Reflections of a Blogger on Blogging

The author at her "day" job

I'm Joy Dickerson and I'm a kid's lit blogger. I've been a kid-lit junky my whole life and I love it. No apologies. Blogging about kid's lit gives it shape and form for me and strengthens the bond. I appreciate my readers.


Children's literature is an all-or-nothing type of love. I love children's literature and enjoy sampling broadly in the various genres. But if you don't like children's literature, POOF!, it doesn't exist for you. You can go decades without thinking about it until some particular title goes viral among the young and you see it everywhere--like Harry Potter and Hunger Games. You're now aware of it, but you still don't read it. Well, I do read it.


Two major themes I monitor in the material I read are gender roles and the hero journey. I'm always looking for books in which all characters may properly develop their potential independent of societal norms--and they are few and far between. Even the vaunted Hunger Games can't figure out what to do with Katniss's sexuality--and she's a great character. It's fun in the Hunger Games trilogy to see the men's lives revolve around Katniss and her instabilities.

One of the best adult books
I've ever read.

The hero journey is wonderful to track. Even lame books can have great evocations of the hero journey, or the movement through certain rites of passage to true adulthood. The hero journey subtext is one of the elements of children's literature that draws me back again and again. And it is pretty much lacking in most adult literature.


And I can vouch for the fact that people lacking idyllic childhoods can retain a love of children's literature. We're not all starry-eyed elementary school teachers (like my sister Robin, lol). I know for myself that I still have developmental issues to explore, and children's literature explores them. Would you rather be liked or right? Can a society without individuality succeed? What is family? How do you define courage? Are some people expendable? What if there is no happy ending? How do you grow up and still retain a sense of magic? Why do humans do so much suffering? Why are people cruel? Easy to be hard easy to say no...


I actually wonder if children's literature is read more by adults than children. Is it secretly a subgenre of adult literature? Kid's lit is not for the illiterate or faint of heart--it is as filled with tragedy and sometimes the reading level is surprisingly high. Hunger Games is a good example of a young adult novel filled with death, poignancy, and sophisticated structure and language.

One of the best children's
novels I've ever read

I have been blessed by my Eager Reader's Best of the Best list (http://www.eagerreaders.com). It has included classics like The Count of Monte Cristo, Pride and Prejudice, and David Copperfield, as well as picture books, Dr. Seuss, cartoons, and books aimed at every age of child (including those thick-cardboard baby books). I've also read lots of science fiction, which I love. (Even adult science fiction is really for the juvenile in us all.) The list is skewed, of course, and is a bit long in the tooth. I agreed to read every book on it as a dare to myself--could I sustain this goal over a long period of time? What value would I gain from it. Well, I have gained a huge amount of value...I have put myself in touch with something larger than myself. Blogging has given me a forum into which I may share even the stupidest of my opinions and openly own them. Blogging has brought meaning to my writing. I want to thank my sister Robin and my nephew Jake for the support and prodding that moved me into this adventure, this hero journey of my own.


The Blogging Process


I am more read than I ever was before--957 readings, at the current moment. I know that probably 1/3 of the hits were in error or by non-human entities and phishing schemes, but that still leaves nearly 700 legitimate hits. What does this mean? It doesn't mean I'm popular--many blogs get tons more hits. To some extent it means that my friends and relatives are indulgent and dutifully go to the blog to look at new entries whether they are interested or not. OK, let's take another third off for that. Now I'm at 300 legitamate look-sees. I think that's pretty respectable, given the limited topic (mostly children's and some adult literature reviews) and lack of bells and whistles (still can't figure out how to embed a film clip).

The author at a quilt show.

Blogging is fun. I enjoy the reading, writing, thinking, designing, and researching that goes into each of my posts. I love putting the pieces together. Blogging combines the things I love the most. Most of my blog posts have been positive reviews...I'm more interested in saying what's in the book, what the book brings to the table, so to speak. I will occasionally condemn a book, but that's rare.


