mrissa | Zodiac House: Monkey chapter

Hey, I'll bet those of you who were paying attention thought I wasn't writing this book any more. Well...I kind of wasn't. I didn't decide to not write it, I was just feeling like other things were more important to get to first. But this morning was a monkey kind of morning, so here we are. For those of you who weren't paying attention, I'm writing a children's book with the chapters themed around the Chinese zodiac, and I'm musing about writing children's books in general and this one in specific as I finish each chapter, sparked by the Chinese Cultural Center pages for the different signs.

The Chinese Cultural Center page says, People born in the Year of the Monkey are the erratic geniuses of the cycle. Clever, skillful, and flexible, they are remarkably inventive and original and can solve the most difficult problems with ease. There are few fields in which Monkey people wouldn't be successful but they have a disconcerting habit of being too agreeable. They want to do things now, and if they cannot get started immediately, they become discouraged and sometimes leave their projects. Although good at making decisions, they tend to look down on others. Having common sense, Monkey people have a deep desire for knowledge and have excellent memories.

This book is kind of a monkey-book that way: it's too agreeable. I know, I know, we're not supposed to say that about books, but the hard part has been finding chewy bits to be hard parts, rather than anything more typical of book-writing. And as a children's book, it'll be short -- so by the time I would have reached a real mid-book doldrum, I'll be done. Except -- except that I'm wrestling with keeping the whole thing from being mid-book doldrum, because it feels like it's a bit pat and a bit gimmicky, and I'm having to poke it pretty hard to get it to stop.

It's not that no successful children's book has ever been gimmicky -- far from it. The ones I'm thinking of right now are Encyclopedia Brown. Amazon seems to think they're still selling them, but I'm having a hard time thinking of anyone who would want to reread Encyclopedia Brown books as an adult (speak up if I'm wrong!). Each episode is short and, if I recall correctly, features a gimmicky solution in the end of the book. I don't think I'd be happy writing Encyclopedia Brown-type books more than once or twice, and that only as a challenge.

Then I think about the book I'm reading right now: Garth Nix's Lady Friday. I love this series. It's got a central gimmick -- each of the entities the main character is dealing with is associated with a day of the week -- but while it remains "clever, skillful, and flexible," the heart is still there.

Oddly, I think the heart went back into this book with the monkey chapter. So...yay, maybe?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

barondave.livejournal.com

There are several Encyclopedia Brown stories I remember fondly, from more than a Mrissa ago. I could reread them. Every now and then I go back and reread a favored book from childhood, with trepidation. Mostly, they hold up. Andre Norton, Dr. Doolittle, etc.

Anyway... the major problem for you (I would guess) is not so much the gimmick as using a twist that's both new and not specific to the present.

I'm a Goat (Sheep) (http://www.zhong.de/zodiac/goat.htm). I'll leave it to you to decide whether the description applies: "You are elegant and creative, timid and prefer anonymity."

From:

mrissa.livejournal.com

? Not specific to the present?

From:

barondave.livejournal.com

Some of the EB stories are dated; were dated even at the time. The trappings of their present make the stories, now, less readable. Even Dr. Doolittle suffers from WWI technology, but the niftiness of speaking to the animals makes up for a lot. (Now that I think of it, the Shire-ish background to Dr. D probably prepared me for LotR. But I digress.)

Andre Norton still works, to the extent the sf does, because the stories takes place in a mystical future. Edward Eager was probably my favorite fantasy writer as a kid. I really really hope those stories hold up, since they weren't too time specific.

Children's books have to be timeless and at the same time relevant to the audience. It's a tricky line.

From:

dichroic.livejournal.com

Danny Dunn has the "dated" problem, too - and did even when I read them in the 1970s, but that didn't really stop me. Even though I was reading about the Professor's invention of the "first miniature computer" while actually learning to write BASIC programs.

The best thing Edward Eager did for me was to introduce me to E. Nesbit. I think maybe his books with Jane, Mark, Martha and Kathie hold up reaasonably well because he was writing them as period pieces. The ones about their children Roger, Eliza, Anne and Jack were written in a contemporary setting (1950s?) but both books are centered on time travel, so it's largely period again.

From:

mrissa.livejournal.com

I still have to reread the Eagers, but I've made a good start on the Nesbits.

