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Author Michelle Magorian says some children read her classic Puffin novel Goodnight Mister Tom at “too young an age”.
At an "in conversation" event at Waterstones Piccadilly last night (24th July), journalist Libby Purves asked Magorian if she had any qualms about writing the part of the book where Tom is mistreated by his mother.
Purves pointed out that the book was published at a time (1981) when dark books for children were not so common and that she had found certain parts quite shocking when her children studied it at school.
The author said that chapter “wrote itself” but that she worries it is sometimes introduced to children when they are too young. “Some schools introduce it in Year 8 [age 12-13], and some teachers just read extracts, but some children read the full book in Year 6,” she said.
However, Magorian said she came across “no resistance” to the character of the mother when she submitted it for publication.
She also said she enjoyed working on the musical version of the book in the early nineties because it allowed her toexplain why the mother is abusive. “She was very ill and had no-one to turn to… she’d been abused herself and I was able to show this in the production.”
Magorian added that she was inspired to write the book when she was in a launderette. “I saw an amazing image in my head of a boy, standing in a graveyard, looking terrified,” she said, explaining that she also drew on her mother’s tales of evacuees during the war, including one about a boy who tried to go to sleep under the bed, because he had not until thattime slept inside one.
The event with Michelle Magorian took place to celebrate the free exhibition of Puffin Classic’s archive material that is currently at Waterstones Picadilly. Puffin this month launched the first 20 titles of its new classic children’s list, including two novels by Magorian; Goodnight Mister Tom and Back Home.