The Rough Guide to Children's Books 0-5 years

Review also includes:

The Rough Guide to Children’s Books 5-11 years, ***, 384pp, ‎978-1858287881

It is hard to believe that Tucker could be responsible for anything rough, even a guide to children’s books. So it proves. This is the familiar engaging Tucker, who wears his considerable knowledge lightly and puts it across with charm and reassurance. These are two little fat books, small enough to put in your pocket and consult in the bookshop or library. They are intended as a guide to the best in children’s books for interested parents, and, apart from substantial reviews of individual titles (about 400 words), they are packed with sensible advice and anecdotal information about books and children, authors and illustrators, that would provide their readers with the background and confidence to move on to make their own choice and support their children in making theirs.

Grounded in child development, these guides are about shared excitement and encouragement, and sensitivity to the needs of the individual child. Tucker restrains the over enthusiastic parent and calms the anxious one.

He warns ‘never to force books on babies when they are restless and not in the mood’. With older children in mind, he advises, ‘However keen an adult may be about any particular title, it is nearly always counterproductive to try to insist that children read it too.’ He tackles issues as they arise, writing about the possibly therapeutic effect of violence in nursery rhymes, or warning parents of a sensitive disposition of the ‘earthy’ humour in Babette Cole’s books. It is all done firmly, with clarity and genial humour.

Any adult or child who is already hooked by books cannot fail to be caught up in Tucker’s enthusiasm. He is like a fun-loving old uncle out of a Quentin Blake story, with his own collection of children’s books, every one of which he remembers with affection and delight, and which he can’t wait to share.

But the guides do have a slightly old fashioned air. The arrangement of the under fives guide, with separate sections on counting and alphabet books, suggests a curricular approach which is belied by its content, and the selections in both guides have a high proportion of classic titles. These are balanced in the under fives guide by more recent publications, producing an attractive mix, but they tend to overwhelm the older guide, particularly in the 5-7 and 7-9 age groups.

Although Tucker warns of the dangers of assigning books to particular age groups, this is the basis of the guides’ arrangement. In the older guide, he is conscious of appealing to both ‘keen readers’ and ‘less committed ones’, but when you look at which books appear in which bands, you feel that it’s the bookish child, who might read The Chocolate War or Lord of the Rings before they were eleven, who’s much more in mind. This guide is more Baedeker than Rough: more concerned to make sure you don’t miss one of the major monuments than to take you down the back streets to anywhere out of the way.

Tucker has an awareness of multicultural themes, but gives much less attention to the needs of the reluctant reader or the dyslexic one. The biggest gaps, to my mind, come with his treatment of picture books and poetry. Picture books don’t make it beyond the age of seven, except Asterix or Tintin, and the entire area of books for younger children beginning to read for themselves (and reluctant readers), which mix graphics and text, is overlooked. Although Tucker includes poetry for all ages, the preponderance of classic titles here seems even more apparent; which is a pity, considering the wealth of modern poetry for young readers.

For some parents and children, these guides may be just what they are looking for, and, for many families, I can’t think of a better introduction for the 0-5s. I am less sure about the 5-11s. Here Tucker’s selections will have more value and appeal to keen reading households, where his selections will act as a refreshing corrective to the publishing market’s emphasis on the latest trend.