Reflections by Diana Wynne Jones Page B

will you? It’s all arranged.” And she sends me out to queue in the rain until someone opens the hall.
    It is not all arranged. The only children present are half of one grumpy class who stare and say, “Who’s she? Why are we here?” The other classes have not been told. While they are being fetched, the teacher says, “You’ll have to arrange the hall the way you want it. I’m not used to this.” I spend half an hour dragging chairs about.
    At last several hundred children rush into the hall, accompanied by shouting teachers. When the children are seated, the teachers turn in a body and start to leave the hall. I recollect that it is illegal for me to be left in sole charge. “Where are you all going?” I ask. They do not admit they are going to the staff room to put their feet up. They say, “You don’t need us.”
    â€œYes I do,” I say. “You might want to follow this talk up.” They look puzzled at this. Resentfully, they find chairs. One stands up and takes revenge. “This lady,” he announces in a sickly voice, “knows all about magic.” Half the children recoil. The rest look round for my conjuring kit.
    I stand up and explain, after which I do my best with the short time remaining. The children, once they understand why we are all here, become keenly enthusiastic. Those who do not get a question in are near tears. The teachers bear me a further grudge for this. At the end, they hasten me off the premises, saying, “We would offer you a coffee, but the water’s cut off just now.”
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    My Very Worst School Visit
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    I arrived with the county children’s librarian. We were met by a teacher in the playground who said, “Go away. The careers interview is canceled.” We explained and got as far as the entrance. The Deputy Head met us there, saying, “Go away. We don’t need any supply teachers today.” We explained again and eventually reached a classroom where six depressed children sat dotted about among empty desks. “The rest have gone to Latin,” the teacher explained. “You won’t mind. You wouldn’t want them to miss Latin, would you?” I clenched my teeth, smiled politely, and started trying to cheer up the six depressed children. I had barely spoken two sentences when the Deputy Head reappeared, saying, “Everybody out of here at once. We’re on strike.”
    I had, I may add, come three hundred miles to visit that school.

Writing for Children:
A Matter of Responsibility
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    This article reveals Diana’s developing awareness that since young and impressionable minds were reading her works, she owed them a sense of responsibility.
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    I have just read a book which—the writer declares in a postscript—would not have been written at all had he not, as a child, chanced to read that chapter of The Wind in the Willows called “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” Those who have not read it can probably gather, just from the title, the sense of wonder, and of magic half heard and half out of sight, in this chapter. The writer I am speaking of, who is an adult, writing for adults, found it influenced him for the rest of his life. And this sort of thing has happened to a lot of people, not just those who went on to become writers themselves. Most adults, in fact, if you question them, will admit that there was this marvelous book they read when they were eight, or ten, or maybe fifteen, that has lived in their minds ever since. It may be a book by Rosemary Sutcliffe, Joan Aiken, Enid Blyton, or even Arthur Ransome. The important thing about it is that it has entered this person’s consciousness at a time when ideas were still forming, waking their sense of wonder and forcing their ideas in a new direction—enlarging their imagination, in fact—and, by the mere fact of always being in their mind from then on, has influenced