Let’s talk about sequels in children’s literature

A couple of articles and new titles have caught my eye this week and they’re all about sequels to classic pieces of children’s literature. ‘Katy‘ by Jacqueline Wilson is out now, ‘Return to the Secret Garden‘ by Holly Webb is due in October and ‘Five Children on the Western Front‘ by Kate Saunders has been out for a while (brief segue: this latter title is terribly, hideously perfect). The Telegraph wrote about this ‘plum period of classic novels being reinvented, updated or given sequels’ – and, whilst I appreciate it’s a spoiler, the last lines to that piece struck me: “Let’s encourage children to reach into the past and discover those delights for themselves”

Well.

Ish.

So here’s the piece where I talk about sequels to children’s literature.

Firstly, a little bit of background. Technically, every story has already been written. There’s a school of thought that says there are only seven different plots in the entirety of literature. I rather love that bald statement; the challenge of it and the blunt truth of it. There are only seven different plots in the world. So what’s the point of writing? What’s the point of creating literature where every piece of literature has already been done before? These, perhaps, are questions for another post, but for here, I want to pick up on the idea of repetition and connectivity. The intertextuality of it all, if you will.

If every book has already been written, then logically every book is a sequel. Every book is connected. No book is an island sort of thing. I’ve talked before on this blog about how books co-exist and how to seek a sequel is perhaps to misunderstand what children’s literature actually is, so here,I want to extend that a little and talk about the fear that comes with sequels.

We fetishize the book. We do. We really do. I love books. If you ever see me at a book fair, I’ll be the one crying in front of the beautiful Chalet School hardbacks and going ‘BUT WHY CAN’T I HAVE THEM ALL’. And that’s a great thing (the crying, maybe, not so much). We should understand and respect and, to be frank, love the book because it is such a beautiful art form. The cover, the binding, the printing – the everything. There is a reason that the book has survived for so long and continues to thrive – it is perhaps one of the most beautifully and perfectly designed things that exist.

But maybe we misunderstand a little bit about what it is.

To think of a book as the limitations of a text is wrong.

(To clarify: when I’m referring to a ‘text’ I’m talking about the actual words that construct the story – the ‘Once Upon a Time’ through to the ‘Happily Ever After’)

A text exists pre-book and post-book. It exists in those moments when a small child runs through the park and imagines themselves in Gotham, fighting crime. It exists in those moments when you’re on a bus through Red Lion Square and imagining yourself off to the Dominick Ballet School. It exists for those moments when you hunt a Gruffalo in the woods, or whisper ‘We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it’ when you see some tall wavy grass.

The book is a moment in the life of a text.

The text is not solely the book.

And that’s how it should be. A book does not begin with page one, nor does it end with the final page. Fanfic tells us this, literary tourism tells us this, our imagination screams it as us every time we walk down a road and imagine ourselves somewhere else.

We get scared, I think, of what will happen to a book when a sequel is written. I know I do. But here’s the thing : we’re writing sequels to everything, every day, all the time. There are only seven stories. And that’s the point : if there are only seven stories, then everything we do, every day, is a remix of those seven. There is no preciousness about that, it’s simply how it is.

A text does not exist in isolation.

And neither do readers.

Sequels don’t exist.

(Oh – can I end this there? I think, maybe, I can. I think, maybe, that’s the point that I’m trying to make : sequels don’t exist. Texts are texts, stories are infinite, everything is everything, and books exist in dialogue, literature is a conversation, a dialogue, and without such conversations, we would be so very much poorer.)