Happy Belated Blogiversary to Me!

Oh, Holy Undies, how could I have missed my own 5th Anniversary? 

So a quick scan of the records showed that five years and nine days ago I embarked on this journey to read, write, and review books for children and young adults. What began as an exploration to better educate myself eventually led to an MFA at Vermont College and what is clearly becoming my great second act in life. I would hardly have guessed as much, but it appears that this blog and all that has come from it was the spark that ignited the tinder of my quasi midlife crisis. 


Since I didn't know it was on the horizon I haven't exactly planned anything for this celebration. Sorry, if I'd known I'd have sent our invitations and baked us all a grand and glorious gooey cake. Instead I think I'll republish my first-ever online book review of a book intended for children, something from my own childhood that made me keenly aware of a book as something other than a mere entertainment. And while you're all enjoying that I'll go look in the mirror for telltale lines of age. 


What do you think, should the blog get a face lift? Can anyone recommend any good digital plastic surgeons?

_____

Originally published October 3, 2006

The Magic Finger

by Roald Dahl 
illustrated by William Pene du Bois
41 pages Harper & Row 1966
 
This is a story of a girl with anger management issues, a story with a high sense of justice and a low tolerance for senseless violence, and the delightfully quirky world that Roald Dahl excelled at creating. The Magic Finger is a pushing, prodding, poke-in-the-eye, accusatory allegory to war via a pointed attack on the tradition of English sport hunting. In the right light, it could also be a call to vegetarianism, though I don't know that was Dahl's intent back in the mid-60's.
 
Our unnamed antagonist -- who'll I call Zak for reasons to be explained -- is the type of child who is a tempest beneath a barely calm surface. When humiliated by her teacher for spelling cat with a 'k' (and Twain had something to say about this) her boiling point is reached as fast as it takes to point her finger and turn the font of derision into a house pet. In the fantasy world of children's literature this casual power and transformation is presented as a natural occurrence, one in every classroom. Zak's abilities and her unwillingness to be trifled with are the point at which we jump to the real story.
 
Zak's neighbors, the Greggs, are a typical English hunting family proud to return from the fields with their kill, one duck a piece. The injustice of this needless killing sends Zak to seeing colors, and in her rainbow fury she turns her neighbors into duck-sized, bird-winged humanoids for the night. And because this universe needs balance (and the Gregg's need a lesson) their house is taken over with people-sized, human-armed ducks. As the humans are chased out and fired at with their own guns they quickly take to the trees and learn the obvious but valuable lesson of seeing the world from the eyes of the hunted. Come morning the world is set to rights and the Greggs set about atoning for their hunting sins while Zak goes of in search of another family that needs a lesson.
 
The joy I had discovering this shortly after it was first published left a lingering mark. In some ways I prefer this to Dahl's better-acknowledged classics James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in that it distills the lesson and entertains without unnecessary baggage.
 
Sadly, modern editions of this book no longer contain the original illustrations by du Bois, favoring instead more cartoon-y illustrations by Quintin Blake who has illustrated (or re-illustrated in this case) all of Dahl's books currently in print. This apparently was Dahl's illustrator of choice beginning with The B.F.G and presumably the earlier books were re-illustrated with his approval. One of my favorite parts of the original is the doubled page that allows you to watch the school teacher turn into a cat. There is also a multi-page spread where Zak's fury changes color but are presented in black and white ink wash that may be the result of economics (color being more expensive to print) but force readers to translate colors to emotions in a way that is more internal (and less obvious) than a similar expression in Leo Lionni's Frederick.
 
As for Zak, unless you read the original edition you won't see a little girl wearing a sailor's hat with that name on it, pointing at the reader in an homage to James Montgomery Flagg's Uncle Sam posters of the early 20th century. This closing image appropriates the iconic military recruiting image and transforms it into an accusation addressed to the reader. Is Zak attempting to teach you a lesson for your unknown sins, or is she merely warning you to beware your actions. Written and illustrated early in the Vietnam conflict the message isn't overt in Dahl's text but du Bois illustration appears to draw a connection between the senselessness of sport hunting and mindlessness of war.

