Lessons from Our President

I originally published this here because it started out as a post about buying Al Capone new books. It got picked up in a trending topic on Twitter last night and I got a couple hundred hits in ten minutes, 3 pieces of hate mail (two were really nasty, but my favorite was "You call me ignorant for keeping my child home and you named your kid Al Capone."), lots of positive comments, and probably some really confused people who ended up on my other blog thinking it was about censorship, Obama, children's literature, etc and discovered that really it was an isolated post buried among 1 million reasons I think I have the cutest baby on the planet. So I'm reposting here as well...

Those who know me, know that I feel very strongly about discussions of appropriateness and children (and their books). I write about* children's books for a living. I can honestly say that I have one of the best jobs in the world, yet on days like today I get very frustrated.

This morning President Obama spoke to school children directly. Our local newspaper ran an article about the speech and posted the entire text of the speech online and still parents went ballistic. They called school board members, they kept kids out of school, they declared it propaganda, they demanded alternative assignments, they filled the newspaper comments section with hateful and racist comments. All of this name calling and hate speech because the President of the United States wants kids to stay in school, pay attention, live up to their potential, ask questions, watch less tv, work hard, and never give up. If this is brainwashing, I'm okay with these messages.

What I'm not okay with is parents who try to take over the schools because they don't like the President. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to skip school if you don't like the person who is talking. I'm not okay with teaching kids that you don't even have to listen if you don't agree with a person. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to make up your mind before you know the whole story. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to disrespect the President, their teachers, or other adults role models. I'm not okay with teaching kids that there is only one right way of thinking or one right answer to a problem. I start every semester by telling my students that I will never ask them to agree with everyone's point of view, but I will ask them to listen and treat each other with respect. It makes me sad when I see parents who use children as an excuse to perpetuate intolerance, disrespect, and hatred.

If Al Capone was old enough to understand and watch television, I would have hoped that he would have watched in school and we would have watched again as a family after school. Since he's not old enough and won't be any time soon, I went online and bought books that are often banned or challenged by people who feel that they have the obligation to protect children from the harmful ideas like diversity. Unfortunately, he won't be able to grow up and say that he remembers when he listened to President Obama at school, but maybe he will grow up being open minded enough that when classmates or their parents try and close down conversations with narrow minded, ignorant rhetoric, he will fight back. Hopefully he will never call our President by hateful slurs because he doesn't agree with his ideologies. Hopefully, he will never make fun of a classmate who's skin or family or religion or ability is different from his own.

We can't afford to buy Al Capone all of the books that I would like him to read, but today I added a few more to his library. Here's what I got him in honor of all of the ignorant parents who think it's okay to breed hatred and intolerance in children.

• The Family Book--because families come in all different shapes and sizes
• And Tango Makes Three--because some of those families have two mommies or two daddies
• The Lorax--because recycling is a good thing and we should take care of the environment
• In the Night Kitchen--because naked baby butts are not bad
• Halloween books--because Halloween is not the work of the devil

Obviously, this is a mishmash of books. Diversity and tolerance cannot be taught in a single book, but when children grow up with images of diversity, hopefully they do not turn into close minded adults.

*For those who don't know me well I do NOT write children's books, I write about them. I teach critical analysis of children's and adolescent literature to future teachers.

Identity, Holden Caulfield, and Flavor Flav

I think I might just create an Eng 101 assignment around this video.

Twilight Irony

When I went to buy the second book in the Twilight series for my book group, this is what I found on the display. Leave it to a "lost" book to explain the meaning of vampire metaphors.

Confessions

I never realized how anti-censorship I was until I realized how much age (in)appropriate material we give our own child. Here's this week's list:

• I read Harry Potter 1 and 4 aloud to him last week.
• Last Friday, we had a prolonged discussion (okay more of a lecture) about road trip metaphors.
  
• Rakicy read Once a Runner to him. New words include: bastard, shit, etc.
  
• I told Rakicy to turn on the television as background noise. An hour later I realized that the background noise was Sahara.
• Rakicy turns on the radio or plays music on the computer when Boutros if fussy. Yesterday, I discovered them listening to Lil' Wayne's Lollipop.

