Lit Kid: my pick of anti-heroes

Last time, I set about thinking about anti-heroes in children’s literature.

Turns out, they’re not always so easy to find. Often, the baddie turns good by the end, even if there have been some shabby deeds along the way.

And my point from last time is: it’s all about the ending. The ending shows us the way forward, the moral message. And if a character has been bad, one way or another, being bad at the end seems to seal their fate.

They become the anti-hero. Sounds bleak. But it’s not.

We still can’t stop reading about them. Maybe even, admiring them still, just a bit.

===

Entry 1: Horrid Henry

Since Henry was the starting point of the discussion, it only seems fair to begin with him.

Henry, as his name indicates, is (generally) horrid. He may occasionally promise to do nice things – or even actually do them – but this is usually to get his own way in the end, or get one up on his brother Perfect Peter.

So, fitting my criteria: Henry is usually still horrid at the end of each story. He may have lied, faked dreadful illness, done unspeakable things to Peter’s toy lamb collection, and so on.

But we still like him. Because part of the point of anti-heroes is that they make the world work for them in ways that we wish had done so for us. (At least a little bit.)

Sometimes, there is even something closer to regular heroism about Henry. If your school dinner lady was nasty to everyone, every day, wouldn’t part of you be rather pleased at contriving her comeuppance?

Other times, it’s more about an honest response to tasks grownups put upon children. If you had a writing assignment for school that you hated, wouldn’t it be enjoyable to subvert it?

Henry doesn’t always get things his own way – which is why he has a matching anti-heroine in Moody Margaret. Henry may play tricks on Margaret – but he usually gets at least the same back.

There’s much more that could be written about Henry (and I’m sure has been, one way or another). But we shall leave him to his Secret Club and stinkbomb plans, and consider someone else.

===

2. Just William

Before there was Henry, there was William. Just William, that is, of the famous Richmal Crompton stories.

I confess to having read a bit less William than Henry, but I shall make up for this by saying ‘so far’. (I have a couple of Just William books stashed away for Junior Reader, for when the time is right.)

William is the bad boy, in a similar vein to Henry, finding numerous situations in which he fails to make ‘good choices’, to use the current parlance in schools.

William also has a gang – though it seems a more dependable gang than Henry’s. William is the leader of it (of course), but is perhaps less deliberately self-centred than Henry.

William has the added advantage of having a dog, which offers a certain grounding to things – Henry doesn’t do much looking after things (apart from his Killer Boy Rats CDs, perhaps).

(And you should know that, in the TV adaption from the 1970s, William’s dog looked just like the first dog I had. Sadly, my internet searches have been unable to turn up a picture to prove my point.)

But the important point is that William can be relied to show a child’s perspective on what is fun, what is worth doing – and how much of the adult world does not fit into that category.

====

3. Blart

One of our more recent discoveries has been Blart, a pig herder who is dragged into, amongst other things, a questionable quest.

(Blart is written by Dominic Barker, whose Adam and the Arkonauts we also highly recommend.)

Blart is more an anti-hero by virtue of his determination not to be a hero. Like Henry, he is selfish, and generally uninterested in matters of the greater good.

Blart is a stage beyond Henry and William – he is no longer a child, though his take on life certainly fits a more teenagerly mode.

When given the opportunity to do something noble or important, Blart will tend to focus on pigs instead. But this is not necessarily a sign of heroic humility – Blart likes the pigs in his care, but remains fairly unlikeable himself.

Unlike other poor but effective heroes of children’s books, Blart can also be duped. (Maybe this is part of the undercutting of anti-heroes in children’s literature: they are effective, but not always that consistent.)

And yet. To survive a series of quests when you don’t want to be involved in them, he is probably braver than Henry, overall.

===

4. Iznogoud

And finally, Iznogoud, the Grand Vizier, in a series of comics from the writer of Asterix, Goscinny, paired with the artist Jean Tabary.

Our local library has one copy of Iznogoud – sadly no more than one (though we should see what inter-library loans can do for us.)

Iznogoud is permanently piqued at remaining in the second-most important job in the kingdom. His aim in life is to become top dog – the Caliph of Baghdad – by whatever means necessary.

It goes without too much saying that, were he to be successful early on, there would clearly be no series. The fun is in the ever more complex ways in which he hopes to secure what he believes to be rightfully his – and of course, fails.

To have a look at Iznogoud, and his famous catch phrase “I want to be Caliph instead of the Caliph”, this site will show you pictures, and more detail of Iznogoud’s various schemes.

