1.
One of my favorite books to read Rainer these days is Richard Scarry’s Best Stories Ever. The book’s copyright is 1971, passed down from my grandmother’s library to my mother’s to me to my son.
The book wears its age terribly. It’s filthy and appears to have been partially eaten. But for all the grime smeared from cover to cover, the stories show their age the worst. I never fail to be mildly (delightfully!) shocked reading from these Best Stories Ever. Either a “terrible” moose is being shot, a wife being (basically) purchased from the nearest Trading Post (and taken directly to the kitchen where she dons a maternal apron and a wooden spoon) or a wicked wolf is being sliced open with scissors in order to free the small goat children he’d just evilly consumed.
If you are not familiar with contemporary kid lit, you may wonder why I am shocked. There is Grimm, after all, and Aesop, to boot. Wily woodsman hack open wolves all the time (Yay! Gramma’s okay!) Witches get shoved into ovens where they burn alive and, if you’re really young, cradles fall form trees where baby’s plummet to their ambiguous dooms.
Those stories were then, but they’ve been pushed aside for a new angle: a brighter angle, a more cheerful, annoyingly optimistic angle. Yes, all that death, all that morbidity has been resigned to cobwebbed bookshelves. The stories I find now on the library shelves (where Henry Rainer and I go once a week) are nothing but fluffy, rainbow, twinkly sunshine.
2.
For example, this new twist on Humpty Dumpty.
The old egg takes his usual fall. He cracks, the iambic meter would be completely thrown off without that infamous last line.
But where the king’s men fail, your amazing, stupendous, apparently omnipotent child can take over—
If you kid wishes for it to happen, if your kid closes her eyes and wishes for the unfortunate situation to improve, hurray(!) it will! Yay!
Compare that to this ending in Richard Scarry’s Best Stories Ever.
Remember these guys? Well, they don’t fare as well as our dear Humpty Dumpty.
With some cute and cuddly todo, the fox plays with his food before eating it.
Below, the fox (and I quote) “Walked with Ducky Lucky. The fox ate Ducky Lucky.”
—- And ain’t no wishin’ gonna bring that dead duck back.
Even Chicken Little, that cute dress wearing rumor mongerer gets hers.
The story ends with the happy (and very full) fox sprawled in the grass with a thistle between his contented (bloodied?) jaws.
3.
So. On one hand, you’ve got this dark, animalistic “reality”, the food chain humanised (which walks a thin line between nature and just straight up murder) Then, on the other hand you have saccharine sweet land where “a cat stretches, fish swim, and stars shine just for you.” (Linenthal, Peter. Look Look. 1998.)
(I’ll hate to break it to him, but I will. The stars shine for reasons other than for his own amusement and celebration. Furthermore, they shine down on other people, too–both the “good” and “bad” alike.)
4.
It’s an interesting progression from the harsh tales of old to the too soft tales of now–especially when viewed in the context of other “progressions.”
Years ago, I read an article in Times magazine on the contemporary adult young adult–the preteen of today–having sex in junior high, watching wars, explosions and other various violences in movies and on video games. These hyper violent and hyper dark “realities” are just as fake as the happy ever after spin.
As a kid, I used to be amazed that the adults "of old" were entertained by certain shows.
Odd, the converse relationship between older people’s entertainment and that of children. As “adult” entertainment (YA entertainment, too) runs darker, children stories have become more and more watered down–sweeter, faker.
What gives?
5.
I say, bring on the black magic of witches in forests, bring on the sly fox who gobbles up chickens. I’d choose them any day over the manufactured gun volleys of Halo 3. I’d prefer them to the misleading la la land where Humpty Dumpty puts on a band aid and skips off into a beautiful sunset.
Because, let’s face it, sometimes things fall and break and stay that way.
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