The Dark Pasts (and Futures) of Children's Writers, Expanded

The best scene in The Secret Garden is when Mary, infuriated by Colin's tantrum, accuses him of self-martyrdom. Colin, who is truly frightened by the idea of being a hunchback, claims that he "felt a lump." Mary insists on seeing his back and then states, emphatically, "There's not a single lump there! There's not a lump as big as a pin! If you ever say there is again, I shall laugh!"

The narrator continues:

No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken childish words had on him...now that an angry unsympathetic little girl insisted obstinately that he was not as ill as he thought he was he actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth.

In this passage, Frances Hodgson Burnett reveals why she deserves her place in the echelon of children's writers. Like E. Nesbit, Burnett knew, or remembered, the quality of child fear—quite different from adult fear--the dull terror that children can live with without fully comprehending why and don't have rationals or experience to combat.

It is this quality that keeps Burnett (more than Nesbit) from descending into the maudlin. In The Little Princess, the true horror of Sarah's loss is captured in her nearly catatonic behavior. In another of Burnett's novels, Little Lord Fauntleroy never experiences anything as horrific but the author does a fine job illustrating his homesickness:

Perhaps he was a trifle tired, as his bed-time was nearing, and perhaps after the excitement of the last few days it was natural he should be tired, so perhaps, too, the feeling of weariness brought to him a vague sense of loneliness in the remembrance that to-night he was not to sleep at home...and the more he thought of [his mother] the less was he inclined to talk, and by the time the dinner was at an end the Earl saw that there was a faint shadow on his face.

It is this ability to capture childhood unhappiness that gives good writers for children such power. It isn't the same as going back and creating a childhood memory. Rather, Burnett and Nesbit had remarkably clear recollections of the fear, terror and uncertainty that children carry with them. (Of the two, Nesbit is somewhat more detached.)

There's a difference between remembering one's childhood emotions and being so haunted by one's childhood that one's entire life becomes an attempt at exorcism. Elizabeth Enright, E.M. Boston, Z. Snyder, Barbara Robinson, J. Spinelli, Edward Eager and Laura Ingalls Wilder belong to the first group. Dahl and Barrie seem to belong to the latter, and I can't say that I have ever cared for their books. (There are, additionally, writers who simply "get" kids: R.L. Stine belongs to the last category.) 

The overall point is that through children's literature, good children's literature, runs a dark thread, a thread that Lemony Snicket exploits quite mischievously. It cannot, however, be recreated as a lesson or set of rules. That is, it isn't about idealizing OR bemoaning OR improving childhood. It's more Calvin & Hobbs than that. 

The dark side of children's literature is often dismissed by people who think that all children's literature is about forming young minds (homilies) and/or who equate subject matter with quality. Which is just foolish. Harry Potter may be as pointless as Harold Bloom contests but it isn't any worse than The Da Vinci Code. In fact, in many ways, it is far superior.

The problem is the same problem that stalks the Academy Awards people every year: how do you honor comedy which, on the surface, just doesn't seem as earth-shattering and profound and deep and all that as, say, American Beauty?

First, I contest, one should acknowledge that comedy is incredibly difficult to make. It's like Olympic gymnastics: sure, it looks easy, but you go try it. Slight tangent: in high school, I had to do a bit of abstract art with oils. I failed miserably. It basically ended up a dirty mess of paint on a board. And not an on-purpose dirty mess of paint. Just dirty. I only passed because the final project was painting from a still life, and I can do still life! So, don't tell me your 3-year old could paint a Pollock. Cause she can't. 

Second, profundity is not only easier than comedy but there's profundity and then there's profundity. Crime & Punishment is profound. Not much else is really. Maybe Moby Dick. There you go. There's your standard. A lot of books come off as profound because people die and have affairs and question their purpose in life and have those kind of endings where people sit around and think about why they have changed (not what they are going to do with the change). I HATE those endings. I think they are lousy. (One reason I believe mysteries are so popular is because the ending IS an ending: bad guy dies or gets arrested or, occasionally, gets let go, but something happens.) 

And for those of you who think art is supposed to imitate life and people do sit around contemplating their navels, fiction is never the same as real life. It can't be. There's no reason it should be. 

Now, there are kids who react well to this kind of profundity, who are drawn to the deaths and divorces and dreary plots of young adult literature. Even I loved The Crucible as a teen--and Sidney Carlton. Kids who retain these likes go on to select the same kinds of things from the adult section. 

I am not trying to argue that such pseudo-profundity doesn't exist in children's literature; I am arguing that lack of profundity doesn't translate into a lack of profoundly good writing. If you accept my earlier claim, that most things aren't really profound anyway, the criteria of what makes something worthwhile to read has to undergo re-evaluation. I personally like the evaluation, It's worthwhile if it's well-written and does what it set out to do. And it's well-written if it keeps your interest (isn't dull), reads smoothly (if it doesn't read smoothly, it reads not-smoothly on purpose), tells a story and isn't stupid.

I don't think my criteria will get me hired on at any universities, but it's a useful standard against which most things can be compared. And a great deal of children's literature compares against it very well indeed.