[UA] Darkening Children's Tales

[Tim Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: Timothy Ferguson <ferguson at beyond.net.au>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2001 4:38 AM
Subject: Re: [UA] Darkening Children's Tales



> Actually most modern children's stories go the other way.  Each of the
> national book councils has recently complained that for some reason
> publishing houses are churning out teen angst filled with manipulative,
> ineffective pschyoterapists.  Thank God for Harry Potter...  Can you be a
> character in a modern children's novel and have well-adjusted, present
> parents who you like?  No, you can't.  If you go through the children's
> bestsellers for the last three years, everyone's parents are mad, dead,
> divorcing or piously conservative.  The one exception I can think of,
oddly
> enough, is R.L. Stein..  Even the really fluffy stuff, like Sweet Valley
> High and Babysitters Club, have kids dealing with how their fathers have
> dumped their mums and gone off with younger women.

I'm shocked the national book councils bothered to open their mouths,
because there's nothing new here.  It's the formulaic 'problem' novel, which
often involves the author falling over herself in trying to get rid of the
partents, so that the young protagonist can be free to take credit for his
or her own accomplishments.  With most 'problem' novels, if the parents were
there, and were doing their job, there wouldn't _be_ a problem, ergo the
death of a tried and true genre.

When I first started working at a library, I had a teenager come up to me,
and asked me if I had any 'love stories.'  I booktalked some that I felt
were outstanding, but she wrinkled her nose the moment I brought up the
'problem' that impedes the young lovers.  "Don't you have any where there's
no troubles?"  I suppose she wanted a PG version of Penthouse Letters.  I
did manage to teach her about the need for conflict in a story, and how
conflict is the 'problem' that she hates so much, but she wanted something
very different, and I actually encouraged her to write up what she felt was
a good story.  WHo knows?  Maybe there's a market for that.

The book market in general is in a serious slump, with everyone chasing
after the tail of the one guy who catches a break and publishes a winner.
Kids, though, are an ephemeral demographic.  As much as we (and they) like
to think they can smell out a fake, the so-called 'phony' books sell very
well, because the formulatic structure is very reassuring.  How many seasons
was the Love Boat on, anyway?

>
> > This sterilization makes the story appropriate for
> > children in modern western culture.  As we grow up though, we realize
that
> > the good things in life can not exist except in contrast to the bad
> > things.  The happy beatific stories of old can no longer exist in the
> > lives of our minds because they lack a dimension that we ourselves have
> > grown in to.
>
> The traditional old stories aren't all that nice either...if you mean
Grimm
> and Perrault.

Kids love urban legends, and urban legends are our folklore.  You take out
the death and the violence, and it leaves an awful hole.  I'm reminded that
most of what is considered classic children's literature started as nothing
of the sort, and only became so because there was nothing else for the kids
to read.  Eventually, these 'great works' are neutered, and if not, censored
outright.  But Chuck Jones got it just right when he made cartoons that
would appeal at every level.


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