Well, not all literature, of course. Just children's literature.
As part of the "clean up" of my mother's estate, I've had to go through all her worldly possessions, the vast bulk of which were retained in the house in which she lived the last 45 years. My mother was not one to throw things out that might retain usefulness...and far less likely to do so for anything of sentimental value...and so I've found plenty of possessions that I recall her having owned since BEFORE we moved into the house where she lived the majority of her life (i.e. the house my family moved to when I was four years old). Hell, I've found things from before MY time, carefully preserved, in boxes, chest, dressers, etc. An old steamer trunk contained not only her wedding veil, but the top piece from her wedding cake and (what I can only presume is) a saved piece of the cake itself. A cedar "hope chest" containing mementoes of her childhood, including her own childhood journals, diaries, and scrap books. 75 years of life saved...her own, her family's, those of myself and my brother.
And, of course, books. My family..on my mother's side...has always been readers and lovers of books. I own shelves and shelves of books in my own home...more than half a dozen stuffed full. My mother had twice as many, most of which go from floor to ceiling, some shelves having two rows of books (one in front of the other)...and then there are cardboard boxes, crates, filled with other books (carefully organized by author or genre) that she probably intended for donation, having found a need to clear shelf space (to make room for new volumes).
Going through the books in my mother's home, I have come across shelves containing my own books...books from my youth, books that I haven't read since I was a child of 10 or 11 or younger. Most of these slim paperbacks, the kinds of books one (once) found on the shelves of school and public libraries designated for young readers. Adventures or mysteries or (subdued) science fiction featuring young (kid or teen) protagonists. What I used to think of as typical kids reading. Many of these...especially anything with a detective or mystery or "horror" (think "ghost story") theme I've collected for my daughter, who struggles to find books that pique (let alone hold) her interest.
And I realized something the other day as I collected these books and showed them to my nine year old and saw her delight and excitement...I realized just how different children's books are these days. The books that I used to read...regardless of the genre, regardless of supernatural or fantastical elements that they might include...were still just about kids. Normal everyday kids. Kids thrust into strange situations or experiencing dramatic circumstances, but kids readily identifiable as normal children.
NOT individuals suddenly discovering that they have "magic powers" and are destined to go to wizard school to learn why they speak to snakes. NOT kids who are descended from Greek gods. NOT kids who have been trained since birth to become super spies covertly working for MI6 or the CIA as soon as they hit puberty. NOT children endowed with wealth and resources and family legacies of secret societies.
In other words, NOT the protagonists of the various popular kids books...or, rather, series of books...that line the shelves of Barnes & Noble and that my son (and the few kids we know that might read as voraciously as my son) tends to read. Kids' literature these days are not about a normal child having to deal with an extraordinary turn of events...instead, they are stories of extraordinary, fantastical "children" dealing with the burden of being some sort of "Chosen One" figure.
WTF.
Frankly, it made me (and makes me) more and more irritated the more I think about it. Yes, the Pevensie children of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe are destined to become the High Kings and Queens or Cair Paravel, but only after starting as normal everyday children and undergoing incredible experiences. They are quite ordinary in many respects, and the children of Lewis's later Narnia chronicles are even MORE ordinary...just normal kids trying to get by in spite of the weirdness of their surroundings. The same holds true for Baum's Dorothy Gale...folks of Oz may presume Dorothy has some magical powers or abilities, but Dorothy herself operates under no such delusion.
But those aren't the books I'm talking about anyway. Those take place in Narnia or Oz or whatever...most of the children's books I'm talking about take place on real world Earth with normal kids that discover an extra-terrestrial or a treasure map or a haunted castle or whatever. Normal kids with normal kid issues (family, school, whatever) in addition to whatever circumstances the author of the book throws at them...and forced to find inner resolve or ingenuity or courage or determination or whatever to deal with that extraordinary situation as a normal child in addition to dealing with the standard kid issues of family, school, etc.
In REAL fashion. Not just casting a spell on your parents to make them forget you exist so you can go off and fight evil with your wand.
I'm sorry...I know a lot of my readers are probably twenty-plus years younger than myself and grew up reading and loving Rowling's books. I've never liked them all that much. And their incredible success has fueled trends in children's literature that I dislike immensely. Call me an old curmudgeon (I call myself one anyway).
Just wanted to get that all off my chest.
I'm 50. I agree, I can't stand Harry Potter. When my son was little ca 2011-15 I read him the Narnia books at bedtime, as well as two of Australian author Victor Kelleher's now-forgotten 1980s children's novellas set in fantasy worlds. The other thing he loved was the Hunger Games, which does have a relatively ordinary young adult protagonist in Katniss Everdeen; her archery skills are remarkable but not supernatural.
