Literary Children

We took the kids round the shops- starting at the pier. Money was spent. When they became bored they turned into puppies and rolled around and play-fought, all the while emitting high-pitched noises.

Something we forget, looking back on childhood- and especially when writing fiction about it- is just how wild it is. We give weight to the defining moments- the moments of learning and sudden awareness- and forget how much time we spent being the chaos out of which a personality was forming...

Do the Famous Five or the Would-be-goods or the Little Women or any other storybook band of children ever behave as madly as real children do? Even Richmal Crompton's William Brown- the great anarch- is highly disciplined when it comes to himself and his outlaws- and their outbreaks are always planned...