Clearly, all of this exposure has had no lasting effect.*

*I say this had more to do with being a First Friday baby then being exposed to older reading material.

Child Actors: Terrorized or Talented

The Today Show did a story this morning about a recent controversy over a NYC public service announcement about smoking. The controversy, according to the article, isn't about the message of the psa as much as it is about whether or not the boy in the ad is really acting or whether producers actually made him cry. Here's the full psa.



I really wish this had happened back at the beginning of the semester when we were discussing Shirley Temple and child actors, but I still find the arguments really interesting. Personally, the ad is very had to watch, but then again a lot of the stop smoking psa are hard to watch. According to the story, viewers were flooding DHS with calls about the appropriateness of the ad. Most of these complaints claimed that the ad was more too emotional, both in the sense that it "manipulated viewer's emotions" and the sense that the boy's emotions were too powerful to be acting.

This begs the question how old does someone have to be in order to act and/or manipulate their own emotions. I've babysat for plenty of toddlers who are quite capable of turning tears on and off. If we are going to make the argument that this child is too young to act in this way, then theoretically, he would be too young to be acting in another (happier) situation as well.

I find it interesting that while crying or upset children appear in movies and on television shows, the real objection here seems to be to the use of the child body to manipulate adult behavior. No one seems to be concerned about the welfare of the child actor when the child cries over the death of a pet in a movie. So why is this child actor so much more traumatized?* The comments about the story reveal that maybe this isn't really a case of a traumatized child or the impossibility of child actors.

The newsvine comments on this story quickly shifted away from outrage about the kid crying and toward outrage about the ideological content of the psa. One person noted:

So, if I don't have kids, I don't have to stop? Thanks!

And several other objected the idea of the psa in general:

What the hell is the government (any level of government) doing wasting our tax dollars to advertise! Friedman can kiss my a**! I dont need a nanny from the government taking care of me based on his vision of what is best!

I'll spare you the couple of other thousand comments about whether or not smoking (first-hand or second-hand) really causes cancer, what the government should or should not spend money on, and what products should or should not be taxed. There were even some comments that made a case for legalizing marijuana.

While I'm not sure that I can quite defend Donny Deutch's claim on the Today Show that

“Kids are very good actors. Maybe sometimes they make a kid cry, but if it saves 20,000 lives for five seconds of crying, I’ll take it.”

The outrage, at least from the internet comments, seems to actually have little to do about the actual child. The outrage instead seems about using the child in an ideological way.** Nearly all of the adults who have commented on the psa talk about the manipulation of the adult audience through the image of the crying child. While I will admit that the narrator does address the ad at parents, a think are far more interesting discussion would be about the manipulation of child audiences through images (however constructed) of children, but that will have to be a blog post for another day.

*The comments that objected to the child being made to cry, claimed that this would traumatize the child actor. I don't think I buy this extreme either, as by that theory any child who was ever told no or had something taken away would be forever traumatized. A television producer (stranger) who takes away a toy to get the child to cry might actually be less traumatizing than an older sibling who takes away a toy.
**Clearly the people who raised such objections have never taken my children's literature class or they would have realized that the child is always used ideologically.

Superheros

I'm a little disturbed that this guy just happened to have a Spiderman costume on hand, but this is a very cool story.

Burping Slugs

This makes me happy...

Me: talking about ideologies and Harry Potter and showing students the graphs showing reasons for challenges.
Student: All of those reasons sound like personal preference. I thought banned books did something illegal.
Me: Most of the challenges are personal objections, but banning doesn't take into account everyone else's personal preference. Why do you think people might object to Harry Potter?

[list of reason goes here]

Different student: People actually think that spells in Harry Potter are real? If they were real, I'd make those people burp slugs.

YA For Obama

I haven't had a lot of time to explore YA for Obama, but from what I've seen it looks pretty interesting. When I first saw it, I was a little confused because it seems like a rather haphazard group (young adult writer, readers and friends, according the website), but in reality this is not different than nurses, teachers, or steel workers for Obama, plus it offers an interesting glimpse into the political lives of people who are usually only defined by their books. Regardless of whether or not you support him, if you teach ya lit, it's a sight you might want to check out.

