So, there's this opinion piece in the New York Times.
About, you know, darkness in children's fiction.
(Sound familiar?)
Before you get all worked up, this one isn't like That Other Article.
(And note that it's in the opinion section, not the regular books section.)
It's thoughtful, and not at all Oh-Noes-Won't-You-Think-of-the-Children-Who-Incidentally-All-Have-Exactly-the-Same-Worldview-As-Me. (Betsy has a good round-up of varied responses.)
However.
It does lump children's and middle grade and YA fiction all into the same category.
Which is a problem.
And I felt that The Graveyard Book was a strange example to use as evidence of the shift towards Teh Darkness, because it's very reminiscent of the classics that she writes about so positively. But, you know. Everyone looks at things differently and so on.
I thought this bit was especially interesting, in a somewhat unrelated way:
These are the traditional villains of children’s books — fabulous monsters with a touch of the absurd. Like Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things and countless others, they walk a fine line between horror and zany eccentricity. They may frighten young readers, but their juvenile antics strip them of any real authority.
Because it made me think of Disney villains, and the shift they've made -- while they usually had comic sidekicks, Disney villains used to be legitimately scary:
And now, they're more like the ones that Tatar describes as epitomizing the Old Skool villain from children's literature.
Kinda weird, right?
Yeah, I felt a lot less bothered by this one. Sure, I thought she was comparing oranges and apples (the older books all seem aimed at younger readers than the newer books), but overall I thought she had some interesting points. And it's difficult, especially when we all love YA so much, but giving in to the kneejerk instinct seems counterproductive to me.
Posted by: Maureen E | 11 October 2011 at 02:59 PM
It bothers me that I now find Maleficent kind of hot.
Posted by: ProfessorMortis | 11 October 2011 at 05:03 PM
I'm not going to lie: That bothers me, too.
Grody, dude.
Even grodier? I totally see it, too.
Posted by: Leila | 11 October 2011 at 06:00 PM
Grodier still: I'm sure many have beaten me to this conclusion and have produced fan fic and worse.
Posted by: ProfessorMortis | 11 October 2011 at 07:24 PM
You aren't wrong.
Why, oh why aren't you wrong?
Posted by: Leila | 11 October 2011 at 07:29 PM
Why did you look? Of course I wasn't wrong. I'm willing to be that was the mild stuff.
Posted by: ProfessorMortis | 11 October 2011 at 07:34 PM
There's totally worse stuff. I refuse to log in to see it, because my brain has already short-circuited.
Posted by: Leila | 11 October 2011 at 07:38 PM
Yeah, I really don't want to know.
Posted by: ProfessorMortis | 11 October 2011 at 08:59 PM
I love Maria Tatar, but, having read some of her works on fairy tales, I find myself wondering about all that this piece leaves out. Fairy tale themes, for one. The ways in which how we see childhood have changed, for another.
My daughter, who is not yet 2, has latched onto Zelinsky's Rapunzel as a favorite book, and she gets an expurgated version when I read it to her, but there's no doing away with the part where the sorceress takes the baby away. There's also no getting around the fact that I find that much more disturbing than she does, which is probably a good indicator of reading adventures to come.
Posted by: Erica | 12 October 2011 at 01:03 PM