Iznogoud is a stage beyond the others. He is an adult, a relatively powerful one at that. We don’t know whether his darker qualities emerged through dint of remaining in the no. 2 slot – or whether they are the outworking of his earlier self.

We know he is the lead character – the titles indicate that, and the Caliph is more like the cuddly and rather ineffectual Sultan in Aladdin, rather than a hero in his own right.

But Iznogoud’s pride and ambition keep him in the anti-hero position – despite every botched job, he is still determined that there will be a next time.

===

I’m sure there are at least a few more anti-heroes to be found in children’s books. (And there are also Bad Girls, a favourite category on children’s book blog Tygertale.)

Despite the (seeming) villainy of these characters, they can also be made fun of relatively easily. Their position may be important (in their own eyes), or, as in Blart’s case, they may simply want to get on with the task of living with pigs.

Maybe the main point of anti-heroes is that they bring us to stop and think – about what is good; what is self-centred.

We recognise that they have a certain power in their own right – and a power over us too, as readers.

 

Free the information

I promised a post about information – how we store it, what we do with it. (I am married to Mr Web Company. I appreciate the irony.)

Quick answer: why keep information? It’s All Out There Anyway. (The end.)

Is it really as simple as that? Yes, with more and more information online, one way or another, there is less need for me to keep some of the things I’ve kept in the past.

University notes. Recipes. Addresses and phone numbers of companies.

The reason I’m grappling with this is that I am an inveterate keeper of cuttings. (My mother will tell you this started way back.)

From what I can think back to, it may have begun with recipes from women’s magazines. (I don’t even remember where the magazines came from. Maybe they were passed on to us.)

I would read them, as I would read pretty much anything that stayed around long enough for me to do so. And as we’d been told they didn’t have to be returned, I would take cuttings out of them. To keep. In case they came in useful.

It went on to other things. TV listings for programmes I’d really enjoyed and wanted to remember. (No catch-up TV in those days; if you’d not videoed it, that was that.)

I had scrapbooks for these. I like scrapbooks in the first place. Every now and then, I might go through them, take out things I was no longer interested in, paste some more in over the top.

And so it went on. For a long time. Saturday Times magazine articles that had been particularly good. Sometimes profiles of people I admired: actors, writers, and so on.

Later on, other things were added into the mix. Health tips. Travel recommendations. Places offering children’s parties. You name it, I would see ‘usefulness’ in it, and file it away.

Except, often, it was putting it in a folder and hanging on to it. I didn’t know what I had, necessarily. I was forging ahead, out to find the next useful piece of paper.

===

I’d like to blame some kind of hunter gatherer tendency for this. That would help. It might mean I can cite genetics, rather than label myself as a hoarder.

And yet. (You knew there was one coming, didn’t you?)

When you study, when you research, you do need to keep an eye out for things: not just what you think you’re looking for but what you come across as well. You hang on to it. You have a hunch about it.

Being a parent can be much the same. It’s not just what you need now, it’s what activity might appeal to your child in the future; that present idea for the great-aunt; the suggestion for something new to do with mince. (It can be more exciting than just mince recipes, too.)

And so I kept them. But as part of my grand sort-out, I am finally reviewing what I have kept – and realising how little I refer back to it.

Why keep several centimetres thick of photocopies – when I could buy the book if I want to keep reading about that topic? (Bye bye, some of my social sciences notes.)

Why keep some of the health or nutrition information when I’ve researched beyond that now? (You sure end up doing lots of online reading if you start cooking gluten- and dairy-free.)

Why keep the clipping about that summer camp when I can make a note of the details, and recycle the paper?

===

So far, it’s going well. Lots of recycling, yet more paper to add to the scrap paper collection.

Old habits die hard, though. I still love researching, one way or another. These days, I am trying to keep it what I find out in Evernote instead. Easier to record; easier to search and find again.

I’m trying something new: a file that tells me what I’m keeping in the flat, and where. (So if I do need to find my TEFL notes again, I know for certain which box I’ve put them in.)

The bigger change is one where I ask myself: do I really need that? Will I go back and look that up again – or will I just research it anew? And which one will take less time (quite apart from storage considerations)?

I don’t want to throw away useful things for the sake of it. That doesn’t sit right with the reuse-recycle part of me.

But as with other areas of last year’s eco sweep: it’s reducing that’s the hardest bit. Accepting that life is short; that we won’t need to reuse everything; that what we need now may not necessarily meet the challenges of the future.

