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20 Feb 97
On Feb 19th, Jane Buchanan wrote:
& Sammy O. commented: First-person narrative bothered me a little more as a child than it does as an adult; Beverly Cleary put it nicely in _Girl from Yamhill_, when she wrote that the narrator usually came off as being "full of himself." Generally, I avoided 1st person books when I was younger. My objections now (&, I, too, have found only a few narrators I like) are because first person is so often poorly done. I haven't read _Music of Dolphins_ (or whatever the title is!), but I find myself in Jane Buchanan's position, of wondering how someone without language could tell her story; I'll have to look at the book. I *really* had a problem with _The Cuckoo's Child_, for this very reason: the writing didn't remind me of a child telling her story; it reminded me of an adult really trying impress her writing teacher. I didn't buy it. "I do still like the main character's thoughts on paper, but this has been eloquently done in a couple books" I agree; it isn't that difficult to do.
20 Feb 1997 "This makes me think of one of my minor pet peeves in literature, first person narratives....Just wondering if there are others on this list with this problem?" (BTW, why do we always use that phrase "snip" and keep in those little arrow lines?)" Well, its like this Sam...(sorry I couldn't control myself)...I also have problems getting into books with first person narratives, and I still (after reading for thirtysomething years) cannot figure out why. But, I do know that if the first person narrative is so unique, the voice so compelling or the dialect so necessary to add to the theme/backdrop/atmosphere of the novel...I will like it better. For example, have you read James M. Deem -3 NBs of Julian Drew-? Here the protagonist is so abused that he resorts to writing/telling in secret code. His sense of isolation immediately draws the reader in...Okay, I reviewed it for "Booklist" and am probably one of the few people on the planet who think its a brilliant book! I also like the first person voice of the protagonist in Sylvia Cassedy's -M.E. and Morton-...again because the novel needs the first person narrative to keep the blend of fantasy/reality going. And here's where my brain cells die...but didn't Virginia Woolf use first person narrative in -Make Lemonade-? And I don't think that -Fat: A Love Story- by Barbara Wersba would have been as hysterical if the 16 year old "heroine" wasn't telling us inch by inch, step by step of her absolutely ridiculous ways to improve herself and find love! Lois Lowery also succeeded with -Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst- some of those lines were classic: "I also have a psychiatrist. His name is Freud. He is dead. But there is no need to be grossed out by that becasue with some psychiatrists it doesn't seem to matter much if they are alive or dead." Come on, how could that get across without using first person narrative!?! BTW, I cannot spell at all and this "freebie" email program has no spellchecker. So, please ignore any words that don't look like words. Oops, once again my few little thoughts took longer than I thought: sorry! Karen...who now understands the process of choosing the Newberry & Caldecott awards, thank you everyone for your posts or emails directly to me...but, wouldn't you all still like to know how this year's committee actually picked -A View From Saturday-?!?! Go ahead, start laughing...
20 Feb 1997
On Feb 20, 1:41pm, "Karen L. Simonetti" wrote: I agree--take for instance _Owl in Love_. Or _Saying Goodbye_, which has such a well-done first person narrative I didn't even notice it was also in the present tense, which ordinarily drives me up the wall. My other pet peeve about first person narratives are the really chatty, remoreselessly breezy ones that are trying SOOOOO hard to convince you they're actually being written by a kid that the effect is just to slam the fact that they're *not* right in your face. "For example, have you read James M. Deem -3 NBs of Julian Drew-? Here the protagonist is so abused that he resorts to writing/telling in secret code. His sense of isolation immediately draws the reader in...Okay, I reviewed it for "Booklist" and am probably one of the few people on the planet who think its a brilliant book!" Hey, count me in! It was one of my "pick of the month" choices. "Lois Lowery also succeeded with -Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst- some of those lines were classic: "I also have a psychiatrist. His name is Freud. He is dead. But there is no need to be grossed out by that becasue with some psychiatrists it doesn't seem to matter much if they are alive or dead." Come on, how could that get across without using first person narrative!?!" There is a style of narrative that could do it; however it seems to be an excusively British style. Rumer Godden could've done it, and Margery Sharp. Speaking of this, did anyone else find it disconcerting as a child when a series writer switched styles like this? (Most of the Anastasia books are in the third person.) It made the first person narrative that much more implausible.
