Barking with the Big Dogs

by Natalie Babbitt

  So what are we going to do? We want children to learn to love reading, but over and above the resistance put up by human nature, there are, today, endless distractions. As if TV and movies weren’t enough, now there are those blasted computers, too. And they’re not going to go away. My husband has computers in his office, and he has a little machine at home which he uses all the time, doing things that were never necessary before but now seem necessary just because they’re possible. This annoys me, but there’s no point in being cranky and resistant. Computers are here to stay, just like TV.

  The only thing we can do, I guess, is fight fire with fire. Well, let me amend that. The only thing teachers can do is fight fire with fire. I would fight fire with fire if I could, but that would mean writing a whole other kind of book, and believe me, if I wrote Natalie Babbitt’s Workout Book, it would only have one page—one page that said, “Get up from the sofa periodically to let the dog in or out.” So teachers are going to have to do the firefighting. Somehow they’re going to have to find a way to make reading as seductive as its rivals—to make it, in other words, easy and pleasant. Because that, it seems to me, is the only thing that was better about the good old days. Books—for me, anyway—were easy and pleasant.

  One of the things that made books easy and pleasant was the practice of reading aloud. Almost any writing is easy and pleasant when it’s read aloud. My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wilson, read aloud to us every day for the last half hour, and she read aloud for pleasure, hers as well as ours. We weren’t tested on the books she read to us. We didn’t do projects or write to authors. We just relaxed and enjoyed it. Even the classmates of mine who weren’t big readers themselves relaxed and enjoyed it.

  Some of the things I hear about that are being done with books in classrooms now make my blood run cold. And would certainly have made my blood run cold in 1941 when I was in the fifth grade. I wish I could believe children are enjoying all those extras hooked onto reading a story, but I’m afraid I think it’s pretty unlikely. Books have collected countless barnacles of peripheral stuff these days, and how can that do anything but turn reading into hard work?

  It would probably be a good idea to accept the fact that human nature has always resisted hard work, that human nature wants to relax and have fun. I’m not saying we should lower our expectations, exactly. I guess I’m saying that in the good old days, reading seemed like fun. So maybe it would be worthwhile to look back at Twain’s Tom Sawyer, the bestseller of 1876. If Tom could make painting a fence seem like fun, maybe we should take a page from his book. Make reading easy and pleasant, with emphasis on the pleasant. Use a little low cunning. Ease up on the projects, schedule time for reading aloud. Read aloud things that you really like, yourself. Everyone responds to a good story, and that is what good literature really is: a good story, well told. If you don’t think you’ve got any skill for reading aloud yourself, bring in someone from the community to do it, someone without a coo in his or her voice, perhaps an actor from a local little theater. When children can see books as sources of pleasure, I think at least some of them will go on from listening to reading by themselves.

  I know a librarian who reads a book aloud only up to the part where the story gets really suspenseful. And then she stops and says, “If you want to know what happens next, you’ll have to read this story for yourselves.” That is low cunning at its absolute best.

  Words, after all, quite apart from their utterly essential and fundamental use for communication—words, after all, can be fun. So what we need to do, maybe, is calm down, forget expecting the moon, and try to give back to reading the pleasure it deserves. I think we can go a long way if we take that route. Honey, you know, is actually good for us nutritionally. So is peanut butter. But they taste so good that we forget about the nutrition. Reading is like that. Or at least it should be. And could be. Maybe. All we can do is try.

  Senior year photograph, the Laurel School, Cleveland, Ohio, 1950

  “At my high school graduation, the headmistress said to us, ‘Remember, girls, no matter where you go, you take yourselves with you.’ That was a shocking thing to hear at the time, when we all wanted to become silk purses and swans—symbols of at least one kind of metamorphosis.”

  Metamorphosis

  (1987)

  It has been my lifelong wish that there was no such thing as change. Outward change, anyway. I like things familiar and predictable. And yet, from the very beginning, my life has been made up of repeated outward changes. I have moved twenty-two times. The humblest dandelion has more tangible roots than I do. But moving is the American way. Nearly all of us had to move from somewhere just to get to America in the first place—we or our forebears.

  I wonder sometimes, however, how much we really change inwardly as we go along. I wonder how many of us, in the course of an average life, become something really different from what we were in the beginning. At my high school graduation, the headmistress said to us, “Remember, girls, no matter where you go, you take yourselves with you.” That was a shocking thing to hear at the time, when we all wanted to become silk purses and swans—symbols of at least one kind of metamorphosis. But our steely-voiced headmistress was absolutely right. We learn things as we go along, we go through experiences that head us sometimes in unexpected directions, but we are still burdened down with our selves, and respond to all experience in ways that anyone who truly knows us could probably describe as predictable.

