Jacqueline Wilson’s bolshie girl is now a single mum on a council estate. Raymond Briggs’s wordless Snowman is becoming a book for ‘a new and older audience’. Why can’t we leave kids books for kids?
Stop the world, I want to get off. On 10 March, it was announced that Tracy Beaker has grown up and become a single mum, in a sequel to Jacqueline Wilson’s beloved trilogy aimed at adults and teenagers as well as preteens. And now it’s been announced that Raymond Briggs’s Snowman is flying towards a similar fate with a retelling by the (admittedly admirable) Michael Morpurgo that will transport the heart-melting carrot-nosed snowman to a “chapter book” for “a new and older audience”.
A chapter book! I ask you! The whole point of The Snowman is that there are no words. He exists in the magical storytelling space that enfolds parents and the smallest children, who are just beginning to find a vocabulary to harness their chaotic, ardent emotions to the communal world of storytelling. When the Snowman tucks Arthur under his arm (obviously it’s Arthur, that’s my son’s name) and carries him high above the rooftops, it is to show him the world so he can describe it for himself. All these years on, my eyes well up thinking about it.
Wilson’s stories of brave children surviving against the odds brought debate to our dinner table and tears before bed
Things I like
My lucky number is seven. So why didn’t I get fostered by a fantastic rich family when I was seven then?
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