The Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stove from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down.
"That is the way," he said.
"But there are no stairs."
"You must throw yourself in. There is no other way."
- George MacDonald, The Golden Key
i spent the week reading jane yolen´s book touch magic, well maybe reading isn´t the best way to describe what i was doing. it was more a case of stealing a few paragraphs between swimming, eating, starting campfires, taking LJT to the outhouse and other camping associated activity.
for some time i have been extremely bothered by the grand majority of books out there for children. they seem to be written with imbeciles in mind, the text is dumbed down, the story (if there even is one) is weak, the characters thin and unsubstantial. these sorts of books are often brightly coloured and clearly some marketing exec has put a great deal of work into making the book appealing to children.
this is the first mistake. books, i think by their very nature are appealing to children (and adults). a well written story absorbs the reader so that they cannot put the book down. if a marketing expert has designed the book i'm willing to bet that the story is so boring that it will be abandoned rather quickly, which i suppose doesn't matter to the publisher as long as the print run pays for itself and a profit is made.
at the library LJT often gravitates towards these books that look so exciting. once read at home they are set aside and never picked up again until i dig them out to bring back (half of the cargo i shuttle around in the buggy - aside from LJT - are these worthless books).
i am now going to make it mandatory that anyone who wants to give LJT a book must first read jane yolen's words so that we might have more chance of quality books entering the house and less trips made to the salvation army to drop off rejects.
**and: stop buying books from costco or sam's club or the superstore. it just isn't worth it. these stores are never worth it in my opinion.
so, to offer some reflection regarding the importance of stories and make believe i offer jane yolen's words, and from some other wise people too.
"One of the basic functions of myth and folk literature is to provide a landscape of allusion. With the first story a child hears, he or she takes a step toward perceiving a new environment ... Stories lean on stories, art on art. This familiarity with the treasure-house of ancient story is necessary for any true [i would say complete HPJ] appreciation of today's literature. ... The second function of folklore is to provide a way of looking at another culture from the inside out. ... The study of the myth-making process, of those things that come together in a culture and propel a folk towards a coherent mythology, may be a very sophisticated one indeed, but its beginnings are back in the tales themselves. ... Like a kaleidoscope, a folktale is made up of large and small units - motifs - incidents that, like bits of colored glass, are picked up as the tale travels from story to story, from country to country, from culture to culture. Shake up the folktale kaleidoscope, and these motifs rearrange themselves in an infinite variety of usable and attractive forms. ... The great archetypal stories provide a framework or model for an individual's belief system. They are, in Isak Dinesen's marvelous expression, "a serious statement of our existence." The tales and stories handed down to us from the cultures that preceded us were the most serious, succinct expressions of the accumulated wisdom of those cultures. They were created in a symbolic, metaphoric story language and then honed by centuries of tongue-polishing to a crystalline perfection." Yolen, pp 15-17
"In art, truth that is boring is not true." - Isaac Bashevis Singer
"Just as the child is born with a literal hole in its head, where the bones slowly close underneath the fragile shield of skin, so the child is born with a figurative hole in its heart. Slowly this, too, is filled up. What slips in before it anneals shapes the man or woman into which that child will grow. Story is one of the most serious intruders into the heart." Yolen, p 25
"Disney was a man who believed that we "recognize [good and evil] instinctively" and he supposed that any retellings of fairy tales could be approached in this simplistic manner. But the power of the tales is that they are not that simple after all. They are as evocative, as sensual, as many-faceted, as disturbing, as slippery as dreams. They offer a moral, they speak to the human condition, but it is not always the condition or the moral one immediately sees." Yolen, p 41
"The dragon is a more enduring animal than a pterodactyl. I have never yet met anyone who really believed in a pterodactyl, but every honest person believes in dragons - down in the back-kitchen of his consciousness." Kenneth Grahame
"The world is much larger than I thought ... I thought we went along paths - but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is a path." C. S. Lewis' Green Lady, Perelandra
"Ladies and Gentlemen: There are five hundred reasons why I began to write for children, but to save
time I will mention only ten of them.
Number 1) Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.
Number 2) Children don't read to find their identity.
Number 3)
They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation.
Number 4) They have no use for psychology.
Number 5) They detest sociology.
Number 6)
They don't try to understand Kafka or Finnegan's Wake.
Number 7) They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils,
witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.
Number 8) They love interesting stories, not commentary, guides, or footnotes.
Number 9) When a book is boring, they yawn openly, without any shame or fear of authority.
Number 10) They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem
humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his
power. Only the adults have such childish illusions." Isaac Bashevis Singer
