Are we getting there?

This blog posting is my 50th. We’re now half way through the course. I wonder if I’ll make it to 100?

I’m still enjoying the blogging. I often wonder what I’ll find to write about but there’s something about just getting started on a posting, however randomly, that piques my interest and leads me on.   To misquote any number of writers (EM Forster? Saul Bellow?)  ‘I don’t know what I think till I see what I say.’

As the first option for the next assignment involves thinking about ‘growing up’, I started to wonder how this Block’s child protagonists are shaping up.  Here are a few quotations from The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature which might yield some ideas.

Swallows and Amazons: Peter Hunt comments

There is much practical advice and little emotional life, but the characters do grow and mature across the series

Now there’s a chance to disagree with Peter Hunt – ‘little emotional life’?

Tom’s Midnight Garden:   Maria Nikolajeva comments

The novel explores the tension between Tom’s desire to stay forever in the childhood paradise of the garden and his acknowledgment of the necessity to grow up and return to real life.

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry:  Nagueyalti Warren comments:

Cassie’s movement from innocence to awareness to bitterness and disillusionment enables readers to experience vicariously these feelings

And how are you getting on? Are you feeling more like Cassie or Tom?  Are you a tad bitter about the critical approach  and feel it’s destroying your pleasure in children’s literature (as you may have worried at the start of the course),  or are you enjoying the childhood aspect yet now ready to view it all with a more knowing perspective?

Choose your family

Here’s a thought-experiment about ideas of childhood and growing up. If you found yourself wandering lost among children’s literature, orphaned and alone, which literary family would you choose?

Do we all want to be Weasleys? Freedom to be yourself, unconditional love, excitement and fun, with the prospect of growing up into a responsible adult with decent values.

I don’t want to stay with Peter Pan – there’s no growth (though I kind of like the idea of no weight…)  Wendy’s childhood is playful but she has to cope with a lot of nonsense from John about boys being better. I really don’t want to camp out with the Swallows or the Amazons – my imagination wouldn’t take me past the discomforts (yes, I’m a duffer); couldn’t abide Tom and his brother Peter as siblings or their stifling ordinariness (too much like my own); Cassie’s family have it tough and  Mama and Papa dole out punishment too.  Lyra’s guardians allow her an enchanting freedom but she doesn’t seem to be much cared for…