20 Feb 1997 Someone wrote: First-person narrative bothered me a little more as a child than it does as an adult; Beverly Cleary put it nicely in _Girl from Yamhill_, when she wrote that the narrator usually came off as being "full of himself." Generally, I avoided 1st person books when I was younger. My objections now (&, I, too, have found only a few narrators I like) are because first person is so often poorly done. I haven't read _Music of Dolphins_ (or whatever the title is!), but I find myself in Jane Buchanan's position, of wondering how someone without language could tell her story; I'll have to look at the book. I *really* had a problem with _The Cuckoo's Child_, for this very reason: the writing didn't remind me of a child telling her story; it reminded me of an adult really trying impress her writing teacher. I didn't buy it. Oh dear--I am just finishing a first person narrative novel with Bruce Coville, he writing from the boy's pov, me from the girl's. Of course, the conceit is that they have both written these as what-I-did-last-summer essays for their English teachers.
20 Feb 1997 Karen Simonetti--I liked what you had to say about first person writing. Seems to me that what we like, we like; and what we don't like, we don't (or good writing is good and bad writing is bad) no matter what person it's written in. Where would Chris Crutcher be (one of my favorite authors) without first person?
20 Feb 1997
On Thu, 20 Feb 1997 Janet45@aol.com wrote: I actually disagree with this.. there must be a better analysis than, what you like, you like, and vice versa, in this matter. I have been thinking about this particular question for a long long time, ever since I read F.L. Block's books done in both 3rd and 1st person voices -- especially, in Baby Be-Bop, she writes both in first person narration and in 3rd person. I found the 3rd person-part much more convincing and beautiful where the 1st person narration is so "unnatural" since she doesn't change her writing styles or tones when she shifts between the two. What's beautiful and haunting in her writing as "another" voice relating the stories becomes pretentious as the "I" telling a first person experiences. I do think it is difficult to write in first person narration since the writer has to really become another person, both in thoughts and in the "voice", rather than just a deep understanding what the characters might be thinking or feeling at the time and under certain circumstances. I hope more people will join this discussion and enlighten me (I am going to start a research on my own regarding this question and may be able to post something more intelligent in a while :)
21 Feb 1997 Oops--I see I mislead with my comments. I did not mean that liking or not liking a book constitutes a critical response. I meant that which person it is written in may make no difference if we like it or it has value (whatever that may mean--it seems as though Sanjay has started exploring this in his post). But Fairrosa's comments make me wonder if the narrative person does make a difference critically! Janet Zarem
21 Feb 1997 I happen to agree with your assessment of Julian Drew--it was an extremely compelling book and it booktalks very well to 7th and 8th grades. Once you explain that there will be a point where they will "get" the code, the kids immediately want to read it. I do not have the problem with first person narrative that others seem to; I tend to be a very trusting reader and believe what the writer tells me until proven otherwise. I *like* the idea of being inside people's heads and have always accepted my role as a reader to have the traditional "willing suspension of disbelief" that I find noticably lacking in our culture. Look how unnecessary it has become: Theater has become about spectacle, film about special effects and television functions to sell a product at the expense of all else. It is only in reading where we have to go beneath the surface and decide for ourselves what we feel/think about the author's work.
