Sir, – I was grieved to learn of the death of your frequent contributor Robert Dunbar, whose quiet, deep and unfailingly positive contribution to the field of Irish children’s literature over several decades will be well-known to anyone involved in that field.
I knew him reasonably well during the years of my own direct involvement in the children’s literature scene. I developed a combination of respect and fondness for him that was shared by every Irish children’s writer of the time that I knew – surely a rare thing for a bunch of mere “creatives” to feel for an academic and critic whose job involved (at least in part) telling them where their work had failed! But then, he was pretty rare.
His dedication to his field was complete, his knowledge of it encyclopaedic; that his name will be at best vaguely familiar to many (if not most) of your readers is a measure of his modesty as much as the scant regard in which children’s literature itself is held.
Mr Dunbar was a scholar of the very best kind – the kind that wears his learning lightly, and for whom it is a source of delight rather than either a weapon or a burden.
And “delight” seems (for once) an appropriate word – whenever a new book of mine was published I knew that next time we spoke he would have a list of questions about obscure jokes and arcane references I’d smuggled into it, and that he’d chuckle with genuine glee when I confirmed some tiny off-beat reference he had spotted.
Parents who let themselves be guided by Mr Dunbar’s regular round-ups of kids’ books in your pages had reason to feel grateful to him too.
– Yours, etc,
GERARD WHELAN
Enniscorthy,
Co Wexford.