Galumphing...

This is one of Lewis Carroll's "portmanteau word," packing together two meanings, in this case gallop and triumphant creating an irregular, exultant march. In my home galumphing can be accomplished only by small children and puppies, particularly puppies. It suggests less a triumphant march than a bounding, joyful, and akward movement, best seen in the unabashed running, jumping, and falling of very young creatures. My parents say it frequently, suggesting that like Humpty Dumpty words mean what they want them to. Which shouldn't come as a suprise to me, since I grew up in a home where my mother altered the proverb to read "Do as I Mean, Not As I Say."

Listen to your mother...

This is the basic moral of the Perrault/Grimm version of Little Red Riding Hood. Whether you agree with Fromm's sexual interpretation or prefer a more benign version that simply emphasizes the need to take the advice of one's elders the focus is the same: listen to your mother. When I was three, shortly after my sister was born, we were living in married student housing on the University of Wisconsin - Madison campus and there were lots of other kids around. My mom was taking care of Cait , and I wandered off with some other kids to visit another one of the apartment buildings. When I came home my mom was going CRAZY. She was yelling, too scared to cry, and made me promise never to do ANYTHING like this ever again. I was frightened and promised I never would. Which is why I ALWAYS told mom where I was going, right up until I moved out. Even now, when I visit, I leave a note and a number for her to reach me at. My sister never got that angry/scared/insane talk and so she has a tendency to wander off occaisonally, despite many bouts of grounding in later years. She didn't get it into her bones young enough. Little Red Riding Hood was no doubt intended to deeply ingrain how dangerous wandering ( or even not listening to your monther) was. I imagine it works ALMOST as well as my mom's diatribe.

The Chevalier Fortune

This is one of the stories contained in the "Disguised Heroes" motif (which is misnamed really, shouldn't it be "Disguised Heroines " since it's women disguised as men, not the other way around? The fact that they ARE WOMEN is integral to the stories...) I really liked her servants, each endowed with some fabulous ability.
One of my favorite movies is The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and having read "Chevalier Fortune" it's pretty clear that's where Gilliam got the characters of Baron Munchausen's servants, right down to a few heavily influenced scenes where the fast man falls asleep during his race and where the strong man makes away with ALL the treasure of the opposing king (possibly lifted straight from the story actually). Baron Munchausen is one of Gilliam's "three ages of man" movies and represents old age (Time Bandits is youth and Brazil is adulthood). Baron Munchausen is an old man, but telling stories literally makes him young again (and I do mean literally, not figuratively). In the movie it's never clear what's a story and what's the hard facts, clearly a war of mythos and logos. The Baron saves the city by telling stories and finally narrates his own funeral, before pulling back and revealing that this was just "one of many of his magnificent deaths".
I think the Baron goes along ways toward explaining why we tell stories that aren't even true: because stories help us work through problems, because stories explain and enlighten, because stories make us immortal, and because it is not always possible to IDENTIFY what is fact and what is fable.

Haroun and The Sea Of Stories

It's been over a week since I finished Haroun and The Sea Of Stories which is one of my new favorite books. The influences of Wonderland, Oz, and the Arabian Nights are clear but, for me at least, this does not detract from the story. I liked how Rushdie made fun of the genre with the "nightmare" Rapunzel cycle story. The Walrus and the Eggmen show how newer influences can be integrated into fairy tales without diminishing them, or even dating them. Rushdie accomplished the most important task of the fairy tale: creating something intriguingly exotic and at the same time reassuringly commonplace. Haroun is a pretty average kid, with average concerns: a broken home and the loss of his dad's job. The fact that he solves these problems with the help of a giant mechanical bird, a water genie, and assorted mystical characters blends seamlessly into the story. That's the mark of a truly excellent fairy tale!

Is Children's Lit Subversive?

Absolutely. For one thing it appeals to and educates children, the most silent of majorities. Children are VERY oppressed, just ask one who is grounded until s/he cleans his/her room. The children in fairy tales are almost always either smarter or more virtuous than the adults. The first motif my group was assigned was the Clever Thief, an excellent example of this subversion: Stealing is ok, it's getting caught that's the real danger. Just be smarter than the mark! Abandoned Children foil the schemes of their parents and assorted villains by being clever and more observant. I can't imagine this subversion was intentional, or at the very least it was not meant to be directed at children. Intrigue, blood, and sex all have been stripped away from folk tales in an attempt to sanitize the tales for kids, so maybe these are the remains of far more inappropriate stories?

Regarding Hood...

I have been assigned to the Little Red Riding Hood group, and I have to say I have NEVER liked Hood, as I will be calling her from this point forward. She is SO thick! A girl who can confuse her grandmother and a cross dressing wolf deserves to be eaten. Reading the folk tales that preceded the sterilized versions produced for consumption by children gave me renewed respect for Hood though. Perhaps a strip tease is not appropriate bed time material for children, but at least the girl is intelligent!

My Favorite Children's Book...

My favorite children's book is called "The Golden Key" by George MacDonald. I was something like seventeen when I first read it. It has this terrific power to remind me, in a very visceral way, what magic FEELS like. I read children's lit all the time because it doesn't seem to be bound to the same rules as "adult" literature. The books I drove my parents crazy over were "In The Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak and "Alexander and The Pirats." I didn't spell that wrong, they were pi-RATS, and Alexander was a tiny man who lived in the moat of a castle. Classic stuff. My parents constantly read to me and my sister, and had their own favorites: "Alexander and The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" was my mom's (this lead to the family saying "sometimes life's like that, even in Australia" whenever someone complained) and "Where the Wild Things Are" was my dad's. I was really lucky to have parents that encouraged me to read, and pushed me towards classic authors like Jules Verne and J.R.R. Tolkein in 3rd grade. For me it was perfect timing, I was getting bored of Boxcar-esque serials and had flatly refused to EVER read Babysitter's Club or Sweet Valley High. I'm very excited for this class, if only because it seems to legitimize my passion for kid's books.