June 15, 2014


There are been some recent discussion--via some Facebook sites, as well as among my friends and librarian friends--about the lack of diversity in books, particularly YA novels. Some good sources about the issue are Amy Poehler's Smart Girls Facebook site and Elizabeth Kennedy's posts about children's literature on about.com.


During my year-long project the issue of diversity was evident all along the way, pretty much any period of time that the book was written. And I probably don't need to say that minorities and ethnic groups were seldom the main character of a novel, seldom more than a novelty character, and too often the target of slurs. Times change. But is ignoring our diversity just another form of bigotry?


On Facebook I recently pointed out some books that do feature characters, main and supporting, of different ethnic groups and vowed that we should all point them out when we do come across good examples. Counting by 7's by Holly Goldberg Sloan features a blended family formed out of an emergency and together they redefine what "family" can be. (This book is a 2014-15 Texas Bluebonnet book so it should get a lot of young readers' attention.) I recently downloaded a YA novel I'd seen on a library shelf (costs but not much and sometimes convenience outweighs "free"): To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han. The three daughters in this book have a Korean mother. An interesting point was brought out in this book when Lara Jean, the main character, and her younger sister were choosing Halloween costumes. As Lara Jean says, anything she wears elicits the question, "What are you? A manga character?" So she chooses to dress as Cho Chang, from Harry Potter. Hmmm, Harry Potter books? Not a great deal of diversity there either.


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I do have some literature triumphs in my life, one being reading Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in its entirety in Middle English. Yes, you can get editions that have the old and new language side by side but my professor strongly advised us against doing that. She said to just start reading, maybe even aloud, and soon it would make sense. I felt I needed to apply that same diligence to reading the Southern black dialect in Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit. I cannot imagine tackling this as a youngster and making any sense out of it. But somewhere along the line I must’ve become acquainted with more than a Disney version of Brer Rabbit for it is familiar. And I did enjoy this.

IT’S BEEN SIX MONTHS SINCE I BEGAN THIS PROJECT AND IT’S TURNED OUT TO BE EVEN MORE REWARDING THAN I’D HOPED IT WOULD BE. I’VE READ SOME BOOKS THAT I’M SO GRATIFIED TO HAVE FINALLY READ. I THINK I’VE FOUND BOOKS TO PUSH MY GRANDCHILDREN TOWARD AS THEY GET OLDER. I’VE HAD SOME GREAT CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT SOME OF THESE BOOKS ON THE LIST. I’VE EVEN CHECKED OUT MORE BOOKS FROM THE LIBRARY WHICH I’VE LEARNED HELPS THEIR FUNDING WHICH IS BASED ON CIRCULATION! BUT, ASIDE FROM THE SIMPLE PLEASURE OF READING THE BOOKS, I THINK THE BEST PART HAS BEEN DOING A LITTLE RESEARCH ABOUT SOME OF THE BOOKS AND THEIR AUTHORS. I’M NOT TALKING THESIS HERE, JUST A READ-THROUGH OF WIKIPEDIA OR SOMESUCH. AS A LITTLE GIRL I JUST CRAVED THE STORIES, BUT WHAT FUN IT HAS BEEN TO LEARN THE “STORY BEHIND THE STORY,” SO TO SPEAK. FOR INSTANCE, I’VE LEARNED THAT THE INFLUENCE OF JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS AND UNCLE REMUS WAS WIDE-RANGED. BEATRIX POTTER, FOR ONE, BORROWED LANGUAGE SUCH AS “COTTONTAIL” AND “PUDDLE-DUCK.” MARK TWAIN WAS A FAN; THE DIALECT AND STORIES INFLUENCED THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. A.A. MILNE WAS ANOTHER AUTHOR WHO BORROWED DIALECT, PLOT, AND STRUCTURE FROM HARRIS. HE EVEN INFLUENCED WILLIAM FAULKNER!

I LOOK FORWARD TO MORE BOOKS AND FURTHER TRIVIA TO ENRICH THEM OVER THE NEXT SIX MONTHS.

Believe it or not, often during my lifetime I’ve been called a Pollyanna. I’ve always taken it as a compliment (whether that was the intent or not), and having just finished Pollyanna I now want to make it my daily goal to be a Pollyanna. It’s almost a shame that I didn’t read this book earlier (sometimes I wonder if I’ve read some of these but just have no clear recollection of them) because it would’ve become a companion and I’m sure I would’ve read it over and over. I LOVED this book! In fact, I’m GLAD I read it!

Found two little books hidden away on a shelf: The Little Sailboat by Lois Lenski and The House That Jack Built, a Mother Goose rhyme illustrated by J.P. Miller and another Little Golden Books Classic reissue. Lois Lenski books always have me smiling as I’m reading them. I wonder if I did when I was a little girl reading them the first time. Little Tinker the dog is so adorable! I was struck by the vocabulary a young reader could acquire from this little book. That’s a good thing, always. Jack is a fun rhyme to read aloud and these illustrations are pretty entertaining.

