Zodiac House: Dog Chapter

[mrissa]

So with most of my list completed, I went and worked on this next chapter, and I got it done, and so here we are. (For anybody just stopping in, I'm writing a children's book whose chapters are centered around the signs of the Chinese zodiac. I'm musing about children's books centered around each sign as I finish the corresponding chapter.)

The dog page at the CCC says, People born in the Year of the Dog possess the best traits of human nature. They have a deep sense of loyalty, are honest, and inspire other people¡¦s confidence because they know how to keep secrets. But Dog People are somewhat selfish, terribly stubborn, and eccentric. There's more than that, but I'm already caught: children's books focus nearly obsessively on dog virtues. Honesty, loyalty, and being able to keep secrets appropriately: is there anything more scorned in children's books than a tattletale? Maybe a crybaby, but that's about it.

So very many children's books -- even the ones that are not excessively didactic -- focus around lessons of loyalty. Standing by your friends. Is this wish-fulfillment for bookish kids who don't have many friends or who have found the playground particularly fickle? I have to say that loyalty was not a prime virtue of the kids I knew when I was little. What else are children's books implicitly teaching at that level of focus? (Not a rhetorical question -- please discuss.)

Comments

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I don't read many current children's books. In the ones I read most*, loyalty wasn't a lesson, it was a given. The stories tended to be about how the children coped (usually by some deception) to keep a friend from getting in trouble with the grown-ups, or whatever. A sure-fire motivation.

*Nesbit, Lewis, Ransome, Eager, etc

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. I think I would say that that level of assumption is a lesson in itself -- that the things that of course kids do in all the books you read is something that will be far more ingrained than the things that are trotted out as specific morals to specific tales.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Very likely. I was thinking of overt, stated 'lessons'. In books like Ransome's SWALLOWS & AMAZONS series, I suppose the actual lesson was something like: "Of course you don't call on the adults unless things get really dangerous -- but in real danger you DO call -- and it's your responsibility to tell the difference. But your main responsibility is to manage things so they don't GET out of hand." Of course this was in situations -- 1930s camping and sailing -- when calling for help was often not possible, and teaching self-reliance was the safer course.

Let's see.... In Eager's HALF MAGIC series, adults were usually available, but their tender brains had to be protected from exposure to magic. There iirc it usually ended up that the children should have leveled with the adult sooner.

Still the loyalty among the children wasn't questioned -- just how best the group would cope with the situation.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The self-reliance of the Blackett and Walker kids was utterly fantastic to me when I read these books -- in both senses of the word. It was wonderful, but it had as little connection with my own '80s childhood as a fairy story, or less. The year I read them, we lived somewhere my friends and I could tromp around in woods on our own, happily and safely, but nothing like in those books.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Hm. I thought the S&A kids were sort of pampered. I'd grown up reading Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and James Oliver Curwood, and Tarzan.... :-) Not that I could DO anything like that myself; we lived in a prairie with no woods or rivers.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But there's a difference between being self-reliant because all the grown-ups in your life are absent or utterly worthless and being self-reliant because the grown-ups in your life have allowed you to have some level of independence. I was never in a situation where I believed mine were utterly worthless even for a minute, but circumstances mostly didn't give them the opportunity to let me wander all that far in good conscience.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's wish-fulfillment - that's a great theory - but this is a very long-standing tradition. If I look back at the Alcott pap for and about children, just as one example, one of the main virtues is 'pluck,' and probably the next is loyalty.

I have to say, I don't see the crybaby problem as badly in more recent children's literature, though of course that may be entirely due to my selection. And I'm frustrated because I feel like I have a good handful of examples, none of which I can lay my brain on right now, of stories in which the - or a - big dilemma that the story revolves around is the conflict between loyalty to a friend whom the protagonist knows is wrong or doing wrong and the desire to do the right thing (i.e., tell an adult). And the "right" answer is usually to tell, but hopefully to find some way of doing it which takes the friend's feelings into account. But telling is favored over loyalty. I've actually felt like I was seeing a modern rebellion against the Pluck And Loyalty days, in that, and also that I've seen some really nice depictions of isolated, unpopular children who don't want to 'tell,' maybe partly because they believe that tattling is a sin, but more because they don't want to shatter the fragile miracle which got them a friendship with the inevitably more popular/successful child who is about to do something dreadful.

