Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 8 - 14 March 2001 Issue No.524
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To the editor

Not child's play

Sir- Notwithstanding my admiration of Al-Ahram Weekly's Books Supplement, I feel compelled to note the lack of coverage of children's books at a time when children's literature in Egypt is the subject of much attention and celebration. I wonder whether this lack of coverage is due to an assumption (faulty, in my opinion) that books for children are not 'serious' enough to be covered by a serious newspaper.

Children's literature, even of the most fantastic, playful sort, is enriching for children and adults alike; it is a serious genre indeed, often, I sometimes feel, more so than much of the second and third rate adult literature that is being (over-)produced these days. St-Exupery's The Little Prince, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, A A Milne's Winnie the Pooh series, and P L Travers' Mary Poppins series, to name but a few classics of world literature, continue to delight, stimulate and provoke long after one has 'grown up.' My sense is that, of late, there is something of a renaissance of children's literature in Egypt, and possibly in the Arabic speaking world at large. With the notable exception of the review a few issues ago of the prize-winning Elias Junior Dictionary, in fact, no literary endeavour aimed specifically at children has been covered by your Supplement.

While the broadly-conceived Supplement may have other subjects to worry about, (and I do realise that there are so many new books being published even as I write this letter and only so much space in which such publications can be covered), it is hardly appropriate to ignore a category of publishing to which both official and private-sector organisations are directing their efforts now more than ever. Children's literature, moreover, is a literary category in which at least some of the Supplement's writers will take as much pleasure as its readers, regardless of their area of speciality.

Wafaa Abdel-Azim
Madinet Nasr

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