21 Feb 1997 On Thu, 20 Feb 1997 JaneYolen@aol.com wrote: "Oh dear--I am just finishing a first person narrative novel with Bruce Coville, he writing from the boy's pov, me from the girl's. Of course, the conceit is that they have both written these as what-I-did-last-summer essays for their English teachers." Jane: I find myself having a similar reaction. My novel which is coming out in the fall is also first person! Yikes! Actually, my problem with Music of Dolphins was not that is was first person, but that the person who was narrating had been raised by dolphins and did not have human language. It would not have been a problem if she had begun narrating after she developed language, or if it had been in past tense, but present tense created a credibility problem for me. Also, I agree with others that each book needs to be judged individually. While there are books written in first person that do not "reach" me, there are many written in third person that don't either. So perhaps it is not the "person" so much as the story that is not compelling? I'd be interested in knowing why Karen Hesse chose to tell this story that way? Has anyone heard her talk about it? Marc Aronson (A personal response but Marc agreed to let it out in the open.) Roxanne: I think this is going in very much the wrong direction. The person an author writes in is a function of their vision of the book. It is silly to make any kind of external, universal, and before the fact judgment about such matters without looking at each book. One voice or another may present different kinds of challenges, but so be it. We don't tell artists to avoid one color or another, or to use one or another point of view of perspective -- the exact parallel to person in fiction. First person may make us uncomfortable, but that does not for a second make it any better or worse as a choice for an author. His or her challenge is to create, our responses are for us to examine and understand. (Unfortunately, I erased my response to Marc's comments...)
21 Feb 1997 Karen, Gee, I thought the 3 NBs of Julian Drew was a brilliant book too, and so did my 14-year-old. In fact, we had a wonderful discussion about the book. The author made the 1st person p.o.v. an interactive one--the reader had to decode him to get it, so you buy into his thinking right away. A great technique, and one I'd like to learn to emulate.
21 Feb 1997 It's certainly true that first person narratives often seem inauthentic and contrived. Some authors have used characters' journal entries to effectively present a first person voice. It would be interesting to do a comparison between first person "talking" and first person "writing" books. My real reason for this post, however, is to ask if anyone has discussed the first person narrative technique with children. Several years ago, when my daughter was in 5th grade, she wrote a piece about reading which said something such as, "My favorite books are where the main character tells the story; somehow those books seem more real. If I ever write a book, that's how I'm going to write it!" As an adult, I often have difficulty sorting out the authenticity of the child voice. For example, I came to the Judy Blume books as an adult (they weren't yet written when I was young) and I have been troubled by the first person narration in most of them. However, my college students talk about these books all the time and how the characters "spoke to" them....how they felt that they had entered into a personal relationship with the author/character. Has anyone compared adult and child responses to the same first person narrative texts?
21 Feb 1997 Like some others who have jumped in on this thread, I'm a reader who suspends disbelief fairly readily, assumes myself in the mind of the storyteller, and tends to like first person. But in response to the more general question about the critical reaction to narrative person, I was struck, this year, when I was reading some of the books that had accumulated a Newbery buzz, by how many were told in first person. And I had a vague feeling that quite a few of the recent winners were told in first person. But I never followed up and actually checked that feeling out. When first person works (or for those of us for whom it works?), it seems there's an immediacy that slides the reader inside another person's skin and is compelling. I, myself, often like playing around with first person/third person in the stories I'm working on, seeing what different sounds the versions make in my head and whether the sounds please me or not. I have a picture book coming out with Harcourt in 1998 (I think) whose revision had me baffled until I switched into first person...had a break-through in thinking about my character...and then switched back to third.
21 Feb 1997 I don't understand the objection to first person narration in children's books. Is it that we assume child readers cannot distinguish a narrative voice that is not 'authoritative'? That they might not be able to sense that the narrative voice may have a character of its own, as distinct from the authority of an author? Certainly children can distinguish the different voices of their peers, and of the adults around them! One of the important tasks to learn in reading (and in learning to write) is to learn to recognize voice. First person narratives are the primary opportunity to learn to identify voice, and to see how it differs from the reader's understanding, or voice. If we only offer third-person, ominisicently narrated reading opportunities to children, they will never develop the ability to sense voice in the world of literature. Some of the finest novels are written in first person--Robinson Crusoe, Jane Eyre, The Sound and the Fury (which is a tour de force in first-person narration, in my view). I know people like Ernest Hemingway disdained first person narration, but it plays a legitmate role and ought to be a legitimate element in the field of children's literature.
