Achievable virtues: Why Morris Gleitzman is an author for our times

Throughout the seven books, readers are brought to an understanding and exposure of virtues including courage, self-sacrifice, endurance, honesty, selflessness, bravery, kindness, patience, resilience, integrity, truth, hope and love. This is not by any means an exhaustive list.

Moreover, Gleitzman does this often against a backdrop of danger, loss, death and fear. So why does this matter?

It was Colin Thiele who said as a children's writer he was "interested in growth". Gleitzman manifests a similar trait in Felix Salinger. His experiences, while historically specific, transition to the world of today's readers as enviable and desirable and above all achievable virtues.

Simply, Felix never gives up.

Much of Australian children's and young-adult literature is polarised between family dysfunctionalism and fantasy. Dysfunctionalism is presented under the guise of relevance and fantasy as escapism.

Is dysfunctionalism where children want to be? Fantasy fiction offers a chance to escape to otherworldliness. The middle ground where historical fiction, the territory of Anthony Hill and others, skilfully explores the past as a means to inform the present. Gleitzman does something else.

Besides strong narrative drive, pitch-perfect dialogue and astute plotting, it is the gentle revelation of virtues found in Felix and other characters that is a consistent feature. Children can feel safe and rewarded in the reading of his work. Furthermore, Gleitzman never talks down to his audience of upper primary level. He respects the emotional landscape of his readers.

Similar clarity of audience awareness is evident in John Marden's Tomorrow series where in the 1990s, one in every 12 Australian households had a least one copy of his books. Marden's creation of Ellie Linton, arguably one of the finest characters in recent Australian children's literature, sits comfortably beside J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and Felix Salinger.

Like Rowling and Marsden, Gleitzman understands the place and importance of adventure. Over the seven Felix books, each one takes readers on a physical journey. The narrative is linear, chronological and follows the trajectory of excitement and palpable tension. Few authors can write as convincingly, empathetically and with sensitivity as Gleitzman. As an author, to kill a young child, Zelda, as a character is both courageous and a huge risk. It is moment of the loss of reader innocence. Yet it is done so with great tenderness and as Felix says in the sixth book:

"I can't help feeling sad all of a sudden, thinking about other precious people I've held in my arms. I held them as close as I could, really close, but I still lost them."

What is patently obvious is that the world of children's literature needs to be understood and discussed seriously at literary festivals. Not as some tandem program and a side bar to the main focus of adult literature.

Clearly there are ideas and a richness in Gleitzman's work that deserve to be seriously evaluated and discussed as to what experiences children's literature is offering. Adults, besides children's librarians and teachers would do well to read the genre. Virtue is not kids' stuff.

The cultural debate leaves children's fiction somewhere else and yet it is precisely children who graduate to young adult readers and beyond. What experiences they take, own and express along their individual journeys into books makes for readers of the future.

It is simply cheap and disingenuous to say glibly that children are beholden to technology as is so often the argument over why some children do not read. It is actually something more basic. Some books do not offer children anything that they can't already access quicker and with instant excitement. Knowing is just a click away. Cannot the same be said of adults?

Some of us can remember the anticipation and excitement each Harry Potter release brought. Perhaps we may never again see children still in their pyjamas in bus shelters reading on the release day, or disappearing for a weekend to read and not be disturbed.

What children discovered was something beyond their experience and they wanted to know. Rowling did more for children's reading than any reading program.

Equally, Gleitzman with his books dealing with the subtle unfolding of virtues and worthy human attributes ultimately enables children to understand that fears can be overcome and there is hope.

A message which is as prescient today as it was in Europe on the cusp of the Holocaust where Felix's story began.