high whistle, eerie, and undulating, and the two sounds rushed together in a blood-curdling wail. It lasted for ten seconds or more. Then a heavy silence fell over the countryside.” In the opening pages of “The Hole in the Hill,” by Ruth Park (Brownie and Dunk), two Australian children, find themselves in

an unusually scary situation, miles from nowhere, on GreatUncle Angus MacKenzie’s King Country farm. In addition to the weird noise and the mysterious value of a rundown farm, an unexplained animosity exists between Maori neighbours and the MacKenzies. Here are the ingredients for adventure, with which Ruth Park captures her readers’ attention and interest.

Well-paced plot and character development strengthen each page of "The Lonely One” by Cecil and Celia Manson. Bill Campion’s parents died at sea on the voyage out from England to Wellington, and the Barnet family took charge and treated the four-months-old baby as their own. But after thirteen years, Bill was an extra in an overcrowded house, and the only happy times he knew were at the stables caring for the horses of the Wairarapa coach. Accused by Mrs Barnet of stealing money, he had earned at the stables. Bill runs away from his foster home and finds a job helping the ferryman at the Wairata river. The treachery of the North Island rivers, the taming of an outlaw stallion, and the proving of his integrity reach a terrifying climax when Bill defies the spring rains and the raging Tangiroa to fulfil his contract to carry the mail. “The mail contract was precious, so precious. A key to happiness found at last, the key to his first contentment, his first taste of a real life. How could he throw that key away?” The climax comes at the right time and place in “The Hole in the Hill” and “The Lonely One,” but not in “The Book of Wiremu” by Stella Morice, “Turi: The Story of a Little Boy,” by Leslie Cameron Powell, or “The Boys of Puhawai,” by Kim, and not really in the Maori myths and legends. Always, one finds the interesting beginning, the developing story, and the satisfying ending. But, curiously, Maori literature and the children’s literature about the Maori are anecdotal. There is crisis, not climax. There are incidents with exciting moments but never stories which grow toward the impact of climax. The Maori story-teller’s art omits climax, and its influence on the “pakeha” writers shows.

There is no climax in “Runaway Settlers,” by Elsie Locke. Vigorous characterisation, lively incidents, and ending which truly leaves the mind at rest, the strongest feature of New Zealand children’s fiction, dominate. The ending of Mrs Locke’s pioneer story Is serene and satisfying. After the hard beginning, carving a home from sixtyeight acres of rough Cashmere land and the one-room and a chimney of a cob cottage, establishing a gardening business, adventuring with gold rushes, and driving a herd of cattle through the passes of the Southern Alps, across the Hurunui and the Teramakau to the West Coast settlements, the reader smiles with the same contentment as the pioneer heroine, Mrs Phipps. The garden had become famous, especially for its golden peaches, Jack was doing well as a boatman, Archie was making a good farmer, and Jim could turn his hand to anything. "She picked a blue marguerite and turned it over in her hands. Whether she looked at the whole picture of her garden, the harbour and the hills, or only at this tiny perfect flower, it gave her great contentment.”

By adapting the art of the story-teller, by using the abundant raw material of New Zealand’s pioneers—gold, rivers, mountains, and Maoris —a rich and rewarding children’s literature has developed. In praising the new, and the New Zealand children’s books were new to me, one must not forget the old. July, 1966, was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest storytellers, of all time, Beatrix Potter. Peter Rabbit, Jeremy Fisher, Tiggy Winkle, Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs Tittlemouse, or my personal favourite, the Tailor of Gloucester. Which is your favourite? Read and re-read the old and the new. The art of the story-teller is the stuff of life and the magic of imagination.