I check my blog stats several times a day. The stats page keeps track of number of hits, which post was read, where the hit came from geographically, and where the hit came from on the 'net. As of this writing, I've had 957 hits across 41 posts from every continent except Antarctica (and, unless penguins learn to read, I don't see that changing) and from innumerable and undecipherable Internet sources. I post new blog entries on average of one per week on Facebook and Linked In. I especially love the little map on which the countries turn green if I've had a hit from them and get greener with as hits rack up. I like the "All Time" button--the planet glows with patches of green.


Thanks for reading. Thanks for greening my planet through literature. And keep on hitting my blog.

Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasure Island. Pirates. Booty. Cutlasses. Danger. Double-crossing. That’s about all there is to say about Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale of adventure on the high seas. But, of course, being me, I can say much, much more. Last night I was at a restaurant waiting for Chinese food to arrive at my table. I started jotting down words called to mind by this book: fast, roller coaster (and rolling sea), terrifying (even when I already knew the ending), gruesome, dark. Treasure Island is a children’s book through and through, but it is a terribly dark vision, a sort of bleak, godless Narnia.

[Learn about Stevenson at http://www.online-literature.com/stevenson/ or at http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/.]

Young Jack Hawkins works and lives at his parents’ inn. He becomes involved with pirates when a mysterious guest comes to stay--to hide there. Eventually, Jack becomes the owner of a treasure map--a map of Treasure Island. Only a few other people know about the map and the island, but each of them wants that map pretty bad. Jack works through the unfailingly honorable Doctor and Squire (although the squire is a bit gullible) and comes to set sail on the Hispaniola with his friends and the motley crew (surely this is the original motley crew). I’m not going to give away too much of the plot here. Go get the book. It’s a quick read, so read it--and read it aloud to anyone between 8 and 13 years old.

The pace of the book is masterful--in a sense, tidal. Huge waves of action come inexorably at you and then ebb away not to disappear but to gather strength for another assault of the beach. Prior to the sea journey, the pirates appear just one, briefly, then another, then two or three, like an ongoing tide themselves until the book and the Hispaniola’s honest crew are totally swamped with pirates. This breath-catching pace was aided and abetted by Stevenson’s able use of foreshadowing. A character expressed and then dismissed a doubt. Another character was just a bit off the norm. A name was dropped, a feature was mentioned. The sense of danger and doom coming in wave after wave began on about page 1 and ended on about page 296 (of 298). No let up.

Stevenson also draws characters and creates images that are striking and original. Ben Gunn, ghostly and odd. The ship marooned up a river and laying on its side. Guns sticking into the portals of the tiny fort. Dead bodies lying on a blood-drenched deck. The star of the menagerie, though, is certainly the pirate captain Long John Silver. I don’t know the provenance of pirate characters, but surely all pirates since have borne a debt to Long John Silver. Shaggy-haired, peg-legged, parrot squawking on shoulder, and above all so two-faced that he almost has no face at all--he’s elusive in all of his outrageousness. Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow is the best portrayal of Long John Silver that I can imagine. He has that same unctuousness, slipperiness. However, Jack Sparrow does seem to develop loyalties. He has a side to be on. Not Long John Silver. He is ever and only on his own side.

I was intrigued by pirate images. Peter Pan’s Captain Hook seems to draw greatly from Stevenson’s character, except missing a hand instead of a leg. Depp’s Captain Sparrow seems to be a direct descendant. When anyone thinks of “pirate” they must surely envision some amalgamation of these three. Kidnapped is next on my reading list. What pirate will that book reveal? It struck me that the Hook/Silver pirate is sort of a personified dragon (or vice versa). The dragon symbolizes mindless greed, mindless amassing of whatever is the chosen item--but it is often treasure. There is no life of the heart. It is not a “feeling” life.

Only the mid-book switch of narrators is awkward in this book--it even makes for clunky chapter titles. All of a sudden two chapters are first-person narrated by the Doctor instead of by Jack Hawkins, who narrates the rest of the book. I wish Stevenson had found another answer to getting out the doctor’s experiences while Jack is absent. Otherwise, this book is rapidly excellent.

