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The sub-title of this book is “Violence, Horror and Sensationalism in Stories for Children”, but a glance at the chapter headings will show the reader that Pickard has set her theme in a much wider context. It is difficult, in a brief review, to do justice to the breadth and depth of her treatment. Perhaps it will give some idea of the range of Pickard's interest to know that, originally a Froebel teacher, she has a degree in psychology and has had a
child guidance training and a full psycho-analysis. Starting work at the Caldecott Community, she has been in charge of a junior school, she has done research into personality, and for many years she has been engaged in training teachers of young children.
Her intellectual gifts and high academic standards are brought to the service of her deep and enduring concern for children; she has written this book because she knows the tremendous importance of stories for the development of children. Stories can, like play, enable children to face horror, violence, and other disintegrating emotions, fantasies and experiences in a way which promotes ego growth and integration of the personality. But if, like horror comics, they “hand back infantile fantasies in infantile forms of aggression” they intensify the disintegration and give no help to the child in his struggle with his primitive feelings.
Much of the book is devoted to an analysis of the oral tradition of story telling and the impact of printing upon it. She sees the latter as causing a great deprivation and reaches the interesting conclusion that television has largely given back to children that complex and concentrated nourishment that printing took away. In another section, she considers the manner in which graphic and literary artists can promote the contemplation of horror, giving themselves and the appreciator a second chance to look at repressed problems and to use conscious intelligence in dealing with them. This process is analysed in some detail from the psych