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Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at 9:52AM 
Why Won't Someone Think of the Children?
by ELLEN COPPERFIELD
Books for kids are a sorry lot. Stephenie Meyer represents a defect in all of us, and Spike Jonze was forced to make a movie where there really wasn't one. Meyer, a purported Christian, wrote a graphic conception scene with a lot of bruising, so she definitely isn't in touch with the kinds of things I read as a child. The great mass of excellent children's literature has already been written. Sure, there's been some classics meant for older folks. You can read them at a library. Still, I don't wake up with a burning urge to devour Hard Times, what I can tell you.
Much can yet be done with the literary form if only at a sexual level, for adults. There's a finite number of things that wonder children, and I'm not sure if a vampire fucking Kristen Stewart is one of those things, but there's really nothing more exciting than a text message to children nowadays. You could print a book full of them, but why would you?
Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game was the centerpiece of much of my life in 1994. I pictured myself as a diner owner-bon vivant who solved murders as a matter of course and had several fake names that revolved around the seasons. The reading of a will is the perfect convention for children, because it adds to their understanding of death. In fact the whole point of The Westing Game is to teach children about heaven, and what it takes to go there. Most people who have gone on to be exceptionally important in American life (Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Martha Stewart, Amy Poehler) are said to have been influenced greatly by reading The Westing Game as a child, kind of how Alan Greenspan read Ayn Rand and as a result potato chips in New York City now require a cash deposit.
The Mixed-Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler was a major influence on everything I did. I surprised my brother by jumping out of a closet and I called him Jamie. I made up a lot of lies in those days; all white lies strictly. I was regularly packing a backpack and threatening to leave for a place where I would be more appreciated. On second thought this book may not be suitable for young audiences. I hear Michael Vick read it in prison.
John Dennis Fitzgerald's stunning series of Great Brain books, set in turn-of-the-century Utah was also among my favorites. I would read them again and again and debate who had the larger brain, myself or The Great Brain. The Great Brain going to school in Salt Lake City was among the most treasured things to happen. These books could be a dramatic series today without changing much and they're meant for kids. I believed that this was what Utah was like and vowed to go there. Fortunately I never read two books at a time out of a perverse sense of honor and an easily confused disposition.
I am roundly convinced my mother slipped this into my reading pile as a threat. I don't know that this is the book you really want to blurb. I mean, Robert Cormier finds this believable? As in, true to life? As in, does the FBI have a file on Robert Cormier? And wasn't The Chocolate War sort of racist?
Sideways Stories from Wayside School was my first experience with horror. I was already afraid enough to go to school - shouldn't everyone there have been informed by letter than I was to be treated with special care? (This was all before I learned a really important lesson about humility by reading Hatchet.) Louis Sachar was really a coward and wrote this book to frighten me, but I couldn't help enjoying it and being really afraid of going to one particular floor of my school. I had a similar relationship to milk until I found out I was lactose-intolerant.
Whenever I order ranch dressing, I think about Gertrude Chandler Warner. It was like she read my mind with some of her settings. Overall, though, you would expect more near-incest storylines in a family so large. And what's a boxcar?
As you would expect, I also read a lot of Nancy Drew. She wasn't the most stylish detective, but everyone else in town was just totally fucking baffled by that Old Clock. Nancy wasn't exactly a pro when it came to using Firefox, but she had a good nose for antiques and serial killers. Say what you want about Nancy Drew, she solved a phenomenal number of cases. I believe she was somewhere around 98 out of 100. That means twice the guy got away. In even younger days I also tried Encyclopedia Brown, that is, until the vast majority of the denouements exposed the truth in lemon juice on white paper. I wasn't exactly clued into what Sally wanted from the boy detective. EB's father was a real detective, but he never busted his son for impersonating a police officer. I guess that's good parenting, but it's lousy police work.
Bruno & Boots were commonly getting up in some shit. The social atmosphere of Canadian private schools in the early eighties was based almost entirely around hilarious practical jokes, which perhaps explains some of the differences between our two countries. I really don't understand how these kids didn't get expelled. Later, they were falsely accused of rape while attending Duke.
Trust me, you don't even want to start knowing Kristy's Great Idea. This edition of The Babysitter's Club was later reissued and became a national bestseller with the title of The Shack. The entire text appeared in the dream of some drug addict and he copied it down. I enjoyed this series to no end, although I came away with profound misgivings about the power of my babysitter, who upon reflection was something of a whore.
It makes me a little sad I can't go back to these places before I laughed whenever I heard the name Avi. I still remember that when Charlotte Doyle came back from the sea, her hands were all rough and sore. Now I imagine a far different reason they were in that condition, but in those days it was just the ropes sliding between her fingers.
Ellen Copperfield is a contributor to This Recording. She last wrote in these pages about the films of Tom Hanks. She tumbls here.
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Reader Comments (3)
I remember nearly all of those books. Good times. Scary to think that we'll probably be the last ones to remember them fondly at all.
The Westing Game. Damn. I have been trying to remember another book about amulets and books and exploding baseballs. It actually centers around an amulet. Scared the hell out of me when I was in the third grade.
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