At least there are no token women in this book--no blonde-of-the-month for a perfunctory romance. Except for one scene, this book is all male. The non-token woman is Jack’s mother, who shows great bravery and determination early in the book. She is a warrior in defense of her inn and her boy. Romance can so muck up a good adventure story. Look what it does to Depp’s Jack Sparrow!

A high recommend for this book for children and adults both. Read it before your next Pirates of the Caribbean excursion and you won’t be sorry.

NOTE OF SCHIZOPHRENIA: How did the same man who wrote Treasure Island, Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde, and Kidnapped also write the insipid A Child’s Garden of Verses?

SIDE BAR: I am especially intrigued by Treasure Island now that I have begun writing one of my own. For example, at one point the idea of an apple barrel freely available to the ship’s crew is oddly introduced in a passage about the liberality of the owners. Turns out, the author needs someplace for Jack to hide to overhear the pirates’ plans. It is part of the god-like-ness of writing a fiction. A problem? Voila! An apple barrel. Writing a novel is a cosmic chess game, an infinite playing of “house,” like being let loose in a toy store. As a child I lived in a world of worlds, of fantasy places and people. Posing and peopling a novel is just like that except that it has to communicate and have at least a modicum of coherence. Treasure Island is great for seeing how the author works. Its bones show, but not in a way that distracts. It’s just plainly written and straightforward.

Old Yeller, by Fred Gipson

Old Yeller, by Fred Gipson, is the source of the classic tear-jerker movie of the same name. And it’s a good book, even though I was guarding myself all the way through so I wouldn’t have a breakdown at the end. I liked the authentic portrayal of pioneer life in Texas—dangers and delights. The lead character, Travis, is left with his mom and little brother while his dad goes off on a cattle drive. His jobs on the farm at the edge of the frontier are fraught with danger and drama—and rightly so. He had to round up the hogs for cutting (marking) and castration without getting attacked by the deadly adult pigs. He has to hunt for food for the family. And he needs a dog. Along comes rascally Old Yeller (Old Marigold?). Travis and Old Yeller have a hate/love relationship until Yeller proves his great value.

Marigold, Mountain Cur

I have a special interest in this book because of my dog Marigold. I was told that her breed is mountain cur--a dog bred to suit the needs of small farmers and settlers in rugged terrain. Old Yeller was also a mountain cur, according to the breed's afficianados (although he was played by a yellow lab in the movie--for shame). I can testify on the intelligence and loyalty of Marigold, which makes Old Yeller's story entirely believable.

Any person who really gets to know a dog--any dog--will have marvelous tales to tell--not maybe of deadly contests with wild animals, but still tales of the dog's sensitivity and skill. Marigold has a special strategy for catching baby bunnies. (Rabbits are plentiful in my area, so don't go all weepy on me!) She will lay down (sphinx-like) a few feet from the hole and go still as stone. Over the next few minutes she will creep forward an inch or so at a time until she is frozen over the hole like an innocuous rock. Then--pow!--all of her coiled and compressed energy flows out into a dive right into the center of the hole. Tiny rabbits fly out in all directions like a bunny explosion. Marigold is not greedy. She'll end up with just one bunny--enough for a snack. And, let me tell you about my old dog Candy and the field mice...just kidding.

Go to http://www.dogster.com/dog-breeds/Mountain_Cur for more information on this breed. The site http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/mountaincur.htm describes the Old Yeller connection.

This movie still looks pretty authentic, but the dog is all
wrong--way too chunky and square-nosed to be the dog
described in the book.

Old Yeller is a tribute to great dogs, working dogs, partner dogs. Their courage and loyalty is unmatched in any species, I think. And their intelligence is greatly underestimated. The book's ending is heartbreaking, and is related to a looming threat introduced early in the book. Old Yeller is a fully developed character and his death is a supreme sacrificial moment--as important as any other sacrifice and not diminished because it was made by a dog. And as I so often observe, the presence of an animal can often ennoble us as humans. Travis's whole family is changed and strengthened because of their relationship to Old Yeller.

This is a good book. It holds up across time. The first-person narrative was great. The use of“frontier-speak” was light-handed, but enough to give Travis an authentic voice. Even people who don’t like dogs will identify with the friendship that develops between Yeller and Travis as they face great danger with great courage. All kids, I think, face great dangers and have great courage. This book is for them.

