Had a fun conversation with someone the other day that got me to thinking. We were discussing the fact that we both get sent a lot of children’s books to read. Some are solicited by their authors/editors/agents and others just arrive in boxes that come from publishers. A person can have a whole individualized set of criteria regarding the order of the books they read. For example, I like to alternate books that have already been published with books that are going to be published.
There are some books, however, that I find myself avoiding. Sometimes I don’t even notice that I am avoiding those books, unless someone points it out to me. That’s what happened the other day when the conversation between my friend and myself turned to the most dangerous form of children’s literature I can name: animal stories.
When I say “animal stories” I usually mean books in the vein of Charlotte’s Web. Stories where animals act like animals but can talk. And though I wasn’t aware of it before, I find that unless I have a reason to do so, I tend to avoid animal stories. When they’re done well they can be brilliant (The Underneath, the aforementioned Charlotte’s Web, etc.). When they’re done poorly they may be the most painful fiction for kids out there. I don’t know why it is, but there you go. That’s my bugaboo.
So let’s have it. Is there a particular type of children’s fiction that you find yourself avoiding when you consider large swaths of children’s books?
I’ve had an idea bouncing around the old noggin recently and I wanted to try ricocheting it off your heads for a while to see where it leads.
Recently I’ve been reading a fair number of fantasy quest novels that follow in the Wizard of Oz rather than Alice in Wonderland vein. You can tell the difference because in an Alice in Wonderland quest novel the protagonist is almost always on his or her own (Coraline’s a good example of this) with maybe a random helper companion that flits in and out of the action. Wizard of Oz quest novels consist of picking up companions, whether willingly or unwillingly, over the course of the story’s plot.
After reading two Oz-like books in a row, I started to notice a strange pattern. Is it just me, or do most Oz-like stories have the same number and type of companions in a row? Here’s what I mean. In a fantasy novel your hero acquires three different types of fellows:
1. The Cowardly Lion type – This is a large, potentially ferocious beast of some sort that turns out to be just the sweetest thing and allows the hero to ride him/her/it at some point. Ell the Wyvern in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making by Catherynne Valente would count. So too would Protein the woolly mammoth in Greg Van Eekhout’s The Boy at the End of the World. They’re usually big critters with hearts of gold. Sometimes they sacrifice themselves for the nice people they befriend. It’s a thing.
2. The Tin Woodsman type -The heartless companion who grows a heart. In Zita the Spacegirl that would be One, the battle orb who starts out prickly. In The Search for Wondla by Tony DiTerlizzi that would be Muthr, the robot parent companion to the heroine Eva Nine. And in The Boy at the End of the World it’s Click, the robot parent companion to the hero Fisher and . . . huh. All robots. Whodathunkit?
3. The Scarecrow type – The native with the brains. I’m stretching a bit here, but that’s generally the type of character you get in these books. So if we go back over some of the books I’ve just mentioned it would be Saturday in Valente’s book, Zapper in Van Eekhout’s, Rovender Kitt in DiTerlizzi’s, etc.
Obviously these aren’t hard and fast, but the consistency is intriguing to me. Why do authors again and again turn to these types? Sometimes it’s because the books are a purposeful homage to Baum’s classic (as with DiTerlizzi). Yet they’re not all that way. The number three for companions is interesting as well. Even the movie Labyrinth outfitted Jennifer Connelly with only three companions and her dog. Mute pet companions of the Toto variety don’t really weigh into all this, being fairly superfluous to their stories.
Of the books I’ve read recently, only Zita the Spacegirl broke this magic number three by giving its heroine no less than five stalwart companions, not even counting the friend she’s questing to save. Do graphic novels allow for greater numbers because the visual edge allows them to tell a story more quickly and succinctly than prose?
What do you think? Is this a consistent trend or am I just detecting repetition where there is nothing to detect? After all there are
Me too! Animal books are always a turn off for me. I wish I could overcome it, but I just can’t seem to enjoy them!
Dead dog books. If there is a dog in the story the first thing i do is turn to the last page and see if it’s still alive. I don’t want to learn a valuable lesson through a dead dog – OLD YELLER scarred me for life thank you very much.
I also have a deep and abiding aversion to dead dog books (I blame WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS). And I get asked by parents ALL THE TIME if I can recommend a good sports book for their son (I’ve never had anyone ask for their daughters) and I don’t have the heart to tell them that I have a VERY hard time reading sports-themed books. Apparently, getting picked last really does leave lasting wounds. Who knew?
Myself, I’d separate out picture books from my wariness with animals. As stand-ins for very young readers animals seem to work just fine in those books and I have no problem ever picking one up. And, while some of my favorite novels of all time are talking animal books (all three of E.B. White’s, THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, and THE JUNGLE BOOKS), something changed me I think when I (whisper here) attempted a REDWALL title back when my students adored them. I tried and tried, but simply could not get more than a few chapters in. So now when I take a look at a new book with animals I try to figure out if it is going to be in the REDWALL vein, CHARLOTTE-like, or little-Victorian-animals-in-clothes-messing-around-boats-ish.
Dog books, in general. Not that I won’t EVER read them, but I do certainly avoid them. And Holocaust books. It doesn’t help that there are a billion of them. I just get too emotional!
Anything overly didactic. (Which includes most celebrity-written titles, I’ve noticed.)
Historical fiction about wars. Ugh. Grim and dull.
Definitely animal books (excluding picture books). Love E.B. White’s and liked The Rescuers, but that’s about it.
I don’t know how to explain this, but books that are too conspiciously clever (books that try to imitate Lemony Snicket).
I can’t seem to make myself read anything with a superCUTE cover. Pink is a turnoff. Anything that looks like Fancy Nancy grew up and became a middle grade or ya. I know I shouldn’t go by covers, but it’s a knee-jerk.
Also, things that teeter on high fantasy. Worlds beyond. I like my kids to be from this world. They can go to other worlds, but I need them to be grounded in this one. This goes all the way back to childhood. I remember wanting to like McKinley, LeGuin, Alexander. But I’ve never been able to love them.