Lucy Mangan is surely One of Us

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Whenever I get hold of a book about children’s literature the first thing I do is subject it to the Antonia Forest test. Is my favourite author – the most brilliant, subtle, intelligent and unjustly neglected writer of books it would be (mostly) accurate but unbearably reductive to call school stories for girls – in there? If she is, I can continue with a happy heart and a mind charitably disposed towards the editor of whatever volume it is I hold in my hands, secure in the knowledge that he or she has at least a modicum of expertise and is capable of sound artistic and moral judgment.

Review of The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature