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20th Century

Books like The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler

The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler

1986Gene Kemp

4.8/5

An interesting children's book from the 1970s, which succeeds largely on the strength of it's fine grasp of child psychology and language, and its naturalistically rambling, inconclusive plot. I liked it as a child because it felt less like a "story", and more like a slice of life of a real person - albeit an interesting slice. And re-reading it as an adult, I feel much the same way.Oh, it's simplistic by the standards of adult novels. It's a little dated here and there, and the world it depicts - the 1970s, in which young children wander around among urban back alleys, weirs, rockfalls, deserted industrial facilities and so on without the slightest parental oversight, while occasionally being beaten by authority figures - may as well be Narnia by comparison with children's lives today (indeed, Narnia is probably easier to understand today than the 1970s are...).... and yet, for the right child, I think Tyke Tiler could still be an engaging read. And for an adult in the right frame of mind, there's still something to enjoy here - this isn't mindless or patronising, it's a genuinely insightful look at a person's psychology. That person just happens to be a child, and that child happens also to be the narrator, but that doesn't make their story any less interesting.It's also become timely again, because of its central gimmick - which, to its credit, never feels like a gimmick: the twist ending, in which it is revealed that (view spoiler)[Tyke has been a girl all along (hide spoiler)]
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