Books are an important element in most
children's lives and development, and there is an ongoing controversy as to how
complex they can and should be and what role they play or should play in the development
of their readers or listeners.
Should children's books be just simple,
interesting readings, with attractive photos and funny characters or can they
explore complex feelings and educate? There are many opinions on the subject, some
easier to adhere to than others, but all worth considering.
Main Theories on Children's Books
An impressive point of view, although
not very popular and credited is that illustrated in the speech Phillip
Pullman, the author of the famous "The Golden Compass", gave when
accepting the Carnegie Medal, in 1996.
According to him, children's books can
cover themes, subjects that are too large to be dealt with in adult books. While
adult fiction focuses more on writing style, technique and literary knowingness,
children's fiction is more straightforward, little to no attention being paid
to literary craftsmanship.
Quoting Isaac Bashevis Singer, Pullman
agrees that "events never grow stale" and claims that stories hide
more wisdom than philosophy books ever could, brings tribute to some writers of
the 19th century and criticizes contemporary writers who seem afraid
of telling a story.
Unlike them, children's authors are not
embarrassed to tell stories, and they do it directly, engaging their readers
and leaving them no choice but to identify themselves with the characters, live
the adventure and experience their heroes' emotions, with no room for fancy
descriptions, controversial metaphors or putting the plot on hold.
Unlike adults, who are often in search
of sophisticated techniques, children read and live for stories. While, at
least at a young age, they do not understand much, they sure compensate that
with passion.
And
there is more: they learn from the stories they hear or they read, they learn
even when the author did not intend to teach them a certain lesson. Every story
sends a message, and, knowingly or not, fully or partially, children grasp that
message and learn their lesson.
What is more, that lesson is never forgotten,
as it is associated with the story. While rules are often forgotten, the same
thing cannot be said about stories, and this is best reflected in the ending
phrase of Pullman's speech: "Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once
upon a time lasts forever." (Pullman, 1996)
Thomas
(1998), on the other hand, focuses not on the creative side of children's
literature, but on the creative side of the reading process. According to him,
reading is a creative, interactive process – the reader plays a part just as
important as that of the author (p. 138). Starting from the Reader Response Theory, he
categorized texts in "open" and "closed". While
"closed" texts are straightforward, leave no room for interpretations
and guide all readers to the same conclusions, "open" texts depend on
the reader's ability to interpret them.
A
similar, yet different perspective is illustrated by Margaret Meek (1988), who
starts from Frank Smith's idea that ‘children learn to read by reading’ and shows
that their involvement in what they read is what actually teaches children to
read.
According to her, children have behaviors characteristic to readers even
before they discover books, like their ability to recognize genres and
patterns, to understand that reading involves following certain rules. Some of
the rules, or secrets, involve that ‘words mean more than they say’
(p.16) and pictures and words often tell a different story in the same book, in
order to create interaction opportunities and engage the reader.
Just
like Margaret Meek and Thomas, Hoffman (2010) focuses on the "active"
role of the readers and argues that the traditional perception of children as
passive audience is limited and privileges the author, implying that the text
can only have one meaning, the one intended by its creator (p. 239).
His
research showed that children have the ability to interpret the texts they read
in their own way, according to their previous experience and readings. Children
are not sponges waiting to absorb the lesson the author wanted to teach, but
personalities able to make their own connections and judgement of characters
and draw their own conclusions (p. 243).
These perspectives are more than enough
to show that even when their author writes them as such, books are anything but
simple, limiting, bland and sentimental. Their complexity lies in the readers'
ability to see beyond their apparent simplicity, to associate the events
described to their own knowledge and experience, and there is reason to believe
that this is easy to accomplish, no matter if we are talking about text books
or picture books.
Fear as an Element of Complexity in Children’s Books
One of the most complex and
controversial themes approached in children's books is fear. While feelings of
love seem natural, and all children play some sorts of games, not many
children's authors dare to write or inspire fear. Those that do, are usually
successful, because this theme is one of the most complex and can be explored
from many perspectives.
There is fear of the unknown, fear of
animals or bad people, fear of doing something wrong or fear of being punished,
to name just a few, and all children experience them sooner or later, at a
certain level of intensity.
