baby, darling, devil, i love you @wond-las - Tumblr Blog

You may find yourself drawing Kermit memes at 2am, and think to yourself how did I get here?

#I think of you all the time Kermit byrne

Would you be willing to tell a little bit more about what blind spots authors of kids' books have in their work? (You mentioned it in your reply to the author asking how to get their book into their local library, which I found very kind and informative).

For me, I would say the most common blind spot I run into from would-be children's authors is if the book is written from a place of authority, correction/dogma towards children rather than joy, genuine help/compassion, or curiosity.

For me, the author whose works most exemplify this is Julia Cook. Not only are her book's illustrations ugly as hell, but they heavily focus on correcting bad behavior in kids, usually with an overarching theme of "You're having a hard time making friends because you're loud/annoying,/unable to take responsibility/any number of things that it's perfectly natural for a kid to be because they barely have a concept of self yet, let alone awareness of other peoples' experiences and needs." I feel these books ultimately operate from a place of shame towards their audience and it's baffling to me that so many parents are like "Yes! That's exactly the book my kid needs!" On top of all that I feel like Julia Cook's books are also overly-texty. I think the blind spot here is that a lot of would-be kid's authors think they've figured out an approach to correcting kids' behavior, but they actually haven't been able to separate their own frustrations from communicating more constructive ways for kids to build social and emotional skills, which is how you end up with a book from at first glance makes me (a librarian) ask, "Do you hate kids, or something?"

A better example of a book focusing on social skills and emotional regulation in kids would be the "Big Bright Feelings" series. These books actually center the kids' emotions and experiences and are really compassionate with regard to where these feelings come from. Also, in my opinion, the illustrations are cuter.

Like, Ravi's Roar is focused on anger and emotional regulation, but it takes time to build up all of Ravi's frustrations throughout the day and actually gives Ravi some credit with how much he's tamped down/swallowed up before his anger finally gets the better of him because guess what! Kids are dealing with a lot! So much is new to them! They don't have an emotional baseline for so many of their experiences! It takes time to tell kids that it's okay to be angry, to show the adults reading how to support kids and steer their anger in a constructive way, and the metaphor of Ravi turning into a tiger makes the story feel both more accessible and more broadly applicable.

Another blind spot which I think is tricky is adults like and agree with this book, therefore they think it is up to children's standards. You see this a lot with a lot of well-meaning independently published liberal books (about community gardens, voting, recycling, etc.), and to be fair, how much a kid relates to or values a book can vary wildly depending on the kid and their state of development, but like the above point about dogmatism in children's books, you can tell when an author is assuming a lot about their audience's priorities. And again, with a lot of independently published titles, you often get this combo of too much text and mediocre illustrations,

I love a community garden. I love indigenous ethnobotany. But if you're going to go this high-concept for a young audience, I mean this with all kindness, but you're going to want to get an illustrator with enough of a professional background to be able to tell when their illustration's background is a busy mess.

Sometimes the enthusiasm of the adult reading the book to a child can bridge the gap, but speaking as someone who's done her fair share of story times, kids can absolutely tell the difference between something they want to do, and something adults are trying to convince them they want to do. Again, this is definitely a more subjective blind spot, and some books can make up for text content that doesn't quite land with their intended audience by having illustrations that capture the imagination and bridge that gap--like, I loved the book Weslandia as a kid even though the concept of "This kid created his own staple crop-based civilization" kind of flew over my little head at the time because I was so enchanted by the illustrations and I think there was also the factor of Wesley, the main character, operating a lot on his own curiosity and drive. It's a book of solitude and curiosity and discovery and invention eventually blossoming into something you can share with others. As a kid so frequently distracted by my own imagination that I had trouble connecting with peers, that emotional honesty landed with me even though other parts of it were a little high-concept.

