Microsoft Word final-current Developments at the Intersection of British Children-online-version doc

Eaglesmount
trilogy, Jacques’ Redwall series, Conlon-McKenna’s In Deep Dark Wood or 
Booth’s Doctor Illuminatus.
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Baldry’s animal fantasy takes over the well-tried cast replete 
with its unequivocal, yet rigid roles of both good and evil. Such fixed constellations lead to 
the predictability of plot, role behaviour, ending and moral. With clichés of old confirmed, 
innovations are hindered, as there is no room for development. Baldry’s trilogy therefore 
strictly follows the guidelines when she assigns the roles of evil to those animals which since 
times immemorial embody the villain. Obviously, wolf, weasel and snake are predestined for 
the part of the rogue. Accordingly, in the Eaglesmount novels, they embody cowardice, 
violence, cruelty, ruthlessness and tyranny. Prime motivation for the evildoers is their hunger 
for power and its conservation. Emotionless, these animals do not show respect for anyone 
but their most senior. Even then, overthrowing the latter is actively schemed for. Needless to 
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Cherith Baldry. Eaglesmount: The Silver Horn. London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2001; Cherith Baldry. 
Eaglesmount: The Emerald Throne
. London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2001; Cherith Baldry. 
Eaglesmount: The Lake of Darkness
. London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2001; Brian Jacques. Redwall. 
London: Hutchinson, 1986; Brian Jacques. Mariel of Redwall. London: Hutchinson’s Children’s Books, 1991; 
Marita Conlon-McKenna. In Deep Dark Wood. Dublin: The O’Brien Press, 1999; Martin Booth. Doctor 
Illuminatus
. London: Penguin, 2003.

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say that - in this hostile environment - friends are nonexistent. Their place is taken by 
temporary accomplices or servants. The fox or the owl, with their cunningness and cleverness 
have potential for both hero or villain. By contrast, the squirrel, the rabbit and the mouse are 
cute and good-natured. Eagles eclipse all other animals with their wisdom and strength.
Jacques’ Redwall animal fantasy series works with the same traditional roles of evil as 
Baldry’s. Picking two novels at random, one is met with a very similar picture. Both Redwall 
and Mariel of Redwall work with traditional roles of evil and the direct contrast between 
villains and heroes. Whereas badgers, hedgehogs, moles, otters or rabbits are on the good 
side, the roles of evil are occupied mostly by rats, but also snakes
.
By direct contrast between 
domestic mice and wild, nomadic rats, the wickedness of the latter is emphasised. In Mariel of 
Redwall
for instance the villain is an insane, belligerent megalomaniac driven by greed and 
lust for power.
The Irish author Conlon-McKenna’s novel In Deep Dark Wood also works with 
traditional roles of evil. An old woman clad in black, replete with long skirt, cape and boots, 
Bella Blackwell matches the typical picture of the wicked witch. Although she lives at a castle 
and runs a dragon school, she might as well inhabit a gingerbread house.
Booth’s Doctor Illuminatus owes to the same traditional roles of evil as Baldry. This 
implicates that he falls back on the fixed roles and the clichés they entail. In Doctor 
Illuminatus
, the representative of evil is De Loudéac, who “seeks to do terrible wrong in the 
world by his creation”.
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It is not only his destructive vein that brands him as evil, but also the 
fact that he pursues his aims with a fanatic energy. Unfailing external signs of his evilness are 
his bad body odour, mirrored in his nickname “Malodor”, and his cruelty when he casually 
disembowels a dog.
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In Nimmo’s The Children of the Red King
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series, three sisters, the Bloor family as 
well as some of the endowed children are outright evil, yet without the potential to develop. 
They remain static throughout the series, thus allowing Charlie Bone and the good endowed 
children to thwart their plans.
Delaney’s The Wardstone Chronicles rely on the traditional evilness of spirits, 
boggarts, witches and necromancers that the Spook and his apprentice have to face. However, 
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Booth, Doctor Illuminatus, p. 52.
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Ibd.; p. 117, p. 129.
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Jenny Nimmo. The Children of the Red King. London: Egmont, 2002-present.

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the rigid roles of good and evil are broken up by the young witch Alice, who mediates 
between the two extremes.
Dale’s Whispering to Witches
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is built on traditional clichés of evil – of witches in 
particular. By relating the events from the point of view of a good witch clan that has to fight 
an evil one, Dale’s novel – interlarded with allusions to Harry Potter - humorously 
demonstrates the relativity of evil.
Further traditional roles of evil can be found for example in McNish’s The Doomspell 
trilogy (the witches), Nicholson’s The Wind on Fire trilogy (above all the Master), Nix’ 
Abhorsen
trilogy (the necromancer Hedge), The Keys to the Kingdom series (the Morrow 
Days and their minions, the Skinless Boy) and The Ragwitch (the eponymous doll), Paolini’s 
Galbatorix of the Inheritance cycle and Rowling’s Voldemort.
As we have seen, traditional British children’s fantasy polarises and fixes the roles of 
good and evil so as to exclude any ambiguities. Such black and white contrasts are meant to 
facilitate the child’s understanding as well as to help it classify good and evil. On the 
assumption that children need obvious guidelines and role models for the development of 
their own character and world view, one thus insinuates that - at their respective stages of 
intellectual development, cognition and experience – children cannot yet cope with the full 
truth. As is the case with one-sided approaches, clear-cut yet artificial categorisations support 
the formation of stereotypes rather than the depiction of authentic circumstances.
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Too 
radical a simplification may lead to an overall lifelessness which then results in too naïve and 
predictable plots with an obligatory happy ending.