Really Important Things About Children's Literature

[labellementeuse]

1. I finally read Kate de Goldi's new book The 10 PM Question. It is absolutely fantastic. Drop what you are reading and read it, it'll only take a few hours. I cried, I laughed, I read til 3 am in the morning to finish it. (Totally worth it.)

2. I'm working on the next bit of my research essay and I want to make some baseless assertions about what has happened to the holiday adventure genre since the 1960s. My assertions are that:
The conceit and the characters have basically split up.

The conceit - "children on their own without adults" - has finally acknowledged itself as fantasy and moved into actual fantasy instead of the faux realism (or in Ransome's case, the fetishised realism. This means that the children are no longer practical characters. Instead they're geeks or average children.

You can actually see a chronological progression in this, starting with Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Bringsamen and Susan Cooper's Over Sea, Under Stone, which feature Typical British Kids On Holiday Sucked Into Fantasy Adventures. Here Britain, instead of familiar, becomes alien. Modern novels are much more dramatic with things like Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom and N.M. Browne's Warriors of Alavna, which feature Typical British Kids Sucked Into Actual Fantasy Worlds.

The exception to this fantasy trend is hyper-realism (which I always feel is its own kind of fantasy), as in Gary Paulsen's wildly-popular-when-I-was-11 Hatchet survival novels. Jean Craighead George's 1959 My Side of the Mountain, a lovely wee book, also is part of this tradition. (Obviously Browne's work in particular owes a lot to this too.)

Meanwhile, the practical Johns and Susans and Nancies aren't in these books, which are all fish out of water narratives starring Arthur Penhaligons or Jane, Simon, and Barneys. Instead they end up in realistic or mostly-realistic Problem Novels. In these novels they rarely do the performative gender role/parent thing, although sometimes they take care of younger siblings.

People who read a lot of YA and children's literature: do you think this hangs together? Got any more examples? Counterexamples?

Comments

[clockworkflight.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure Five Children & It is a counter example - (as far as I can remember) whilst the children do have fantasy adventures, they still remain in their own world, which is probably more key than the genre or presence of magic.

The modern example which springs to mind is China Mieville's Un Lun Dun, where two (but mostly one) children from modern day London get sucked into a alternative version of the city. Possibly the particular way this backs up your point (though this be pushing it a bit) is that things which have been forgotten in actual!London, from discarded furniture through to bus conductors, find their way through - so they're not just in a fantasy world, but a world which includes remnants of a different time.

Oooh, also in His Dark Materials (I think The Subtle Knife, but long time since I've read them) you have an interesting variant - Will is initially the practical carer and protector, not of younger children but of his mother, and then escapes to a fantasy world.

[clockworkflight.livejournal.com]

Oh bugger, just actually read your post - I don't think those qualify on the holiday aspect.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Yes. I mean Ransome and Blyton come after Nesbit but they don't really borrow from her - they're nascent realism for children, but the trouble with that is that they're not very realistic, which is partly why they're not really in vogue any longer. I mean I think... OK, I just wrote about 300 not very coherent words and deleted them all. Your thoughts are useful! Mine are nuts. :P Mieville and Pullman are difficult texts for me because they don't really, um, agree with what I'm talking about (and in fact I haven't yet read Un Lun Dun, although I will when I get a chance!)

[clockworkflight.livejournal.com]

*nods*. I was just picking up on themes and running with them rather than making any kind of coherent argument. I'm having study deprivation right now...