Thunderclan Roll!!

The Rationalist and The Intuitive are both avid readers. Going to the library usually ends in bringing home stacks of books and a few anime DVDs, like Yu-Gi-Oh....or the very bizarre Dragon Ball...which I still can't believe they watched and enjoyed. It was right on the cusp of being a little too bizarre for them to have my permission to watch it, but I think most of the bizarreness went over their heads.

They enjoy the grand, epic style of cartoons like Yu-Gi-Oh which pit the forces of good against evil and which have a continuous story-line that builds throughout the series. Japanese series have a knack for that type of story-building and mythology-making that most Western cartoons don't develop nearly as well. Most Western-style cartoons tend to have more stand-alone episodes and tend to keep only a thin thread of mythology running through the series.

Currently, I am being pestered by my children to read the Warriors books, a series of books about warring cat clans. It sounds a little weird...but they love it. They read each book and discuss it afterwards. They run around outside pretending to be from warring cat clans. They talk about the special terminology used in the books. They whisper about the parts I haven't read yet, so as not to spoil the surprise. They talk about the twist and turns in the books.

In short....they love these books.

These books do the same thing that a good anime series does; they develop a consistent, ongoing, mythical story-line while incorporating adventurous battles and intrigue.

So...if you have a child in the upper elementary grades, or lower if they're advanced readers, give the books a try.

Magical Series

I finished all of the Harry Potter books a couple of weeks ago. Having completed the series, I had a few observations. The last four books are much lengthier, but also darker and more mature. While I enjoyed the first three books, I didn't think that Rowling hit her stride until the last four, with the last two, Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows probably being the best in the series. Interestingly, The Deathly Hallows develops, in a much more specific way than the previous books, basic, Christian themes.

I was left wondering if this had been her plan all along, or if it blossomed in the midst of so many fundamentalist, evangelical Christians denouncing her work as dangerous and occultish. Was this a way to poke them in the eye and turn their arguments to dust?

Either way, she does a nice job of bringing everything together and providing a satisfying ending to Harry's adventures.

After finishing my marathon reading of the Harry Potter books, I decided to pick up C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia books from the library. I had never read any of the others besides The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I used to read Lewis ravenously, but soon became burned out with his work. Having read most of his major works and essays, and some of his fictional books, I had decided that I had had enough of him and understood the major themes running through his writing.

The Magician's Nephew, the first book in the Chronicles reminded me of several things. The style of writing has changed so dramatically. Going from Rowling to Lewis was a bit of a shock. There is a certain stiltedness, or formality to the book. I realized that Lewis tells his tale from the position of an outside, grown-up narrator. He breaks into the story at times comparing the characters' ideas and backgrounds to an unspecified "nowadays". It's a different type of storytelling that is meant to evoke the idea of sitting around a fire while a friend tells a childhood story, or an adventure they once had. It is harder to lose oneself in that type of narration because you are always being brought back to the reference point of the story-teller.

As I thought about the differences between Rowling's and Lewis' magical series, it reminded me of the Oz books by Frank Baum. The style and nature of Baum's work is quite similar to Lewis's Chronicles and makes me wonder if the Oz stories served as a pattern for Lewis to start with.

One more stylistic difference jumped out at me. In the very beginning of The Magician's Nephew, before the plot gets fully underway, we are introduce to Digory's uncle through a conversation between Digory and his friend Polly. Digory's mysterious uncle and his unknown activities are always kept from Digory by his aunt leaving an impression of an eccentric old man with a hint of possible sinister intentions.

In modern stories, a frequently relied upon twist in a plot involves revealing an unknown, quirky, possible scary person as actually being quite nice and useful, explaining away the first impression as a misunderstanding and the rejection of people who are different.

In The Magician's Nephew, Digory's uncle is as sinister as he was implied to be in the beginning of the story. This struck me as unusual, and as an indicator of the time in which it was written.

Once I finish the Chronicles, I'm going to go back and finish the few Oz books that I never quite made it to.

Worst Children's Book....EVER!!!

Yesterday, Intuitive Monkey's kindergarten class went to the school library, got their library cards and were allowed to check out a book. He came home with a colorful book entitled, Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People and War.

Supposed message of the book: Elephants are honored for their needless, noble deaths during wartime in Japan....oh yeah, and war is bad.

Actual message of the book: Japanese zookeepers are stupid and cruel.

The book opens in a zoo with a man maintaining a memorial for three elephants that died at the zoo during wartime. The guard of the memorial expounds on their deaths, explaining that during a war the zookeepers of the zoo were worried about bombs that might break open the cages of the wild animals, letting them loose on the streets of Tokyo.

Their solution? Why to kill all the animals, of course! Because, if you kill all the animals before they get loose, then that will save you from having to needlessly shoot them later if the zoo is hypothetically bombed, hypothetically breaking open the cages without killing the animals inside them.

Now you get where the stupid part comes in. I guess transporting them somewhere else or just taking your chances was too inconceivable to these zookeepers. But wait, it gets better.

Once they have killed most of the animals by poisoning their food, they have three elephants left to dispose of. They try feeding the first one some poisoned potatoes, but he picks out all the poison ones and only eats the good ones. They try to inject the poison into him, but his skin is too thick and breaks the needles. What's an idiot zookeeper to do? Why starve the animal to death. Yes! That's the solution to this entire mess!!

And so, they starve the elephant.

Well that seemed to have done the trick, so they take the same route with the remaining two elephants, pausing only for a day or two when one of the zookeepers suffers from a guilty conscience and actually feeds and waters the animals. He recovers from that soon enough and the starvation is on again. The pesky elephants finally die after a couple of weeks.

The last part of the story talks about the zookeepers doing an autopsy and declares that not even a drop of water was found in the elephants stomachs. We're back to the stupid part again. After all, why else would you need to do an autopsy to figure out that the animals you just starved to death have no water or food in their stomachs? It's also lovely to try and explain what the word "autopsy" means to a child!

Finally, the book ends with the guard polishing this memorial to these elephants who made such a huge sacrifice for the war.

That's funny. I thought a sacrifice was something you did willingly for the greater good, not something that someone forced you to do out of idiocy and cruelty.

I guess there weren't any rifles around in wartime Japan to shoot these elephants. Wouldn't a bullet to the head have been so much more merciful than torturing live animals with an excruciating death of wasting away? Oh that's right, I forgot, the zookeepers were stupid and cruel.

This is the most disturbing "children's" book I have ever read. Recounting the story as a parable about the insanity of war is bad enough, but trying to portray what happened as somehow noble and worthy of a memorial pushes the bounds of any sane person's interpretation. Yuck.

I can't believe that the school library wasted money on such a despicable tale.