In Celebration of Magic

[mark_asphodel]

Discussion on Raphi's LJ on relatable characters and Harry Potter and such made me want to dive back into the "magic" books that enthralled me as a child.  

See, I wasn't remotely charmed by the first two HP books, and other acclaimed modern series like His Dark Materials really haven't worked for me.  I grew up reading the sort of books that are the foundation of kiddie fantasy lit, like the E. Nesbit Psammead trilogy, not to mention lots of Roald Dahl.  If that's what you start out reading, J.K. Rowling and her generation don't seem like much of anything special.  Now, I think Rowling got her groove on with Prisoner of Azkaban, which actually got me invested in her series and characters, but the first two books are pretty standard school-story formula with bonus Dalhian grotesquerie, IMO.  

[I also realize that part of the cultural impact of the Potter books was that, for many kids, that was the first series of books they ever read or wanted to read.  That's a valuable role.  They were NOT the first books I ever read and that's all I have to say about that angle.]

Not that derivative works can't be amazing.  

The #1 fantasy series of my childhood, the books of Edward Eager, wears its Nesbit influence openly, proudly.  The books are intentional "gateway drugs" to the works of the woman that Eager called the "Master" of their trade.  The seven books that Eager penned for children are a positive celebration of the power of literature, from Plato to Sir Walter Scott to Longfellow to Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Prose and poetry transport the children as powerfully as the magic does-- the magic is often a portal into the fictional worlds they love.  His characters are, in essence, little proto-fanficcers, trying to hook up Ivanhoe with Rebecca and Laurie with Jo because it's better that way!  To fully appreciate the worlds that Eager constructs, it really helps to know what he's building upon, and I don't consider that a shortcoming of the books in the slightest.  Reading Eager drove me to pursue the works of Nesbit and Alcott (thumbs up) and to read Ivanhoe and Evangeline (thumbs down, way down); they make themselves part of a literary tradition that stretches back to ancient Greece and Babylon. 

That wasn't enough to make the books great, though.  The prose style is clear and engaging, humorous and memorable (I can quote many passages from memory, with relish), and the characters are some of the best and most convincing children in Stateside kiddie lit.  Boys and girls shine alike in Eager's books, and they were children I could sympathize with, children who loved reading as much as I did.  Eager doesn't fall into the trap of making the "active" kid, the "motherly" kid, the "bookish" kid, and the "stupid" kid.  All the kids (except Gordy from Magic or Not?) are bright, curious, engaged with the world around them.  I was completely in tune with them-- with Ann when she orders pickled mangoes in the Pullman car, with Mark when he gets excited about a town called Angola because he recognizes the name from his stamp collection, with Laura and James when they discuss why their parents didn't buy the house where George Washington slept.  And I was with them when they were being bratty and petty and occasionally cruel, because they were, well, kids.  

The books aren't perfect.  Artifacts of their time, they have some depictions of Arabs and "cannibals" that were still borderline acceptable in my 1980s childhood but are decidedly not so today.  But for 1950s kiddie lit, the evenhanded portrayal of boys and girls, sisters and brothers and friends-- intelligent, active, independent, interesting kids-- is pretty impressive.  Eager's standout character is probably Roger, the main hero of Knight's Castle, which might be the best book of the seven, but the supporting cast (with the possible exception of Gordy) is always solid and memorable.  I loved characters like Roger and Mark, bookish boys who weren't in any sense the "nerds" that filled 1980s TV and movies, and I equally loved poetry-quoting Katherine, artsy Lydia, headstrong little Martha and her future daughter Ann.  

[I was less sympathetic toward "bossy" types Eliza and Jane; as a very bossy child, I think I resented the accuracy of the portrayals!  But I warmed up to them, and to the "stoic leader" character James as I grew older.]

Eager's books were not available for a long time, if I recall.  I grew up reading my mother's battered old copies.  They were re-issued when I was in university, and judging from the increase in "web presence" from 2000 (one little fansite) to today (articles, blogs, Amazon reviews) they've penetrated more of the public consciousness.  I hope so.  