Perhaps it is time to re-release the original edition.

Horrid Henry

by Francesca Simon
illustrated by Tony Ross
published in Great Britain
by Orion Children's Books 1994
Sourcebooks Jabberwocky 2009

Henry is a horrid little boy, and everyone says so. He's devious, mischievous, he's stubborn and prone to getting into trouble. Naturally he has a perfect brother named Peter. Peter is good, and kind, and everything Henry is not. In fact, even Henry's parents are fond of asking Henry why he can't be like Perfect Peter.

So much of what motivates Henry is ruining Perfect Peter's life any way he can.

There is the palpable undertone of Roald Dahl books here, from the at-wits-end parents who are simply worn down by Henry's antics to the illustrations that bear more than a passing resemblance to work Quintin Blake has done as Dahl's official illustrator. There are four breezy stories to each of the six Horrid Henry books either released or pending and if one doesn't look to deep they are exactly the sort of book emerging boy readers would delight in reading.

But after I put them aside for a bit and picked them back up I began to feel less easy about them. It isn't the books so much as the marketing approach the publishers have taken. Right on the cover they announce that each book contains "4 laugh-out-loud stories!" in each, the way a detergent would advertise "20% more for free!" as enticement to pick them up. No one actually measures to make sure they got that extra 20% any more than any parent or reader is going to hold the publisher to that "laugh-out-loud" claim... so then why is it there?

Then on the inside we are treated to a splash page announcing Horrid Henry as worldwide sensation, followed by three pages of testimonials from children and adults alike verifying that, indeed, Horrid Henry is not only funny but it will cure carbuncles and teach your parrot French in ten days. Well, no, it doesn't say that, but it may just as well for how hard it is trying to convince the reader that these books are, indeed, the funniest thing every to reach these far shores.

It's then that I realized that the reason they were working so hard to underscore the humor is the simple fact screaming from the title of the book: Henry truly is horrid. He's unrepentant, often unpunished, and by most accounts horrid for horrid's sake.

I've battled this demon before, the one that screams in the back of my head "What's the big deal about books where kids can revel in a character behaving badly?" It first showed up with Captain Underpants where I found the underwear jokes and absurd villains pure boy amusement. They were clever, enjoyable, and they hit young boy readers right where they stood. The problem was that these same boys couldn't and wouldn't venture beyond these titles. They had been pandered to in a way that permitted them to demand more of the same or nothing else. They became the book equivalent of watching boys set a garage on fire with a "boys will be boys" sigh attached.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy these books (or Captain Underpants for that matter) or that I wouldn't recommend them for parents and teachers looking to engage boys in reading at a very crucial moment in their development. But I am alarmed to see publishers and adults giving up on these boys so completely that the only way to appeal to them is to engage their darker instincts and play it up as humor.

No boy is going to want to identify with Horrid Henry any more than they would Perfect Peter – and perhaps the less said about Peter's latent fey tendencies that better – but I do wonder if, in a generation or so, the only way to reach this same age group will be through some other extreme form of humor. I'm not blaming Simon for this, but I do feel the genie is out of the bottle and that nothing less will do when it comes to engaging a certain subset of reader.

Or I could be overreacting and these are perfectly benign, amusing books for the beginning reader. Maybe the prickles I feel at the back of my neck aren't connected at all.

The Great Piratical Rumbustification

& The Librarian and the Robbers
by Margaret Mahy
with pictures by Quentin Blake
Godine 1986
originally published in the UK 1978

Two books worth of story crammed into 63 magical pages, full of robbers tricked by librarians and retired pirates who know how to party and revive the joys of boyhood (while paying the bills). No impossibly articulate child protagonists with clearly defined goals or desires, no rhyme or reason, just a pair of stories cut from the same cloth as books by Willaim Stieg and Roald Dahl.

