A prolific and very talented children's author herself, Mollie Hunter has published many works of fantasy, folklore, and historical fiction, all set in her native Scotland. She won the prestigious Carnegie Medal in 1974 for her novel, The Stronghold. This collection reproduces five lectures given by the author in the United States in 1975, devoted to the craft of writing for children.

Talent Is Not Enough was the May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture, an annual presentation made by a children's author, or a scholar of children's literature, to the ALSC (Association for Library Service to Children), a division of the American Library Association. The title is taken from Ralph Waldo Emerson's assertion that "Talent alone cannot make the writer. There must be a man behind the book." Here Hunter asserts that craft is as essential to creating a good children’s book as natural talent, and that every author must struggle to discover that unique "code" which will bring their talent to fruition, and allow for true communication with the reader. In a very moving passage, the author describes the powerful effect of one of her own stories on her then eight-year-old son, who sat listening, silent tears running down his face:
"Those soundless tears, then, did more than move me. I felt them as an honour, for the story situation that drew them was poignant beyond the child’s own power to express; but he had understood my form of words for it, and they had spoken for him. And so at last, it seemed to me then, I had discovered my particular code."

Hunter’s point that a successful children’s author must understand the landscape of childhood - the vivid sensory impact of living in a physical world designed for adults, and therefore out of scale to children; the sense of wonder and enthusiasm, not yet blunted by an adult code that "debars spontaneity, and is embarrassed by naked idealism," is well taken. Her contention that the field of children literature, as she found it at the beginning of her career, was dominated by a middle-class sensibility which humiliated poor children, who were "confronted in their reading by the cruel implication that they were the exceptions to the rule of people never having to worry about the rent, or getting enough to eat, or being cold and ragged," is also well observed.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I agree with her position that the "school story" genre has no relevance to the average child, simply because it does not reflect their actual life stories. Fantasy too, frequently includes occurrences that have no direct experiential equivalent for the child - but through a process of association, the reader sees her life reflected back at her. Although I have only just begun to investigate the school story in any detail, the girls' school-story group begun here on the site), I would imagine that it functions in a similar fashion, allowing the child to imagine a world separate from the parent. The phenomenal success of the Harry Potter books, which bridge these two genres, seems to point to the continued relevance of such stories.

Hunter’s concluding discussion of the "convention of care," which obligates authors of children’s books to consider the nature of their audience, and the necessity of balancing good literature with age-appropriate material, should be required reading. I’m not sure that the contemporary reader (this was published more than thirty years ago, after all), will agree with all of the author’s specific ideas, as to what would be appropriate, but the notions of caution and responsibility, as it concerns what children are exposed to, is as relevant today as it ever was.

Shoulder the Sky was the Anne Carroll Moore Lecture, delivered annually at the New York Public Library; this one in May, 1975. Here Hunter addresses the genre of historical fiction, its potential to make the past come alive for children, and its all-too frequent misuse by "pseudo-romantics." The author’s strong Scots sensibility shines through, as she dissects the mythology of Bonnie Prince Charlie, arguing for an approach that balances the need for realism and truth-telling with that for heroes, moments of glory, and that "voice calling bravely out of the past to the youngster of the present day." Her argument that the author of such work needs to be able to combine a sense of history, "an instinctual appreciation of the past," with a detailed knowledge of that past, an ability to create characters that truly inhabit the world/time described, is both convincing and perennially relevant.

One World was a lecture given by Hunter at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, in Baltimore, Maryland, in April, 1975. Here the author addresses the fantasy genre, which she broadly defines to include everything from fairy tales to spaceship adventures, arguing that it is all drawn from folkloric sources. Her analysis of a typical “starship story,” which clearly demonstrates the folktale parallels of character and plot, will no doubt strike a chord with many Star Trek and Star Wars devotees.

Hunter defines folklore itself quite broadly, arguing that it the sum of “What people have learned and passed on through the ages,”, and that it represents, not spontaneous acts of individual invention, but a slow accretion of knowledge, providing humanity with a connection to our pre-historic heritage. Her discussion of the Maes Howe, a megalithic monument on the Orkney Islands, and how its memory was preserved for thirty centuries in folk culture, long after it had been lost from the “factual” record, is as persuasive an argument for the relevance of folklore, as any I have ever read. Often “despised as a source of accurate information about the past,” folklore, Hunter contends, is a “chain of communication through the centuries,” a “long, unbroken line” stretching from Megalithic times to the present.

Thus fairytales and fantasy, though often dismissed as escapist literature, actually provide their readers with connections to a reality deeper and more immediate than history. Hunter demonstrates that this is the case even in supernatural stories, analyzing the Scots selkie tradition, which maintains the existence of “seal people,” who can abandon their skins and come up on shore in human form. Her anthropological interpretation of these stories is fascinating.

In The Otherworld, Hunter turns her attention to the subject of fairies, by which the author decidedly does NOT mean the “minute, gossamer-winged creatures” popularized by the Victorians. Rather, she is referring to the powerful and eerie “Other People” who inhabit much of western European folklore. She examines two major theories, as regards the origins of this lore: the transformation of ancient “Cult of the Dead” religious beliefs; and the more anthropological notion of displaced Stone Age inhabitants of Europe, gradually declining after the coming of more “settled” peoples. Her examination of the Celtic concept of the “Other World,”and her exploration of certain folktales, and what they might (or might not) tell us about interactions between various tribes in pre-historic Europe, make for an enlightening read.

Finally, in The Limits of Language,, Hunter analyzes the mechanics of writing for children: word choice (including issues of obscenity), sentence form and structure, and the rhythm created by word order, are all considered. The “magical” power of the words themselves is discussed, and the need to balance the instinctive with the intellectual. The end goal, of course, is that moment of recognition, of true communication, which is itself a kind of magic...

By turns moving and enlightening, the five essays contained in Talent Is Not Enough should be of interest both to the folklorist and to the children’s literature scholar. I have re-read this classic a number of times, always gaining some new insight. It speaks to themes near to my heart: the power of folk culture, our human connection to the ancient past, and the importance of care in our use of language. I assigned the titular essay in the class I taught on children’s fantasy and folklore, but I recommend the entire collection. ( )