There is a growing line of argument to suggest that education should move away from accumulation of knowledge – because so much ‘general knowledge’ information is easily accessible online.

What we need instead is synergy – making connections between different, seemingly unrelated areas. Turning them into something new.

Maybe it’s OK to keep some stuff then. Or at least to know where to find it.

So I can put it together with the new things I learn along the way – and make something that reflects who I’ve been, as well as where I’m going.

Writing in my head

Back at the start of the year, I set myself three posts a week. It still feels the right amount.

Enough to keep me writing, thinking – enough space for the other things going on at the moment.

You may have surmised that Lit Kid is not exactly writing itself, but that’s where it’s flowing most. Some Fridays, while I wait in a cafe for sports class to be done, I sit and write a list of what I might turn into a Lit Kid blog post.

So far, pretty much all the Lit Kid posts this year have come out of their own circumstances, rather than off a list. So not to say that the list will be ignored – more that there are plenty of good kids’ books out there, and plenty to write about.

For the rest, it’s harder to be sure. Some weeks, a circumstance comes along and I write about it (sickness bug week, for example).

Other times, I sift what’s happening, try to decide what is noteworthy. What I might put in front of you.

In the past, I would write blog posts in my head on the way to school pick-up – and that still happens. They don’t necessarily all come out word for word the same, when I get to the keyboard, but something of the fresh air and space and exercise seems to help the writing process.

Recently, I realised it was happening in other places too. By the kettle, waiting for the next heated beverage of the day. (This can be, and often is, combined with shovelling things in or out of the dishwasher, while waiting for the kettle to boil.)

I’m not sure what to make of this. Is it a sign that the writing is able to jump out at a moment’s notice? Or am I overly worried about what I have to say to you – whether it’s blog-worthy?

===

Some of you may join me in having conversations in your head. They are usually the ones where you are worried about the outcome, a bit defensive maybe.

You write the script in advance so you can say what you really feel – whether or not that’s borne out by the actual conversation you have.

(Sometimes, of course, we don’t have the real conversation – we bail out. But we tell ourselves that’s what we would say, if push came to shove.)

I don’t think it’s like that. I’m not arguing with you – maybe forming a line of argument, on occasion, if the lit crit fancy takes me.

I may be arguing with myself about what is relevant to say. My voice, narrating the living of my life, day by day, lunchbox by packed lunchbox.

Against me, the more critical voice, querying whether what I have to say is valid; interesting; well-written, even. I can’t answer that. (I can look at analytics for the blog, and gain some ideas, but it’s still guesswork.)

What it boils down to is that I don’t see any reason to invoke the inner critic when I write. Various times here on the blog, I’ve written about this being a place for me to have fun when I write.

I still believe that. More so, given my notions of early retirement. There is enough good living to be done, and enough writing that captures that spirit of enjoying life, enjoying the craft of working the words.

===

So the narrator will tell you that there is more clearing out going on. Some of it is bringing me to rethink how I relate to information, and how I store it. I might write about that at some point, but not just now.

There are moments big and small. There are completed star charts, and prizes of exciting pencils from the school’s stash of ‘well done’ items.

There is sampling of water chestnuts for the first time. Learning more about the inner workings of clients’ organisations, with my copywriter hat on.

There is exploration of how to draw faces with more details. The ending of one chapter book at bedtime; the beginning of another, and the fast and frantic finale of the one I get to read out loud if we’ve finished tea early.

There is the finishing up of a box set (Mad Men Season 6, if you’re interested), and some further exploration of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown short stories. (I might just do myself some lit crit of books for grownups too, in time.)

There is the exploration of how many pairs of jeans have holes, and where, and how many might reasonably be patched. And by whom.

These are good things. These are life just now. They seem so frail sometimes, when I spin them out before you on the keyboard. Nothing of significance.

Nothing, except the amazement of daily life. And the repetition. And both again, together, filling each other’s spaces.

This is really what I want to tell you about. It’s the discovery of new worlds, and the familiarity of the kettle being put on again. One is nothing without the other.

Lit Kid: the anti-hero in children’s books

Junior Reader and friends have some interesting discussions in the morning before school. Some of these I hear at the time; some are relayed to me later. And some of them touch on Lit Kid topics.

“Do superheroes get married?”

Easy answer: Yes – see The Incredibles. (In this household, it is always right to see The Incredibles.)

