100 Years Old But Young At Heart

When my daughter brought home Daddy-Long-Legs from the library, I was delighted.  I remembered loving the book as a child and I remembered the basic premise: a young orphan girl writes letters to her mysterious benefactor, whom she calls Daddy-Long-Legs, having just seen his shadow as he left the orphanage.  But I remembered nothing else.  With plenty of time to read as I recover from pneumonia, I picked it up, and was in for even more of a treat than I had expected.

Judy's letters to her anonymous patron are so delightfully irreverent, funny and modern, that I was shocked to see that the book was written in 1912.  We have read plenty of other children's books written or set around then, including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, the Betsy-Tacy books, and All-of-A-Kind Family, and yet none have as modern a voice as this.

Judy is a true feminist before the coinage of the word.  Inequality between the sexes is simply so plain to her, and so obviously unfair.  She  complains of not having the right to vote, saying that while she hopes to develop into a Very Useful Citizen, "Are women citizens? I don't suppose they are."   After a sermon about how women must not "develop [their] intellects at the expense of [their] emotional natures," she wisely notes, "Why on earth don't they go to men's colleges and urge the students not to allow their manly natures to be crushed out be too much mental application?"  She even laments the lack of a neutral pronoun!

And she writes this gem, a model of economy of words, "Did you ever hear about the learned Herr Professor who regarded unnecessary adornment with contempt, and favored sensible, utilitarian clothes for women?  His wife, who was an obliging creatrue, adopted 'dress reform.'  And what do you think he did?  He eloped with a chorus girl."

Judy doesn't just address serious issues. Her descriptions of college life ring true today - friends dropping by, decorating her dorm room, deep philosophical discussions.  (All except the fudge - what WAS it with fudge a hundred years ago?  In the Betsy-Tacy books they are also constantly making and eating fudge!)  She draws a picture of the farm she is spending the summer at, explaining, "The room marked with a cross is not where the murder was committed, but the one that I occupy."

The only part of the book that might bother modern sensibilities - not that this kind of thing doesn't happen today - is the ending.  Spoiler alert.  At the end, Judy - and we - find out who Daddy-Long-Legs is.  This time, I knew all along, but I'm pretty sure as a child I was surprised.  It turns out that Judy has met him in person, repeatedly, but without knowing it.  But the real twist is that Judy marries him.  The fact that she marries a father figure, someone she's literally been calling "Daddy" throughout the book, definitely gave me pause.  The power dynamic is even more skewed by his wealth and the fact that he's gotten to know her through her letters as well as in person, while she has been kept in the dark.  Early on, my daughter predicted that Daddy-Long-Legs either was Judy's real father or would adopt her at the end of the book.  I would have preferred either of those endings and when she finished, she stated she would have, too.

Can you think of any old children's books that are similarly modern in tone?

The Parent Problem

Authors love to get parents out of the way so that their child protagonists are free to embark on their adventures.  Often one parent is killed off (as I've written about before, it's usually the mother) and the remaining parent is of the absent-minded professor sort.  Mr. Mildew of the Tumtum and Nutmeg books and Mr. Melendy of the Melendy Quartet both come to mind as examples of the type.  Sometimes the children have a maternal figure in the form of a housekeeper or nanny, such as in the Melendy Quartet, or the Shoes books, or the Penderwicks series.  But when they don't, as in the Tumtum and Nutmeg books, it often strains credibility to believe that the children can take care of themselves and that Child Protective Services (or its British equivalent) has not appeared on their doorstep.  The neglect is supposed to be benign, but it often comes perilously close to being worse than that.  And in Under the Egg, it very clearly crosses that line. 

In Under the Egg, thirteen-year-old Theodora Tenpenny, whose father died years ago, tries to solve an art-related mystery, leading all the way back to the Holocaust, presented to her by her grandfather's dying words.  The adventure and research and plot (except for a too-neat ending) were all wonderful, but I was really disturbed by the character of Theo's mother, who is clearly mentally ill.  A mathematician who has taken refuge in her work (which is of dubious quality), she is unable to care for herself, much less Theo.  Once her grandfather dies, Theo has to care for both herself and her mother, doing everything from growing food in the garden to save money, to shopping, planning and cooking meals, fixing things in their old home, and handling the finances.  Perhaps we are supposed to be impressed by Theo's resourcefulness, but I was more struck by the fact that Theo is so obviously hungry that the gruff but kind local diner owner offers her free food (but does not call Child Protective Services!).