The Eagle of the Ninth

NOTE: The third and fourth photos on this page are from a movie of this book.


The Eagle of the Ninth was a wonderful surprise--full of amazing plot, crystal-clear insights, interesting characters, and great writing. I had never heard of this book, but it was on my children's reading list, so I ordered it in from interlibrary loan and started reading. It was receipt of this book and two others in this series that made me happy enough to write my blog entry "Good Books: An American Freedom," available on this blog page.

Sutcliff sets this story in ancient Britain, during the time of Roman occupation, the second century A.D. The plot takes a young Roman soldier through his first command and then on to a quest to retrieve the eagle of his father's legion, called The Lost Ninth. The eagle is the golden standard held at the front of every legion--the eagle is protected as long as a soldier lives.

Our hero, Aquila, wants to return the eagle to bring honor to his father's legion, but also to find out if anyone knows what happened to the legion, what happened to his father. Along the way, Aquila grows greatly in understanding and courage. He finds that courage is easy with a whole legion around you...it's harder when it's just you and a companion pursued like animals by the men of a British village. He comes to know British people in the south and north (the south was conquered, the north free); a British girl being forced to live in the Roman way; his uncle, a retired Roman legionaire; and a wolf that is given to Aquila as a tiny puppy after its mom is killed by hunters.



The pup does more than more than any other part of the book in establishing the reader's trust in Aquila. Yes, a person may most certainly be evaluated by how he treats his dog. The pup also reinforces a main theme of the book--that love and trust must be a choice and cannot be enforced by ownership papers or leashes. Aquila gives the pup a clear opportunity to be free and still the puppy returns, with love, to stay with him.

The journey to the north to find the eagle also gives Aquila time to solve another critical life issue--what is he going to do with his life? An injury drove him from the only life he ever knew or wanted, a military career with the legion. The eagle quest is his hero journey, by which he comes to know himself truly as an adult. He gains talismans and loses treasures, but his greatest achievement is knowing his own future course.



Aquila's friend Esca deepens the theme of freedom. Esca, an unwilling gladiator, is saved and then purchased by Aquila as a slave. Their deepening friendship encounters many difficulties. The two men are from radically different cultures, social classes, and belief systems--all of which orbit around the central question: Can a free man and the slave he owns be friends? What can you ask a slave to do that you could not ask from a friend--and vice versa? Finding the answers to these questions is an important part of Aquila's growth, and also Esca's. Does being a slave determine your whole life?

But the best thing of all about this book is the writing. If it had been my book, and not the library's, I would have marked all over it to note the location of beautiful passages of prose. "He was desperately homesick for his own land; for now that they seemed lost to him, his own hills grew achingly dear, every detail of sight and scent and sound jewel-vivid on his memory." "Jewel-vivid." I am jealous of that phrase.

In discussing the phenomenon of being conquered, Esca says, "We know that your justice is more sure than ours, and when we rise against you, we see our hosts break against the discipline of your troops, as the sea breaks against a rock. And we do not understand, because all of these things are of the ordered pattern, and only the free curves of the shield-boss are real to us. We do not understand. And when the time comes that we begin to understand your world, too often we lose the understanding of our own." Beautifully put.

Esca, telling the story of the disappearance of the 9th legion, says, "But the mist was creeping down from the high moors, and the Legion marched into it, straight into it, and it licked them up and flowed together behind them, and they were gone as though they had marched from one world into--another."

Aquila's sacrifice of an emblem he has carried since childhood--a bird carved of olive wood--returns to the jewel imagery: "The golden sparks that he struck dropped onto the tinder-dry scraps of birch bark, and hung there an instant like jewels; then, as he blew on them, nursing them to life, they flared up into crackling flame; a flower of flame with the olive-wood bird sitting at its heart like a bird on her nest." Sutcliff's writing is like the sparks that catch and flare. Her command of detail give the book a sterling authenticity.

Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann Wyss, circa 1889

Papa contrived a boat of cut apart barrels--this illustration is close to how I imagined it.