If I have children, I may or may not insist upon introducing them to Harry Potter.  I'm still deeply ambivalent about a series that, IMO, peaked in the third of seven installments.  But I will definitely be reading them Half-Magic and Knight's Castle when they're tots, and then Magic or Not? when they're a little older and can handle its harder-edged, more ambiguous take on magic.  I want them to have the same "friends" that I did as a child-- not Harry, Hermione, and Ron, but Roger and Ann, James and Laura, Mark and Katherine.

I want them to experience Edward Eager's "gateway" into literature-- not a portal into one sealed-off world ruled by a single author, but a thousand different doors and windows into all that myth and history, prose, and poetry can offer.

Comments

[lyndis]

This was an interesting read!

I never really read "series" books as a small child. As a pre-teen I found Nancy Drew at a garage sale and from then on would buy ALL THE NANCY DREWS FOREVER. When my parents said the Hardy Boys were similar, I scoffed because, pf, boys, who gives a shit? But my brother got into those. And then we happened upon NANCY DREW AND THE HARDY BOYS and my brother and I squeed for months over those. I still have quite a few original print Nancy Drew books iirc. I am not a huge fan (as the writing REALLY sucks, says the person who couldn't stop laughing two pages in the last time she tried to read one) but I loved them as a kid, so I have emotional investment there. I dabbled with Animorphs books for a short time, and was absolutely blown away by VERY few books as a kid. Let's see: The Girl Who Owned a City, Shade's Children, and I'll Always Love You-- the last being for very young kids, a picture book about death-- were the only super memorable books I really read. As a young teen I happened upon The Last Unicorn (and then the movie) which did leave me pretty excited because the writing was great, and I borrowed my friend's copy of Faun & Games (even though fantasy wasn't my usual genre-- I carried around a lot of autobiographies) and did enjoy it very much. (I remember the Daymare the best.)

I always knew what auto-biographies and biographies were, and I read a lot of them. Especially about presidents (they were easy to find at school), but I think it was when I realized that Laura Ingalls Wilder's books were AUTO-biographies, as in, written by her and not 2nd-hand accounts, that I about flipped my shit. I don't remember how old I was, maybe 13, I had read the books a million times before. But there was something about realizing that she actually fucking lived that absolutely BLEW MY MIND. That pretty much cemented my love of history-- that the world /actually was like that at one time in one place/. It's so hard to believe now with all our technological shit, though. But that's how it used to be! (I'm still kind of overwhelmed by it, in a good way!)

Then a teacher introduced me to The Giver. I was so intrigued by it that my younger brother filched a copy from his 6th grade teacher (I was a year ahead), and not only did he read it, but I read it to my six-year-old sister and quizzed her and asked the same questions my Reading teacher did. The "utopia" theme to this day is an intriguing thought, and the book pretty much spelled out my opinions on it for me. Jonas was probably my Harry Potter in that, when I picture a "young boy" in a strange type of world, relate-able but at the same time, completely not, I do picture him, I think.

They Cage the Animals At Night (auto-biography) hit upon EVERYTHING I loved in a book-- it was so realistic it was like I was there. It was an auto-biography which means it really happened. There were funny parts, and heartbreaking parts, and just...gah. I read this one to my sister, also.

And then Night (Eli Wiesel) was a required read in 8th grade. I almost flipped my shit over that, too. The teacher was made fun of to high heaven and called "a Jew" by half the kids for actively doing Holocaust-information units for 8th graders, but I was absolutely in love with history by this point and I wanted to know what happened so bad I was in the library checking out 20 books on the Holocaust (including Night). I was a seriously annoying know it all in that class, and I was also the only avid reader/bookworm. (I read this to my sister, too! A seven-year old. Hm.)

