Children's Literature is Serious Business
By Victoria Fortune
When I get stuck while working on my novel, one strategy I use is to write something else, like a piece of flash fiction or a blog post. During a recent bout of writer's block, I decided to unearth the picture book I wrote years ago and give it another go. (I'd tossed it in the proverbial drawer after two rejections. I’ve since developed a thicker skin.) Working on it has reminded me how much I enjoy writing for young people, which is where I began.
When I started writing seriously, I was teaching middle school, immersed in young adult literature, so it seemed the natural choice. I was also insecure about my writing skills and whether I had anything important enough to say. Writing for kids seemed less daunting. Like many, I had the misconception that writing for young people would be easier than writing for adults. I quickly discovered that there was nothing easy about it. Yet, the prevailing attitude, in the U.S. at least, is that writing children’s literature is a less serious endeavor than writing adult fiction.
At one point, I mentioned to a journalist friend that I was working on a picture book and he said, “You mean you’re writing sentences to go along with pictures?” I was offended, but also astounded that he could think it was so simple. By that point, I’d discovered that writing a picture book, like any story, requires command of structure and plot, character development and pacing, rhythm and diction; and there are constraints that adult fiction writers don’t face, such as the audience’s limited background knowledge and vocabulary. It was discouraging to work so hard and feel I wouldn't be taken seriously by other writers.
In an article in the Australian magazine Aeon, author Adam Gidwitz makes a compelling argument that the books we love most as children, the ones we beg to hear again and again, reveal some essential aspect of our character, which is why we connect with them so deeply. (Gidwitz, who had a competitive relationship with his father, loved The Carrot Seed, in which a little boy’s family doubts he can grow a carrot, and he proves them wrong. He has kept a copy of the book all his life.) How many adult novels stick with us with the enduring emotional resonance of classic picture books such as Where the Wild Things Are or The Giving Tree? And nearly everyone, if they read at all as an adolescent, can name a book that helped shape their values and outlook on the world.
The influence that JK Rowling has had on children throughout the world (not to mention the fortune she has made) ought to be worthy of respect; yet when she was expressed dissent in the wake of President Trump’s immigration ban with a pithy tweet on Mike Pence’s sanctimony, she received a torrent of vile comments from Twitter trolls who suggested that a children’s writer had no business commenting on politics. One who calls himself Mr. America said, “You’re a grown ass woman whose entire career is based on stories about a nerd who turns people into frogs. Stay out of politics.” I suspect Mr. America is not a big reader; he clearly hasn’t read Ms. Rowling’s books. (No one gets turned into a frog.) But even a non-reader is familiar with some of the most common elements of children's stories: a character who is an outsider (nerd), a bit of magic.
Gidwitz points out that Harry Potter is, in fact, a version of the most enduring and ubiquitous fairy tale of all time: Cinderella. (An outsider who is unappreciated by the family he lives with, who is rescued by magic and delivered to his rightful place.) But Rowling adds layers to these basic elements that are particularly pertinent in the current political climate. In an interview with People, the actor Jason Isaacs, who played Lucius Malfoy in the movies, said, “There is a very recognizable racist and supremacist [in Lucius Malfoy], acting out of fear and thinking that the past was a better time,” he said. “And scared of Muggles and scared of the future because it feels like his place was some time ago, when he was part of the super-elite who could look down on the rest of the world. . . Those issues are never more relevant than today, [but] they are dealt with in this kind of magical world.” It sounds like Rowling understands Mr. America and others like him better than most political analysts do.
In fact, children’s tales have long been a means for conveying political ideas and social commentary. In a 2013 article in The Guardian, Phillip Pullman describes how, when the Soviet Union under Stalin began to crack down on writers, some of the country’s greatest poets and artists turned to children’s literature. It was one of the few genres in which they could work without persecution. As a result, the richness and depth of children’s literature from the Soviet Union in the 20’s and 30’s is astounding. But even children’s literature eventually fell under the scrutiny of the regime.
The communists, suspicious of imagination, began to put out childcare posters that said things like “Do not tell stories to a child before he goes to sleep, or you will disturb him with new impressions,” and “Never tell a child about things he cannot see (this means that fairy stories should not be told to children)." Pullman includes an excerpt from the 1961 memoir of Svetlana Gouzenko to illustrate how children reacted to such edicts:
For the October Revolution our class produced a small play in which a group of Young Pioneers expelled the heroes of Russian fairy tales as 'non-Soviet elements' … The group leader, a girl called Zoya Mechova, got up and made an introductory speech. She explained that the old fairy tales, about princes and princesses, exploiters of simple folk, were unfit for Soviet children. As for fairies and Father Frost, they were simply myths created to fool children.
The trial began. Cinderella was dragged before the judges and accused of betraying the working class … Next came Father Frost, who was accused of climbing down chimneys to spy on people. One by one we were condemned to exile … Zoya Mechova made her summing up speech, but nobody heard it. The children in the audience began to cry. 'Bring them back! Bring them back! Don't shoot them!' The uproar was deafening."
It’s chilling to imagine children playacting such scenes knowing that they had likely seen adults being “dragged before the judges” and “condemned to exile” or shot. Yet their resistance, their defense of fairy tale characters, is so hopeful. It is a testament to the power of such stories. It was the power of their children’s stories, in fact, that spared some of Russia’s great artists. Pullman quotes the letter of one Soviet children’s writer who was spared from the firing squad: “We could have both perished. The children saved us.”
Far from being trivial, children’s literature is very serious business. Lately, I’ve been thinking it may be the most important writing I can do.