Sometimes a book combines with what is going in my life to double its impact. Such was the case with Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann Wyss. The Robinsons’ unceasing earnest industry in surviving the shipwreck that left them stranded on an island matched the serious frenzy going on in my own life as my co-workers and I struggled to establish a new jobs program in three different communities. We (and the Robinsons) could rest, but only for a short time…the work goes on…the work goes on.

My colleagues and I are working toward a specific goal and we expect things to slow down in a few weeks. What’s striking about narrator Papa Robinson, however, is that he keeps working because work itself is a virtue, a human duty. The island is a challenge to be explored, harnessed, controlled, changed, mastered, conquered—and relentlessly. Every animal was seen as a food source to exploit or make use of. Every plant was seen in terms of its uses—beauty was a secondary benefit to the provision of shade, fruit, grain, or fiber. With the energy of the true Christian Soldier, Papa sets forth to bring order and productivity to the chaos of nature. It is a truly 19^th century zeitgeist. Man is at the top and he will rule.

Mama Robinson, referred to as “the wife” or “the mother,” supplied endless pots of food from the most exotic of ingredients as if by magic. She never grimaced when Papa and the boys (four of them) brought back something new to cook—like kangaroo meat, shark steaks, penguin, frog, monkey, bison, and bear. She too was inexhaustible in her energy, grinding manioc root into flour, making cloth (and food) from scratch, planting, reaping, and sowing (as well as sewing). Mama and Papa have a cooperative  relationship—in a few sweet scenes, they wake each other up before the boys to…no, not that…talk over their plans for the day, so as to show a united front. In another obscure item, Papa seems to reveal that he sleeps in his own room. Perhaps the Robinsons concluded that adding to their shipwrecked brood would cause hardship, although they took in baby animals of all sorts (to tame for use).

We only see Mama through Papa’s eyes—we see his view of her and of everything. Is Papa a reliable narrator? Has he glossed over the truly gruesome predicament that has befallen his family? Is everyone’s incessant good cheer and enthusiasm more what he wants to present to the world than what he actually experiences from his family?

I am going to default on this question, because it simply does not matter. This book is not serious. It is a somewhat sober tall tale, like Paul Bunyan if he had been brought up properly. The stories are preposterous and implausible, but terrific fun. I kept reading to see what wrongly situated animal or plant they would come across next, what invention would come from Papa’s fertile mind, what new landscape might appear on their infinite island. And, what animal would they tame next? (The ostrich trained for the saddle was a bit too much for me.) The book rollicked all over the place—all with hearty enthusiasm.

 
I guess training an ostrich is more plausible than I thought--this was not the only photo of domestication.

The introduction to the book, in fact, points out that Wyss told these stories in endless variations to entertain his children. One of the children gathered up the stories into a collection, which was then translated and re-translated until this semi-seminal English version was published and became the standard for the English-speaking world. (Note how favorably the English are presented at any mention of them in the book.) So, a narrative structure was actually imposed on the story, like chaining together the Paul Bunyan stories with an artificial narrative. So, please don’t take this book too seriously and try to have it make sense. It just won’t.

I also came to view this story as a fantasy. I thought of it in terms of the fantasy a desperate person might spin if faced with loss and death—as in a shipwreck. I imagine Papa, hungry, having lost everything, spinning out this one last fantasy in which all his sons survived and thrived; food was infinitely available; Mama was by his side; imagination had no constraints. I liked this perspective, but it’s just something I made up myself.

Papa’s philosophy (added, perhaps, some years after Wyss told the tales) is summed up in a paragraph in the final part of the book: “...my great wish is that young people who read this record of our lives and adventures should learn from it how admirably suited is the peaceful, industrious, and pious life of a cheerful, united family to the formation of strong, pure, and manly character.” What Victorian could argue with that?

I recommend this book highly—not as a moral tale of sober survival, but as a series of romps in a fantastical landscape. There are lessons to be learned, but please keep them subsidiary to the fun!

Go to www.tcm.com and enter "Swiss Family Robinson" in the search line for an interesting and funny article about the Disney's filming of this story.