Killing God? Secular and spiritual elements in some recent literature for children

Abstract

What beliefs and values are upheld, implicitly or explicitly, by recent writers of fiction for older children? The first of Philip Pullman’s trilogy, Northern lights, was published in 1995 and the first of the 10-year sequence of Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling came out in 1997. This paper begins by considering Pullman and Rowling’s fantasies. It briefly appraises recent books by four leading authors, set either in secular Britain or a historical context in which Christian churches had a significant role. (In the order in which they are considered these are: Kevin Brooks, Meg Rosoff, Siobhan Dowd and Theresa Breslin.) It concludes with the work of another Carnegie Medal winner, David Almond, which seems to bring earth and heaven into meaningful contact with each other.

Keywords:

• children’s literature
• beliefs and values
• Christianity

Acknowledgements

This article is based on a lecture given at Birmingham University in April 2010 as a contribution to the conference on ‘Secularisation in the Christian World’ which marked the retirement of Professor Hugh McLeod. As a gathering of historians and sociologists of nineteenth and twentieth century, religion would not necessarily be familiar with the world of recent children’s literature some description of the content of the books seemed necessary to underpin their relevance to the secularisation debate. The proceedings of the conference have been published by Ashgate Press in a book edited by Calum Brown and Michael Snape.