ReplyDeleteThe Hunger Games are probably a little older than the books I'm talking about (though "YA" literature is its own pet peeve for a variety of reasons), so I'd set that series aside in terms of this discussion.
DeleteI'm not familiar with Victor Kelleher. What are the book titles? Are they worth a read? Thanks!
The Hunting of Shadroth, Master of the Grove, Forbidden Paths of Thual. I enjoyed them very much as a child of ca 10 years old, right before I got into Fighting Fantasy and thus D&D. Kelleher is apparently still alive! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Kelleher
DeleteNot just literature but think of the impact on TTRPG. Many of us lament the days long ago when a character started out with a sword, a spell, the world before them and a dream. Today you get hundreds of gp of equipment, feats, spells, special skills and talents and a lengthy backstory.
ReplyDeleteYes, of course, this discussion is meant to tie in with the the changes to tabletop role-playing. But kid literature can have an influence on the developing mind's psychology...how does the shift in lit style change the expectations of the imaginative child who wants to have fantasy adventures? Voila: 5E.
DeleteI'm probably a bit older than you are, and I think you're wearing some slightly rose-colored glasses. Yes, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and the Three Investigators were more or less normal kids, although their parents sure didn't reign any of them in very much. Sports series like Bronc Burnett weren't even vaguely fantastical, but the parents in those are, if anything, even more absent from the story.
ReplyDeleteBut we were also reading Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and the juvenile fiction of Heinlein and Norton at the same time. Tom Swift Junior was by far the most influential series of my childhood, and he's as much of an inventive superman as any pulp hero from the 30s and 40s were. His dad (who I read a few of courtesy of the grandparents) was no less so, even if his big inventions felt quaint and outdated by the 1960s.
Storytelling styles in kid lit have changed enormously over the years, and Rowling has inevitably spawned a huge number of imitators, but the genre's always been escapist - but the escapism was in the freedom from parental control (and schoolwork - ye gods, the schoolwork), something most children dreamed of. Modern kid lit has shifted the angsty "chosen one" trope to younger readers, but it's always been popular in the teen/YA subgenre. And even pre-Rowling there have always been a fair number of "exceptional kid" stories, ranging from the Swifts and Heinlein's various child geniuses to Jupiter Jones and Encyclopedia Brown on the more grounded side of things.
The biggest change in kid lit is due to teh publishing industry itself. They're much more risk-averse now than 50 years ago, and the economies of printing have changed so that short paperbacks just don't make money. You can't charge enough on a 150 page mass market book to break even, not when 600+ page behemoths are almost as economical to print. They loved Rowling (and grabbed at her imitators) because her massive, bloated books could actually earn a profit. That may well be a permanent change, at least until the trad publishing industry completely collapses and the bulk of literature shifts to POD and e-readers.
Which will be a sad turn of events, but I can see it coming even in what little is left of my lifespan.
Point taken, Dick...though I think it may be less about "rose-colored glasses" and more about small sample size (i.e. my reading days come from what was on the shelves in the 1980s and Bronc Burnett and Tom Corbett were not among those kid protagonists...though Alice, Dorothy and Tom Sawyer certainly were!).
DeleteStill, I would probably Quibble. Encyclopedia Brown's young Sherlock Holmesian mind or Nancy Drew's resourcefulness may be as effective as superpowers but they are at least in the realm of POSSIBILITY. In theory, a kid reader could say, 'hey, this is all stuff I could really do.' Same with Margaret from L'Engle's "Wrinkle in Time." Okay, she's good at math, sure...but it's not like she has the ability to fold space/time herself.
That's different from, say, the Baudelaire children whose abilities (especially those of the sisters) are clearly fantastical.
Regarding the publishing industry: I think you are dead on correct, in every regard. But the sadder part to me is the paradigm of CONTENT that is being set...the idea that the books have to be stuffed with THESE TYPES of characters in order for children to be interested in reading them. I expect the industry to be risk averse and profit-driven (haven't we seen that in Hollywood the last 25+ years?)...just one more shitty thing about our capitalist free market. But I think I put a lot of blame on the "creatives" trying to find the next way to make a buck on the formula.
Though I'm sure they care not a whit for my opinions as they just go about the business of paying their utility bills.
I was also going to mention Tom Swift, Jr. as a definitely larger than life child character. Diane Duane's "So You Want to Be a Wizard" series also came to mind as an '80s precursor to Harry Potter.
DeleteRowling deserves credit (like Dan Brown) for writing highly engaging page turners with mass appeal. Her characters are memorable and tap into archetypal tropes. As I've got older and reflected on the books, some of her "messaging" seems less coherent to me.
