Garrett and I were talking about the children's book I'm never going to write (I've been planning it since highschool), and I told him the basic plot.
"So, basically, it has no plot?" he asked.
"Sort of... but it has lots of beautiful colors. Besides, children's books nowadays don't have a point."
We discussed the Velveteen Rabbit, which he had never read, and decided it was a dreadful children's story. For that matter, most of the Brothers Grimm stories are dreadful children stories. For that matter, all of the children's stories Garrett had to read in German class were dreadful children's stories.
They don't write stories like that now. Thankfully.
Those stories concentrated on trying to teach children moral lessons, with the usual plotline warning children to be good or a monster will eat them (and perhaps their souls).
Contrast this to modern stories, which center around teaching colors, basic math, and maybe how to deal with bullies. The only moral conveyed, if any, is that to be nice is the greatest nice. Bullies aren't nice, and "strangers" aren't nice, but that's as far as we get into morality. Now go learn your hexagons from your rhombuses.
Past writers taught morals (gruesome, bloody morals), whereas modern children's book writers teach facts. The former tried to scare children, but the latter seem scared themselves. Why shouldn't writers teach morals? Do they think they are overstepping their bounds?
And when did storytellers start caring about bounds?
3 comments:
Perhaps you and Garrett read a modernised version of Grimm (something gathered by Lang, perhaps?) -- some of which did have morals forced into them. But from what I have read/heard, the tales these stories were spawned from didn't have a nice moral tacked on. The stories were still bloody or unhappy at the end, but the reader was left with the story itself, not a moral.
Bloody stories and unhappy endings are not what we consider children's stories today, but maybe if we had real stories, children would be able to deal with real life. I'm not sure... I prefer stories with redemptive endings (no morals tacked on). But I would rather learn about rhombuses and diamonds in math class.
Have you read "On Fairy Stories" by Tolkien? He addresses this a bit.
Yes, but it's been a long time. I should pick up "On Fairy Stories" again.
Well, it has been giving me a different perspective on Children's stories...
Post a Comment