Oh, Those Gay Penguins!

My one-year-old pulled two books from the library shelf at random for me this week.  As it turns out, both books are about homosexual penguins.

Well, no, not really.  He's just pink.  I suppose this penguin could be gay, but the book doesn't go there.  Too bad.

Anyway, in What's a Penguin to Think When He Wakes Up Pink, sweet little penguin Patrick wakes up a new and interesting color.  His friends tease him, so he runs away to Africa to meet pink flamingos.   Due to him being a short-legged and flightless penguin, he doesn't fit in well with the flamingos.  So Patrick swims home again, only to find that his friends all think he is awesome now because he went all the way to Africa and met flamingos.

It's a heartwarming story about how it can be both challenging and neat to be different, and about how boys shouldn't fear the color pink.  I would classify it as too uncontroversial for my collection of dangerous books, but I actually did once overhear a parent at a daycare scold their son not to play with the tea set.  I'm sure that such a parent would disapprove of Lynne Rickards' sweet pink penguin tale, so for them, I add Pink to my library.

Now THIS book really is about gay penguins!  And what a wonderfully sweet book it is.  Based on a true story, two male penguins in the Central Park zoo court each other and build a nest.  A zookeeper gives them an egg to hatch, and the resulting fluffy chick is named Tango.  The end, happy happy.

Being as this is a picture book about a homosexual relationship, And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, was the most challenged book of 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010.  It was the second most challenged book of 2009.

I read this to my four-year-old.  His only point of confusion: "what's a penguin house, mommy?  I thought they lived in a nest.  Where is the house?"

Children's Books that Lack Happy Endings

For today's disturbing-and-fascinating children's literature, I present two parables.

Although I found Fox by searching for "most hated children's books", I jumped in with both feet by reading it to my four-year-old in the bedtime-reading lineup.  That was, perhaps, a mistake.  I could feel his discomfort by the second page.  At the end he was about to explode into dismayed questions, and I was not prepared at that late hour to turn Fox into the proper lesson that it needed to be.  I was forced toreach for some standard fluff book as a distraction.

That said, Fox is now on my wishlist.  It is a parable so deliciously and horrifyingly dark that I boggle to think a publisher was willing to risk it.  Good for them!  If there is room in the picture book world for this, then there is certainly room for what I want to write about.

Here is the spoiler:

A one-eyed dog rescues a bird from a fire.  She is so burned that she can never fly again.

This tragedy happens by the second or third page.  Already by this point my son was squirming with discomfort, and so was I.

The dog and the bird become the closest of friends.  Together, they run!  The bird sees for the dog, and the dog's running becomes the bird's flight.

The writing is absolutely touching, by the way.  Margaret Wild had me by the heart.  But even these feel-good bits were flooded with tragedy of Greek proportions.

Then along comes the fox, who is enthusiastically welcomed into their friendship by the dog.  But the bird fears the fox, and the dog ignores her fears.  The fox then drives a wedge into the friendship by secretly whispering to the bird that he can run faster with her than the dog can.  Ultimately, hurt by the dog's ignoring of her fears, she gives in and goes for a ride on the fox.  He runs and runs, dumps her far away in a desert, and leaves her with a nasty comment about how she will now get to understand the fox's loneliness.

The bird contemplates giving up and dying on the spot.  (And this is a picture book!)  But then she thinks of how lonely her friend the dog must be.  And so she resolves to find her way back home.

After having read this as a bedtime story to a child who was not yet ready for its deep themes, I can't help but think that Fox is a fire hose among squirt guns.  It is an immensely powerful parable that does not make any attempt to spell out what lesson the reader should take from it.  I would argue that Fox would be best when used as a teaching tool, read out loud by an adult who is armed with a lesson plan, or at the very least who is armed with some time to answer questions.

As with the other disliked children's parables I have dug up, this story could be interpreted several ways.  But I can't help but be amused and horrified at what seems like the obvious interpretation: Fox is about adultery.

Given my parents' love of Shel Silverstein, I am surprised that I never read this one as a child.  Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back, by Shel Silverstein is practically an illustrated children's novel, at well over 100 pages

Look how vulnerable that lion looks!  I haven't given Silverstein enough credit as an artist.  That's a picture of Lafcadio the lion realizing for the first time that he is naked.  But it also sums up the way a reader is left feeling at the end of the book.

Spoiler:

Lafcadio is a wild and innocent lion who eats a hunter, picks up his gun, and learns to shoot.  A man from a circus recruits him, and Lafcadio subsequently becomes rich and famous in the human world.  Lafcadio learns to walk, dress, and eat, and live like a human.  Ultimately he and everyone around him forgets that he is a lion.  Lafcadio becomes jaded and weary of his experiences, and ends up back in Africa as a hunter of lions.  One of the lions reminds Lafcadio of who he really is.  Suddenly, Lafcadio fits in to neither world.  He runs away and is never seen from again.