It seems like part of it is a rather tiresome extension of the cult of "Just Say No," inadequately covered lectures to children to resist the seductive nature of peer pressure and follow the rules that their loving parents and teachers have properly instilled in them. Yuck. But in so far as it leads to depictions of insecure, lonely children who are mesmerized by the prospect of acceptance, I'm okay with it - it seems to reflect a much more common reality than the other.

Oh, I don't know. I feel like I've turned myself around until I'm tangled and half-enmeshed in tinsel. Now I'm thinking that that's not so very new, either.

What else are books teaching? That artistic and creative children are inherently more interesting than children with other strengths. That bullying is bad but it's entirely fixed by having someone - anyone - on your side. And, as ever, that strong, big, stupid, mean, and ultimately unimportant all go together.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've run into that modern rebellion against "loyalty" as well, and I think it's good to have both kinds of books mixed together, so that kids think with some nuance about when loyalty is misplaced and when it's in exactly the right place.

Well...and while adult life does not remove strong, big, stupid mean people from our lives, I think adults have far more power to render such people unimportant than we give to children. The response our society has to bullying is a pity and a shame -- "let them sort it out themselves" on the sort of behavior for which an adult's method of sorting it out would be to call the police, bah! I just wish kids' books could honestly offer more to kids than, "It'll get better when you're a grown-up."

I have had about enough of the big dumb ox character, though. I know a guy who played on it pretty deliberately to get people to leave him alone, but the great big males in my life (of whom there are many -- I come from a Scandinavian-American family and live in Minnesota, for heaven's sake!) are not at all dumber than the little fast people. There are character traits that are more or less barred to large men -- my personality, for example, would be terrifying in someone 6'3" and broad-shouldered. But that doesn't mean they're stupid, and I'm sick of seeing that in fiction.

(One of the protags in my contemporary YA series is the big fat kid, who is extremely smart and skilled with his hands.)

I am afraid I have questions

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

The first is about age level? When I think of children's books I think about the ones Ben and I read together. I don't think about that for self as much because my parents didn't read to us. And then are you interested in general or in the ones that were liked?

Re: I am afraid I have questions

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Middle-grade books, is what I mean. The ones that are long enough to have chapters.

In general would be fine, but the ones you liked in particular (or the ones your kids liked in particular) are of somewhat more interest.

Re: I am afraid I have questions

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I probably can't contribute much then. Apologies.

I think when I was that age I was mostly in adult material already. (It was the seventies.)

Ben went off books in middle school. I don't think that the reading in school was a good thing here. And then came back because a couple of his friends in highschool were enthused about some. I think that's the case now too. The Robin Hobb, I am pretty sure, came via Justin.

Re: I am afraid I have questions

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Middle school is not what I mean by middle-grades -- I mean around third grade, probably, mostly, although I started reading "middle-grade books" much younger.

Sometimes the category labels are extremely confusing, because the YAs that are labeled "14+" are regularly read by 10-year-olds -- and the authors and editors all know it.

[thorintatge.livejournal.com]

I like the prevalence of loyalty in children's books, and it never occurred to me that you don't usually see that sort of thing in real life. My experience in grade school was that we rarely found ourselves in any sort of dilemma that required the choice of loyalty versus disloyalty. No one was particularly disloyal; it just wasn't an issue. I guess it probably became more of an issue in high school, but I didn't keep up with anything in high school, so I didn't notice.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do see it in real life. It's just that I didn't as a kid.

