"Children’s literature makes us fall in love with books and we never recover – we’re doomed”
- Betsy Bird, Julie Danielson & Peter D. Sieruta. Wild Things!: Acts of mischief in children’s literature. (2014) p. 5.
I own a book series by Bernadette Gervais - That’s Dangerous; That’s Mean and That’s Disgusting - which all have Amazon descriptions that start off "Not for the faint of heart" and use descriptors like "kid-approved." Sometime in late July, I toss That’s Disgusting into my Storytent book box to meet what we call the "mid-summer slump" - that point when kids have read the books they think they like and are looking for something new, something different. Gervais never disappoints.
So, not surprisingly, Wild Things! caught my eye and seriously interfered with my leisure reading of The Witcher series.
Wild Things! talks about books with scary things, and weird things and other things children like, including subversive literature. The authors remind us that Sendek’s Where the Wild Things Are was a pretty big deal at the time it was published (Max is not a pleasant, obedient little boy). They tell us that Robert Munsch's Paper Bag Princess originally had Elizabeth punching Ronald in the nose (a scene that, after a dragon ate a whole castle, seemed a step too far for the publisher of the day). Wild Things! includes some behind the scenes stuff like GLBT in books for children and youth, concerns about e-readers, and the ways and means of book banning (a complicated topic - I'm not in favour, but then again you won't find a Caillou book anywhere I live, work or read aloud). Celebrity picture book writing and the lasting impact of Harry Potter's adult readership on the world of books for children and youth also come up for discussion.
One area that particularly interested me was the idea of recommended books. I own seven different books listing “great books for kids,” included some that promote gendered lists. I also have three children (now grown) whose strong opinions about books didn’t seem to have anything to do with these lists. Furthermore, having read hundreds of titles to diverse children in diverse settings over the past two decades, I have some pretty strong opinions myself on what makes for a "great book." When I'm not sure, I ask the kids around me. That's why, despite some lukewarm adult reactions, book series like R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps, Dave Pilkey’s Captain Underpants, and Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid have so much room in our book borrowing boxes and little free library shelves. Children ask for them, read them and, from time to time, hide them under their beds to avoid having to give them back. Children are discerning readers - or, at least, fussy ones - and my coworkers and I have had the unfortunate experience of running low on great books and being force to watch kids look through our not-great books only to leave empty handed.
No surprise, then, that my favourite chapter of Wild Things! was "Kids Love ‘Em, Critics hate ‘Em…. And Vice Versa." Book reviews and "recommended" lists may lead to increased sales, but, the authors point out, children "neither know nor care what the critics think" (p. 142). Importantly, a title appearing on a book list isn't enough to write it off. One perennial, Goodnight Moon, became my daughter’s favourite and by far most requested book even though I didn't think much of it at the time. Why did she like it? Was it in the way I read it, as a little song? Was it the time we spent together reading it? Was it the illustrations? Was it the mouse hiding in a different spot on each coloured page? I really don't know and now she says she doesn't remember. In any case, it is a reminder that, as the authors of Wild Things! point out, the gulf between critics' takes and children’s tastes is only “part of the truth, part of the time” (p. 168). The trick of it is to remember that if you can’t trust the list, you can trust the children.
Cheryl Brown (@CherylAnneBrown) is co-creator of the Storytent and Bookwagon programs, QLNB's Community Literacy Coordinator, and long-time advocate for and facilitator of a variety of family literacy initiatives. In these posts, she has been documenting and sharing snap-shots of some of her daily reading.