From:

barondave.livejournal.com

Eager lead me to Nesbit, but I didn't like her writings nearly as much. Nesbit relied too heavily on background and background characters who were stereotypes, and that grated.

Half Magic (http://www.amazon.com/Half-Magic-Edward-Eager/dp/0152020683") is still my second favorite fantasy (after LotR), though it's been many years since I read it.

From:

mrissa.livejournal.com

That's funny: I didn't think that Dr. Doolittle suffered from the WWI technology at all, when I read them as a kid, because they were clearly set in a past when characters like Dr. Doolittle were possible. I think that the key here may be not confusing "timeless" with "time-free": better to have a book taking place in or around a specific year than "err...vaguely now-ish." Especially with a series: if you want to have one of those time-dilation series, okay. I'm reading Rex Stout now; certainly I don't want to issue a blanket edict that all events must happen in a specific year and the characters must age at a rate of one year per year. But I would far rather have watched Archie Goodwin existing in a perpetual 1949, say, than have to cringe watching Wolfe try to deal with the concept of hippies.

Some things with time in children's series date better than others. The Babysitters' Club, for example, has gone on for far, far too many volumes to fit into one year or even two or three years. The way the clothes are described (in extremely loving detail) in the first volumes are very clearly 1980s fashions skewed for preteens -- but I suspect that it would be more jarring to contemporary readers that these babysitters didn't carry cell phones in the early books and did in the later ones. (I don't particularly want to reread them and find out for myself.)

Mostly I think what I want in regards to time is some kind of series consistency.

As for "relevance" -- I hate that word, and I'm not sure you meant it the way it got used in my education and is still being used today. Kids who are oversupplied with relevance are taught that nothing is worth learning if they can't think of a way to use it tomorrow -- if they have to wait until next week, that's no good, and if they may never use it, what good is it, anyway? Being curious, wanting to know stuff for the sake of knowing -- bah, who needs that, if it's not relevant?

The writer wants the reader -- of any age -- to care about what's in the book. Of course. But "relevant" is trotted out whenever books are being prescribed as castor oil. We don't give kids Bridge to Terebithia to read after they're dealing with loss or Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry to help them cope with prejudice. That kind of flowchart timing trivializes both the kids' lives and the complicated, non-trivial responses the books have to big problems. We give them those books because they are good books, and help in coping with loss or prejudice or any number of other things comes later -- or else it doesn't -- but you can't force that sort of thing.

From:

barondave.livejournal.com

I try to be precise in my use of language, and often succeed. "Relevant" is used too often in the sense of "to teach coping skills". Here, I'm using it in the "establish a connection with the reader" sense. For example, I'm the oldest of three boys. I had a greater affinity toward stories where the protagonist is the oldest kid, sometimes even if they were a girl.

In all of the books/stories brought up so far, I can't recall anyone watching television. That would be roughly equivalent today to a story where no one uses a home computer. A few of them mention radio; movies go back another generation. Dr. Dolittle (finally spelling his name correctly) was clearly of an era. I remember at the time both marveling at and distancing myself from the very slow mode of travel. It would, my kid-self thought, not take us as long to get to Lake Tanganyika as the good doctor, and we'd probably radio someone for help. The Dr. Dolittle stories online (http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Hugh_Lofting/The_Story_of_Doctor_Dolittle/) still hold up as Sensawonda but feel creaky like HG Wells. (Hmm... should add Wells and Verne to reading list...)

Even before I inserted myself into Star Trek, I realized had more medical knowledge in middle school than Dr. D's turn-of-the-century technique and figured I could help. Not true in the concrete sense, to be sure, but even today a reasonably well-educated tween could go back 50 years and tell them things they didn't know. I don't think I could have invented penicillin, but I knew vaguely how it was developed. After some convincing, Dr. Dolittle would be very happy I had come. Such was part of my inner life as a child.

Stories don't have to be preachy, and the author of a children's book is under the same obligation as any author: To get the reader to turn the page. I didn't mind reading a story with an obvious lesson, but it fell into a different category than fiction.

"Clearly set in the past" is all well and good, but all stories are about the present. As I said, it's a fine line. The stories that hold up best (for me) are more character driven than "gimmick" driven. Encyclopedia Brown worked because he was a clever, brassy kid who was right when the adults were confused or just plain wrong. Nyah nyah!