Overrated Children's Writers
 

Hello all. This is a topic I have been exploring along with others in the Literature thread, and i wanted to pull it out and discuss it here, instead of clogging up their thread.

In that thread, I made the claim that writers like Richard Adams, CS Lewis, and AA Milne are vastly overrated, because their writing is so poor.

In writing, there are two elements. There is the plot, tone, context, and so forth. This is largely artistic. Then there is the craft of writing. Are your pronouns exact? Is your sentence structure correct? How many different words do you use? Are you using the same words or different words?

My claim is that these three writers are examples of children's writers who have a poverty of language. I am critiquing their craft, not their plot and so forth.

I think we have a tendency to make rosy things from our childhood. I went back and watched GI Joe cartoons a few years ago. I loved them as a kid. As an adult, they were really, really bad. I never realized how dreadful they were until I objectively reviewed the cartoons as an adult.

I think it is fair to demonstrate that these writers have a poverty of craftmanship that many do not recognize, because they think of these books and writers as classics. They they may have clever plots or characters, they have poor writing.

Let's take a look:


I consider CS Lewis to be the worst offender. Here is a sample paragraph from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe


I hope you can see the bad writing here. There are clumsy statements, poor analogies, and bad pronouns. If you submitted a story with the first sentence quoted here, you would have all sorts of red ink on it, and rightfully so.

There are clumsy phrases and the language is small and tiny. The words are small. Phrases like "on a level with it" read poorly and sound even worse when said aloud.

Now, here is a quote from AA Milne:


Now I am not addressing the tone. It has the typical wistful Merry England tone that a lot of these works have. I have also stated that Milne is a better writer that Lewis and Adams, but there is still a lot of clumsy writing here.

The word choice is better, and the picture he paints is therefore more clear than Lewis, who writes very muddy scenes. There are no visuals with his work. Here, you have visuals. The problem is with its poor writing. This is all one sentence! That's not good writing, it's running concepts into one another at high speed. Some of the phrases read awkwardly, like "tinkling happily to find themselves their own pretty shape again."

Alright, let's look at Adams. This is from Watership Down


Again, not as bad as Lewis, but still pretty poor. There are some notes of better grammar, like using Glimmering and such. He obviously respects the audience more than Lewis.

There is still a paucity of proper writing. His description is merely a laundry list of physical characterstics. Compare to Milne who at least gave you a feeling and sense of the scene. And this was published in 1972! You'd have thought he would have been a better writer by then!

Now let's take a look at some other popular writers from way back. I want to show you the important distinctions. Let's start with The Land of Oz by Baum.



Do you see how he is a better writer? First of all, the language used is much more evocative and illustrative. He is teaching words like fleet and vigorous and more, but writing them on context, so a child can learn them. There is respect for the audience. This is writing that challenges children with interesting stories and clever writing.

Baum wrote before any of the three cited writers wrote their works. Can;t you see that Baum is a significantly better writer?

Let's take a look at a more modern writer. Here's McKinley, in a newberry award book, The Blue Sword. from 1983


Now, that's just good writing. Quick, detailed, evocative, with a good vocabulary and good grammar to back it up. I've never read the novel, but it almost makes me want to.



Now, I am not dealing with characters here, although one could argue that Baum;s fleshed out characters were much better than Lewis hackneyed stereotypes (and they'd be right) or that the tone of Adams is simply too sweet for the things he wants to do, or that Milne meanders way too much with his prose and needs to get to action scenes more often. But, they are not cogent critiques to this discussion. What is important here is the craft of writing, not the clever ideas that may have arisen therein (if any).

I just read the first line from C.S. Lewis. That is indeed really bad.

I would submit that a children's writer needs only to appeal to children, not to Anxiety the lit snob.

dola: And not to say I disagree that they are indeed poor writers, but how can we trust that you didn't take the best ever segment of Oz and compare it to the worst ever segments written by the others?

Even if we are to accept that Baum is a better writer (as opposed to storyteller), so what? The fact that Lewis, Milne, and Richard Adams are still read today would indicate to me that their storytelling abilities are good enough to make up for their lack of proper grammar.

On a side note, this seems to be a really odd thing to get worked up about. Or maybe it's just me, but the language you use (Can;t you see that Baum is a significantly better writer?/I hope you can see the bad writing here./etc) just strikes me as oddly strident for a discussion about children's literature.

Also, I'm having trouble with your statement "What is important here is the craft of writing, not the clever ideas that may have arisen therein (if any)." In my opinion, when discussing literature, it's pointless to seperate the two. One can read a beautifully written passage and appreciate it for what it is, but if the author can't tell a story to save their life, then no one is going to read their beautifully crafted shitty story.

I think we should ask for the 8-year-old Harold Bloom's opinion on this matter.

You just take me at my word. A man's word is his bond. For example, LWW was considered Lewis's best of the series because the others were rushed and had numerous grammatical errors and less editing.

BTW - appealing to children is one thing, sure. I am not a "lit snob." As I mentioned in the literature thread, popular literature that is well written is fine by me, such as JK Rowling, or Baum.

