![]() Thus, if literature is a way of saying something, it requires a reader to complete the work. Samuel Butler once observed that it takes two to say a thing, a sayee as well as a sayer - a hearer as well as a speaker. For it seems to me that all literature is a form of communication, a way of saying something. We need a critical method which will tell us about the reader in the book. We need a critical method which will take account of the childas -reader which will include him rather than exclude him which will help us to understand a book better and to discover the reader it seeks. But we must go further than that truism, which helps us very little to deal critically with books or to mediate them intelligently and effectively to children. ![]() The fact is that some books are clearly for children in a specific sense - they were written by their authors deliberately for children - and some books, never specifically intended for children, have qualities which attract children to them. And unless one wants to be partisan and dogmatic - which I do not, having had my fill of both - one has to agree that there is some truth on both sides and the whole truth in neither. Indeed, some people argue that there is no such thing as books for children but only books which children happen to read. There is constant squabble about whether particular books are children's books or not. The Reader in the Book Notes from Work in Progress by Aidan Chambers (1)Two to say a thing. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
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