in which Katta gets a bit worked up about children's lit
We're having a meeting with the school librarians on Thursday, and as part of the meeting we're doing a Chambers/Langer type book conversation around Muren (The Wall) by Titti Knutsson.
I've read the book now, and... it bugs me. It really bugs me, and I don't know if I'm just being oversensitive.
The book is about an unnamed country (but where people have Swedish-sounding names like Gunnar and Karin) where there's a big wall. The Crocodiles live on one side of the wall, and the Rodents live on the other. (As far as I can tell, the names are just names and don't infer that these are anthropomorphic creatures.) The Crocodiles are well-off and have soldiers patrolling the wall; the Rodents are dirt-poor and fight through acts of terrorism. Both sides live in fear.
Sofia is a Rodent, whose father works as a stable groom for a Crocodile family where the other protagonist, Peter, is one of the children. Sofia discovers a cave leading to the other side of the wall, and after a bombing at Peter's home, one of the horses, Storm, runs away and ends up in the cave.
The story itself is fairly engaging, though it ends before it quite gets started. (The first of a series, surprise, surprise.) The writing's pretty good. It's the concept I can't abide.
It's well-meaning enough, I suppose. I assume the point is to take war zones in general, and the Palestine/Israel mess in particular (whether or not one agrees with the book's analysis), and make it understandable to "ordinary" children by simplifying the sides of the conflict into easy-to-understand terms (which also brings up the dehumanizing effect of propaganda), and by naming everyone "ordinary" things. To "bring it home."
Trouble is, in order for this effect to work, the implied reader needs to be an ethnically Swedish kid who has never been in a warzone. I've got kids who come from warzones, who in some cases are terrified of being sent back to them, and to whom Swedish-sounding names of characters aren't so much bringing the point home as taking it away from home.
And maybe this could be seen as just an unfortunate side-effect of targeting the story to an intended audience. The story works better for some readers than others, that's true for most stories, move along.
Except. The implication is that for the intended reader to get a feel for the situation, the country needs to be unspecific and the characters "like them", which means taking it away from the kids this kind of stuff actually happens to, because apparently they're not understandable enough.
If the story had been SFF, or a dystopian alternate universe, I might have felt differently - and indeed, it brings to mind Diana Wynne Jones's Power of Three. I don't think it's just my DWJ love that makes me think that book handles it better, by making us identify with what seems to be the people of a high fantasy village, only to find out later on that no, we're the Giants, we're the enemy. And while the children of the book are clearly British, the "we" includes all of humanity.
In contrast, Muren says, "This could be us", and in doing so assumes that it isn't already us.
This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/556752.html and has
comments there.
I've read the book now, and... it bugs me. It really bugs me, and I don't know if I'm just being oversensitive.
The book is about an unnamed country (but where people have Swedish-sounding names like Gunnar and Karin) where there's a big wall. The Crocodiles live on one side of the wall, and the Rodents live on the other. (As far as I can tell, the names are just names and don't infer that these are anthropomorphic creatures.) The Crocodiles are well-off and have soldiers patrolling the wall; the Rodents are dirt-poor and fight through acts of terrorism. Both sides live in fear.
Sofia is a Rodent, whose father works as a stable groom for a Crocodile family where the other protagonist, Peter, is one of the children. Sofia discovers a cave leading to the other side of the wall, and after a bombing at Peter's home, one of the horses, Storm, runs away and ends up in the cave.
The story itself is fairly engaging, though it ends before it quite gets started. (The first of a series, surprise, surprise.) The writing's pretty good. It's the concept I can't abide.
It's well-meaning enough, I suppose. I assume the point is to take war zones in general, and the Palestine/Israel mess in particular (whether or not one agrees with the book's analysis), and make it understandable to "ordinary" children by simplifying the sides of the conflict into easy-to-understand terms (which also brings up the dehumanizing effect of propaganda), and by naming everyone "ordinary" things. To "bring it home."
Trouble is, in order for this effect to work, the implied reader needs to be an ethnically Swedish kid who has never been in a warzone. I've got kids who come from warzones, who in some cases are terrified of being sent back to them, and to whom Swedish-sounding names of characters aren't so much bringing the point home as taking it away from home.
And maybe this could be seen as just an unfortunate side-effect of targeting the story to an intended audience. The story works better for some readers than others, that's true for most stories, move along.
Except. The implication is that for the intended reader to get a feel for the situation, the country needs to be unspecific and the characters "like them", which means taking it away from the kids this kind of stuff actually happens to, because apparently they're not understandable enough.
If the story had been SFF, or a dystopian alternate universe, I might have felt differently - and indeed, it brings to mind Diana Wynne Jones's Power of Three. I don't think it's just my DWJ love that makes me think that book handles it better, by making us identify with what seems to be the people of a high fantasy village, only to find out later on that no, we're the Giants, we're the enemy. And while the children of the book are clearly British, the "we" includes all of humanity.
In contrast, Muren says, "This could be us", and in doing so assumes that it isn't already us.
This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/556752.html and has
comments there.