I think the takeaway there is, you don't always know how a kid might connect with a book, if they connect at all, but kids are way more emotionally perceptive than we give them credit for. They know the difference between when something is being shared and something is being taught, and if the ultimate goal of a book is connecting with a kid, you want to share more than you want to teach.

nitewrighter

Okay just to add on to this because I feel like in terms of content, Weslandia doesn't quite hit the mark in terms of looking at the ways that "No Place for Plants" falls short (and also it's an older title) but anyway--if we're going to talk about a well-executed children's book that features a pretty context-dense concept like indigenous ethnobotany, we can look no further than the Caldecott Winner Berry Song.

Berry Song basically has the reader join a little girl and her grandmother on a foraging trip in the Pacific Northwest. The book expresses gratitude and responsibility towards the land through joy and wonder. It doesn't feel the need to whack kids over the head with "Pollution bad! Forest good!" Again, it's about sharing more than teaching, giving kids the space to make their own connections and judgments with the material. It makes you feel safe while simultaneously making you feel like you're a part of something much bigger-- I think that's also another mistake a lot of would-be children's authors make: trying to jam too much into their book's overall thesis. Kids are capable of grasping nuance, but if a book starts jamming in too many "Yes but's" and "yes, however's" and "Yes, but on the condition of--'s" it muddies up the impact and fucks up the book's overall execution fast. Walk your book's thesis back to its original "yes" and you'd be surprised at how much content you get out of that core concept alone.

nitewrighter

Supplemental: While yes, I do consider Julia Cook's illustrations ugly as hell, that isn't to say that illustrations in kids books can't be ugly or gross. In fact kids can very much revel in the grotesque, but there's a big difference between when the grotesque is something that is eagerly being shared with the kids and when the grotesque is, as we see in "Baditude," basically being used to beat kids over the head with criticism. I think also her illustrator just... isn't very good on a technical level. The over-rendering, the lack of composition to exaggerated proportions... these do not speak to a developed style. Meanwhile "Here Come the Aliens/The Aliens are Coming!"shows that a developed visual style can make the disgusting delightful.

This image can practically trigger misophonia, it's so vivid, but I remember loving the disgust and chaos of it as a kid. There's a sense of movement as the aliens shove each other around the table and send bones flying. Like!!! This is a professional illustrator! This is what lifelong training in composition and medium can do!! And that isn't to say that self taught-illustrators can't be great but it's terribly presumptuous of adults to assume that kids can't tell the difference between good and mediocre illustrations on a technical level.

babblingflowers

chomp chomp

#i support women's wrongs #raven

coffee-without-anesthetics

never kill yourself . your next apple could be so good it makes you feel like a horse

oulious

tpwrtrmnky

Analyzing the politics of a work that's meant to be apolitical is actually a really interesting exercise because it asks you to critically examine what the creator considers to be "political" in the first place. Which ideas are just How Things Are, and which ones are Political, and how is that influenced by the creator's beliefs?

takashi0

Usually this just ends up with you looking like a moron btw

tpwrtrmnky

Angrily lashing out at the suggestion that it's possible to do basic media analysis was foundational to the ragebait ecosystem of the 2010s, from which we got basically the entire culture of modern far right politics, btw.

iteh3xael

I genuinely believe myself and others are being so sincere and literal when we say TOUCH GRASS

tpwrtrmnky

I went outside and got an education, that's where I learned that you can obtain knowledge and insight through analytical methods, then noticed that some people who sit on the internet yelling at strangers get really mad about that constantly.

irishironclad

So actually if you really wanted to use your analysis skills you'd realize that what people are annoyed about is the implication that there's never a story or creative work they can create that can escape people like you attempting to assign political meaning to it when they just don't want that. That in fact people's presumptions about life are not, in fact, political (at best they are cultural, which is not an inherently facet of politics). And that by you people arrogantly pushing this idea you are intruding on the fact that a lot of people use fiction as escapism from politics and insisting that "urm no actually your favourite cartoon actually has politics cause no human being is 100% unbiased" is in fact, supremely fucking annoying

tpwrtrmnky

"Stop having fun wrong, it ruins my fun when you have fun wrong, it's not enough for me to just scroll past the analysis I don't like, if anyone anywhere is saying that the cartoon exists in a political context that's undermining my enjoyment of it!"

That's you. That's what you sound like.