Gulp!  It's a fun little ride up until the lion's disenchantment with his human life.  Is this a cautionary tale about forgetting one's roots?  Surely if I had read this as a child, I would have mulled over it for years, and likely my conclusions would have had a profound impact on me.  Here is what Silverstein himself has to say about happy endings:

“Happy endings, magic solutions in children’s books create alienation in the child who reads them. The child asks ‘Why don’t I have this happiness thing you’re telling me about?’ and comes to think when his joy stops that he has failed, that it won’t come back.”

There is a spectrum in children's literature.  On one end are the comfort books - those fluffy things you can grab at bedtime to sooth the kids to sleep.  On the other end are the stories so disturbing that a child will hide a book or lock it in a cage in order to prevent themselves from being subjected to it again.  Adventure or didactic tales are more likely to end up nearer to the disturbing end of the spectrum.

Of course, a story that is just disturbing enough to be exciting for one child can well be beyond the pale for another.  As much as I am intrigued by these outliers in the picture book field, I don't believe that a story with a happy ending is inherently the bad thing that Silverstein considered it to be.  I think a story can be lasting and profound without pounding its readers into a quivering emotional heap.  I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for books that offer a bumpy ride with a nice soft pillow at the end.

Some Parental Discretion Advised.

So.  In order to clarify my thoughts on this post, popped over to dictionary.com in order to learn once and for all the difference between an allegory and a parable.  And I find the definition of a parable begins: "a short allegorical story. . ."

That explains why I was confused on the subject.

The reason I was pondering parables and allegories was because I have been pondering edgy, creepy picture books, among which my own manuscript will likely be lumped by some.  Chief among such stories is the perennially popular The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein.

Silverstein was the author of several volumes of children's poetry that children adored but which frequently bothered adults.  If you recall the Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue", those lyrics were his work.  In the Giving Tree parable. . . allegory?  In this tale, a tree is friends with a boy, and together they are happy.  In their continued search for happiness as the boy grows into a man, the tree gives him every last part of herself, at his request, until she is nothing but a stump. Then the boy - now an old man - sits on her.  Sits.  "And the tree was happy."  Shudder.

The Giving Tree became popular back in the sixties in part because it was promoted through church sermons.  To this day, churches present The Giving Tree as an entirely positive parable - there's that pesky word again! - with the tree representing God or Jesus, selflessly giving and giving and giving.

As an adult rereading Silverstein's book, I can't help but see the story as being something entirely different: a picture book warning about the dangers of adultery.  Talk about inappropriate children's book material!  The tree is the other woman, blinded with love, giving her life to a man who is taking and taking but who has another life elsewhere.  Or the tree is the devoted wife, giving and giving her life to a man who squanders his his love on another woman.

The problem is that the Giving Tree is entirely devoid of any guidelines on how it should be interpreted.  It is a hollow shell that can be used to teach whatever lesson the teacher or parent or gift-giver wishes to invest in it.  Religion?  Check.  Parenting?  Check.  Environmental abuses?  Check.  Pick your issue and load it into the Giving Tree like a bullet in a gun.

But what happens when a child reads this book and is given no guidance?  Most picture books are not open to interpretation.  Either the book tells a story - with a happy ending! - or it teaches a lesson - with a happy ending!  But rarely is a picture book story open to any sort of interpretation.  In those books which are not entirely pablum, the child reader is typically led by the nose to the conclusion the author wants them to reach.

The Giving Tree gives the child reader the opportunity to ponder, widely and deeply - as I did, for many years, trying to mentally make the Giving Tree fit in with all the other picture books of my childhood.  The single clue I had to guide my interpretation was that the book was not kept on the bookshelf in my room, with all of the other picture books.  The Giving Tree sat on the living room shelf, looking oddly out of place between the works of Shakespeare and Kahlil Gibran.  Apparently my parents didn't know quite what to make of it, either.  Given that it was an expensive and new edition, in a house otherwise filled with the free things my parents had acquired during their tenure as broke college students, I imagine it was given to them as a gift.

Perhaps it was handed to them when my mother was pregnant.  Because, apparently,  it is considered good taste to traumatize pregnant women with a story that hints that the way to be a good mother is to completely and entirely sacrifice one's self.  (Please excuse me while I vomit into my coffee mug.)

My childhood interpretation of the Giving Tree?  It was a warning against poorly-balanced relationships.  And it was creepy.  And I imagine that was why it lived in seclusion in the living room.  Books and gifts were sacred things to my parents, so they wouldn't have given it away, even if they disagreed with it.

So, do I now let my copy of  the Giving Tree lurk among the kids' shelf of toothless fluff, in the hopes that it will give them something to meditate on when they have forgotten all the other books?  After all, it was so educational to me.  Or, out of dislike for the way it has been used against mothers, and by churches, and in promotion of unhealthy relationships, should I keep it separate?

The solution: I will compile a library of dark and subversive picture books!  After all, these are the picture books that spark my interest the most as an adult.  The books will live in my studio, and come out to play when the kids are ready for a challenge, and when I am available to take their questions.  Some parental discretion advised.