Longer, harder answer: yes, probably, but often no, because…but I would need a much bigger knowledge of Marvel-style comics to answer that.

A recent discussion brought in opinions of Horrid Henry. Junior Reader is quite fond of Horrid Henry, both book and audio (and my opportunity to do a shout-out for Miranda Richardson’s brilliant audio versions of the books).

Junior Reader’s friend thought Horrid Henry was “a bit dark”. Dan weighed in, and suddenly the terminology of anti-hero appeared.

Junior Reader relayed this to me later, somewhat unsure. So I added my tuppence worth about heroes vs anti-heroes.

In this (thinking on my feet) version, heroes are the main character, (generally) do good things, and we like them. Anti-heroes are the main character, (generally) do bad things, but we still like them. At least a bit.

This seemed to work for Junior Reader, who then got on with other important tasks like cutting yet another paper snowflake. Which left me time to think about this some more.

I think the point is: what is a lead character like at the end of the book? Are they generally good or generally bad?

(I do say generally, because often a well-written character will have some quirks or flaws, but you can still tell that they’re a goodie – or baddie.)

A hero can be various things earlier in the story – a bit brave, pretty cowardly, terribly nervous, and more. But what they are like by the end seems to seal their fate on the hero scale of things.

An anti-hero, by contrast, needs to remain (generally) bad by the end of the story.

They haven’t seen the error of their ways – or they are having too much fun to stop – or they lack enough self-awareness to see that their actions aren’t doing so well on the popularity side of the scale.

So much of children’s literature has a moral point to it. We tell stories at least in part to instil the appropriate values for the culture around us.

We tell stories to show what works with others, and what doesn’t – in part, we hope, so children can avoid making those mistakes.

But anti-heroes do not fit with this. They do not reform. They do not obey societal norms. They may even be given opportunities to change – but (generally) they do not.

So I wondered who the anti-heroes of children’s literature might be. And why, after all their (presumably) dreadful deeds, we still like them.

Because the point of an anti-hero is (I think) that we find some place of affinity with them.

We may not be like them, we may not aspire to be either, but we are still drawn to them.
They ring true as characters, and we respond to them.

I know we do, because I started off writing a post twice this size, telling you about the ones
I found.

But in the interests of a cliff-hanger, you’ll have to come back next week to find out who
I picked.

 

 

How to avoid food shopping

This one doesn’t quite seem my style, given my much-professed love of food. And, indeed, of food shopping, sometimes as though I am feeding a garrison rather than a family of three.

(Junior Reader is eating more and more now, though, so maybe the garrison is along the right lines.)

So it’s a bit strange to find myself avoiding food shopping, several times in a row.

I blame illness. Looking after someone else who just keeps being sick, you go off and hide when you need to eat something yourself. Dan helped out a couple of times, I cooked lack-lustre dishes at other times.

Then I blame spring-cleaning related injuries. Or rather, aches and pains that might turn into injuries if I go and do a full food shop. So I identify the essential to buy at the local shop that I can walk to, and put things off a bit more.

After that, I can blame a shift in routine. Conflict of interests on my usual food shopping day? Put it off again. And so on.

It may also be part of the general clearing things out phase at the moment. You get rid of things in one corner of the house, you do the same in another. You try not to bring any more in. You continue not to go food shopping.

So then you start to see how much you have in the house that you can turn into meals. Turns out, a good amount. Tins, grains, protein in the freezer one way or another.

I thank my earlier self for cooking bulk at times – and work my way through the stores.

Last year, I ended up reading about food spending challenges – where you set a budget for the month and stick to it. By week 4, everyone is cooking weird combinations of what’s left at the back of their cupboards, and hanging on in there.

I’m not at that point. But in some ways, it’s good to try. I remember challenges where you voluntarily reduce what you eat for a period of time, thinking of others for whom that level of eating is their regular diet.

(I found it harder to find examples of this online, but Meat Free Mondays are a step in that direction, even if the focus is more environmental than in support of others in poverty.)

Or the Oxfam banquet-type meals, where a percentage of people get a banquet, and others sit on the floor eating rice and beans – or less. (I think these are maybe not happening so much now, but here’s an example.)

I’ve reached the point where I have to do the food shop tomorrow. So I will. Really.

My garrison doesn’t run well on bread and water rations. And we are fortunate in the West that we can choose (and choose and choose) from so many products.

But maybe that trolley will end up a little less full. And I can save my wrists and my back for more of the sorting out.