Random Readings 22

I have a much younger friend, Sally, who when her children were just beginning to read became annoyed because so many of the books written for them were about animals: it was a mouse, not a child, which disobeyed its mother and got into trouble, a rabbit who raided the kitchen garden, an elephant who became a  king. Why, she asked, was she expected to feed her children on this pap of fantasy instead of on stories about her real life? The answer, it seems to me, is that children respond to animal protagonists because when very small what they need is not to discover and recognize 'real life', but to discover and recognize their own feelings. Take a pair of well-known animal characters, Piglet and Tigger, in The House at Pooh Corner. Piglet is an anxious, timid little person, capable of being brave if he absolutely has to be, but only at great cost to himself, and Tigger is so exuberantly bouncy that he can be a nuisance. Both of them express things which a child discovers and recognizes with pleasure because they exist within himself. If those characteristics were expressed on the page by a child, they would belong to that child and would call for the use of the kind of critical faculty one employs vis-a-vis another person. Expressed by a 'made up' animal (I have yet to meet a child so simple-minded that it doesn't know perfectly well that animals don't talk in human language), they slip past the critical faculty into the undergrowth of feelings which need so urgently to be sorted out and understood.

- from Somewhere Towards The End, by Diana Athill

Comments

[Beth]

Yes! And Rupert and Peter Cottontail and even Curious George...
(This book was recommended by another blogger - it's on my Wish List.)

[Scriptor Senex]

What an interesting quote. I had never thought about the predominance of animal stories before. I wonder if there is a carry over into adult life that makes books life Watership Down so successful?

[Mindy Withrow]

Wonderful selection! I recently added Athill's book to my TBR list and was delighted to see you quoting it. Thanks for the preview.

[patricia]

It's a beautiful, honest book. I'm truly enjoying her perspective on life. And I really like her clean, direct style of writing. Have you read 'Stet'. Another gem. I think I'll read it again after this...

[susan]

I love this Patricia, thanks.

[jean]

Have you come across a book called "Journey to Ithaca" (Anita Desai)? I am about half way through it, and enjoying it.