Sometimes, the fear is experienced by
the reader or listener through catharsis, other times it is induced by the
descriptions made by the author. Some stories encourage children to fear
certain things, while others teach them to face their fears and overcome them.
How
intense the feeling of fear is and how easy it can be overcome usually depends
on the story and on the author's skills, but few children's books manage to explore
the feelings of fear and stir controversies as well as "The Witches” and the “Little Mouse’s Big
Book Of Fears”, the works of Roahl Dahl and, respectively, Emily Gravett.
“The Witches” – A Masterpiece or an Outcast in Children's Literature
Published
in 1983, the book stirred controversial reactions from the very beginning.
While some praised its complexity and depth, others went as far as declaring it
unsuitable for children and accusing the author of misogyny and sexism, among
others. Suitable to be read by children or not, "The Witches"
occupied the 22nd position on the American Library Association list
of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books from 1990 to 1999 (Crew, 2013).
The story focuses on a young boy and his
grandmother from Norway, who live in a world where witches that hate children
still exist in secret. The book starts with the young boy moving with his
grandmother, immediately after his parents die in a car crash. The woman is a
great storyteller, so the boy ends up absolutely fascinated with her story of
the witches that are only after killing children.
According to the description,
these witches are terrible creatures, “demons in the shape of humans”, who hide
their bald heads under wigs, their long
finger nails under gloves, and who can hardly wear pretty shoes, because they
have no toes (Schmoop, 2008).
The story gets more interesting when the
boy has to return to England, because of his parents will. His grandmother
warns him that English witches are some of the worst in the world, and that
they like to magically turn human children into small creatures, such as mice,
in order to make the adults kill them. The biggest witch of them all is known
as the “Grand High Witch”, and her evilness is feared by all the witches in the
world.
The boy meets one of these witches soon
after moving back to England, while he is working on his tree house. She tries
to convince him to come down, but he realizes who he is talking to and stays in
the tree until his grandmother comes out looking for him. After this, the boy
decides to observe each woman and see who is a witch and who is not.
Close to the end of the book, the boy’s
grandmother gets ill, and the doctor recommends that she cancels her trip to
Norway. Instead, she takes the boy to Bournemouth. But, as it happens, the
“Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children” have their annual
meeting in the same place where the boy and his grandmother are staying.
This meeting is actually the annual
council of witches, lead by the “Grand High Witch” herself. She reveals to the
other witches a plan about how to turn children into mice, without anyone
suspecting anything, and she even gives a demonstration, by luring a child with
the promise of chocolate and turning him into a mouse.
Shortly after, she senses that someone
else is watching and they catch the boy, turning him into a mouse also. He
manages to go back to his grandmother and tell her everything that has
happened. Together, they plan to give the witches a taste of their own medicine
and decide that the best way to do that is to pour the formula that the witches
are using to turn children into mice into their own food. They do that and the
witches are transformed, instantly, into mice, and they get killed by the
unknowingly hotel staff.
But the story does not end here. Killing
the Grand High Witch only makes the boy, who is now a mouse, and his grandmother,
want to free the world from these creatures. So they find out where the Grand
High Witch's Castle is, in Norway, and they turn her replacement and the other
witches into mice as well, letting cats kill them. In the end, the boy’s
grandmother tells him that, since he is now a mouse, he will not live more than
nine years, but the boy is not upset, because he does not want to live more
than his grandmother, anyways.
Children are fascinated with terrifying
and mythical things, so Roald Dahl gives them just that. The complex and, in
many ways, scary story about witches that hate children and want to kill them
is not necessarily appalling, especially since he also gave the children a
hero, a seven year old orphan who finds out how the witches plan to kill the children
and uses their own plan against them. The way he tells this story is worth a
closer look, however.
Writing it in the first person, with the
seven year old as narrator, Dahl invites his readers to live everything at full
intensity, from the perspective of losing parents and starting a whole new life
to the scary image of “baldheaded women, with long claws and toeless feet,
which hide their deformities under wigs, gloves and pointy shoes” (Dahl, 1983)
and to the terrifying (although unexploited) experience of witnessing murder.