(I later teacher aided for this teacher and loved EVERY MINUTE OF IT. She taught me everything about foreshadowing and even though she didn't teach English, I learned most of my writing techniques from her teaching me how to absorb reading material! I never looked at reading material the same way again.)

In later years I picked up some Christian novels (Janette Oke was family reading material and my brother and I absorbed all the ones my mother didn't read to us. The ones she did, I really enjoyed). Janette Oke isn't an amazing author, and her writing is rather simple-- not a lot of detail. But the way she writes still tells a story, and the "west" during the 1800s was her prime choice for a setting, and I was seriously in love with the "wild west" and "history" and absorbed everything like a sponge. I learned a lot about writing by reading her works, too. She also wrote about fairly strong, capable women and I REALLY loved that.

I was always a major bookworm, and three of the four of us (3/4 kids) grew up readers. Reading helped me immensely as a writer and just in general comprehension. The one sibling that always hated reading? Did terrible on writing-related stuff and reading comprehension and only RECENTLY learned how to write a real sentence. Reading good material is always good for kids, in my opinion. I wouldn't tell my kids they couldn't read, say, Harry Potter, because I preferred other things, but I would make certain they were of an appropriate age beforehand (and of appropriate maturity-- not all kids age the same, etc etc).

Books were such a huge part of my childhood I can't even imagine what I'd do if I had a kid who hated reading! Late in high school I got into the Star Wars books (pretty simple writing there, too) and after high school I hit upon some favorite books-- The Lovely Bones, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Glass Castle.

I think it's so neat how books that we loved as kids are not loved by kids today. I both find this unsurprising and surprising at once. When I was a kid, I NEVER would have picked up Harry Potter. There are a million reasons why, too-- the name is stupid as shit, the cover art wasn't cool looking, I wasn't into fantasy unless there were unicorns involved (haha), and I don't think I could have been assed to look past the dumb shit to see if it was a good book or not. (My parents would have thought it was evil when I was a kidlet, anyway.)

But I didn't grow up like most people and I readily admit this. I grew up watching Little House on the Prairie, I Dream of Jeannie, Petticoat Junction, My Three Sons and Road to Avonlea-- not cartoons or popular shows that were on TV at the time. I really LIKE the older shows-- I wish I owned them all, especially Petticoat Junction and My Three Sons, haha-- but I can totally see why kids now wouldn't be remotely interested in those shows. :X I guess books go through "popular" cycles, too: and with the internet and stuff, it's so EASY to find good reads if you really want them.

I LOVE how easy that is! Love it. SO MUCH. When I was a kid I had to read the back of a book to see if I'd find it interesting or not. Now I can read that and look up reviews, too. Though I still kind of get nostalgic and every now and then I DO pick up a book based on the cover art and summary alone. XD

[xirysa]

A really interesting post! I very much enjoyed reading it.

Growing up, I was always the bookworm of our "group", and I quite literally read anything that came my way. I don't remember much of what I read, I'm afraid, but a lot of what I do remember reading wasn't standard "American" reading. I read a lot of Dahl, Carrol, C.S. Lewis, and Dickens, and then was introduced to Dumas and the like. Funnily enough, I didn't start reading HP until I was second or third grade, and even then it was at my mother's insistence. I didn't really get into the series until the third book, which I really loved, and since the fourth book hadn't been published then, I read a lot of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, and then lots of "classic" American literature--I have very vivid memories of reading Huck Finn when I was nine or so. Animorphs too, eventually, and Garth Nix and Diana Wynne Jones. Also the Redwall books, and after I got The Hobbit for a birthday present, Tolkein quickly became the Next Big Thing for me.

Looking back, HP really wasn't one of my favorites--aside from the initial excitement of a new book being released, I wasn't that totally vested in the series. But I still think fondly of them, and if, in the future, my children wan to read the

[raphiael]

For me, I think it was the waiting for a new book and getting all excited over it with friends that "made" the HP series. On their own? I don't really feel much attachment.

