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C U LT U R E

Shirley Hughes’s
Conservative
Imagination
The children’s author, who died this year, produced a treasure
trove of stories teaching children to love the normal, local, and
traditional.

(David Cooper/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Casey Chalk
Sep 3, 2022 12:05 AM

A new school year means new books for grade schoolers, though
one notable children’s author’s literary journey has sadly reached
its end this year: Shirley Hughes. The British author and
illustrator, whose books sold more than 11 million copies
worldwide and earned her many awards, died in February at her
home in London after sixty years at the easel. It is a loss not only
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for children, but for parents who delighted in her many books,
which in their unobtrusive beauty could be called conservative in
the very best way.

My family was first introduced to Shirley Hughes while we were

living in Thailand several years ago. The owner of the largest and
most accessible English-language collection of books in Bangkok
was a 150-year-old private library adjacent to the British Club
(annual family dues were only $100!). Unsurprisingly, a
disproportionate percentage of the books were from the United
Kingdom rather than the United States. And many of those were
by Shirley Hughes.

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Hughes's children's books immediately stand out from the rest.

Every single page features a work of impressive artistic quality—
Hughes studied at the Liverpool School of Art and later attended
the University of Oxford’s Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine
Art. In an era when many children’s books rely on cheap
computer graphics, it’s refreshing to discover an illustrator who
obviously labored, with deep attention to detail, over every page.

It's not just the illustrative talent and distinctive style using pen
and ink, watercolor and gouache, to “infuse ordinary domestic
scenes with a mixture of coziness and magic” that sets Hughes's
works apart. She was also an expert storyteller. That’s not
because her stories are particularly imaginative; indeed, none of
her books flirts with the fantastical (though there are a few fairy
tales). Rather, perhaps counterintuitively, it’s the simplicity and
normality of the stories that make them so pleasing to kids and
parents alike.

Take Dogger, one of Hughes's earlier books, published in 1977,

which sold millions of copies and won Britain's Kate Greenaway
Medal. Dogger is the story of Dave, a young boy who loses his
beloved stuffed dog when he and his mother and younger brother
go to pick up his sister at school. (Presumably, Dave drops the
dog when he is distracted by his mother buying ice cream for him
and his siblings.) It also features a school fair the following day,
with entertaining pictures of, among other things, children
dressed up in silly costumes, a fathers’ race, and adults in bell-
bottoms (it was the ‘70s!). And, of course, there is a happy, heart-
warming resolution.

Much of what makes Dogger and the rest of Hughes's corpus so

engaging is that the stories are told from the perspective of the
child encountering everyday events—some of which are novel
and thus exciting or scary, others that are familiar and thus
comforting. What’s more exciting for a four- or five-year-old boy
than going to a school fair with games, prizes, and even parents
joining in on the fun? And what’s more comforting than going to
sleep beside one’s favorite toy, with the child-like confidence that
one’s parent’s outside the room are there for constant
protection? Hughes has a special skill for describing the life of
the child from his or her own perspective, drawing wonder out of
what we often assume to be boring and uninteresting.

In her beloved Alfie series, we follow around the eponymous well-

mannered little boy and his sister Annie Rose as they experience
all the kinds of events that define youth. Alfie attends a birthday
party for his best friend Bernard, who, like many five-year-olds
overwhelmed by the attention, acts like a complete brat. Alfie and
Annie Rose—with help from mom and grandma—set up a make-
believe shop in their backyard, using acorns and leaves as
currency. Alfie receives a new pair of rainboots and has trouble
learning to put them on the right feet; he accidentally locks his
mother and Annie Rose out of the house upon returning from the
grocer.

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Though I have a graduate degree in education, I never would have

expected my children to love these stories. Where are all the silly
rhymes, crazy creatures, and absurdist storylines? But my
children do love them. My best guess is that it is because
Hughes's books talk to them about the kinds of things they
witness and experience daily. By extension, these books tell them
in reassuring tones that, yes, their little world with all of its
people and curiosities is quite interesting indeed.

These stories also evince a peculiarly conservative conception of

childhood. “She could create a sense of drama out of the
smallest thing and resolve it without ever needing to deliver a
message,” noted the Guardian’s obituary earlier this year.
“Instead, she relied on children and their parents being largely
sensible and so able to solve problems for themselves.”

I’ve also yet to read a Hughes's book with a broken family—

perhaps there is one, but of the dozens of stories I’ve read to my
children, the working presumption is always that families are
intact, and that mothers and fathers love one another and treat
their children with deep affection. There’s also a strong sense of
community and appreciation for the working-class men who
make the world work—stories involve milkmen, painters, and
movers, all depicted sympathetically as integral members of the
neighborhood. And there’s a cherishing of creation and the
bucolic, with tales of visiting family in the countryside and
marveling at the unusual behaviors of wildlife and farm animals.

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Church looms in the background of some stories, though less to

preach some religious or theological idea than as part of what a
full, authentic childhood is supposed to look like. There’s also a
whimsical esteem for a past that reflects a simpler way of life,
and even thoughtful, authentic considerations of various periods
of English history. Forebears loom venerably in the background,
such as in Hughes's poem “Statue,” about Alfie running around
the “big stone man,” a statue of an unnamed, deceased English
lord: “when everyone’s gone home / and the park’s closed / and
it’s all dark, / he’s still sitting there”—not desecrated or torn
down by woke mobs who despise the patriarchy.

Perhaps much of the reason I’ve so taken to reading Shirley

Hughes to my own children is that it reminds me of what the
world looked like when I too was a little boy, wandering around
and enjoying puddles, trees, and ducks, or sitting at the window
wondering what all those people are doing out there, and might
they perhaps wave hello to me? It’s the kinds of things childhood
is supposed to be about, not contemplating anti-racism, your
gender identity, or, God help us, abortion. We must have our
natural inclinations to enjoy and treasure the world encouraged
and even enlarged before we’ll ever be able to prudently and
productively critique it.

I’m sure Shirley Hughes had political opinions, perhaps many

with which I would disagree. But whatever they were, her cultural
sensibilities—which, in the Aristotelian sense, are essentially
political anyway—were profoundly conservative: individual
responsibility, respect for the past, appreciation for traditional
families, and a love of the local. “If there’s anything wrong with
childhood today,” she told the Guardian in a 2015 interview,
“[it’s] that there’s too much on offer and everything moves at
great speed. What I want children to do is linger, turn the page,
see themselves as readers long before they can read.” That’s a
pedagogy worth celebrating in the digital age.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Casey Chalk
Casey Chalk writes about religion and culture issues for The American
Conservative and is a contributing editor for the New Oxford Review. He is
the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living
Their Faith in Muslim Lands (Sophia Institute Press).

Articles by Casey !

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