Unfortunately I chose to read A Little Princess shortly after reading Pollyanna. Both have a very similar plot—motherless girl loses her father and handles life’s difficulties with her attitude. Or mind games, so to speak. If someone had asked me if I’d read A Little Princess, I would’ve said that I didn’t think so. While details didn’t come streaming back into my head, I’m reasonably sure that I did read it when I was little. Which then begs the question of why I didn’t read A Secret Garden back then.  And I know I did not  read that one until starting this project.

It has been decades since I’ve heard anyone use the term “little Lord Fauntleroy”—another remembered favorite of my grandmother’s—but until reading the actual novel I didn’t realize that I’ve had the wrong perception of a “little Lord Fauntleroy” for most of my life. I thought it meant a sissified, pampered, fancily dressed, imperious little man. The title character, Cedric Errol who becomes Lord Fauntleroy, is, yes, a long, golden-curled boy in velvet suits and often big hats, but he is a loving and lovable, charitable, caring child. And the good he does is heartwarming. It’s also uncanny how similar Little Lord Fauntleroy is to Pollyanna and A Little Princess (by the same author, Frances Hodgson Burnett)—here a fatherless boy “loses” his mother (they’re not allowed to live together for a short period of time) and his innocent personality wins over everyone and gives him a wonderful life when it could have been a harsh experience with his brash grandfather. I could hardly put this one down I enjoyed it so much.

Thank you, Elizabeth! She bought The Rooster Crows at a book sale benefiting the Adult Reading Center of Pearland, a total win-win proposition in my book. The Rooster Crows is subtitled A Book of American Rhymes and Jingles, and it is chock full of things I learned by heart growing up but I suspect they’re no longer part of the modern curriculum. Too bad. I need to incorporate more of these in my times with my grandchildren.

Pollyanna, A Little Princess, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and now Anne of Green Gables. This project has been worthwhile if only because I’ve read these four books. Thoroughly enjoyed them, got a lot out of them, was affected by each of them. And now for a little op-ed:

Sometimes I do feel I’m one of those little ol’ ladies who pines for the good old days. Even if I know they weren’t all that good. But growing up in the mid-20th century was a lot more pleasant than growing up in the early years of that century, when these books were written. I prefer indoor plumbing and cook stoves, dishwashers and clothes washers and dryers, automobiles, televisions, record players, telephones—you get the idea. Now, into the second decade of the 21st century, it saddens me to see the malcontents all around. Malcontents seem to come in two varieties: those who don’t have “it” and those who have “it” and don’t appreciate it or want more. Furthermore they all feel they are entitled to “it.” Bicycles are now ten (or more) speeds, automobiles are now Hummers, telephones are now iPhones, televisions are now high definition and color and huge and ubiquitous, record players are now iPods, indoor plumbing is now jetted spa tubs, cook stoves are now microwaves and convection ovens and double ovens, and the excess goes on and on. No, I don’t want to give up some of these inventions that I love dearly but I don’t obsess over things I do not have and I certainly don’t feel that I deserve to have everything available out there. I pray that my grandchildren don’t grow up to be the type that cannot appreciate having something as opposed to demanding the best, designer, Brand Name whatever. There’s a time for video games—which I stink at but they fascinate me anyway—but there’s a time for Scrabble and Yahtzee and Solitaire. There’s a time for a read-to-me NOOK book (again, one of the reasons I began this project) and a time for a lap and a cuddle and a giggle or seven and a book to maybe be read 12 times in a row. There’s a time for fast food and a time for breakfast for dinner at the family dinner table. I didn’t lead a life like Pollyanna or Anne Shirley, my children didn’t, my grandchildren don’t. Life was sterner when those books were written. Orphans and homes for them were commonplace. There were classes of people, de facto as in Little Lord Fauntleroy or not. There was WORK to get through each day. Each of these children suffered and led lives that were not cushy by any means. Yet they were happy and they triumphed. Why does the populace today want to have what everyone else has without working for it, and why does the populace drag down every person or institution that has seemingly made it and revels in their demise? Somewhere along the line we’ve lost our sense of self—self-acceptance, self-determination, self-reliance, self-respect. A line from Anne of Green Gables hit me deeply: That is one consolation when you are poor—there are so many more things you can imagine about. Imagining about how to earn a pair of $200 sneakers and imagining your $50 sneakers are as cool as those $200 ones rather than beating someone to a bloody pulp in order to steal a pair of $200 sneakers seems to be such a better, more civilized, kinder way to live. Not having a pair of Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses is not a tragedy. Not being able to see is a tragedy. Not having designer sunglasses is a disappointment. Make life’s disappointments matter less by playing the “Glad Game” or caring about other people worse off than yourself or imagining good things around you or seeing the real beauty of the world and the people around you. They’re all free.

 

I’d love to hear the critiques of young readers today of these books. Does any class expect them to even read such “out of date” novels?