Author Archives: l.frost

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Little Black Sambo Looks Familiar

I read through Little Black Sambo, then took a second pass through it… Something looked familiar. The illustrations of Sambo & his family are somewhat similar to the characters depicted in A Coons Alphabet. A quick Google search confirmed that the two were published around the same time in– Little Black Sambo was published in 1899. However, the authors are a continent apart. The forward in Little Black Sambo notes that this was written by a Brit traveling with two little girls in India.

 

When I saw the illustration below of Black Mumbo I got the impression I’d seen this before. By flipping through A Coons Alphabet I confirmed that there are some similarities. But, how can this be believable? One mom is from India and the other is American. They’re from very different cultures, and the Caucasion storytellers are also from distant parts of the world.

                               MISSING IMAGE

 

The characters in both stories also share qualities of facial structure– they don’t look quite human. Even in Sicar’s essay he notes that the original illustrations were “grotesque” (136). So, now I’m curious… How come these ideas of what a “negro” looks like are so similar? How is this impression in both British & American Caucasian minds so much alike?

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Boys & Bugs

Tom and the boys in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer covet bugs as the possibly the best play thing. Tom’s pinch bug reeks minor wreaks havoc during a Sunday sermon. He and his best friend Joe conceive of a game around a wood tick and a slate board. Tom calls upon a doodle bug in a boyish incantation for missing marbles. I thought of these three pretty quickly off the top of my head. Tom has many boyish treasures, but bugs do seem to offer him the most entertainment.

Tom uses bugs to pass the time when quiet reflection is expected during church and school. Tom is clearly not wired for quiet reflection, so a bug-friend offers him distraction that is engaging, easy to hide, and as an added bonus likely repelling to girls. Bugs are also a valuable commodity in Tom’s trades. The little wood tick is worth enough for him to trade his recently lost tooth. Twain offers the reader an authentic trait of young boys and they’re attraction to little creepy-crawly things.

 

 

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When to Be Big and When to Be Little

I loved to read as a kid, but I didn’t read Alice in Wonderland all the way several years later when I was well into adulthood. I made plenty of attempts as a child, but the book stressed me out. This most recent reading was my third time through the book. I’d say I got over my aversion.

When I was young, during the first attempt, I do remember Alice changing sizes really stressed me out. This happens well before I’d meet the Caterpillar, Cheshire Cat, or the Mad Hatter- all characters I’ve come to really enjoy. I never made it very far into the story because I got so uncomfortable with Alice’s fluctuating height.

Alice isn’t exactly comfortable during these shifts either. She often seems too big or too small to get where she’s going. It occurred to me that I didn’t like when I was  a kid because Alice couldn’t be the right size the situation. She was either too big or too small; she was either too much a child or too grown up. It’s hard for Alice to know what’s expected.  On this most recent reading I got the impression that, like Alice, I got treated like was supposed to be more “grown up” when I was little. I also got treated like was I was “too little” when I knew I was capable of more. As I got older, matured, I started to learn how to act my size.

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Abbott wants boys to learn their lessons.

While reading “In the Woods,” “The Truant,” and “The Truant Boy’s End” it became pretty apparent that Abbott wrote these to educate a young reader about right and wrong. He tackles moral concepts like the value of obeying your mother, sharing, honoring obligations, and the value of honesty. That’s quite a few heavy lessons for a story for 5 year old boys  and a story for 12 year old boys.

 

From being around kids both 5 and 12 I feel like “In the Woods” got it’s audience a little bit better than the stories of the Truant Boy. However, definitely they have the spin of what Abbott think 5 year old boy and 12 year old boys would like and what those boys should learn.

 

A quick Google search helped me find a Jacob Abbott site with a brief biography (http://www.jacobabbott.com/bio.html). Turns out he was a minister in addition to a children’s author. Totally get the “preachiness” of the Truant Boy stories now. This minister will show the young boy that a wayward choice will not only eat away at his conscience it will lead to a life of sin and ruin.

 

Here Abbott is using children’s literature as a means to teach morality lessons- pretty common thread throughout the genre. I’m not entirely convinced that Abbott was writing to engage his young reader by entertaining the reader. Rollo was much more entertaining for me.

 

As far as the Truant Boy goes I can’t see the 19th century boy having an epiphany of, “Oh! If I don’t follow the rules and go to school my life will end in ruin and I’ll break my mother’s heart!”

 

Maybe that’s the fault in many children’s stories, from then and now, that rings a little false. The writer is more concerned with the lesson or moral than drawing the reader into a good story.. On the flip side maybe that’s what makes the great children’s stories stand out- they’re great stories that happen to have life lessons.

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The Difference Between Child and Adult: The Same Story with Different Meanings

In the earlier reading Kiddie Lit Beverly Lyon Clark points out that, “immaturity does not seem like a permanent label.” She then illustrates that immaturity is not limited to the child, but also can include social awkwardness and ignorance.

Why then does children’s literature get a bad rap for being immature, beneath, unworthy of the “mature” reader’s effort?

In our class readings so far I keep coming back to this idea of state of the child. The intended audience, children, of children’s literature is supposed to be in this place of innocence of needing to learn how the world works. The adult reader has moved past the need for these stories. The reading selection How to Read Children’s Literature outlined the idea of the “implied reader.” If a children’s book like Goodnight Moon, that I’ve read at least a hundred times with kids I’ve babysat, is intended for children then why do I like it so much? I’m not, I don’t think, I’m the implied reader. Right?

Here’s what I’m stuck on and don’t really have an answer worked out just yet: What if children’s literature has more than one implied reader? And why can’t that be ok in the lexicon of Literature?

In the Jacqueline Rose essay she references the socially unacceptable sexual repression of both JM Barrie and Lewis Carroll and discusses what both writers are likely alluding to.

My first reaction to her pointing this out is, “but I love these stories! Not cool!” I felt like that was too dark, wrong connection to make of a story that I read innocently as a child and with nostalgia as an adult.

I started thinking, after getting over the lured overtones that I got hung up on, what if it’s sexual discovery that’s this invisible line between child and adult? I mean the Bible points out how innocent and good life was for Adam & Eve. Sexual discovery is still that line in the sand between before and after; child and adult. Ok, maybe not the entire line; too Freudian for my taste. But the discovery of how to live in the community and how to navigate more complex gray areas is the mark of one who is no longer a child.

This idea of discovering maturity might allow us to use stories to consider, to explore, the impact this discovery when it’s made at the right time, too soon, or too late. (Anyone read Confederacy of Dunces? Ignatius is a guy that may have been a little late to adulthood based on this whole discovery idea.)

When considering children’s literature it’s starting to look to me like the adult writer, who catering to an implied child reader, is trying to lead that child in degrees to discover the world. But it turns out the adult reader inadvertently becomes the implied reader (in the case of Peter Pan we’d have to “strike that and reverse it”). There’s looking back to a life before discovery a deeper understanding of what maturity brings and what is lost when maturity is gained.