Why was Billy Bunter Never Really Expelled? And Another Twenty-Five Mysteries of Children's Literature by Dennis Butts and Peter Hunt

Abstract

Reviewed by: Why was Billy Bunter Never Really Expelled? And Another Twenty-Five Mysteries of Children's Literature by Dennis Butts and Peter Hunt Jutta Reusch WHY WAS BILLY BUNTER NEVER REALLY EXPELLED? And Another Twenty-Five Mysteries of Children's Literature. By Dennis Butts and Peter Hunt. The Lutterworth Press, 2019, 165 pages. ISBN: 0-7188-9544-4 Why Was Billy Bunter Never Really Expelled?, a volume of essays by Dennis Butts and Peter Hunt, formerly teacher and professor of children's literature at the Universities of Reading and Cardiff, respectively, is a sequel to their book How Did Long John Silver Lose His Leg? (2013). What Butts observes in his chapter "What Happened Next? The Problem of Sequels" for the sequels of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer or Louisa May Alcott's Little Women—namely, that they disappointed their readers—certainly does not apply to the present volume. Like the previous one, it addresses a wide variety of questions on international (though mostly English) children's and youth literature with intimate knowledge of the text, analytical acuity and linguistic wit, and an impressive command of literary history. While some of the chapters provide a clear answer to the question posed in their title, others explore several possible avenues before returning to the initial question as a way of a conclusion and open ending, inviting further reflection or surprising readers with a completely unexpected conclusion. In the chapter "Why Are There So Many Dead Parents in Children's Books?," for example, Hunt quotes and paraphrases with great virtuosity passages from numerous works in which parents die or have died, as in The Story of Babar, The Tale of Peter Rabbit ("Father had an accident; he was put in a pie by Mrs Mc Gregor"), The Secret Garden, Heidi, Pippi Longstocking, Harry Potter, The Graveyard Book, and Bunker Diary. He hints at possible reasons for the literary necessity of the absent parents and suggests a psychologically plausible thesis, only to close with a tongue-in-cheek warning: "But if the mystery remains, the moral is clear. If you are a parent, steer clear of a part in a children's book." The questions addressed by Butts and Hunt raise more general issues, such as "What Makes a Children's Classic?," "What (and Where) Are the Secret, Lost Books of Childhood—and Why Do They Matter?," "Why on Earth Are There Children's Books about War?," "A Mystery Solved: How Adults Read Children's Books," and "Which Are the Best 100 Children's Books?" However, the authors also pursue very [End Page 96] specific, seemingly absurd questions of content that relate to the plots of individual works, such as "Was Lorna Doone Really Married?" (on the invalidity of mixed marriages) and the chapters "Why Was Billy Bunter Never Really Expelled from Greyfriars School?," whose title heads the entire volume; "Why Is There Nobody Nice at St Clare's?" (about bullying in a girl's school); and "Were There Two Flutes? Time Present and Time Past at Green Knowe" (about narrative inconsistencies in the story). Other thematic forays into the field include questions about authors and authorship such as "Charles Kingsley: Christian Socialist, Evangelical Storyteller, or Sexual Sadist?" and "Who Wrote 'Little Goody Two-Shoes'?" as well as explorations of the history of literature and publications, such as "Why Were There No Nursery Rhymes before 1744?" A few glances into the chapters suffice to show the diversity of approaches and the wide spectrum covered. In "Why Is There No Such Thing as Children's Poetry?," Hunt uses numerous examples to illustrate how children's poems, in contrast to the "sophisticated, skilled, philosophical" poetry for adults, are often simplistic, patronizing, or condescending, merely considered a transitional genre preparing for the reception of "proper" poetry. Inspired by a very poetic poem by a child from the series Cadbury's Books of Children's Poetry, Hunt comes to the pleasantly provocative conclusion that only poems written by children can truly be called children's poetry. Butts takes the trick question "Why Were There No Nursery Rhymes before 1744?" as an excuse for an entertaining journey through time, beginning with the oral history of nursery rhymes...