21 Feb 1997 A couple of years ago in an advanced (senior year) level (university) course in children's literature, I asked the class to read (among other things), Blume's *Blubber.* We had the usual discussion about bullies, responses to bullying, personal integrity, language, the trivializing of the real issue by the ending, and so on. During one of the discussions, one of the students commented in an aside, "When I was much younger and read this book for the first time, I thought it was great. I can't believe how trashy I think this book is now. How could I have ever thought it was a great book?" The discussion went on from there from some time. Obviously, Blume had (and still has) the recipe for addressing in a telling way the concerns and problems that many kids have in the home and outside it. It's the problems that they focus on, and the solutions that the book proposes. It's only later that adults look at other things and worry about point of view, credibility of language, and so on. I thought (and think) it extraordinarily interesting that my student had had the chance to read, and then re-read, the book and react in radically different ways.
21 Feb 1997 As a reader who enjoys a variety of kinds of stories and styles for a wide variety of different reasons, I'm a little surprised to read in some of the postings on this subject that there are readers who would choose not to read a book simply because it's in a certain kind of narration--such as, being told by a first person narrator. That seems to me a sure way to miss out on some potentially interesting reading experiences, especially because writers can do a whole range of things with first-person narrations that they can't do in third- person ones (and vice-versa, of course). For instance, a first-person narration can miraculously, at one and the same time, both tell you how one person views something AND let you know that that person's view is distorted or incomplete.--and all without saying any more than what the one person sees, so that you have the fun of being a detective and figuring it out Also--and thus is one of my own most intense pleasures in reading literature--a first person narration can capture the rhythm and flavor and texture of one specific human voice in a direct and immediate way--much as a play does, and I love plays too. (Indeed, as I think about it, I see that both the qualities I've mentioned have to do with creating a sense of drama-- dramatic presence, dramatic tension and dialogue. A kind of dramatic immediacy it's harder for a third-person narrator to capture?) My own books The Same Place But Different and its sequel, A Completely Different Place (which is coming out this spring) are told in the first person for the simple reason that that's how they first came to me. Almost the very first thing I knew about the idea that eventually became the first book was the voice of Johnny Nesbit, the narrator, speaking inside my head, more or less as he speaks in his own voice in the finished book. After hearing that voice, there was no way I could not try to get it down on paper--and that's where the book really started. To have turned that originating idea into third-person narration would have been to re-create the re-experience entirely--to turn it into something else. And I wasn't interested as a writer in something else--I was intrigued by that voice. And so, what most attracted my attention as I worked on the book was still and always the voice--finding ways to shape it, giving it rhythm and timing, making its responses to events seem authentic enough and interesting enough to actually be the main focus of the story. The book I'm currently working on, about a boy's involvement in his high school's efforts to bring in a code of conduct, is also in first person--this time a journal that begins as a Language Arts class. But the boy finds it so liberating and so much fun to write everything down that he can't stop doing it--and as I'm working on all this now, I'm finding that that's becoming a really important feature of it all--how telling your own story to yourself functions in your emotional life. It has in some ways come to be about the fact that it's a first person narration, I guess. I've also written in the third-person--in the two novels I've written with my friend Carol Matas, Of Two Minds and More Minds. They're that way because it just seemed the right way--or rather, we never made a conscious choice, we just started writing that way. But now, after the fact, I think that third person is the clear and appropriate choice--in part because there are two main characters and many switches in point of view between them, and in part because the focus in less on how the character's voices sound than on the actions they're involved in. And also, they are very emotional people, those two--they need the tempering objectivity of an uninvolved storyteller carefully undercutting the intensity of their feeling with well-placed summary adverbs, like "she said haughtily," or "he said coolly." Somehow, having someone tell you it was "haughtily" or "coolly" or even "intensely" nicely distances the feeling itself--and leaves more room for melodrama (said Perry melodramatically). Which is to say, different stories need different kinds of narrators--and different kinds of narrations can do different kinds of things. But of course, perceiving and enjoying those things depends on a reader having the skills to do it. The childhood reading experiences reported by a number of us here suggest that a lot of us as children didn't know what to make of a first-person narration--how to read it, what kinds of tricks or games to expect. Yet more evidence that we need to be taught these strategies for making sense of and taking pleasure in fiction--and that it's a kind of teaching done not nearly often enough.