I would quibble about the Baudelaires. I think they fit right in with older children's literature, and nothing they do is particularly fantastical in my opinion, at least within the skewed world in which they live. Their parents might have been important figures within that world, but I think they themselves follow a long list of literary orphans adrift in a world of uncaring or incompetent adults.
I would agree that in general children's literature has become less grounded as time goes on. One could speculate that as socially-expected parenting has become more restrictive and tightly scheduled, child literature has become more and more escapist to compensate. Maybe that's true of role playing games in general. It's no longer sufficient to explore a dark crypt with a lantern and a sword; now we need to be a cat person who can see in the dark and shoot magical lasers every round. Overall I agree with you. I too miss the "ordinary person thrown into a fantastical situation", which seems like a less and less common premise even among adult fantasy stories.
Thanks as always for a terrific, thoughtful post. I'll reserve my take on kidlit, but this piece explores a fascinating angle on YA that might interest you:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/04/the-mad-scientists-club
Hard to remember what I read as a kid. But besides the Hobbit lots of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Sawyer, and other semi normal kids doing mystery stuff. Honesty most of my reading was probably chose your own adventures.
ReplyDeleteI was all about fantasy and there wasn't really that many choices for kids. I think that's why Dragonlance and the other D&D novels were so huge when they came out. Mostly my mom just got me random fantasy things from the library. Most of it for adults not young adults.
Other media was probably just as influential as books when i was 9 to 12.. Luke Skywalker is defidefinitely the chosen one. But things like Goonies, Red Dawn, Gremlins, E.T., Young Sherlock Holmes, Never Ending Story, Stand by Me, Karate Kid, Back to the Future. Regular kids and teens doing kid stuff. No powers no destiney just right place right time for an adventure.
By middle school (circa ‘85) I was turning to pulp for my fantasy fix, but as a youngster there were others fantasy authors besides Lewis and Tolkien. Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain books come to mind and Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising series. Also (John White?) The Tower of Geburah series, though I only ever read the first book. A lot of fairy tale stuff, of course…Grimm’s and Arabian Nights though, like Greek Mythology (which I read a lot of) this wasn’t really “kid literature” of the type I’m talking.
DeleteChoose Your Own Adventure aren’t terrible…you’re still just (usually) a normal person doing some sort of adventure. TSR’s EQ books are just D&D training skewed toward a younger audience (though still filled with more death and dismemberment than your standard 5E campaign!).
Didn’t come to Elizabeth Boyer’s wonderul books till later (in my teen years) though her Alfar series make for great kid’s lit.
Mostly, though, I think there WAS a dearth of (what today we’d call) “fantasy fiction” for kids. Much, much more SciFi, mystery, ghost, and adventure fiction.
Maybe swords were deemed to lead to too much bloodshed in a children’s book?
; )
You make a good point, and I see the trend as well as one more factor in what newbie RPG players expect from a game. I also see Dick's point. While raising our kid in the 21st century we found books that had normal kids as well as special kids. But I agree, today's trend has a lot more high-visibility special protagonists.
ReplyDeleteI was I elementary school when Harry Potter came out and subsequently exploded. One of my teachers even read the 1st book to us aloud as an activity. By this point I was already an avid reader and wasn't really interested in these sorts of child centric stories. I went from barely reading in 1st grade to classic fiction fiction in 2nd grade(what would now be called adult fantasy, but back then it was all just fantasy). I was never the child detective or "mystery" stories. I never got into hardy boys or navy drew or the babysitters club or the R.L. Stein books, even though my older sisters all read those. I detest the idea that a child protagonist makes a story a "children's book" or a film is only good for children just because it's animated. Or more specifically the reverse that children won't watch live action shows or read books with adult protagonists and complex storyline. It's this tendency of talking down to children as if they can't think for themselves that has irked me my whole life. Good literature is good literature no matter what age you are, the same goes for film or any mode of storytelling. I don't blame Harry Potter specifically, but the chosen one trope has been popularized since people have tried to copy tolkien without understanding him(mistakenly thinking frodo was a chosen one) and its generally just lazy storytelling.
ReplyDeleteYou (Lance) also had a father who ran you and your family members in a regular D&D campaign from a young age…that’s a different experience growing up than many of us had.
Delete; )
True, true..
DeleteThis feels like it follows the (equally problematic) larger trend of Fantasy literature as a whole, shifting away from character-level self-contained stories to huge epic sagas.