The fears represented in this story are
known by all children and exploited in many other books, such as the fear of
death, the fear of the unknown or the fear of strangers (especially women), the
last one being metaphorically presented in the episode where Bruno Jenkins is
lured and then transformed into a mouse by the Grand High Witch.
The problem is that the author manages
to take these fears to extreme, as we are not talking about just any death, but
that of the hero's parents and of a child of closer age, we are not talking
about just any stranger, but about the possibility for every woman the child
encounters to be an evil witch in disguise.
It is no doubt that after reading
this book, most children will study the women around them looking for gloves or
wigs that could signal a witch in disguise or wonder if a mouse is not, in
fact, a child transformed by the witches.
If the sexist or misogynist character of
the book (Driscoll, 2011) can be argued, considering that the grandmother is a
woman and one of the good characters in the book, the dimension fear reaches
could easily be considered exaggerated for a reader who probably has not yet
come to terms with the concepts of life and death and cannot easily distinguish
myth and fiction from reality.
Luckily, the author compensates with
other aspects of the book, such as the complexity of the hero, who turns from a
nameless child into a role model. At just seven years of age, he takes on and
defeats all the witches in England, and even in Norway. He is the typical hero,
committed to fight evil and save the weak (Schmoop, 2008).
This portrayal is all the more
surprising considering that it all starts with an unfortunate, sad and scared
child, who, after having lost both his parents, he places all the love and
respect he has left in his grandma, an old and chubby Norwegian woman walking
with the help of a stick, smoking cigars and telling witch stories.
She in no
way resembles the typical grandma, all kind and gentle, baking cookies and
knitting on the porch, but she is rather a portrayal of the author himself (the
character was actually built starting from the author's own mother),
mysterious, but great at telling stories and having has her share of extreme
experiences and sufferance. The hero offers her all the love and devotion he is
capable of, reaching the point when he is glad to die younger just to avoid
outliving her.
Then, the main character is very
curious, and this is under no circumstances bad, but quite the contrary. Had he
not asked questions and tried to find out more, he would have never recognized
the witches, revealed their plans or take them down. If anything matches this
curiosity, then it is his courage. He is not afraid of dangers, of death, of
pretty much anything, or, to be more precise, he manages to get over his fears
and act with courage (Schmoop, 2008).
Add to these the wonder of his age, the
enthusiasm with which he tells the story, and it is easy to understand why
children and adults alike are conquered by this book and cannot let it out of
their hands. Who cares that witches don't actually exist and cannot turn
children into mice and kill them? That does not mean you cannot fantasize about
fighting them and saving the world, and that is so very easy and fulfilling
when you are in the shoes of a brave and smart seven-year-old.
Through the power of example, children
are taught to listen to their loved ones carefully, just like the hero listened
to his grandmother's stories and they helped him recognize witches when he saw
them, and to never talk to strangers or trust them simply because they offer
treats or toys. Had Bruno Jenkins not talked to the witch and let himself
fooled by the chocolate she offered, he would have never been turned into a
mouse and killed.
The fear of death is well exploited in
this book from the very beginning, turning into a parable. While premature,
violent death is not acceptable, and should be avoided at all cost, inevitably,
all creatures die sooner or later and, instead of reaching desperation because
of that, they should embrace their fate and make the most of the time they have
left.
The whole story is a lesson for children
and adults alike, one about love towards one's family (or what is left of it)
and towards the other people. Although the boy himself is afraid of witches,
using the information he received from his grandmother, he manages to overcome
his fears and, after having won his own battles and having been turned into a
mouse, he decides to fight other children's battles as well.
The value of this story depends on the
way it is told. If the reader or listener were a disabled child, his fear of
witches would be a fear of the uncertain future, of other people mocking his
condition. In order to overcome his fear, the hero would have to leave the
house, go to school and get involved in activities no other disabled children
would dare to try, setting an example.
Instead of feeling sorry for himself, he
would have to enjoy life as it is, learn to live with his disability and enjoy
all the things that he can still do, just like Dahl's hero learned to live as a
mouse and never cried at the news that he would only live for a few more years.
