RE: RARA-AVIS: Noir kiddie (and YA) lit

From: Todd Mason ( Todd.Mason@tvguide.com)
Date: 26 Mar 2002


Well, there is Kin Platt, whose DUMMY annoyed the hell out of me when I was ten, but who wrote some other novels that may've been better. Obvious crossover folk, such as Marijane Meeker ("Vin Packer" and "M. E. Kerr"), who may only have slightly touched on noir with the YA likes of DINKY HOCKER SHOOTS SMACK! and DELIVER ME FROM EVIE, while Frank Bonham's DURANGO STREET might be a bit more imbued with a (less-downbeat-than-Gold Medal) hb flavor; these may be pitched a bit older than true "kiddie" lit. Certainly such favorites of mine as MY BROTHER STEVIE by Eleanor Clymer (for near-beginning readers) and THE LONER by Ester Wier (which ran up, but should've won, the Newbery for its year: '64 for '63 publication--the rather similar, not quite as good, but more urban and less contemporary western IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT won) are imbued with as much hb anomie as one might want to dump on a kid. In fact, the trend in the '70s and '80s seemed to be to strive for the downbeat, even to a ridiculous extent, as with DUMMY; no doubt in response to the overemphasis on Happy Endings in the past (though even such a theoretically HE item as JOHNNY TREMAINE is full of darkness, and its titular hero has come to his revolutionary participation only after the permanent crippling of his right hand, among other misfortune). TM

-----Original Message----- From: Doug Hoffman, MD [mailto: hoffmand@cc.northcoast.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 12:48 AM To: Rara Subject: RARA-AVIS: Noir kiddie lit

The recent thread on cross-genre noir/hb (science fiction and fantasy) got me to thinkin... What would the cross-genre examples be for other genres?

How about children's literature? I could only think of one example, and that one is obscure: Julia Cunningham's _Dorp Dead_ (yes, that's how it's spelled), about an orphan who comes under the sway of a rather sinister guardian. There must be other examples (more 'popular' ones than _Dorp Dead_), but I'm at a loss.

Of course, most fairy tales in general (and the brothers Grimm in particular) are very dark, as are most of Roald Dahl's books. For example, consider _The Witches_, which was made into a very good movie with Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch. At the story's end, the boy (who remains a mouse--no reprieve, as in the movie) and his grandmother make plans for the genocide of witches everywhere (this was dropped for the movie). In _James and the Giant Peach_, James' evil aunts are crushed to death by the peach (again, this gets watered down in the movie)... but the story becomes too lighthearted after that.

Oh! I thought of another good one: _There's a Hair in my Dirt_, by Gary Larson. (The cartoonist.) If you can find a copy of this gem, buy it!

Doug Hoffman

(always looking for suitable reading material for my very dark 6-year-old)

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