ReplyDeleteProbably another industry choice based on the success of certain huge, epic sagas (and the desire to emulate that success). Once upon a time, consumers would follow...and purchase...books by specific authors. Later, it became about investment in the intellectual property, rather than the authorial ability (see Star Wars books, Dragon Lance books, etc.).
DeleteBusiness generally follows profits.
Agreed. Also publishers are following the lead of movie studios - everything *must* be a franchise!
DeleteIt wasn't that long ago that series like "A Song of Ice and Fire" a "The Wheel of Time" were niche fantasy series, but now every book that comes out has to have Sanderson level page counts.
Matt Colville touched on this a while ago too. In a video he held up one of the ~200 page Elric books and all I could think was "No publisher would print that now, it's too short".
Regardless of the overall merits of the current state of YA books I will say this. The Harry Potter books and the Percy Jackson books opened up an entire generation to reading and that is not something, as an educator, I'll ignore.
ReplyDeleteCollege freshman are now younger than the first few Potter books. I have seen reading comprehension take severe blows over the decades of being in higher ed (teaching, administration, development), so anything that gets incoming freshman to read more is great in my book. Yes, I wish it would be something else, but I am begging here just to get students to read the damn syllabus.
Plus we do have research to suggest that children who do read these book have more empathy for others not like themselves.
So again, I'll take that all day long.
I could quibble, Tim, but it would make me seem exceptionally callous. I applaud your ability to find a silver-lining. I'll try doing the same.
DeleteI am results oriented. Better and more readers will mean more, and hopefully better, books in the future as they desire more.
DeleteIf nothing else it will help with the batch of incoming freshman I am dreading about dealing with.
As a kid of the late 70s and early 80s the books that I remember are Enid Blyton's Secret 7 & Five find-outers mysteries, and the Hardy Boys and Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators. Everyone was pretty normal and there was no real back story, just the mystery itself. I read Tom Sawyer too. The only scifi book I remember reading before 10yo was Spaceship Medic by Harry Harrison. I re-read that a lot. By 11/12 I'd progressed to Rosemary Sutcliff's historical Roman and Celtic tales, then the Hobbit & LOTR as I approached 15, before veering off into Len Deighton's spy novels and a fair bit of Leslie Thomas too. All very mundane real characters there. Other than Tolkien I didn't read much fantasy until I discovered Jack Vance.
ReplyDeleteI definitely read more in my childhood than my kids do in theirs, but then I'm insular, inarticulate and awkward outside of professional settings while they're much more confident and questioning of authority.
I think if you're going to criticize this type of story, it's important to understand the appeal. It's not just wish fulfillment. For Harry Potter specifically, it's an "ugly duckling" story.
ReplyDeleteHarry grows up in an environment where he is weird. His caretakers punish him for things he can't control. He tries to act "normal" but it is impossible. His wizardly nature is undeniable. Then he finds out that there is a whole other society where people are like him. He can finally be his true self.
For many kids--especially queer and neuro-atypical kids, but I don't think it's limited to them--this is a relatable experience. For them, being their true self and finding others like them is the dream.
As a parent of several of those kids, I wonder if this is carried too far in HP-like books - in the scifi & fantasy literature I read growing up, there were also messages like "as a young person you might not be right about your true self" and "accepting/changing your identity doesn't magically fix all your other problems." Two of my children have focused on their ugly ducklingness in ways that have absolutely hurt them, and I see other peers seeming to do the same.
DeleteI think you give Harry Potter far more credit than it deserves. The superhero/"chosen one" genre is _far_ older than that.
ReplyDeleteThe superhero comics, of course, but also countless novels feature protagonists that have some special abilities or are clearly above the average person in some way since the very beginning. "The special one" is a trope probably as old as oral literature, and it's a main ingredient of sagas and epic poems from all over the world.
The Dark is Rising is a Newbery Medal winner (well, one of the books is), and came out from 1965-1977. It's excellent...and features Will Stanton, who at the age of 11 learns he is one of the ancient immortal people called Old Ones and is chosen to fight evil etc. You should read it, it's neat.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, point is this is very much not a new phenomenon at all.
I've read most...if not all...of Susan Cooper's delightful series, though that hasn't been since I was a young teen. The only book of hers I still own is Silver on the Tree (probably checked the others out of the local library).
DeleteWill Stanton might be "chosen" for adventure, but I don't recall him being quite as magical as Potter and his amigos. Probably I'll have to go back and read the books.
Harry Potter was a new phenomenon because it brought about a desire of tens of millions of children to read one specific book. This is very different from one obscure book series that most, living in the decades Simulated Knave describes, would never hear of.
DeleteThis vast difference should be obvious. Numbers are more important that who got there "first."