What do we want from children's literature?

Recently, courtesy of my search for suitable and stimulating reading material for my son and a great blog/conversation on Little House on the Prairie by DarwinCatholic, I have been considering and reconsidering the topic of children's literature. I say "reconsidering" because children's lit has long been an interest of mine. It is the one and only subject on which I am published--well, that and ecocriticism, but it's the same article.

It is inevitable that children's literature should try to teach. After all, it is difficult to find work of literature in which the author (who after all, does not exist in poststructuralist literary criticism) does not seem to have something that she or he is communicating to the audience. Even if the work seems to be "just a story" (whatever that means), there is some "exigence" (rhetorical term I taught to my students this past week meaning some reason that the writer wrote that story and not something else).

Having said this, in spite of my lifelong love of the Chronicles of Narnia that began when I was 10 and culminated in my M.A. thesis (and the above-mentioned article), I, like Neil Gaiman, who expressed the sentiment at the Mythcon 35 conference, which I attended in 2004, felt utterly betrayed in high school when I realized the religious subtext. Yes, I am one of the three or so readers who did not catch on to this on the first, second, third or fourth read. I can't say when I caught on, but I think it was the fuzzy white lamb who turns to Aslan at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader that did it for me. In my defense, I did not read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (the most Christological) as often as the others because I found the story to be less interesting than many of the other books, and did not acquire a copy of The Magician's Nephew, with the Creation story, until after I had read the rest twice, as the (Baptist school!) library where I first encountered the Chronicles had lost their copy. When I did read MN, I was taken by the symmetry of the series--the discovery of who "the Professor" of LWW really was--rather than by the Creationism.

I lost interest in Harry Potter when it became clear that book 3 was, in the first three chapters, more concerned with establishing its anti-capital- and corporal-punishment slant (not to mention the house-elf slavery sub-plot) than its main storyline, at least initially.

Yet, I find myself concerned, while reading The City of Ember, that the author's only mention of religion is mockery--brief mockery, and mockery of a kind of extreme Evangelicalism, but mockery nonetheless. I find myself thinking that there is enough of this kind of mockery to be found in everyday life, and asking whether in need intrude upon the most compelling early adolescent book I have encountered in many a year.

I have not made it a habit of studying new releases in children's literature. I have been busy studying--or avoiding studying--early 20th century Brit Lit (the whole "life's work" thing). But since my son is going to a school with a library this year and a screwy reading program that awards "points" for reading, and since he is in the "tweens" as far as book-level and book-content, I have been paying more attention. I have no interest in the more or less "realistic" pre-teen fiction. I didn't even read it when my friends were busy with The Babysitter's Club series. Since HarryPottermania, the standard formula for children's fantasy goes something like this:

1. Young person has difficult family/school situation.
2. Young person discovers something extroardinary about him or herself, some extroardinary creature, or an otherworldly realm.
3. Young person is faced with a crisis that pertains directly to the ethereal plot device mentioned in #2.
4. Having discovered the fantasy element, young person puts it to good use, growing and learning about him- or herself in the process, resolving the issue satisfactorily, usually heroically.
5. Young person's life returns to normal, and s/he is able to resolve difficult real-life issues due to the intervention of the deus ex machina.

It's amazing how many variations there are on this now. The formula is effective, if done well (though Tolkien thought the fantasy lessened by the entering-the-secondary-world-through-our-world motif). But to do it well in the wake of the acknowledged masters is difficult. And I hate to say it, but dragons are getting old.

School stories are trite. Fantasies are becoming poorly- and overly done. I don't approve of books that preach, unless one knows what is being preached to one. And yet cheap jabs at religion are objectionable, too. The classics are a bit above his reading level, though Treasure Island is on the agenda. I will be working on getting him to read the Little House Books, because they have a rare quality about them--honesty. And perhaps that is what I am seeking, really. Even C. S. Lewis, I came to realize, is not quite genuine in his fiction. He comes close, but he doesn't quite believe in his characters or his world. He does have fun with it, though, and there's something to be said for that! If Little House on the Prairie is teaching anything, it is doing so because the ideas communicated were so well-ingrained in the author as to be second nature--they couldn't not be there. Religion is not self-conscious; it is not intrusive; it is just a way of life. And isn't that how it should be, really?

I haven't yet decided what makes The City of Ember so compelling, but it is. I'm not entirely sure what it's trying to communicate. There is self-reliance, with the realization that one does need help sometimes. The children are mature, but still act like children. The fantasy world is fantastic, but has an air of reality. Society is dark and has dystopic elements, but it is not a dystopia. It's even got that healthy fatalism that is so entirely missing from entertainment media these days. (The same healthy fatalism inherent in Return of the King or the poems of W. H. Auden, though non-Christian existentialist fatalism--a fatalism makes it unsuitable for my son, unfortunately.) It would be perfect (so far) if not for the "Believers."