When you are writing for children, you aren't given a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for bad writing.

Here's an excellent example. A Wrinkle in Time. I'm sure most of us have read it. Classic, classic children's story. Why? Because it respected kids. It had difficult concepts explained easily enough (with illustrations) and great craft in the writing.

That's not me being a lit snob, only advocating the unusual books published by people with English degrees - that's me pointing out that children's literature can be literature, and not just Danielle Steele. Writers like Baum wrote caringly, whereas other writers sometimes just throw their words upon a page.

Oh, btw, I think its funny that someone like me, who had never even had a college level lit class, is begin called a lit snob :)

Er, much of Milne's writing is attempting to subvert grammar to create juxtapositions of meaning. Stick that in yer pipe und smoek it!

ESPECIALLY with Children's literature. With Children's lit (and I have a hard time considering Lewis Children's lit as I really consider him to be more young adult, but I digress) the story carries more weight compared to the prose compared to adult literature imo.

While I see what you are getting at, I hope you realize that a lot more can be gotten away with in fiction than any non-fiction writing. While I am not a C.S. Lewis fan, most people had taken to the book because of the story and not its construction.

Now if the grammar is so poorly constructed that it becomes a distraction, then the writer has failed in getting the story across. But most people get in the habit of getting used to a writer's style and are just looking for words to construct images in their mind.

Just take a look at the most popular authors of the last decade and you can probably pick out a lot of flaws that an English teacher would flog you over. But most of us don't necessarily remember the words on the page, it is more about the images that formed when reading those words. And if the words fail to do that, that is the only book's flaw.

You mean this isn't a parody thread?

Pronouncing it doesn't make it so.

One can be snobby about something without actually knowing what they are talking about. They are typically called a "poser." :)

I didn't read that long diatribe (I'm too busy and important to read more than a paragraph on FOFC), I will say this:

JUDY BLUME



"Are You There God, It's Me Bleedy McBleedalot"

I laughed. :D

Now, you need to seperate the two.

For example, Alan Garner was considered to be one of the best children's writers in the 60s in terms of craft, but not in terms of plot. Ever heard of him? I doubt it. So you just don;t need craft.

You also can't have just a decent plot and characters and move on (although Lewis has neither, Milne at least has characters).

The best works, the ones we should hand our kids, are the ones that do both - and those are the ones that last. The true greats of Children's Literature.


The reason we have difficulty separating ourselves from kid's books, as opposed to other children, is, in one part, why these things are still being read. Imagine I gave my son the GI Joe boxed set with teh cartoons I loved when I was a kid, without seeing if they were truly quality. Then he did the same for his kid.

We think so nostalgicially about our childhood that it is hard to separate the bad from the good.

That's why they are still being read today. They have intertia. Other genres don;t have intertia. A hack who publishes a bunch of popular works 70 years ago in unknown today, because no one keeps reading it.

Children's works do have inertia. We either don;t go back to see if it was quality, or we have rose colored glasses.

So they kept getting read, not because they are quality, but because they have inertia.

Some books at least have some merit. I discussed the merit of Milne and Adams above, who are at least better than Lewis.

Lewis is the true offender. I had these books read to me as a child, so I loved them. I also like LWW on DVD and have it. I cried in the theaters when Aslan was killed.

BUT - Lewis is such a bad writer is isn;t even funny. If his best works is as bad as I quote, and his other works are even worse, then why did he get read then, and why is he getting read now? Simple. CS Lewis wrote Christian allegory for children, and a lot of parents prescribe his works based on that. Not that there is any problem with that, my dad did too. Just that you can;t turn around and say his work is a classic, or deserves to be on the same stage as other classics. The writing is poor, and frankly, there's not much redeeming about his works.

But Lewis is a special case because of the Christian allegory thing. The general principles of intertia even more to Lewis, who just happened to write at the right time.

Now, if you want to put Lewis on the Rushmore of 20th Century Theological Writers, I have no issue. He's just a very poor chidlren's writer from a craft perspective.

To me, as long as the story being told keeps my interest and the style of writing is easy enough to follow, I could care less about how good or bad the author is technically.

CS Lewis is an example to me that fails because it isn't easy to follow that style of writing - it just doesn't flow. My mind wants to insert punctation, because it reads like it was written by an excited child.

I don't have any real problem with the other quotes in Anxiety's initial post.

I am in total agreement with Ant.

Different strokes for different folks, but fiction writing should not be a science. I am fully willing to try a piece of fiction that is composed entirely of run-on sentences as long as it captivates me.

Most fiction is meant to be art. Sure you welcome to criticize it, but it is a bit much to think that there can be a common understanding of how good fiction should look like. It is that expectation that makes you snobbish, not your background. :p

I think others have said what basically what I was going to say, but I also have to add that the fact we're arguing over craft vs. plot and character development amuses me, because the way you're crafting your argument is annoying the shit out of me. :)

It comes across as lecturing, which in turn makes me want to... stop reading. So yes, there does come a point when the crafting of words can be so bad as to make it unreadable. But as Wade and others have said, when it comes to children's literature the story is far more important than the grammar in keeping the attention of the young reader (at least in my opinion and experience).

