Bob Luckin
>Now this time, Sandy, I think you could _genuinely_ be accused of an
>"oversimplification" [mentions] Kenneth Graham, Robert Louis
>Stephenson, A. E. Milne, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Hans Christian
>Andersen and Rudyard Kipling.
Not to mention C.S. Lewis, L. Frank Baum, John Bellairs, Roald Dahl, Tove Jansson, Edward Lear, and Beatrix Potter (I can't believe you left out Beatrix P.).
What you have to consider is that all the authors we've mentioned, while "children's authors" are in fact much too complex for an actual young child to read. My 8 year old can read, but he sure as heck can't figure out THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, KIDNAPPED, THE HOUSE AT POOH CORNER, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, MOOMINSUMMER MADNESS, or SQUIRREL NUTKIN, not without help. It takes a precocious 10 year old or even older to handle these books. Yet these were traditional kid's books for decades -- books no young kid could read, or easily understand. When I read WINNIE THE POOH or to my kids, they love it, but I have to simplify many of the words and phraseology. Partly this is because it's based on a 1920s English setting, but partly it's because the words and language are really fairly adult.
My kids like to read a lot, are reasonably precocious, and my 8 year old reads Asterix (but I suspect he skips over the hard words). Lewis Carroll is impenetrable to him. For a long time, even Dr. Seuss was guilty of this -- BARTHOLOMEW AND THE OOBLECK is just as hard to read as THE TALE OF TWO BAD MICE.
An actual child needs to start out with simpler stuff. For years, that "simpler stuff" was deathly dull (I learned on "Dick and Jane"). THE CAT IN THE HAT came out in 1955. It only had a hundred words or so, and its repeating doggerel style made it very easy to read. There were few words on a page, so it was not daunting to children to plow through -- they got to a new page every few lines with a new exciting picture that exactly matched the words. When they did get to a word they didn't know, like "cupcake", they could look at the picture and see one. My 7 and 8 year old can read THE CAT IN THE HAT and love every second. Moreover, when I read to them instead, it flows along swiftly and easily.
It was the first in a new wave of children's literature, suitable for the younger kids, who had nothing for so very long. My 12 year old reads and enjoys the "classic" kids books (as do I), and has for a couple of years now. They're fantastic. But they're really intended for an older audience. A certain maturity is required for a kid to know that a caterpillar smoking a hookah is funny. Or even to know what a hookah is! Now, thanks to Dr. Seuss, we have other classics in the same genre -- GO DOG GO, ARE YOU MY MOTHER?, and PUT ME IN THE ZOO, for instance. Seuss broke down the walls.
What does this have to do with Glorantha? Maybe nothing. However, many of my gaming friends restrict their reading almost exclusively to junk SF and Fantasy. Now, while I have nothing against junk SF & F, I have at last learned to read good books as well. And I urge any of you still stuck on Conan and the Ringworld to give some of these kids' books a try. There are plots and cool happenings aplenty, and they're a good fun read anyhoo. Anyone who reads one of John Bellairs supernatural mysteries and doesn't come up with a great scenario idea is sans brain. Recommended highly.
Note: I especially recommend Tove Jansson, whose Moomintroll books I only discovered at the age of 22. She is a Finnish author, but whoever did the translating into English did one heck of a job. The Moomins are tremendous, and there is a great deal of keen psychological insight going into the personalities of the characters. When you finish reading one of their books, you know just exactly how a Fillyjonk is going to act in any given case. If you want help in figuring out personalities for NPCs, the Moomins are probably the very best books for doing so ever. I recommend MOOMINVALLEY IN NOVEMBER as the very first book to read for a novice in the subject (no, it's not the first chronologically). After that, it doesn't matter.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #182
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