His Dark Materials and Garth Nix's Old Kingdom books were my personal favorites growing up, though, and probably the ones I felt most passionate about. Were I to get my kids to read any books from my childhood, those would probably be the ones. And possibly Diana Wynne Jones' work, too.

(So with you on The Giver, though. Slap Bridge to Terabithia in there as well, while you're at it. :|)

[samuraiter]

Most peculiar that I have never heard of the author or the series. o_O I mean, I worked in a freakin' book store for most of a decade, and never a peep!

As for myself (since I remain an avid reader, and always will), I grew up reading Piers Anthony, Robert Asprin, Raymond E. Feist, Dragonlance, Elfquest, and a variety of other things. ... Which might explain a few things about me. ^_^;

[kyusil]

I've read Half-Magic! I remember it being very entertaining, though I didn't read further into the series (petty kid, didn't like the girl who recommended the series to me so I didn't want to read more). I think I might've sold the books, but I'll poke around next time I'm at a used bookshop.

Harry Potter was very much my childhood, although I remember trying to plow through Lord of the Rings as a kid when the movies were coming out. I loved the films but only got through the first book. I'd like to finish reading The Hobbit before the movie comes out, at least.

[myaru]

I feel like such an oddball. My reading tastes as a kid spanned whatever happened to be available at the time, which wasn't always very much, so I read Madeleine L'Engle (loved her), ended up reading Narnia, but also read and loved Dragonlance, Xanth, Nancy Drew, The Indian in the Cupboard, Roald Dahl, and historical novels. The stuff people always say they read as a kid (Diana Wynne Jones, for example, or HDM) I didn't even know about until I was an adult. I still haven't read The Dark is Rising, which it seems everyone has read.

Harry Potter was a lot of fun, I thought. I picked the books up expecting very little, mostly because I was curious about what made it so popular - I think I started reading them around the release of Goblet of Fire, when I was working at a bookstore and could get them cheap. They're enjoyable. For a short time I even wanted to write fic for them. (Whew, dodged THAT bullet.) But otherwise, I didn't see much to get obsessed about. I do still like to reread them occasionally, but only because they're such an easy read; I'd like to read Name of the Rose again, too, but that consumes way more brain power.

[amielleon]

I'm not going to begin to say JKR deserves her massive income, because I doubt any single writer in the world at any time deserves that much money for a single series. That's just a consequence of capitalism. Nor am I going to say that the HP books' merit alone warrants its popularity.

But, I do think that there tend to be reasons that certain books become popular, and at least one of them has to stem from something inherent to the book itself.

I liked Dahl as a child, but thinking back on it, his style was rather like goat milk. He had a quirkiness to his writing that I suppose one could find either incredibly charming or too weird to really stomach -- especially if you've been growing up less "weird-mindedly". Dahl is incredibly unique and I think the fact that he's done well shows that children more often than not appreciate him. His goat milk flavor is not, however, something I'd attempt to market on the scale of Harry Potter. It may very well be considered a plus that Harry Potter stays within blander boundaries, because I think that makes it more potentially accessible. Not requiring the reader to be familiar with existing literature -- that, too, makes it more accessible.

Not to say that Harry Potter offers special. I think there's a lot about its particular premise that makes it more relatable for this generation. (Which, uh, would be mine I guess.) It builds the magic around a world that a child essentially already experiences. It hides Diagon Alley in the streets of a mundane city, and the magical train in the walls of a normal train station. It says kids get sent a magic letter on their 11th birthday (and their parents get a visit if no one knows any better) and then they get to go to magic school where they don't have to learn crappy subjects like math.

Cut to Hogwarts, and it's still an embellishment upon an existence kids essentially know. Harry Potter is its own High School AU. I think fandom's demonstrated the appeal of that one by its immeasurable archives of it.

My point is, until the final book, the striking thing about Harry Potter is that it's about a world that is parallel in more than one sense to ours. I think that sets it far apart from most books about magic, in which the magical hijinks cause things to diverge (even temporarily) from the routine of normal life.