First Person

 

The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler by Gene Kemp is this month's Carnegie Medal winner and it is the first winner to be written in the first person. It's not the first children's book to be written that way, but I don't think that before 1977 there had been all that many. I'd be interested to see what readers can come up with, but I immediately thought of Oswald Bastable, narrator of E. Nesbit's books about The Treasure Seekers.  Here is Oswald at the start of The Wouldbegoods:

'My father said, "Perhaps they had better go to boarding school." And that was awful because we know Father disapproves of boarding-schools. And he looked at us and said, "I am ashamed of them, sir!"

Your lot is indeed a dark and terrible one when your father is ashamed of you. And we all knew this, so that we felt in our chests just as if we had swallowed a hard-boiled egg whole. At least, this is what Oswald felt . . . so, of course, the others felt the same.'

If you've never read E. Nesbit's books you should do so as soon as possible. I'm sure Gene Kemp had read them, and there's even a little thing about names in The Wouldbegoods which Gene Kemp used for her own reasons and I used myself in one of my books. It would be nice to think that E. Nesbit started it. Here's Oswald again, at the end of the book:

'And do try to forget that Oswald has another name besides Bastable. The one beginning with C, I mean. Perhaps you have not noticed what it was. If so, don't look back for it.'

It's interesting, too, to see Nesbit's little dig about boarding-schools. In The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler boarding schools also have a presence, as places where neither of the two main characters wish to go. Like Mr Bastable, Tyke's socialist father disapproves of boarding schools. It was only in the 1970s, when The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler was written, that it became common to see books set in ordinary state schools. Robert Leeson had some things to say about this in an essay published in 1994:

'Let me take the most striking—even grotesque—example of a literary assumption—that 95% of schools and pupils did not exist ("In England, all boys go to public school," said Tom Brown).

In the 1960s I was often told by publishers that day school pupils liked boarding school stories and that was it. Well, the assumption collapsed because of external pressure, from teachers, librarians and some writers with social inclinations, and because of television and its audience.'

The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler was part of this new wave of school stories, and when I first read it, back in the early 1980s, I enjoyed it simply for what it was —a good story with great characters, a realistic setting and entertaining writing. Of course, the plot twist (spoiler alert!) was amusing, but the fact that Tyke turned out to be a girl didn't seem that extraordinary to me at the time. She's no more feisty than Ransome's Nancy Blackett or Enid Blyton's George in the Famous Five. So this is all about playing a little trick on the reader and pointing out the reader's lazy assumptions. And in order to play that trick the first person narrative was pretty much essential, enabling the author to avoid all those tricky pronouns.

This is, however, much more than an 'issue book', though if you look at the (lengthy) Wikipedia entry you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. It's a book about friendship and loyalty and although it's funny it's serious at its heart. I thought Tyke's friendship with Danny, who has a speech impediment so severe that only Tyke can understand him, was beautifully observed, and I know it's true to life because I witnessed a very similar friendship when I was teaching. I also, as it happens, once taught a boy, call him Christopher, with a very similar speech impediment to Danny's. It was almost impossible to understand him at the best of times, but when he was under stress of any kind he became completely incomprehensible. So it was only natural that when an OFSTED inspector picked on a child to talk to it had to be him.

Sometimes good things happen, even during OFSTED inspections. I heard the beginning of the conversation:

'So, you've been learning about the three bears?'

Christopher launched into an explanation. I made myself scarce. My class of four-year-olds didn't boast an interpreter with the skill of Tyke Tyler and so it was that an utterly baffled inspector approached me a few minutes later, shaking her head. She moved past me into an open area where a boy named Peter was struggling with the challenge of making three chairs for the three bears out of large wooden blocks. The inspector's eyes lit up. 'Are you making chairs for the three bears?' she asked.

'No,' said Peter firmly, and carried on with what he was doing.

Even the inspector had to laugh.

I wrote it in the first person then 
rewrote the whole thing!

I've always enjoyed writing in the first person, and I sometimes do it just to get to know who a character is.  On one occasion I got carried away and wrote almost a complete 50,000 word novel that way before realising that it just wouldn't do because there were things I wanted said that the character couldn't say. Gene Kemp, in this case, solves that problem by tacking on a postscript written by one of the teachers. This neatly accounts for any inconsistencies of language or tone because it tells us that the teacher has transcribed what Tyke has told him, no doubt using his own words from time to time.

A first person narrative with a narrator who 
doesn't like her own name. Probably
influenced by both E. Nesbit and Gene Kemp

A dozen years after that remarkable OFSTED inspection I ran into Christopher again. He was standing, six feet tall now and towering over his mum, in the small front garden of their terraced house. 'I bet you didn't recognise Christopher, did you?' his mum said.

'Hallo, Mr May,' said Christopher, and all trace of that speech impediment was completely gone.

***

Robert Leeson's piece 'It's Only a Story, Isn't It?' Creativity and Commitment in Writing for Children is in The Prose and the Passion, Morag Styles, Eve Bearne and Victor Watson eds, Cassell, London , 1994

Originally published on ABBA July 2022