21 Feb 1997 Before I post further thoughts, I just want to clear one thing: I do not Oppose first person narration. I just think it is an interesting area to explore, like Jane Kurtz mentioned, different voices let both the author and the reader look at events and emotions from different angles and I'm more interested in the choices and executions made by the authors and the effects different voices have on the readers, than to find the "best" way of telling ALL stories. (There cannot be one universal rule regarding this matter!)
21 Feb 1997 I have to preface this comment by saying that Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes is one of my all-time favorite books and that I would never have noticed this except that I have reread it so many times. Crutcher makes a small mistake in the first person narrative in Sarah Byrnes. Steve Ellerby comes over to Moby's house, and Moby describes Steve's actions outdoors and his (Steve's) interaction with Moby's mom. But then it turns out that Moby was holed up in his room listening to music and couldn't possibly have heard/seen all this. See pages 22-23 of the paperback. This is the kind of inconsistency that drives me crazy, but I must say I've noticed that it happens in third-person narratives as often as in first-person narratives. 21 Feb 1997 KATHY Baxter When I was a child, I was, as I am now, a voracious reader, but I refused to read anything for a long, long time that had a first person narration. I just plain did not like it. Kathy Baxter
21 Feb 97 Roxanne: Fair enough, but wouldn't that have to be decided in each case, each book, each author? Surely any author who is blindly following a "rule" about having to write in a certain voice is probably making a mistake. But, at least in the books I know best, that has never been the case.
21 Feb 1997 Two points on which I wish to weigh in with a couple of observations: 1. First person point of view seems to me to be a choice of the author based on the perspective he/she wishes to present, and is probably story driven. While I can't argue against personal taste--if you don't like it, you don't like it--I can argue that some conventions require it. Gothic novels--of which Jane Eyre may be the quintessential example--are invariably told in first person. Much detective fiction also requires first person to avoid giving away the plot; we only know what the sleuth knows as he/she learns it. Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories used first person (Dr. Watson, of course) to keep the reader in the dark as to Sherlock's discoveries. Ineptly done, of course first person is off putting. Example: The first lines of a book which shall remain nameless that I just pulled off my shelf: "The summer started out as pure glory. My best friend Staci Hopper and I did all our favorite eleven-year-old girl things..." My suspension of disbelief was lost instantly. No eleven-year-old girl considers herself in those terms (at least if the three I've raised are any example). Most eleven-year-old girls I've know wanted to be fifteen. I'd argue that the fault in first person narration is the same as the fault in third person: If either is a bad choice for the story being told, we're going to have problems as readers.