Theo explains why she does not seek help for herself or her mother, saying that if she did, "the Tenpennys [wouldn't be] the Tenpennys anymore.  It would just be the name on the door of a house I used to live in.  Before I went to foster care.  And then I would be really, truly, entirely alone."  That's understandable, but it sends readers the wrong message. 

The mother's condition is so serious as to bring her to the forefront of the book, rather than eliminating her as a plot point.  Moreover, the book treats mental illness too lightly, and ignores the burdens - fiscal, physical, and emotional - that such illness puts on the relatives of the sick individual.  The author either missed an opportunity to address mental illness or should have found another way of getting rid of Theo's mother.

In contrast, Theo's friend's parents are disposed of by being wealthy movie stars, too busy, too preoccupied, and too famous to take care of her, and she is taken care of by a full staff instead.  That, to me, is a preferable method of disposing of parents!

What do you think about the ways parents or parental figures are disposed of in children's books? Can you think of a children's book that deals with mental illness?

The Redemptive Power of Nature (Or, Invalids and Orphans)

As I've been reading classic children's books to my daughter, I've noticed a theme that doesn't come up much in modern children's literature: the healing, even redemptive, power of nature.  In book after book, children find happiness, peace, self-confidence, spiritual satisfaction, and their true selves as well as physical healing after finding or living in some special place surrounded by nature.  Perhaps a product of or related to the Transcendentalist movement in the United States, epitomized by Henry Thoreau's Walden, these works emphasize not just nature but self-reliance and solitude.  These books also express a belief that there is a significant connection between physical, mental, and emotional health.

In Heidi, first published in 1880 (perhaps the oldest book I have read to my children!), the title character is happiest when in her mountain home with her grandfather.  She spends day after day with her taciturn friend Peter and the goats he herds in the mountain pastures.  In significant contrast to today's children, she needs nothing more to amuse her - not toys, not books, and certainly not electronic devices.  She is content just frolicking with the goats, picking flowers, and admiring the view.  She is not asocial however, and her relationships with her grandfather, Peter, and especially Peter's grandmother are vital to her. When she is taken to live in Frankfurt to be the companion for the wheelchair-bound Clara, she languishes, both mentally and physically, in spite of the fact that she enjoys Clara's company.  Of course, in the end, the mountains prove healing not just for Heidi but for Clara's doctor, whose grief over his daughter's death is eased by his visit there, and for Clara, who ultimately regains the ability to walk.  Interestingly, Heidi's spiritual awakening comes not in the mountains but in Frankfurt, encouraged by Clara's Grandmamma, who urges her to pray and to believe that even if things do not turn out the way she originally wanted, God has a plan that will eventually reveal itself.  Nonetheless, it is the mountains which are portrayed as the source of healing.

In The Secret Garden, as the orphaned Mary Lennox tends the abandoned garden she has discovered, she tends her own spirit and body, and is transformed from a sickly, contrary child who cannot or will not even dress herself to a healthy, happy one who is self-reliant and resourceful.  As she spends time outdoors, she becomes "wider awake every day."  In a parallel to Heidi, a wheelchair-bound child (here, Mary's cousin Colin) who also participates in restoring the garden, regains the ability to walk.  Similarly, in Julie Andrews Edwards's Mandy, a more recent work first published in 1971, the title character (also an orphan) finds peace and happiness in tending a secret garden and turning a secret cottage into a home of her own.  As their gardens blossom, so do they.

A move to a country farm also results in the transformation of Elizabeth Ann in Understood Betsy from a doted-on, supposedly sickly, nervous child into a confident, independent and happier one, as I wrote here.  When her Aunt Frances must leave her with relatives at a Vermont farm, Elizabeth Ann (whom her Vermont relatives immediately and familiarly address as Betsy), discovers that she is neither nervous nor frail nor incompetent.  New experiences, including the simplest of tasks such as getting out of bed on her own, to other, more challenging ones, such as making butter and walking to school alone on her first day, push her to become more independent.  To her surprise, she finds these experiences not only empowering but fun.  The girl Aunt Frances comes back to retrieve is very different from the one she left.  It is the farm and nature which make the difference.