I love seeing Anxiety wade in on topics related to children. It's comical.

Yeah. This thread actually made me pretty angry. Maybe I'm being a bit silly, but seriously. Let's take our pretentious over-inflated sense of lit snobbery and apply it to Children's books.

Really? I mean really?

Holy shit!! I agree with wade moore!!!!!!!!

Anxiety must really hate e.e. cummings then.

Hey - we have common ground on taste in women too - so that's somethin'.

TITTIES!!!!!!!!!!!

Preach on preacher man.

FWIW, this is a hopelessly simplistic view of writing.

Exact pronouns? Correct sentence structure? Word variety?

Yeah, that reflects an awfully shallow and poor understanding of fictional writing.

Tell you what. You sit down and read a book to a 4- and an 8-yr old and see which ones they like better. It's about imagination, storytelling and memorable characters - not about whether some adult lit major thinks it's good or not.

FWIW, I agree with you, though I will point out that it's quite possible to do legitimate analysis of Children's Lit.

Anxiety's way, however, is not.

Yes, definitely.

I think it is Hilarius that someone who has never had a lit class is criticizing the writing style of a distinguished Professor of Literature of Oxford University. It is on the par of me criticizing someone's spelling.

We have a winner!

I'll throw down on Anxiety's side in this (meet me in Depot Town and we can arrange my fee). Kids are pretty impressionable, and I'd rather give them literature without poor grammar, if I can.

I teach 5th grade, and soon after the Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe was released I read the Narnia series to my class. The kids enjoy them, but I found them extremely simplistic and not nearly as good a read as the Harry Potter series or the Lord of the Ring series. I still have kids that read the series, but my top end readers stay well clear of it. I've had kids remark at how they just don't like the "way its written". Narnia seems to be the first series read by my students that want to start reading longer books, but they all seem to eventually graduate away from Narnia.

I never did get into Milne either. I always read the Michael Bond Paddington books to my 3rd graders, who absolutely loved the stories. I prefer his style of writing to Milne, even if his novels are basically a series of loosely attached short stories.

Dahl is another author I enjoy reading to the class.

This thread is... ... 98.33% gaytarded.

For some reason, this made me really laugh

SI

Did I miss something? Who thinks Rowling is actually a good writer? She's okay. Where she excels is storytelling. Some of her writing is awful. I hope she's not your standard for excellence.

I agree Baum was a wonderful writer. I also think (as you might have guessed) that technically skilled writing in children's books is a bonus--what needs to be there is the story telling, and at that all of these authors being debated are excellent.

I think my parents were lit snobs. I recall drifting off to sleep to the pleasing sentence structures and light hearted characters of William Peter Blatty.

Young Jedi, you impress me.

I just noticed that part of my gaytarded post didn't appear... I had put some stuff in fake html tags and it's just gone. Weird.

Regardless, I stand by my previous calculation. In fact, if anything it may have increased by a couple basis points since I last did the maths.

I'll agree with this.

And also Cam's statement that the way you have presented the argument is needlessly confrontational. It makes people WANT to disagree with you...

Can't you see how bad this is?

Yeah. And fwiw I (as I do with children's lit and education stuff) talked to my fiance who has a Master's Degree in Reading Education (that sounds pompous, i don't mean it to) this morning.

She pretty much agrees with Anxiety - but she explained in a way that didn't make me want to poke her in the eye ;).

Edit: Agreed with the principle, not necessarily the specific works.

I have to admit here that I bought the Narnia books so I could read them before the movies were release (and also because I have young children who will probably want to read these books soon). I attempted to get through them, but I had a very difficult time and eventually gave up. My difficulty was precisely what Anxiety is pointing out.

However, I can agree that if the book is for children and they are entertained by the simplistic writing styles, then so be it. Also I have had difficulty reading adult books that use sentence structure that differs from the way I think...."Day of the Jackel" was one example of a book I struggled to finish because I kept having to reread parts to understand what the author was saying.

I agree with Anxiety, specifically about CS Lewis. I like the Narnia books, but he's terribly overrated as a writer and a thinker.

If poor writing is a gateway to children enjoying the act of reading, so be it. I'd rather my kid read Milne than sit in front of the TV all day.

That's a strange statement. Why can't good writing be a gateway to children enjoying the act of reading? Is there something about poor writing that makes it more accessible to children, in your opinion?

Tonstant Weader fwowed up.

I would say the empirical evidence proves it. Books like the ones mentioned above would not be popular if children (young adults?) did not enjoy them and pass them along to friends. It would certainly be preferred that they are reading higher quality writing, but if they prefer the poorer quality, I'm fine with that.

There's nothing wrong with "good" writing; however, I think that the actual content, themes, characters and imagery is what brings the young reader enjoyment, not the correct usage of a semi-colon when dividing two independant clauses.

I agree, but I don't see why you can't have both. I'm not thinking that I would tell any kids I have not to read certain books based on that. But I sure as hell am going to do what I can to prevent them from ever saying "is" twice in a row, unless they're quoting Bill Clinton.