[UA] Darkening Children's Tales

[holycrow at mindspring.com]

>>>If you go through the children's
>>>bestsellers for the last three years, everyone's parents are mad, >dead,
>>>divorcing or piously conservative.  
>>
>>Try naming a Disney movie where the main character has both parents. > >Most are orphans or missing a parent (typically the mother), often >for >unexplained reasons.  
>
>Ditto Harry Potter and Roald Dahl.

Hm... so I'm running this through my mental checklist and going "'Dark Materials'?  Often absent, and when they're not you frequently wish they were.  What about the Narnia books?  Well, the parents aren't really addressed because the kids are extraspatial and extratemporal when they're having their adventures."

Now, that made me think.

How's this for a children's novel: The kid -- let's name him 'Mel' -- has fine parents, interesting, pleasant, concerned, yadda yadda.  Mel gets pulled into some Narniesque scenario -- he's off having perilous adventures, but outside time and in a different place.  There's nothing where he's gone for weeks on end to alarm his folks, BUT... they notice.  They notice that SOMETHING is different about their son, and they try to get involved but Mel either (1) tells them and they don't (of course) believe or (2) Mel hides it because he knows they won't.  So you get this interplay.  Could be neat.

ObUA: Er... uh... mm... "...so then I ganked his punk ass"?

-G.

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