Inspiring Young Readers
posted on 22 May 2016
Through the looking glasses: where are all the children’s books with children wearing spectacles?
When I was growing up wearing glasses was definitely not 'cool', particularly for girls. When at the opticians, aged nine, I received the dreadful news that I needed to wear glasses I can remember my mother putting on a cheery voice and telling me that I probably wouldn't need to wear them all the time. And so began my life of not wearing my glasses when I should have been and pretending that I could see; a strategy which reached its peak in my teenage years when, like so many others before me, I was fated to miss all those 'eyes meeting across a room' romantic opportunities and was condemned to being landed with some gruesomely ugly boys at the disco because I was too late to refuse their offer to dance with me once they had loomed into my close field of vision.
As we now know, our identities can be influenced and sometimes bolstered from a very young age by characters that we meet in the books that we read. I can't remember coming across any glasses wearing girls in anything other than Mary Cotton of ' The Four Marys' story in my Bunty comic which I devoured every week. The other three weren't renowned for their beauty but she was defined by her swottiness more than anything else. Once I moved on to reading Jackie the strong message was that, if a girl was unfortunate enough to be a glasses wearer, these would render her invisible to male attention. Occasionally, she might be noticed and the hunk in question would tenderly remove her glasses and exclaim at her gorgeousness. Sometimes the story would continue with her now naked face ( pre contact lenses and laser surgery remember) as if she had been mysteriously cured of her myopia. As far as I know the only equivalent boy character was Billy Bunter, known as pretty disparagingly as ' the Owl of the Fourth' and mocked for his general physical oddity and greed.
Hopefully, attitudes have considerably improved since these dark days and wearing glasses from a young age is now regarded as more ' normal' than ever. So what about how this cultural shift has been reflected in children's books? The ' Harry Potter' effect was certainly exploited by opticians and the media in general. But he was a very particular kind of boy associated with the same mystical/ scatty/ too clever for his own good tropes that have always been associated with wearers of glasses. What about all the kids who have different characteristics? And what about the girls in all of this?
When I recently went for a check- up at my local opticians I commented that the pile of children’s picture books in the waiting area did not include any children wearing glasses. She agreed that this might be a good idea and so off I went to attempt to put a list together. As soon as I got home I started to look through my own collection and could only find three obvious ones, apart from Harry Potter that is. Firstly Klaus Baudelaire in ' A Series of Unfortunate Events' by Lemony Snicket has more than his fair share of dangerous adventure but is rather brainy which again conforms to the stereotype. The beautifully illustrated The Marvels by David Selznick shows the boy on the cover wearing glasses. My copy of 'Mistress Masham's Repose' by T.H. White has a cover illustration by Martin Hargreaves that depicts the ten year old orphan Maria who has 'brown eyes the colour of marmite, but more shiny' and 'wore spectacles for the time being, though she would not have to wear them always'. So perhaps she doesn't really count.
Delving into my collection of books for very young children I wasn’t surprised to find that those published by Childsplay include lots of incidental pictures with children wearing glasses as part of their inclusive philosophy. One of my personal favourites is Snug by Carol Thompson. Shirley Hughes is renowned for her depiction of ‘ordinary ‘children and I was pleased to find Angel Mae as a picture book with the eponymous be-spectacled little girl beaming on the front cover of this charming story. I daresay that there are several other such children included in the vast backcloths of her other books which I have yet to find.
Fired with enthusiasm and optimism, I started to do some research about other titles and was pleasantly surprised at finding some lists and recommendations quite easily available. Although I have never been a fan, apparently the ' Swallows and Amazons' series by Arthur Ransome has Dick Callum whose life is pretty active and exciting despite his affliction, although he is known as ‘The Professor’. Apparently the author was extremely short sighted himself, suffered considerable bullying as a child as a result of wearing glasses and so writes from an informed perspective.
No-one in the networks I consulted really identified books that were aimed at older readers and I guess that might be my next task. I suppose that unless it is specifically illustrated or mentioned in the text, it might be quite hard to find out. In fact, perhaps it really doesn’t matter and the reader can imagine characters wearing glasses, or not as the case may be. However, the range of picture books seems to be quite wide and varied, including some being about children wearing glasses and others making this just incidental to the story. I’m not sure whether these are made widely available in the mix of books in nurseries and schools or whether they may instead be in danger of being seen as ‘issue’ books that are only significant to have if there happens to be a child who wears glasses in a group. And how about some BME characters who also happen to wear glasses being portrayed or is that still a step too far?
I hope that the list that I have put together on the link below will be useful to my optician and to others, particularly children as a way of showing that wearing glasses is absolutely fine. Perhaps I would have been more inclined to wear mine if such books had been around when I was a child.
Karen Argent
21st May 2016