Avatar triumphs

Maybe not at the Oscars; but in the film it IS the avatar who wins out against the ‘real world’ of crippled Jake. Back to reality – NOT!

The end of Daniel Mendelsohn’s piece in the New York Review of Books draws the comparison with children’s books very plainly:

This moment of waking is, structurally, a crucial one; at the very beginning of the film, during Jake’s introductory voice-over, the crippled man has poignantly described the liberating but ultimately deceptive dreams of flying that he often has: “I start having these dreams of flying…sooner or later, though, you always have to wake up.” The final image of the redeemed and healed Jake waking up to his new Na’vi life is clearly meant, then, to be a triumphant rewriting of that sour acknowledgment.

But the implications of this awakening—in a character that Cameron himself described as an unconscious rewriting of The Wizard of Oz ‘s Dorothy (“it was, in some ways, like Dorothy’s journey”)—are not only different from but opposite to the implications of Dorothy’s climactic wakening. When Dorothy wakes up, it’s to the drab, black-and-white reality of the gritty Kansas existence with which she had been so dissatisfied at the beginning of her remarkable journey into fantasy, into vibrant color; what she famously learns from that exposure to radical otherness is, in fact, that “there’s no place like home.” Which is to say, when she wakes up—equipped, to be sure (as she was not before) with all that she has learned from her remarkable odyssey, not the least of which is a strong new awareness of her own human abilities—she wakes up to the realities, and the responsibilities, of the human world she’d temporarily escaped from.

The triumphant conclusion of Avatar, by contrast, takes the form of a permanent abandonment of the gray world of Homo sapiens—which, as Dorothy learns, may contain its own hidden marvels—for the Technicolor, over-the-rainbow fantasy world into which Jake accidentally strayed.

Compared with our Block 4, it’s a big step beyond the ‘how to deal with reality’ conclusions of John in Swallows and Amazons, of Tom in Tom’s Midnight Garden, Cassie in Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, and even Harry in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Technology and children’s books

Fizzing and inspiring  thoughts here, from Katherine Paterson, distinguished author of Bridge to Terabithia*, about whether the ebook readers spell the death of the book. I like her observation that Plato suggested poetry would be killed by literacy because it thrived in the oral tradition (I’m not so sure he was wrong).  She concludes that the book is ‘the perfect technology’.

So really the concern turns back to whether readers will continue to exist (are poetry readers kept in existence only through formal education, and then only just?)  How do we nurture children’s reading? To paraphrase Larkin

Ah, solving that question

Brings the politician and the teacher

In their long coats

Running over the fields.

Katherine is positive:

I feel a sense of pity toward my fellow writers who spend their time writing for the speeded-up audience of adults. They look at me, I realize, with a patronizing air, I who only write for the young. But I doubt that many of them have readers who will read their books over and over again, who will create their own Terabithias to play out endless repetitions of beloved passages.

All power to authors, parents, teachers, librarians, and all those who support the idea of children getting absorbed in books.

* just look at the plot! – fantastic island adventures help child protagonists develop. Spot a pattern here?

Some illustrations to enjoy

First, be warned of bad language in this cartoon. But a good thinking point – a definition of poor fantasy? Our hero learns stuff that blows his  mind, with No Relevance At All to his real life.  (Sorry, Lyra, but his/her is so awkward).

Now, some luscious links.  There’s a website devoted to Shirley Hughes’s Alfie. Shirley Hughes is a national treasure.

And in further homage to illustrators, here’s a website to get lost in – ‘Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time! (found via The Guardian linklog). Start clicking down the list of subjects, on the right of the page, and you could be gone for some time.

And here is a photograph that seems powerfully anti-illustration: book display in a Spanish bookshop with children’s books spine out, completely uniform, showing age-banding not cover illustration (or anything else).  What do you think?  After my first shock, and reading Charlie Butler‘s  measured comment, I can begin to see the appeal.

But no. It’s too reading-scheme for me.

Turning children into adults

You may have noticed that I’m a fan of Terry Pratchett – especially of his Nation.  And here’s a quotation from a recent interview that might help bring either option for the next assignment into focus:

‘I think that our job is to turn children into adults, not encourage children to remain children.’

“Only in children’s literature now is the story taken seriously”

In our current study Block, we are enjoying some classic 20th century children’s stories. Has children’s literature kept faith with readers’ pleasure in storytelling,  in a way that literary novels have failed to?

The  quotation in this post’s title is attributed to Philip Pullman. I’ve not found the original context but it’s quoted in a full-length interview with Pullman here. (Pullman also has many other things to say, including comments about his distate for fantasy yet how he found it useful for Northern Lights; and discussion of words and pictures which may relate to our upcoming studies in Block 5).

This is I think a swipe at  literary novels which adopt experimental approaches.  In contrast, there are ‘crossover’ children’s books like Pullman’s, not to mention Rowling’s, which have been hugely popular with adults.  So is story telling only truly alive  in  children’s books?

Today’s Guardian mentions some of the older ‘golden age’ stories for children we are encountering on our course.  They arose in the late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries and have been taken up enthusiastically by film makers:

This was the age that threw up Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Peter Pan, The Wind in the Willows, The Railway Children, the Jeeves and Wooster series and finally, in the 1920s, the queen of crime herself, Agatha Christie, and her Poirot and Miss Marple series.

Every one of these has been rendered cinematically for a mass audience on several occasions. We like stories, and especially when they are accompanied by appealing, strong and identifiable characters who can be interpreted by stars.

So are the storytellers  working for film and TV now? Hmm – critics of Avatar find its plotting sadly lacking.

But perhaps the tide has turned, and novels for adults are rediscovering story:

All of this is changing. The revolution is under way. The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, romance.

This idea that children’s literature keeps genres in safe keeping, can indeed be in the van of development, is one that is in our course. A free virtual coffee to anyone who can pin that down to an article in one of our Readers.

Most distinguished contribution to American literature for children, 2010

… is (according to the Newbery medal awarders,  children’s librarians in America) a fantasy story by Rebecca Stead, When you Reach Me (the link is to an enthusiastic review). The criteria for the award are set out here.

It is discussed in the Guardian, here, particularly in relation to Madeleine L’Engle’s fantasy story A Wrinkle in Time which won the Newbery in 1963.

How time changes things

Julia Eccleshare claims in today’s Guardian that time has robbed Swallows and Amazons of its universality.  I’m not sure that middle class children having a holiday sailing adventure  in the countryside, fortified by loving parents and a knowledge of Robinson Crusoe, was ever universal; but she makes a clear statement that is in line with many of our course ideas:

Attitudes to children, interactions between adults and children and especially wider social attitudes change swiftly, and books sometimes get left behind.

She also discusses realism and fantasy:

Fantasy has an additional attraction for authors as it allows them to write about children being unsupervised and taking risks. In real life, children are no longer able to do this, and authors are strongly warned away from showing children in potentially “risky” situations. Authors also need to avoid situations in which a child talks to a stranger. In other words, “real” stories ­reflect the very proscribed and watched state into which we have ­corralled children. To counter this, contemporary novels often begin with a child losing a mobile phone, freeing them from outside interference. In fantasy and ­historical fiction this isn’t an issue and the child can be bold, brave, cowardly or sensible. But, of course, there are good stories set in the real world.

I think her column – if ‘book doctor’ continues’ – may be a fund of sensible ideas.

She’s  certainly right that time changes things. Check out today’s lovely Guardian photo with one showing her earlier haircut