BOOKS

'We want our children to be innocent, and when they're not, we turn them into monsters'

We eagerly search for explanations for and understanding of a child's bad behaviour. They may be naughty, but we put it down to inexperience, ignorance or special circumstances beyond their childish control. We attempt to first forgive, and then reform them. But there's one act that's so horrific we can't explain it away — when a child kills another child.
You, a new book by Sandra Glover, is the story of a young girl who is also a child murderer. At 11 years old, Josie kills a member of her family and several strangers. With a new name and a new identity, in her late teens she struggles to rebuild her life and become someone else — someone good.
Even with such strong subject matter, this book might not be considered remarkable; children's fiction is increasingly tackling raw, gritty issues, but this psychological thriller, aimed at children aged just 10 and up, is particularly challenging because the story is written from the viewpoint of the murderer.
The young reader is asked to step into the child killer's shoes.
Glover was determined that young readers didn't follow in adults' footsteps and simply condemn. “It's easier to shout than examine what creates the situation in the first place. But unless you're looking into why this behaviour is happening, you're only putting the plaster on the wound. That's what I'm trying to do — look behind what's causing this behaviour. And this is what we should all be doing as a society. Looking behind.”

The catalyst for You was the release, in 2001, of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, who had tortured and murdered two-year-old James Bulger when they were 10 years old. “Like everybody I felt desperately sorry for James Bulger's family, but I also felt sorry for Thompson and Venables,” says Glover. “I'm not making excuses, and I'm not ignoring the victims either, but the children who perpetrated the crimes are victims too. The clear fact that a child can commit a horrific crime lets you know that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong in their life.”
But are murderous children really a fit subject for children's fiction? “My children were talking about Thompson and Venables all the time with their friends,” says Glover. “That made me think it was something children would actually want to read about.”

Glover, a mother of three, wanted to show young people a more thoughtful approach. She believes there's no moral middle ground given to children who have committed such terrible acts. “We want our children to be innocent, and when they're not, we turn them into monsters,” she says. Ironically, we find it more difficult to understand a child killing than we do an adult. In You, teenage Josie writes, “In some ways I reckon the public are harder on child criminals than they are on adults. They've got these cosy views about childhood innocence, I guess. So it scares them, it really scares them, when a kid does something bad. It's an affront to nature. They want to hide it away.”
Glover, 51, a former teacher, was also inspired by teaching a boy who had blinded another boy with a shotgun. After serving time, he had returned to her classroom, sitting among his teenage peers. “It happened 20 years ago now, but it's one of those things that's always with you. In many ways, he was a nice lad. He didn't mean to do it — but it was done.” How did he live with it? “He didn't,” says Glover. “He described nightmares. It was constantly with him.”
You dwells on the culprit being dogged by what she has done. “Everybody has things in their past that do haunt them. Other children can extrapolate from that. What if it was really horrendous? How does that affect you in the present?” says Glover.

Although You poses plenty of questions, it refuses to provide clear answers. The lack of a neat ending is the greatest challenge Glover has put to her young readers, who instinctively look for cut and dried instruction. Her aim isn't to offer solutions, but provoke thought. “However much you empathise, and however liberal you think you are, if you came across it in your own life, and it was your child's friend who had killed, you'd be agonised. There are no easy answers — it's impossible — there are never going to be.”

You isn't the only recent book to tackle such a sensitive issue. Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy, which has been shortlisted for the prestigious Carnegie Medal for children's literature, also tells the story of a young woman who is living with the consequences of having killed her best friend.
Cassidy and Glover are friends, and discovered that they were coincidentally both working on the same theme at the same time. “It was a book shouting out to be written,” recalls Cassidy.
But neither realised how controversial their latest books would be. You is Glover's 15th book and Looking for JJ Cassidy's 18th, but it wasn't until they tackled child murderers that they received such attention. “I knew it was difficult, and I knew it might offend some people. But sometimes fiction writers have to go to these places, because no one else will,” says Cassidy.
Glover believes that children's novels, rather than any other medium, are the very best place for such issues to be raised. “Books are far safer. In books, children can examine difficult issues in relative safety. You've got to have reached a certain reading age to access them, and you stop reading if it's too hard. But anyone, of any age, can turn on the telly, and then it doesn't get turned off. Books help kids make sense of things.”
Interestingly, she believes children can handle the book's harrowing story far better than an adult might. Children's reviews of Looking for JJ on the Carnegie Medal's website support this. While teachers constantly call the book difficult and upsetting, their pupils have been far more matter of fact.

Similarly, You encourages and reveals a level of understanding that may elude adults. One child critic has even made a list of the reasons which drove Josie to kill. Another simply wrote, “It opened my mind.”

Sandra Glover
8 June 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1501400,00.html

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