I have now started the new course on my degree pathway, Writing for Children. My tutor is Nina Milton, a return performance (or should that be trial) for her and I am hugely lucky to have her.
So... I did the usual, read all through the work books, advice and the first chapter of the binder. I plunged into the exercises, looked at the timeline of published children’s books and visited a book shop and took note of the children’s section and the books being offered...
I decided the first children’s book would be Neil Gaimans Coraline. I have read it before but this time, with the first few exercises and advice still ringing in my mind I found it much more vivid, strange and charming; it also seemed more sinister than I remembered. This time I made notes in the margin; reading a chapter and then going back and re-reading (this seems to work with me and has always been my habit with certain books/exercises). Context is everything and so while thinking about the course I read it with a different set of rules or ideas than the last time. I enjoyed it and the analysing of the cover (colour and illustration) and the drawings within (though these are sparse) made the experience more rounded; I thought more about who it was aimed at.
The exercises over I moved to the assignment.
The assignment asks you to remember a book you loved as a child and, after jotting down what you remember about it, to re-read it; then to move on to a contemporary equivalent, by age group and genre, and read that. The reflective piece you are to produce is to compare the two.
Reading the assignment a book popped into my head – White Fang by Jack London (Published 1906) (read by me at the age of ten around 1976). This puzzled me – I thought I hated the book. My initial notes reflect that it was brutal and made me angry - that anger being remembered from a distance of thirty six years; the harsh environment, the beatings given to the main character and terror he goes through. So the question was why this book popped into my mind above all others?
I thought harder and remembered others but none stirred as much as this one. As for the contemporary equivalent I thought of Michelle Paver’s Wolf Brother (Published 2004) (read by me 2004) the story about an early human boy, a wolf and his clan structured world – this I thought would make a good comparison because of similar subject matter and genre. Also, in my opinion, both books are heavily aimed at a male readership.
What's also struck me and made things even stranger was that I recalled being read and reading the series Littlenose by John Grant, a string of illustrated stories about a Neanderthal boy. I think I may have to get a copy to see if Littlenose has a wolf or dog!
So I began with White Fang. I find that a really good book takes hold of you for the first third of the book, dragging you in with your feet scrabbling to keep you in sync with your enthusiasm. The second part is the revelling in the story, characters and narrative; slowing down but wrapped in the world created within the pages. Then comes the worst part of a really good book-based experience, the final third; this is the part when the pages are diminishing, you are coming to the end and no matter how much you want to know the outcome you also want to revel in the first reading, the first flush, the first steps into this world that you have come to know.
This is what has happened with White Fang. I have read the first third, remembering how stark and brutal some of the scenes are but it drew me in and I was revelling in the scenery, the language and the wolf-view of the world. I am still quite shocked at the treatment of White Fang, to the point that when my twelve year old nephew asked me what I was reading for my course (something he does on a regular basis) I lied!
I told him I was reading Coraline. At this he shrugged and made the comment that he thought it was “good but a girls book, really”.
The question was why did I think he shouldn’t know? Did I think he couldn’t handle this book? This child who ten minutes before the question was playing a fantasy escape game firing arrows into hordes of blood-venting demons – would he not be able to handle the scene in the book where the puppy is held aloft and beaten repeatedly with a heavy hand?
It’s an interesting question, not least because I was younger than him when I read the book and less exposed to news reports, papers and internet based access to the brutality of life than he is.
It is something I need to think about and perhaps refer to in my assignment essay.
My initial recollection of White Fang was not liking the book – but after reading it again, going through the narrative which does contain hardship and brutality – the stark reality of the time and environment – I admire the character of the wolf because of his endurance, strength, adaptability and intelligence.
I have realised that the memory of this book was about how this wolf endured, fought the injustices done to him and overcame obstacles. You might hate the journey but the character and his ultimate destination is what matters…I now wonder how I will view Wolf Brother when compared.