I don't know your sister, but I wonder if your sister had a similar experience as a girl, or whether your area/school was just not problematic that way for either sex or any other subgroup. The little girls I knew in grade school were a lot more focused on relationships than the little boys I knew were (which was one reason why the boys were more fun to play with -- they were focused on doing stuff rather than on who was whose bestestest friend evar). But from talking to other people, I've started to think that the girls in my grade school class were perhaps not entirely typical.

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

Well, the ones I consider as kids' books - Bobbsey Twins, Boxcar Children - I don't remember any more...

But I totally agree about seeing the scorn for tattletales and crybabies. How do people expect kids to know what secrets are appropriate to keep when they aren't to tell? This troubles me as I get older.

Various DWJ books have the children who keep secrets in this wise; they don't tattle because One Doesn't, and yet it's something important being withheld. Of course that's part of what they're learning - how to know when you shouldn't keep silent. Worse is when they're surrounded by adults who aren't listening.

I expect that's something children notice, in and out of fiction - how adults as a rule don't listen. :<

I also wonder about the other side of the bookish child - alienation. Staying silent not to keep secrets but to avoid hurt by trying to befriend and trust someone. Why cope with them if/when your differences will always be thrust into your face?

I can't say that the latter is something being encouraged. But I wonder.

- Chica

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do you see it being neutrally portrayed or discouraged in kids' books? Or are you just not thinking of fictional examples at all, only real ones?

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

No, I was thinking of these things in fiction and in real life.

Susan Cooper did another great book (_King of Shadows_) about being a lonely kid. I don't remember if he was alienated or grieving; must re-read it.

My reading of kids' books is a trifle random. When I was a teen, the Earthsea books were sf/f, not kids' books. Everything Earthsea is right next to L'Engle now.

I'll have to think about the first question further.

- Chica

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking a fair amount about fiction and how it affects how I think and perceive myself. So this is sort of scrabbly and unfinished.

If there are two people, one will be big, dumb, and probably nice, and the other will be tiny, hyper, and probably mean. Ren and Stimpy, Two Stupid Dogs, lots of cartoons.

Normal is always bad. Always. This is the one I'm running up against; I read essays and entries about how the writer thinks differently or reacts differently to certain situations, and immediately become defensive because their differences condemn me to normalcy. Being just like everyone else means I'm redundant and disposable. I am not a character. At best, I might be one of the jeering crowd near the popular kids.
I remind myself often that it is okay if I'm not as interesting as other people.

Praise is usually a sign of weakness. Teachers encourage you by tormenting you. If they tell you you're doing a good job, it means you can't do any better.

Brown is better than blonde, if you're talking knights or princesses. Ugly is better than beautiful. Poor is usually better than rich. Once you get past a certain age, dragons are better than knights-- only babies are so unsophisticated as to like the knights.

Your life would be better (for definitions of 'better' including 'not normal') if you were horribly abused, adopted, and/or had a life-threatening illness. If you can pull the threefer, you are golden-- until you meet the kid who has all three at boarding school. This probably comes down to wanting to be a character rather than faceless fellow child.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I was a blonde as a child, and for all I've heard of brunettes feeling disgruntled and ignored, I felt like I was supposed to be insipid, and that was bad, too. I have some totally non-insipid blonde heroines, but this is partly because, well, if you write about Finns and Icelanders, going with all non-blondes is more noteworthy than having some blondes mixed in.

Also, I am always the tiny hyper mean one. I can only think of one relationship in my life in which that might not be true, and I think gaaldine might try to argue that I'm the mean one, if she happens by and sees this.

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

Although some teachers don't realize that praise - and making you stand out - is Bad. I remember a teacher; he was very honestly happy that I'd aced a test. He was proud and pleased.

I noted his response, and that of certain classmates. As a kid, you have to live with your peers.


On the other hand, your point about hyper and small characters is well taken. I've just been re-reading some of the Miles Vorkosigan books. I remember poor Arde after his creme de menthe finally made Miles crash, and finding out with horror, "You mean he's ALWAYS this way?" -chuckle-

I keep thinking to myself: Surely I can't be as bad as Miles. Can I? -grin-

In all honesty, yes, I probably am.

- Chica