Is this enough to make a story suitable
for children or does the way in which it is told matter more than the
underlying message?
A starting point in establishing whether
"The Witches" is a story suitable for children would be Watson's
theory (1992) on the responsibility of writers and readers. While most critics
and theorists support their verdict regarding a book with arguments built
around the text, others, especially Watson, emphasize that this approach is misleading.
The analysis should not focus on the text, but rather on the impact it has on
the reader, on the way the text challenges the reader and on the reader's
ability to understand the text and live up to its complexity.
In Watson's perception, writers can be
irresponsible and write about violence, death, fear and any other controversial
theme. It is the reader's responsibility to identify the real intentions of the
author and distinguish between good and bad, between right and wrong. Those who
succeed to do so at a young age are those who will enjoy the reading the most
and see beyond the surface characteristics of the text (p. 6).
Children should therefore not be
perceived as blank slates that, in Dahl's case, will start hunting witches and
protecting mice, but rather as deep thinkers who will treasure their safety and
freedom and think twice before falling into traps.
“Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears”, A Scrapbook of Fear and Hope – Frightening or Educative
This picture book was written and
illustrated by Emily Gravett. The first element of surprise or, better yet,
interest, is the cover, where a great hole is depicted and the author’s name is
crossed off and replaced with Little Mouse, suggesting that the story is told
from the point of view of the small creature.
Both covers are filled with characters
that look like hieroglyphs and intrigue the reader, stir curiosity. As the book
slowly reveals, these hieroglyphs represent the different fears the book is
about.
The first fear represented in the book
can be found on the very first page, right where the nibble hole from the cover
was. Shaped like a spider, it represents fear of all things that crawl, a fear
that most children have, intuitively. The terms used by the author to describe
this fear are “Arachnophobia (fear of spiders)” and “Entomophobia (fear of
insects)”.
With every page turned, the reader sees
Little Mouse facing each of his fears, and, through the power of the pictures,
lives that fear. Along the way, he faces “Teratophobia”, fear of monsters, and
“Clinophobia”, fear of going to bed. The two are connected by a large bed,
under which there are a lot of eyes peeking around.
On page 3, Little Mouse is faced with
his fear of knives, called “Aichmophobia”. After that, he is confronted with
his “Ablutophobia”, fear of taking a bath, “Hydrophobia”, fear of water,
“Dystyciphobia”, fear of accidents and “Rupophobia”, fear of dirt. The story
also covers “Ligyrophobia”, fear of loud noises, and “Chronomrnmtrophobia”,
fear of clocks.
One of the worst fears presented is
“Isolophobia”, fear of isolation, of solitude, which is continued by
“WhereamIophobia”, the fear of getting lost, present in the heart and mind of
every child. Even though it is a not a real phobia, Emily Gravett did a great
job depicting it.
The most incredible illustration from
this book is, of course, the map of “Isle of Fright”. On it, the reader can find
an owl, a cat on a fence, and giant spider webs, all making references to
previous fears presented in the book.
The
fears the Little Mouse illustrates do not end here. There are many more, such
as “Ornitophobia”, fear of birds, or “Phagophobia”, fear of being eaten. When
this one is presented, Little Mouse is chased by … feathers, which are very
much alive and have real teeth and eyes.
The end of the book gives the reader a
glimpse of hope: “I’m afraid of nearly everything I see. But even though I am
very small, she is afraid of me!”. After being confronted with all those fears
and after realizing that he is afraid of pretty much everything out there,
Little Mouse discovers those who suffer from “Musophobia”, or fear of mice.
Therefore, a large smile appears on his small face, and, after surviving the
adventure, he now feels very tall.
The end of the story depicts a satisfied
Little Mouse, who is hugging his companion, the pencil that stood by his side
from the beginning of the book, and is covered in tiny bits of paper that
represent the fears he managed to overcome. Children will easily identify with
the hero, especially since most of them share the fears of the Little Mouse.
The “Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears” is not an illustrated book, but a picture
book, because the story would never be complete or lived at the right intensity
without the pictures, the story is actually in the pictures. It is the best
illustration of Graham's definition of the picture book as a complete design
based on both text and illustrations, as a historical, cultural and social
document, a complex experience for the young reader.