21 Feb 1997
On Fri, 21 Feb 1997 KATHYB@anokas.anoka.lib.mn.us wrote: This is interesting because I have a vivid memory of reading some book when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, possibly even older, that was written in the first person, and I was terribly baffled and disturbed. Maybe blame it on the Dick and Jane readers, but I was certainly not used to much variety in narrative form -- I got the same feeling of dislocation years later when trying to make sense of New Yorker stories which seemed to have no beginnings or ends but to be all middles. I remember bringing the book to my mother and asking her how "I" could have written the book, since "I" was "me," and I was especially bothered because I didn't know what "I's" name was, and didn't know what to call him her or it. I don't remember whether she gave me a reassuring term such as first-person narrator (she was an English teacher) to attach to this mysterious "I" or not, but she did seem surprised that I had never encountered this kind of writing before and tried to reassure me. The point of all this is, I think, that we as adults can have an enormous impact on helping children become more sophisticated readers. I was probably exceptionally naive and kids today who grow up with television are surely more sophisticated about literary conventions of all kinds -- but still, I find even among my college students some awfully narrow boundaries on what they are willing to accept without mediation. Another point is that I can almost never remember after reading a book whether it was told by an "I" narrator or a third person from the view of one particular character, so in some ways the distinction between first person and third person is not as useful as we might think. Since this discussion has been going on and I've begun reading Konigsburg's View from Saturday, I've become very conscious of how she is using the "I" narrators in that book, who so far are incredibly bright and verbal.
21 Feb 1997 Greetings: Well, Jane Buchanan's comment about Karen Hesse's _Music of dolphins_ has brought me out from behind the bushes at last, so let me introduce myself: I have been a children's librarian at the New York Public Library for the past fifteen years or so, and have been lurking on this and other listservs since last summer, following the various threads with great delight. I chaired this latest Newbery committee (of which a goodly number of members were not just lurkers, but regular posters--though as far as I can tell, none made her connection with the committee public), and came to Midwinter with Hesse's book clutched to my bosom (figuratively), as THE outstanding 1996 example of a novelist taking risks with premise and characters. I was not bothered by Mila's relatively easy acquisition of language, because she was about three at the time of the plane crash, and those mental pathways that give us the ability to learn such things had had time to form. She also had more than a decade's practice in being a quick study, and in picking up sounds. The premise is a particularly hard one to swallow, but the author worked hard and smart, I think, to make it easier. By the way, please excuse the header; I'll be home for the next couple of weeks, and so am using GraceAnne's e-mail. Messages sent to my work address below will be forwarded.
21 Feb 1997 I do hope I didn't give anyone the impression that I do not like all first person books. I agree that there are times when the first person is the best way, I was just saying that sometimes authors use the first person when third person would do better. It is these books that I do not like. My favorite books that are in first person are Paul Zindel's two books, _The Pigman_ and _The Pigman's Legacy._ These books could not make it in the third person. They are about two high school age kids who are writing about their experiences with an old man they meet and befriend.
22 Feb 1997 I too disliked first person books when I was a child, and cheered when I read the following passage in Ginger Pye (by Eleanor Estes, a master at conveying an individual point of view through third person): "[Rachel and Jerry] both always opened a book eagerly and suspiciously looking first to see whether or not it was an 'I' book. If it were they would put it aside, not reading it until there was absolutely nothing else. Then, at last, they would read it. But, being an 'I' book, it had to be awfully good for them to like it. Only a few, _Robinson Crusoe_, _Treasure Island_, and _Swiss Family Robinson_, for example, survived the hard 'I' book test. These were among their best beloved in spite of the obvious handicap." I believe I have seen this prejudice against "I books" mentioned in other children's books -- maybe in Edward Eager? Nesbit? (Probably not Nesbit, come to think of it, because of Oswald Bastable.) I think some incompetent authors are drawn to the first person because it seems the most natural way to form a narrative, and their bad prose seems all the worse because you fasten it onto the mouth of "I" (or should I say "of 'Me' "), who is a big bore. "Indeed, when I was a little lad, I always worked hard, never stirring until I had ..." Aw, shut it, Grampa. Also, any incongruity in description (the example of "all our eleven-year-old girl stuff" was perfect) will show up ten times as much in a first person narrative. It's like sewing mistakes showing up more on a plain material than they do on a print. In the above passage, Estes uses the children's thoughts to great advantage, but the language (when you look at it closely) is a notch or two more sophisticated than the children could put together for themselves -- e.g. "the obvious handicap," which most children would understand but few would say.
