Play-World [jana]

My guilty pleasure…or one of them…is children’s or youth literature—the best of the genre, at least. I’ve been reading lately a variety of different authors lately, and just as a brief disclaimer, there’s a world of difference between the childlike and the childish but the lines are easily blurred, and of course, sometimes both childlike and childish elements occur within the same stories.

Childlikeness, especially for me as I’ve grown up soaked in Scriptural Sunday-school classes, is a description suggestive of childhood, innocence, and a simple way of viewing the world; the simplicity of the “Our Father, who art in heaven…” and of the loaves and fishes.

Childishness, on the other hand, is representative of a more simplistic view of the world and is associated with a sense of negative immaturity.

Childlikeness has a wisdom of its own, childishness is perceived as self-focused and a rejection of wisdom in favor of emotion-based reactions. Childishness views the world in black-and-white absolutes, childlikeness in black, white, and the silver of mystery, true and present.

This acceptance of the mysterious is a trademark of good children’s literature. Think of some of the best stories you remember…Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, Madeleine L’engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, L. Frank Baum’s the Wizard of Oz, along with more modern titles like Kate DiCamillo’s A Tale of Despereaux, Louis Sachar’s Holes, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, and Gail Carson Levine’s The Princess Tales. Also, titles that are less strictly “magical,” more of an imitation of childhood, like Katherine Patterson’s A Bridge to Terabithia, L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie. Even these more realism—focused works (I don’t say realistic) embrace imagination and the whimsical in a less obvious way.

I don’t want to get into a distinction of quality of writing, or the qualifications that make a good story into a great one. I know there are not-so-great children’s books which address mysterious concepts like Magic, witchcraft, fantasy, and even the Occult. And, most likely, even some of the titles listed above will garner arguments about their right to be included in this discussion. What I would like to discuss and hear from readers in return is more the subject of that quality of the mysterious or otherworldly in youth/children’s literature.

Why is the theme of otherworldliness or supernatural essential to almost any story you can pick in the youth section of Barnes and Noble or Chapters? The Newberry award winners’ shelf alone contains books on time-travel, magical practice, fantasy, utopian society, dystopian society…dinotopian society. Dragons, talking animals, mythical creatures, superhumans, even gods and goddesses are the players in these tales.

My idea is that it has something to do with the mindset of living in the present. Michael Card wrote an article for the Discipleship Journal some years ago called “Acting Like a Child: The more we become like children, the more we become like Jesus.” He writes that four areas of Jesus life are reflected in the outlook of a child: simplicity, naivete, living in the present, and reckless confidence. In regards to living in the present, he writes,”

When children are at play, their game is all that exists. The concept that we have to go somewhere by a certain time is lost on them. They are absorbed in the present moment, and for them, that is all there is.

I see the same quality displayed in Jesus’ life. Though the most important agenda on earth awaited Him, He lavished attention on even the most seemingly insignificant person. Anyone who had His attention was the most important person in the world right then. Jesus was absorbed in the present moment. {Discipleship Journal : Issue 61. 1999 (electronic ed.). Colorado Springs: The Navigators/NavPress.}

This willingness to absorb oneself completely into the story is part of that byline of non-realism writers, the “willing suspension of disbelief,” the name that is sometimes given to the ability to take in, wholeheartedly, the fantastic, the mythical, the unbelievable; making the choice to suspend factual judgment and accept a reality other than that presented by our rational senses.

How to end this post? My interest in this discussion is in parallels and possibilities, not necessarily conclusions and developing a position on the issue. In what sense have stories spoken to you about the nature and character of belief? And in simple, childlike writing can we find, as one of C.S. Lewis’s most-loved characters said, “…a play-world which licks your real world hollow…”? {The Silver Chair. C.S. Lewis.}