  I suppose the whole thing comes down to what is meant by the term metamorphosis. I went back for a reunion a few years ago to the school with the steely-voiced headmistress—she herself, of course, long gone. My classmates and I all looked hard at each other. Most of us, in spite of the thirty years that had elapsed, looked pretty much the same: that is to say, perfectly recognizable. No problem knowing each other on the street. But the heaviest girl was now thin, while the thinnest was now heavy. I wouldn’t have known either of them on the street—unless I stopped and talked to them. Then I would have recognized them easily.

  Outward changes. There are plenty of those. I always look with great interest at the makeover stories in the women’s magazines whenever I come across one. Mrs. G.K. from Kansas as she looked before. Before the hairdresser, the makeup artist, and the dress designer had their way with her. Before, she was lank-haired, pale, frumpy, and embarrassed. Then—presto! Mrs. G.K. from Kansas after: puff-haired, rosy, stylish, and—embarrassed. I think Mrs. G.K. probably went home to Kansas after this experience, washed out the hairspray, wiped off the makeup, put her old denim skirt back on, and said to Mr. G.K., “It was fun, I suppose, but I just didn’t feel like me.” And Mr. G.K. probably gave her a hug and said, “I like you just the way you are.”

  It can be unsettling to the people around us if we indulge in too much outward change. My daughter, Lucy, once gave me, for a birthday joke, a curly, short-cropped black wig—a sort of Elizabeth Taylor style. We passed it around and everybody tried it on, even my husband and my two sons. But aside from being funny, which it certainly was, it also had an eerie alienating effect. “Take it off,” my son Tom said to me quite seriously, when I was wearing it. “You don’t look like my mom anymore.”

  The wig did represent a kind of momentary metamorphosis, but not a metamorphosis greatly to be desired after all. We grow used to ourselves, the people around us grow used to us, as we grow older. How we look is closely tied to who we are. We come at last, perhaps, to some understanding of our individual essence.

  My good friend and collaborator, the poet Valerie Worth, is much concerned with essence. She writes about it often. In one of her collections of poetry, Still More Small Poems, she has this to say about a rosebush:

  In summer it

  Blooms out fat

  And sweet as milk;

  In winter it

  Thins to a bitter

  Tangle of bones;

  And who can say

  Which is the

  True rosebush?

  A questio
n well worth pondering. But no doubt the rosebush itself knows the answer, just as we know at last our own essence.

  I don’t suppose there’s anyone, and I emphatically include myself, who doesn’t wish he were different in some way from what he is. But I doubt if any of us would really be willing to undergo a true metamorphosis now, one that altered our inward essence: to become some new and wonderful other kind of person at the touch of a godmother’s wand and then go back to our unchanged lives, the lives that we have shaped—or tried to shape—to fit the person we were before. No, if we underwent a metamorphosis, everything else would have to change as well, or else we would be forced to live as new square pegs in old round holes: uncomfortable, alien, the proverbial odd man out.

  But in spite of this, at some level the longing is there, this longing to be different. We say to ourselves that we are the way we are because of things that happened long before we had anything to say about it, and that is probably largely true, though some of what we are is certainly due to the experiences to which life, in its random and disinterested way, has exposed us. Nature and nurture, as the psychologists have it. We say we didn’t have much choice, and we also say that we wish we were different. Very different, or maybe only a little different, but different. Younger, perhaps. Or thinner. Richer. Smarter. Even, perhaps, gentler. Or more confident. Or wittier. But most of us adults know by now that we are unlikely ever to be much different. We are, finally, what and who we are, and that’s that. Nevertheless—nevertheless—the longing is there, and perhaps that longing is at the bottom of many of the stories we have produced for our children. Unlike adults, children seem to go through changes rapidly and constantly. Outward changes, anyway. They may not be much aware of it, but we, as parents and teachers, certainly are.

  Children, however, are born as we were born: each with his or her own essence, an essence that is largely unalterable in spite of continual outward changes. Parents sometimes take a long time to accept their children’s essences. If the children don’t turn out to be heroes, parents sometimes feel let down. Here these offspring were, beginning new, and they perversely turned out to be just like us. If we could do it over again, we wouldn’t turn out to be just like us. And yet, Frank Stockton, in his story “The Bee-Man of Orn,” reminds us that a reversion to childhood, a new beginning as an infant, doesn’t at all mean that we will grow up to be a different kind of adult. The Bee-Man, after his metamorphosis, becomes a bee-man all over again.

  But this is not the message of many children’s stories. Many stories say, “The power to be whatever you want to be is there for you. You can and will be different.” Probably we mean “different from the way we turned out.” And sometimes they are different. But the things that make the difference are very seldom in life what they are in stories. In stories the things that make the difference are mostly magic, or obedience to a set of rules, or are due to events carefully orchestrated by the author to produce the desired result. To produce, in other words, a hero.