22 Feb 1997 Sometime ago, someone asked for responses to the Newbery winner (A VIEW FROM SATURDAY) and then people got onto a thread of first person narratives. I must preface my statement by saying that I really like first person in most cases. I agree with the child who says it makes it more real, if it is done correctly. Someone also asked if anyone had spoken with children about this, and since I will be doing a [book discussion] this summer with the book PRIVATE NOTEBOOK OF KATIE ROBERTS, AGE 11, I think I will bring this up to them. We'll be talking about diaries, journals, personal writing, and I would like to see their opinions of how this style impacts the story for them. [NOTE: Under NO circumstances will I call this a "book discussion"--while programs of this type are quite popular with adults, we had 1 child sign up for our "book discussion" group last summer. I need to think of a snappy name for it, like "Pizza at the Van Gogh Cafe" or "Friends of Poppy"..., which are our other bk discussions for children who have finished third to fifth grade.] However, I agree with those who have certain problems with this year's Newbery winner. I normally suspend disbelief when I begin a story, and I am prepared to let the author entertain me, but this one strains the limits of credibility. I have never in my life heard of any 5th-going-into-6th grade child refer to herself as a "prepubescent child." I was already a bit annoyed by the flip and capricious tone of the book which sounded too adult (it reminded me of the tone in THE QUARTZSITE TRIP, which is written for about high school level), but when I got to the part where Nadia Diamondstein found use for the word "prepubescent" in reference to herself on two different occasions in her first person narrative, the book lost all credibility. Also, the coincidences are just too coincidental. Pretty soon, any reader will be saying "Hunh-unh....That would never happen." But when an author has captured a child's voice exactly and does it in first person, the potential for a great story is excellent. There is one thing even worse than the worst first person, though, and that is second person! Most readers I know cannot stand to be told what "you" are doing. (Not exactly a common voice to write in, but those who experiment with it should be warned that it is an even bigger put-off than 1st person.) The only ones who use this frequently are Choose Your Own Adventure writers, but this is more of a game than a story.
22 Feb 1997
The man who was head of te Newbery committee said: Excuse me: but that is hardly a good rationale. I have worked with materials on feral children for years, even wrote THE MERMAID'S THREE WISDOMS when I was studying for my Masters in education during a course on language acquistion. Have written two books about the so-called wolf girls of Midnapore , India. What we know of language skills tells us that a child who does not pick up human language (and hold on to it) by 5 or 6 will not learn language at all. Mowgli and Tarzan are strictly fantasy with no language-skill base at all, and one has to assume Karen Hess' reworking of that basic story, while it may be clever, is not particularly connected to real language acquisition work. I say "assume" because I have not yet read the book.
22 Feb 1997
Linnea writes: But this puzzles me entirely because my best selling book (and the book I get the most mail from children) is in the first person: OWL MOON. It is for young readers and young listeners. And not once in the thousands of letters I have received has any one of them written that they were puzzled by the "I" in the book. Yes, some of them thought that child was actually me. That OWL MOON was about me going out with my father. But more of my correspondents thought the child a boy, so the idea that the author was actually the character was one that they never entertained. First person is simply a narrative device. It is going to work for some readers, not for others. There have been times (in HONKERS for example) where I wrote the book in first person and when it didn't seem to be working, changed it to third--and voila! First person only works if the voice sounds authentic: proper age, proper knowledge. Third gives you that panoramic, godlike view. First gets you into the hot center. Each book tells the author what voice to use. We don't always listen.
22 Feb 1997
On Sat, 22 Feb 1997, Julie Linneman wrote: Wait, wait -- remember Winnie the Pooh? Remember Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? There is No good or bad "point of view" -- it all depends on the execution.
22 Feb 97 Roxanne: Of course, actually, though I subscribe, I'm not sure I have the right address for sending comments to the list myself, could you give that to me? I think there are two different ways to look at generalization. We can study the evolution and development of certain forms. We can also register how the affect us, what do we feel about them. We can question whether our reactions have something to do with the nature of that form. Doing all of these forces us to do some generalizating. But in a given and individual case, we have to look at that work, at the set of choices that author made. Let me give you different example. When I teach writing I tend to discourage using the present tense, which can make people feel uncomfortable, unless there is a very strong and special reason for doing so. There the general and the specific cross. I can speak for the reader in general, but the author has to make the case for her creation in the instance.
