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.

My Friend Flicka and Lassie Come-Home

My Friend Flicka, by Mary O'Hara

This is what I imagine a grown-up
Flicka to look like--minus the
male genitalia, of course!

          My Friend Flicka, by Mary O'Hara, was a wonderful surprise. Ken, a nine-year-old day-dreamer, drifts through life. He leaves gates open, horses half-groomed, and chores incomplete on his family's ranch high up in the Rockies between Laramie and Culver City. The ranch stocks chickens, cattle and horses, but horses are where the family's heart is. Ranch life is portrayed in delicious detail--I was pulled right into the story by writing that was much better than I expected, better than it had to be for a kid's horse story.
          Despite his inattention (which drives his father crazy), Ken is allowed to select a yearling of his own to train and take care of. His choice, the half-wild Flicka, is the last horse Pa would have selected. O'Hara beautifully portrays Ken's process of coming out of the fog of his childhood, finding out there are things in the real world that are even more satisfying than his daydreams. He and Flicka fall in love with each other, learn to trust each other.
          It wouldn't be a horse story if it didn't have heartache. The stress and strain of trying to make money from ranching are aptly shown. Pa, by necessity, sees everything in terms of dollars and cents. Ma is the softening agent, but her ranch labors are as arduous as any other worker. And, of course, Flicka has one crisis after another. What keeps this from being formulaic is the characterizations. Each person is responsive to every plot point (except brother Howard, who is a cipher) and is pummeled and changed like a stone rounded in a river.

This is Marigold, the third dog I fell
in love with. Who could resist her?

          My expectations of this story were Disneyesque, that the story would be somewhat dumbed down and simplified. In truth, My Friend Flicka was as compelling as any novel (youth or adult) and had a marvelous sense of place. If you want to know ranching in the Rockies in the 1930s, this is the book for you.
         And if you love horses, this is the book for you. I don't even like horses that much and I loved Flicka. I have gone through that falling in love process with animals before. I didn't have my first dog until I was in my forties and I was so scared and awkward. But little Candy looked at me with such total love and acceptance that she pulled the same from me. I loved every part of her--nose, ears, eyes, chin, belly, tail. I fell for her. And I have seen an adolescent go through this process with a puppy I ended up with. In an uncertain life, the little pup was an anchor for the girl. When everything in her life was crappy and even I was feeling witchy, that pup loved her and loved her. So, it is in this context that I now am starting to like horses and to be very curious about them.
          High recommend for this boy and his horse book.


Lassie Come-Home, by Eric Knight

          Eric Knight's Lassie Come-Home is full of suspense and danger as a noble collie seeks her way home. The lovely Lassie is described as beautifully as any collie can be--beautiful full coat, intelligent eyes, sharp ears that cock and point, delicate but powerful legs and feet--and unswerving loyalty. The author portrays Lassie's inner life as determined by instinct but shaped by her instinct for loyalty. Lassie is sold away from the family who loves her (adores her, really) because they have no money for food. The new owner takes the dog 400 miles away, to northern Scotland. The travails and travels of Lassie begin as she escapes and begins the long journey home, earning her new second name, "Come-Home." Keep a box of tissues handy.
         I found the suspense in Lassie Come-Home almost unbearable. When would she meet with something other than cruel treatment? When she met kindness, would she respond to it any more? Battered, bruised, abused, Lassie is driven by her sense of "South," and the feeling that she has a job to do--to be at the school gate to meet her boy. I almost loved dogs too much to get through this story.

The Scottish landscape traversed by
Lassie was harsh and empty.

         Along Lassie's journey, we meet quaint characters from rural Edwardian England--a peddler and his horse-drawn cart; an old couple scraping by on pennies; struggling mining families. The funniest sequence (although also grim) is when Lassie outwits a dogcatcher and his assistant. There is a slight hero-journey element in this book. His owner, Joe, is seen to move from boyhood into young manhood with losing Lassie as his crucible.
          Knight's writing is workerly and occasionally pedantic and a bit patronizing, especially when he strays from describing Lassie. But he creates an unforgettable dog who has translated herself so thoroughly into American culture that few are probably aware of the English/Scottish beginnings of this tail tale. The Lassies used in American movies and TV shows have been big male dogs. That seems weirdly apt. My sister Judy's collies have been big males--and they were big, loyal, and smart--smarter than us, I think.


          A boy and his horse, a boy and his dog. Makes for good reading. Next I am reading a whole series of books where the characters are mice, rats, and other woodland critters. By the time I get to Beatrix Potter I'll be batty.