As a form of art, it relies on a
relation of interdependence between words and pictures, on the display of the
two facing pages, as well as on the suspense that each turn of the page
creates. (Bader, 1976, p 1).
The book is very complex, based mostly
on crayon drawings and embedding various techniques, such as chrosshatching, to
obtain various tones of grey and make images look old fashion, doublespread
pages, meant to accentuate the feeling of fear, the frames imitating old paper,
meant to suggest that the book was put together in time, but the fears
illustrated in it are timeless.
The endpapers and the layout work
together to create the impression of a scrapbook, further strengthened by the
relief map and the apparently randomly placed pictures and animated with the
use of lines, hesitant when the little mouse is scared and bold in the end,
when he discovers that he still holds a great deal of power.
The scrapbook is put together by the
mouse, the narrator and the main character of the running story. His importance
is suggested by the colored crayon in his "hands", as opposed to the
black, white and grey drawings, scaled according to the intensity of the
feeling of fear – the more intense the feeling, the bigger and scarier the
images that depict it are.
The text is handwritten, shaky and
unsure, betraying the emotion that the mouse would feel while facing his fears,
because that is what representing those fears in the "big book" means
– facing them. However, it is very clear, easy to understand, suggesting that
the fears are universal, common to many creatures and, probably, anyone who
would browse the book.
The point of view, that of the mouse, is
the key ingredient in the whole story – the readers see everything through the
eyes of the mouse, their perspective is reduced to the tip of the mouse's
crayon, they shake with fear in the first part of the book and jump with
enthusiasm and hope in the end, as the narrator dictates.
While picture books are considered by
many theorists among the simplest children's books available, this is certainly
not the case of the “Little Mouse’s Big Book Of Fears”, and the above elements
are just some of the proofs in this sense. With it, Emily Gravett succeeds to
tell a complicated story in a simple language, to reach out to both children
and adults and help them exteriorize and face their deepest fears.
For the children that consider the
images used to depict the fears rather funny, the book will be the push they
needed to understand that their fear is mostly in their head and they basically
have nothing to worry about.
For those who live the whole story
through the eyes of the Little Mouse, every page is an adventure that, luckily,
has a happy ending – they learn that every creature has its own fears and
weaknesses, the secret to a happy life being to leave one's fears and
weaknesses aside and focus on one's strengths. The best part is that everyone
has his or her own strength, just like the tiny, fragile Little Mouse does.
Following the example set by Rousseau,
in 1762, Emily Gravett uses familiar things to help children overcome certain
fears, but she also introduces the idea of new, experimental fears that help
the readers overcome fear in general.
The main difference between the two is
that Rousseau considered it necessary to use notions that children could
associate with different objects or events, denying the latter the ability to
understand things (2004). Emily Gravett, on the other hand, believes in the
children's power to understand fear and arranges such an encounter for them,
engaging her small readers and determining them to cope with their fears.
"The Witches" and the "Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears" – Common Elements
While the approach and the techniques
used by the two authors are completely different, the two books do have several
important elements in common:
- Both of
them have fear as a central theme, exploit it and present it under various
forms.
- Both are
written in the first person: while Emily Gravett's narrator is a mouse
from beginning to end, Dahl's narrator turns into a mouse throughout the
story;
- Both
books have a positive ending, encouraging readers to face and overcome
their fears and showing them that there is always a positive side: a mouse
can kill bad witches, respectively scare grown up people.
- Both
books are written for active readers, expecting them to engage, interpret
and live the story every step of the way.
- Both
books make great educational tools. In the right hands, they could teach
people discipline, facing fears, fighting for what they want, never losing
hope and always seeing the bright side of things.
Conclusion
Leaving theory aside and returning to
Philip Pullman's perspective, a book is as great as the story it tells. These
two books tell two great stories of fear and courage, they represent a deep and
rewarding experience, worth trying by anyone, young or old, happy or sad. They
educate and they challenge the reader's imagination, they are complex and bold,
and they should be granted their place in children literature and not only.
Last but not least, no book should be simple,
limiting, bland and sentimental. If it were, no one would read it.
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