Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Choosing Animals with Care


I’ve been reading and giving feedback to many aspiring authors lately, and one issue has come up repeatedly to irk my otherwise want-to-be-generous reading self. It’s the way kid-lit writers use animals in stories.


There’s an old tradition of using animals as human stand-ins. Aesop did it, and even the Old Testament has a donkey who talks. (Numbers 22:28) But in every case, the storyteller chose the animal because something about its species conveys an essential character trait or function in humans, of which the story is really about.


This is most clearly articulated in this fable, about the scorpion and the frog. The frog is the one who can swim (and real frogs do) and the scorpion is one who can’t help but sting (and they do.)


Conversely, in recent picture books, some writers use an animal character humorously, as one who grossly doesn’t fit its species characteristics. Think of Olivia the pig who wants to be a ballerina. Every one of us humans has experienced this “not fitting the mold.”  Ballerinas are supposed to be lithe and graceful, and this is not how we experience pigs.

This way, a cat character who loves to get dirty and stay dirty, much to the consternation of his feline friends, could work. The writer chose a cat specifically because cats are always cleaning themselves. The choice has to do with something of the real animal.


But more and more I’m reviewing drafts with anthropomorphic animal characters chosen for their novelty, (there are no other stories on the market with a Sugar Glider, so there) or their cuteness, (I like bunnies, so there) or just because why not.


This isn’t a new thing. Puss in Boots, anyone? But it seems more like an epidemic in the drafts I’ve been reading lately. Animals are chosen for the wrong reasons or no reason at all.


To this reader, this is not use but abuse of this venerable tradition of anthropomorphic animal-tales.



11 comments:

  1. The frustration is real! I'd say not new though. Could Shelter in Place be the reason for the latest influx of stories not quite thought through? Thanks for the blog, Mirka.

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  2. Mirka, you make lots of good points, but there's another important reason that an author and/or illustrator might choose to use an animal as a character and, in this case, the type of animal (i.e., its characteristics) might not be particularly important. I'm talking about a story in which the author doesn't want to specify whether the MC is male or female. I have such a PB. It's told in first person and there's nothing in the text to indicate whether the MC is a girl or a boy. The MC is doing a chore that's typically thought of as being female work. I want to break that kind of stereotype, so I wanted my character to be a boy. But then I read research that said there's a problem with PBs--a much higher percentage of them have boys as creative problem solvers than girls. Since my MC is definitely solving a problem and I don't want to add one more story to the list that might suggest boys are better problem solvers than girls, I realized maybe my MC should be a girl. It was a dilemma. I posed it to some author friends. One of them (I think it was Vijaya) suggested the illustrator make the MC an animal. That way the reader can imagine the MC as whichever gender they want or identify with. I thought it was a brilliant solution to the dilemma.

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  3. Avoiding gender/race/age of character is the main reason for moving from realistic humans to other animals. But it doesn't mean ANY animal will do. A writer would be wise to choose *which animal* with great care, regardless. Animals are stand-ins for humans in kid-lit, except for when the species in nature of the animal is the story. (LASSIE COME HOME, OLD YELLER, JULIE OF THE WOLVES etc. All of these are nature-based, not human stand-ins)

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  4. Good advice and something I'd never thought about.

    Love,
    Janie

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  5. I love animal stories, esp. when the animal in question keeps those important traits. What's fascinating is how many of my short stories have been published with animal characters--they make the story that much sweeter for me. And that's when I realized how easily you can avoid the problem of sex-specific roles in literature.

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  6. Good points, Mirka. I watched the movie The Secret Life of Pets 2 last night. Learned lots of characteristics of cats, hehe. A dog was pretending to be a cat...

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  7. Many editors and publishers feel the same way. That's why stories, where animals are the protagonists, are discouraged.

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  8. I see a lot of animal-protagonist stories published. Especially in picture books, these human-stand-ins are beloved. But my point is that writers should choose *which* animal for *what* story with literary (not arbitrary) care. Just the way Aesop did.

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  10. I so agree. A critique partner wrote an animal story where they acted like humans but still went hunting other animals for food. To me that doesn't work at all and I couldn't explain why not in a way that made sense to her. Maybe I should have told her to watch Zootopia!

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