I did quickly google YA for McCain to see if such a group existed, but nothing turned up. I guess in terms of ideology it would be more likely to see Children's Authors for McCain. If I thought it wouldn't offend students, it would be interesting to examine the ideologies of children's literature in terms of the election.

Willy Wonka and/in the Lincoln Bedroom

Oompa loompas are a little creepy and do seem like the spies of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but apparently their spying ways in the film are not all that different than Roald Dahl's own past. The news that Dahl was a war-time spy was not nearly as entertaining as last month's revelation that Julia Child was a spy, but his methods were a little more scandalous. According to recent reports, the celebrated children's author was employed by the government to charm and then sleep with well-connected Americans in order to win confidences from them. Does 007 really come from 00-mpa loompa? According to one source in The Telegraph:

"I think he slept with everybody on the east and west coasts that [was worth] more than $50,000 a year."

While this this may sound like a great gig, accordng to Newsweek:

Dahl was assigned to gather pillow talk from Mrs. Luce, who was regarded as anti-British. It was hard duty. "I am all f–––ed out," Dahl complained to the ambassador, Lord Halifax, after a three-night stand. "You know it's a great assignment but I just can't go on."

Supposedly FDR knew he was a spy and allowed Dahl to report his pillow confessions to the UK, as the US would enter WWII shortly. More interesting to me, however, is what the children's lit backlash will be.

In my 170 class this morning we talked briefly about this and related issues and my students seemed unsure how to process sex spy turned children's author. Luckily they seem to have fallen in love with his books first and are unwilling to degrade their value simply because of scandal. Let's just hope Sarah Palin doesn't get wind of this story. According to Time, while mayor of Wasilla, AK she, among other things,

continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them.

Clearly Harry Potter is to blame for teen pregnancies!*

*I've found conflicting reports about the titles of the books she sought to ban. John Green first alerted me to this connection. I'll be interested to see what's on that list though.

BFG?

A recreation of a recent conversation in our house:

Me: Blockbuster was having a sale on previously viewed so I bought some for my children's lit classes.

Greg: What did you get?

Me: X, Y, Z, and BFG

Greg: BFG? in children's literature.

Me: Dahl's Big Friendly Giant, it's the animated version.

Greg: that's not what I think of...

So here's my question... How many of you played Doom? and if so, at what age? And if you're willing to go so far as to give me info regarding the non-giant meanings' popularity, I'd be even more grateful. Was it used in other games? Is it still used?

And yes, I'm a nerd who just learned that BFG could stand for something other than Big Friendly Giant.

Children's Movies

I realize that days before school starts is not the time to be posting this question, but I've decided to do a film unit this semester, but I can't for the life of me pick a movie. My problem is now I want to teach too many movies. I don't want a Disney movie because I already show clips during a unit of fairytales, but anything else is fair game. So, if you could teach a movie in a children's literature class what would it be?

Note: you do not have be a children's lit person to answer this question. I welcome all suggestions.

Red Carpet (Children's Lit edition)

If you don't already read John Greene's blog (or his books), you should check out both. Among other things, he posted this great YouTube video of the "fashion police" at this year's Caldecott/Newbery awards banquet. The video is a little long, but funny.

Wizard of Oz v. LOTR

The American Film Institute just released it's top movies by genre, and Wizard of Oz took number 1 in fantasy, followed by LOTR: Fellowship of the Rings. Not that I argue with their standings, but I find it interesting that in a category that houses some big budget new movies, Oz is still number one. I am a little partial to it because I spent 4 years studying under an Baum scholar who even taught an entire class that was only about Oz, but when I ask my students how many have seen the 1939 movie (I'm not surprised that many haven't read the book), the numbers seem to be dwindling.

Other interesting winners (to me) included:

• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (animation): The order of this category was odd to me. Beauty and the Beast came in above both Shrek and Cinderella, for example, and nearly everything is Disney.
• To Kill a Mockingbird (courtroom drama): one of my favorite movies and books of all time, but I had never thought of it as courtroom drama, which in my mind is more Law and Order.
  
• The Godfather (gangster): Fitting since it made the genre popular.
  