In the first story, it is spring and the retired, land-locked pirates are restless. They long for a Pirate Party but the sign in the sky informing them of a pending party is not there. The problem is that a pirate party must be stolen.

Next we see the Terrapin family, having moved up from their cramped flat to a spacious house. The three Terrapin boys have been promised that with a bigger house came opportunities for adventurous behavior, but father's overwhelming dread at purchasing a house beyond their means has soured things.

It is only natural that these two parties be united, and when the adult Terrapins call the Mother Goose Baby-sitting service it should be no surprise that they are assigned an ex-pirate as a sitter. Fears of qualifications quelled, the boys find their sitter deserving, and with this the boys are off. Sitter Orpheus Clinker sends up the announcement that he has found a suitable location, and a Pirate Party proceeds to take place at the Terrapin's.

Father Terrapin is at a big, important dinner but he senses something wrong, something taking place elsewhere that is more fun. There appears to be some great rumpus taking place in the part of town near his house, and how he wishes he was there. Leaving the important dinner as soon as he can possibly escape he returns home to find a Pirate Party well under way. Once over his initial indignation, Father Terrapin falls in and enjoys the Pirate Party, after which he is richly rewarded by the pirates and never has to worry about his financial situation ever again.

& & & & &

Our second story in this double-feature finds a band of woods-living robbers who have come upon the idea of stealing the town librarian for ransom. Her warning that she has recently spent time with children infected with measles goes unheeded and soon all the robbers but one, the Chief Robber, are sick. Allowed to return to the library for a reference book to heal the sick robbers the librarian returns with books to read. Having never been read to, or taught how to read, she begins with Peter Rabbit and proceeds to give them a classic education in children's literature.

Eventually everyone forget about the ransom and the librarian returns to work. One day the Chief Robber dashes into the library to escape being apprehended by police. With quick thinking the librarian shelves the Chief Robber and refuses to turn him over to the police without a library card. Of course, once the officer has left the librarian slyly checks the robber out for herself and prevents the officer from coming back and apprehending him for the indefinite future. Saved, the Chief Robber continues with his initial task: checking books out for the other robbers because now they have insatiable reading habit.

One day an earthquake brings down all the books in the library, burying the librarian. Chief Robber and his fellow robbers join the police and other citizens in saving the librarian. Chief Robber admits to liking the librarian and they marry on the condition that they all give up robbing. The Chief Robber even becomes the head children's librarian in perhaps the most rambunctious branch any library has ever seen.

* * * * *

I can understand some of why this book was withdrawn from my town library and put on the 25 cent shelf in the sales alcove. It is hard to imagine any book today would be published where a babysitter requires rum as part of his services, and that he carries a bottle large enough in his coat pocket to cause him to list to one side when he walks. And I'm not sure what to make of an adult male, upon meeting three young boys, exclaiming how he likes the cut of their jibs. Indeed, this very slang expression is the sort of thing that caused me to snort out loud.

But we are talking about pirates here, and removing rum and salty pirate talk (within reason) is like drawing cows without udders or exchanging water for soda in stories because we don't want to scar or unduly influence young minds. This political correctness has its place at times, but not here.

And these are stories about adults primarily, adults behaving like children at times but adults nonetheless. It's as if we don't expect children to identify with anyone except protagonists their own age, but so often these child protagonists are forced to carry the weight of stories and messages beyond their years. The idea of fun seems no longer the province of adults or kids in children's books anymore. Do we think that kids won't understand or identify with a parent character longing for the carefree days before bills and important dinner? Do we feel that they'll reject a book because it includes a romance between an unlikely duo, one half of which is a librarian?

Also, I admire the amount of ground covered despite the brevity of the text. The Great Piratical Rumbustification is told in thirteen chapters, many of them fewer than three full pages. I know this is a hallmark of books aimed at readers who are still gaining fluency, but I'll take a dozen well-crafted books like this any day to a sprawling attempt to build the chapter book into something more substantial from fewer parts.

Readers who appreciate the absurd humor of The Twits or Flat Stanley or the books of Daniel Pinkwater will be rewarded.