Are the kids now in charge?
With the release in the US and Canada last week of the movie Where the Wild Things Are (although made in Australia, we won’t see it until 3 December), the mainstream media seems to have rediscovered children’s literature. Or more specifically, children’s picture books. And they don’t always like what they see.
In the New Yorker today, critic Daniel Zalewski has penned a lengthy essay entitled ‘The Defiant Ones’ in which he cites changes in the tone and messages of picture books over the past 40 or so years. Parents no longer rule, it seems:
Many recent picture books offer inventive variations on the theme of parental subjection. Consider a recent entry in the “Knuffle Bunny” series (Hyperion), by Mo Willems, which revolves around the obsessive relationship between Trixie, a Brooklyn girl, and her plush bunny. Trixie, beginning school in Park Slope, discovers that another girl owns the same toy. They accidentally switch bunnies. That night, Trixie wakes up and realizes that her comfort object is an alien impostor. She flips out—she wants Knuffle Bunny, now! Her dad sheepishly requests a reprieve: “Trixie’s daddy tried to explain what ‘2:30 A.M.’ means. He asked, ‘Can we deal with this in the morning?’ ” Trixie’s fixed stare makes clear that the answer is no. Salvation comes in the form of a ringing phone: the other girl’s father, equally cowed, has called to propose a handoff in Prospect Park. There’s an element of satire here, but the idea that children have executive authority is now so entrenched that many readers, old and young, are likely to consider a moonlit stuffed-animal exchange an ordinary turn of events.
The parents in picture books used to be tougher. In “Bedtime for Frances” (1960), a little badger—as clever as Olivia, but less snotty—devises various schemes for staying up late. (“I forgot to brush my teeth”; “There is a tiger in my room.”) The author, Russell Hoban, lets young readers root for Frances but makes clear that it’s not a game that the badger can win. Frances’s father—after reminding her that he needs sleep so that he can be ready for his job the next morning—calmly issues the threat of a spanking. Implied violence is probably not the ideal means of maintaining control. Yet, a few pages later, Frances is fast asleep.
The whole essay is worth a read, and maybe a comment. Is Zalewski right?
