The Marble In the Water: Essays On Contemporary Writers of Fiction for Children and Young Adults

by David Rees

Essays on Nina Bawden, Judy Blume, Jill Chaney, Beverly Cleary, Robert Cormier, Penelope Farmer, Paula Fox, Alan Garner, E.L. Konigsburg, Ursula K. Le Guin, Penelope Lively, Philippa Pearce, Doris Buchanan Smith, Rodie Sudbery, Mildred Taylor, Jill Paton Walsh, E.B. White, and Paul Zindel.

211 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1980

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

David Rees was born in London in 1936, but lived most of his adult life in Devon, where for many years he taught English Literature at Exeter University and at California State University, San Jose. In 1984, he took early retirement in order to write full-time. Author of forty-two books, he is best known for his children's novel The Exeter Blitz, which in 1978 was awarded the Carnegie Medal (UK), and The Milkman's On His Way, which, having survived much absurd controversy in Parliament, is now regarded as something of a gay classic. He also won The Other Award (UK) for his historical novel The Green Bough of Liberty. David Rees died in 1993.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1980, this is a collection of essays on then-contemporary writers for children (the likes of Alan Garner, Phillipa Pearce, Paul Zindel, Nina Bawden). The fact that some of the writers featured here are still writing almost 30 years later (including Leguin, Patton Walsh, and Konigsburg) gives the book an out of date feel. The essays are readable and sometimes interesting (I enjoyed the rather scathing assessment of Alan Garner), but anyone who already has an interest in these authors is unlikely to come away with any new insights. I was most interested in essays touching on two British authors who are relatively unknown in this country: Rodie Sudbery (I actually have read and liked the only book of hers to be published here, A Sound of Crying, originally The House in the Woods in the UK) and Jill Chaney, because in the case of these two I actually do have a lot learn. Rees' respect for them (I generally agreed with his opinions) makes me feel they're worth seeking out. Not that I don't have enough to read or anything.

[Meghan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book's misleadingly-formatted table of contents led it to be catalogued in WorldCat under the names of the authors who are in fact the subjects of very tedious and shallow analysis by the actual sole author, David Rees. As his critical style consists of making unsupported Word of God pronouncements about everything and as I was not in sympathy with a single one of his judgments I put this book back down again very quickly.