It is interesting how all these children enjoy spending time alone.  They each have friends, relatives, or mentors, but they spend a significant amount of time by themselves - and like it.  While today's books often address how to navigate friendships, bullying, and other relationships, these books focus on children's internal life.  It is not their relationships which nurture their emotional and physical growth (although they help), but nature which does most of the work.  Then again, these fictional children have the luxury (or hardship, depending on your perspective) of lots of leisure time, as they either do not attend school, or attend it for many fewer hours and days per year than children do now.

It is also noteworthy that not one of these children lives with her parents.  Is this just a plot device?  These children, orphans or pseudo-orphans, are somewhat forced into solitude and introspection.  It would be nice to see a book with the same themes featuring a child with her nuclear family intact.

Do you think these books still speak to children?  Are they too dated?  Has the idea of nature as a force for healing (both physical, mental, and emotional) been eclipsed by modern medicine, for better or for worse?  Are the ideas of living somewhere remote or undeveloped, or of nature as a redemptive force, too foreign to our plugged-in, urban and suburban children or do they open a whole new world to them?  My 7-year-old city girl has loved all of these books (except for The Secret Garden, which she has not yet read and which I am giving her for her next birthday), but is she typical?

Can you think of any other classics that would fit in this category?  Finally, can you think of any contemporary children's books with similar themes?

Motherless Children Having Adventures

The trope of motherless children is well-known in fairy tales but it persists in modern-day children's books as well.  Picking up The Saturdays, the first in the Melendy Quartet by Elizabeth Enright, a classic I missed reading as a child, I groaned when I discovered that the Melendy children's mother was dead, a fact introduced within the first few pages.  But, I must admit, I also felt a delicious anticipation.  After all,  books about Motherless Children Having Adventures are usually good, if they meet the following criteria:

They feature several siblings (usually more than 2) who are, of course, motherless but have a mother figure, often the oldest sibling and/or a housekeeper with a cute nickname, their father is well-meaning but bumbling and inept when it comes to childcare, rendering them quite independent, they live in an old rambling house (which often has a cute name as well), often with a garden and, of course, they have all sorts of adventures. 

I always think of these books as being British, although they often are not - The Saturdays and another example of the genre, The The Penderwicks series by Jeanne Birdsall, were both written by Americans and set here.  But both have characters with British sounding names such as Cuffy (the housekeeper in The Saturdays) and Churchie (the housekeeper in The Penderwicks, not to mention youngest sister Batty and the name Penderwick itself).   The Shoes books by Noel Streatfeild, which actually are British, come close to falling in this category too.  And in the Cobble Street cousins series by Cynthia Rylant, the main characters are cousins instead of siblings and their parents are merely conveniently absent rather than dead.  Of course, there are the only-child orphans, like in The Secret Garden and Anne of Green Gables, which to my mind are in a different class of book entirely. 

Wracking my brain, I was only able to come up with one classic character of children's literature who has two parents who figure prominently in the book: Ramona.  Betsy, Tacy, and Tib all have both parents as does Betsy in the B is for Betsy series but the parents don't play a major role.  They are perhaps slightly more prominent in the Riverside Kids series.  In Laurel Snyder's Penny Dreadful, the protagonist's father's unemployment is the catalyst for all that follows, but unlike when Ramona's father loses his job in Ramona and Her Father, her parents' trials and tribulations seem more a way to provide Penny with the independence to have all sorts of adventures, rather than an issue in and of themselves.  I'm sure middle grade and YA literature feature parents more prominently as the main character's relationship with his or her parents can be an important theme at that age (I can think of Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me as well as most if not all of the books by Judy Blume and that's just off the top of my head), but authors of books for younger children seem to enjoy killing the mothers off.

It's easy to see why.  In The Saturdays the children pool their allowance and each takes a turn at having a special adventure in New York.  Alone.  No mother would allow that!  But it certainly is a handy plot device.  For another take on The Saturdays, head over to Storied Cities.

I remember reading lots of books about Motherless Children Having Adventures as a kid but I'm having trouble retrieving all their names now.  Any ideas?  And what about books for younger readers from the other end of the spectrum, which feature one or both parents of the main character prominently?