22 Feb 97 I'm surprised to hear that many people had a dislike of the first person voice. It seem a natural narrative style to me. It's what your friends use when they tell you about what happened last week. But perhaps that's because I was raised in the South and there was still the lingering expectation that one would never just say "I went to the store yesterday," but would provide the full cast of characters, their relations, the grocery list, the reason for needing said items, the weather, and all possible sins of both omission and comission that occured to make such a thing neccesary.
23 Feb 1997 Hello, I liked the quote from Beverly Cleary book of the first person narrator sounding full of himself. I have experienced this reaction when reading. I have recently read _Crash_ by Jerry Spinelli, a very well done Realistic Fiction in first person. Crash narrates the story of his evolving emotional and social maturation, it sounded as though I was sitting next to him listening to him talk. very believable. Great book, great read.
24 FEB 97 "I believe I have seen this prejudice against "I books" mentioned in other children's books -- maybe in Edward Eager? Nesbit? (Probably not Nesbit, come to think of it, because of Oswald Bastable.)" Oswald Bastable is NOT an ordinary I-narrator; he wriotes of himself in the 3rd person, remember (so that he can praise himself) --- ?
24 FEB 97 And cf. _Cheaper by the 12_ where the narrators say "we" as both narrators and characters, but write of themselves as "Ernestine" and "Frank" when they appear as characters. PS. The "I" of Winnie Ille Pooh confused me too.
23 Feb 1997 There's a nice articulation of the prejudice against "I books" in Eleanor Estes' "Pinky Pye".
24 Feb 1997
On Sat, 22 Feb 1997 JaneYolen@aol.com wrote: But this puzzles me entirely because my best selling book (and the book I get the most mail from children) is in the first person: OWL MOON. It is for young readers and young listeners. And not once in the thousands of letters I have received has any one of them written that they were puzzled by the "I" in the book. Yes, some of them thought that child was actually me." I've been continuing to think about this. Owl Moon is currently in my classroom cupboard so I can't look at the book directly, but I think there are a couple of differences between Owl Moon and the book I read that matter. First is that Owl Moon is a picture book, so when there's an "I" and pictures of people, especially if the pictures are done so that there is not question about which one is "I," this helps solve that confusion. The book I read was simply a mass of text, with no pictures at all that I can recall, although there might have been a cover illustration. The other is that young children most often come to pictures books with an adult reading to them, which also helps them through any confusion they might have about the conventions of the story. In my case, if we think of a beginning reader struggling to read books without pictures, with no clues other than the words themselves, coping with an unfamiliar form is even more difficult. I'm reminded also of my experiences in reading books in French -- they are more difficult for me than reading in English to start with, but if the book is also written in an unconventional style or uses language in a highly innovative or original manner -- one that might cause difficulties even in English -- the foreign language compounds the difficulty. And another factor, which I mentioned previously, is that our responses are based on what we've previously experienced in literature, and my experiences were quite limited and quite conventional. I was a child who at 7 ran out of The Wizard of Oz movie terrified, having no conception that these figures who changed size in front of me were simply pictures on a screen and not giants bearing down on me. It seems hard to believe, now, but it was so.
24 Feb 1997
In a message dated 97-02-23 23:56:33 EST, droberts@haverford.edu (Deborah
Roberts) writes: Ginger Pye, unless Estes did it twice (not impossible). I posted it here already. Seems to me I've seen other examples as early as the 1870s, but can't think of specific examples (I say 1870s because I used to catalog 19th century children's books that were published between 1821 and 1876, so it was probably in that period). |
Last Updated: May 21, 1997
March 21, 2004