Creative and imaginative plot - check.
Absent or ill parent or parents - check.
Guardian with almost omnipotent power - check.
Child or children with little regard for rules, safety or society - check.
From Treasure Island to Harry Potter this basic structure has driven a huge proportion of our most loved children’s books. It has melted into every genre and has become the stand out literary device, especially in books that are targeted at Key Stage 2 and above.
It’s easy to see why, Blyton’s Famous Five masterpieces for example were essentially the same story over and over. By changing the setting, the villain and the mystery, Blyton could retain the same independence of her central characters. Parents have sent them out the house, parents are away working etc. Fast forward half a century and as the world has got smaller and children are more aware of threats or at least perceived threats, this has shifted to deceased parents, jailed parents or even parents with terminal or critical illnesses.
Let me be clear, this is not a criticism of such writing. I have championed many of the books that do this and will continue to. Rather this is a recognition of how hard it is to create an original idea in a much saturated structure. So why the appeal?
Magical Thinking is a psychological theory in which a person believes that their own thoughts, feelings, wishes or desires can influence the external world. This is partly why I believe this absent parent, knowledgable guardian structure works so well. Magical Thinking is particularly prevalent in children, the idea that there small decisions can have a huge impact on a myriad of events. Their superstitions can impact their world, think not letting your foot dangle over the bed in case the monster grabs it. However in much of the literature they read this is the case (not the monster, the mind set).
Now it is true that Harry Potter (apologies for the HP example but 99% of people know it) doesn’t just rely on his ‘Magical Mind’ - no pun intended. Rather he actively goes out and engages with indeed alters his environment. He creates the changes, he makes the waves. However this is not the case for our children. Many of our children engage in pretend play. This allows them to take on the roles of the characters they read about and attribute their own actions to perceived results. Admittedly this fades as children get older and indeed there is a sphere of psychology that aligns the Magical Thinking in adults with mental illness.
However, there is still the internalising of what you would do, how you would react in a characters position.
Undoubtedly the draw of books structured in this way - which when you think about it, is many of them - is the freedom the child is granted. Worth noting that applications to boarding schools rocketed after the release of Potter. Freedom that provides the reader with escapism from their own perhaps perceived tyrannical parents. Yet they don’t need to be fully free they still want security, step in the all knowing guardian. Whether that is Zeus in Who Let the Gods Out? Harriet Culpepper in Brightstorm, the stag in The Last Wild or indeed the treadmill of characters in Harry Potter that seek to protect him until they each shuffle off and he is left alone; it is worth noting however he is 17 and essentially an adult at this point. Indeed a character like Magpie from Sky Chasers whilst not appearing to have a guardian clearly does, when push comes to shove she needs the Montgolfier brothers to get her out of a tight spot she simply wouldn’t have been able to without them, they feed her, dress her and protect her. But also give her the freedom to essentially do what she wants. A child’s dream no?
Furthermore it is naturally to be expected that children want to read about children. Adults tend to read about adults. However if there was a clear and coherent trend in adult literature focussed on, abandoned, deceased, ill or dead children, we would perhaps find it a little unnerving.
So what does that mean for us educators?
Well firstly it can be a challenge. I looked at my bookshelf searching for something to give a child with severe attachment disorder that struggles to separate emotions, it was hard. I know this is an extreme case but I’m regularly contacted by tweeters who need books that don’t have a dead, absent or ill parent. These are a much harder find than you would think. We must know our books well, better than ever, I would argue. We must be conscious of the fact that there is every chance a 9 year old has never come into contact with death. The book you hand them may be the first time the pain and raw absence is portrayed in a way they can imagine. That is a responsibility if we think about that for amount, we as educators may be the person to introduce a child to the idea of death. If we want our children to be comfortable to discuss their emotions, if we are going to drive mental health to the forefront then we must acknowledge that many of our books may make for hard reading for our children. We must be prepared to have those discussions and teach our children that it’s ok to feel for characters in a book, to be immersed but to also recognise that if reading something makes them uncomfortable it’s ok to walk away from it, come back to it later or indeed to not.
A child is still in the throws of Magical Thinking and it is much harder for them to see the lines between reality and fiction than it is for adults.
I salute authors and their wonderful books. I am not criticising here or negating the talent that it takes to write such material. I just wonder if there’s another or an additional way and what the current trends mean for the teachers in our classrooms and parents in our homes.