  In The Secret Garden, which I loved when I was a child, Mary and Colin begin their story weak, self-centered, rude, and manipulative. By the time the story is over, they have become wise, sweet, and powerful. In the setting provided for them, and with events carefully arranged, this metamorphosis seems reasonable. I doubt if, given their early experience, so dramatic a change would happen in real life, but who cares? It’s a story; and a story, after all, is an acting out of our best-loved dreams and desires. Mary and Colin rebel against authority, take charge of their own lives, and thereby prosper. The concept is irresistible to a child. In a way it’s funny that we, as adults jealous of our control, should give such a story to a child, for who among us wants to encourage rebellion? But of course we don’t give our children The Secret Garden to read because we think they will learn from it. We give it to them because we still remember the magic it worked on us when we were children. And a good thing, too. Otherwise, children would miss out on a great deal of magic.

  But an adult rereading of The Secret Garden considerably damages its magic. And there are other beloved stories where the magic is equally fragile. The Ugly Duckling is one of these, I think. So is The Little Engine That Could. Too many of us adults look exactly as we might have been expected to look, given our childhood features. And too many of us have grown up to be little engines that couldn’t, in spite of the greatest efforts. But I am not saying we are all unhappy and discouraged. Most of us have comfortably accepted the facts of our selves. I’m talking about Mrs. G.K. from Kansas, who realized she didn’t really want to be Cinderella after all. We’ve seen by now too many Cinderellas grown petulant and anxious when their beauty faded with aging. And regardless of our political views, certainly most of us would agree that although Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North is a little engine that could, he will probably end up forgotten on a siding.

  But I don’t want to be misunderstood. I am not saying that the encouragement of children’s hopes for glory through the great metamorphosis of growing up is a bad thing. Not at all. As long as we define glory carefully. Perhaps the best glory of all comes in the form of a sense of the ridiculous, a satisfying kind of daily work to do, and tolerance.

  My favorite two books when I was a child were Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass. These books are full of transformations. I loved the pig baby and the Cheshire cat and the Caterpillar. Remember this exchange between Alice and the Caterpillar?

  “Being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing,” [said Alice].

  “It isn’t,” said the Caterpillar.

  “Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”

  “Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.

  “Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,” said Alice; “all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.”

  Yes, indeed! That seemed like a reasonable reaction to me when I was a child. It seems reasonable now. All of Alice seemed and seems reasonable. For Alice wasn’t changed at all by her Wonderland experiences. Alice stayed her own true self throughout. Lewis Carroll didn’t want Alice to change. He only wanted to point out, I think, the endless absurdities of the adult world. And maybe that’s why I liked the books so much. They seemed to be saying, from Alice’s viewpoint, “The world is utterly crazy, but I’m all right.” That’s the way I felt as a child. It’s not a bad way to feel. Perhaps it encouraged tolerance and a sense of the ridiculous.

  One of the things that worries me about modern American life is that we are rather short on tolerance. I am not talking about the great political struggles for racial and gender tolerance. I’m talking about the small but precious kind of tolerance that comes from self-acceptance. Not self-satisfaction. Self-acceptance. We all seem to think we ought to be like someone else. Look like someone else, live like someone else. Instead of trying to be as good a version of ourselves as we can, we seem to think we ought to be someone else entirely. Everything around us encourages this attitude, an attitude that breeds discontent, self-denigration, and guilt.

  Take TV, for instance. Everywhere on television, people are beautiful or wise or witty. And sometimes all three at once. Or if they’re comical, they’re comical in a lovable way. Movies are a little better, but not much. We know a lot about the real lives of the actors and actresses who play these roles. We know a lot about the lives of our flesh-and-blood heroes, too. Maybe our own lives are less dramatic; maybe we won’t get into the history books. But it seems to me it’s time we realized that most of us are just as worthy. Maybe we are even more honorable, more unselfish, more loving than many of the celebrities who glitter above our heads. So why do we wish to be changed into one of their number? In order to be famous? I doubt it. In order to be happy? Probably we don’t really believe celebrities are happier than anyone else. In order to be rich? Ah! That may be pa
rt of it. To be rich means to be safe, doesn’t it? To be rich means to be respectable. At least, if we were rich, we’d be safe and respectable.

  All this may not seem to have much to do with children’s literature. Metamorphosis in that realm is most often about magic, about shape-shifting, about transformation. And all of those things, finally, are about hope: hope for a better life and a better world. Nevertheless, I want to suggest that we should tread carefully.

  There is a line somewhere in the blur between fact and fantasy that is extremely hard to pinpoint. One side of that line encourages children to look hard at themselves and the real world around them, to define the genuinely achievable, and to try as hard as they can to do their very best in fashioning for themselves a life that is honest, fulfilling, tolerant, and as comfortable as possible. The other side of that line encourages them to believe that the world somehow owes them wealth and power and happiness without their having to work for it, that the means to wealth and power and happiness are always just around the corner, will come all in a rush, and at a single stroke metamorphose them into the glittering heroes they see in many of their books and movies and TV shows. It is this side of the line that emphasizes the moment of glory, the moment when the world bows and acknowledges herohood. Very seldom does this side of the line recognize that there is a lot of life left after the moment of glory has passed.