Road Trip with Peter Dickinson Pt 2

This time last week, I was quite nervous about the approaching ChLA, but more importantly I was very nervous about taking Peter Dickinson back to the airport at the end of the conference. It wasn't so much that I really had anything else to do that day, but 3 hours one-on-one with a well known author whose paper I presented on was a little unnerving. I know I said yesterday that I would blog about the experience today (and I sat down to do this morning), but in the mean time, I found Robin McKinley's blog. I'm intrigued for several reasons, but I spent all afternoon reading not because I'd just spent the better part of three days with her husband Peter Dickinson, but rather because she has footnotes in her blog. Those of you who know me well know that I am both unable to function without the footnote and have an irrational fear of footnote punctuation (there's a story here for those that are interested). I don't know that I will be able to pull off the footnoting of my own blog, but I'm in love with this metacommentary.

Anyway, back to the conference. I spent the first half of the conference regretting that I had submitted the paper. The introvert part of me combined with a very strong perfection impulse led me to toy with scenarios that would allow me to not present. I met Peter very early on Thursday morning when Roberta introduced us. I think that I was only able to end the conference without an ulcer because I was able to interact with him on much less pressure intensive situations earlier in the conferences--I helped him send an email to his wife, we printed his boarding pass, I drove him to lunch, etc.

By the time we got to Saturday and the presentation, I felt like I was going to be sick again. I opted for the short version of my paper.* (please note the punctuation of the pseudo-footnote) The paper seemed well received; quite frankly I don't remember much of that time.

The trip back to O'hare was wonderful. We chatted about politics, semis (and truckstops), how I miss the hills of the Ozarks, and numerous other topics. I was worried about the weather because storm clouds were looming, but they managed to hold out until our return trip. We did spend some time wandering through a Joliet grocery store in order not have to drive in the storms, but the flight seemed to depart as close to on-time as O'hare can accomplish.

My final thoughts on the experience have little to do with the confernce, and more to do with Peter Dickinson as an author who is also a human being. Part of my anxiety in this conference came from an experience I had as a master's student. I was writing my thesis on the runner up for the Phoenix Award and I emailed her to ask a question. She responded with a very dismissive and very accusatory email.** That experience made me very nervous about interacting with another author, but Peter was so gracious. Shortly after I helped him check-in on his flight, he gave me a book of his poetry that his children put together in honor of his 80th birthday. He inscribed it to Greg and me as a thank you for taking him back to the airport. I've paid people to sign my books, I've stood in line to have books signed, but I've never had someone offer me one as a gift.***

*it's very bad form to go over the time allotment at a conference, and since I was in the very last session, I felt like everyone's attention span would be shot anyway.
**basically she told me that I (and all other academics) was what was wrong with literature and that I had totally missed the point. I've withheld her name here because many of you know, but simple research can reveal this person if you are really interested.
***this was the honored portion of the previous post

Things that oinked, lived in water, are on bones, or are generally orange

These are all things I don't eat. The last category is slightly misleading because it really just refers to my carrot allergy, but I really don't eat seafood or pork or anything still on a bone. I know that my reasoning is purely psychological (I had traumatic experiences with pork and seafood), but those feelings are so strong and I have not eaten either in so long that I almost can't eat them anymore.

When I was very young we went to Florida on vacation and a friend of the family introduced me to seafood by giving my a raw oyster. The result was not pretty. I've tried to add seafood back in the last several years, but it really upsets my stomach.

My aversion to pork is more psychologically traumatizing than texture/taste related. When I was in second grade, I was at a pork roast (a tradition in the south) and sitting quietly reading a book. An introvert and avid reader, the book happened to be Charlotte's Web. Enough said. Long story short, someone offered to show me Wilbur, and I've not eaten pork since.


Tonight Greg made pork steak, and I tasted it. It's not my first choice, but I didn't totally freak out. This is an improvement. I'm not ready to add it to my regular menu, but I am proud of myself for trying. I'm quite happy with my diet of veggies and boneless, skinnless chicken breast, but twenty years later, I think I may finally be ready to move on from a very bad joke. Although, I do much better, if you simply refrain from telling me it's pork.