Observations on a children's book
Aug. 18th, 2002 03:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2As I've posted several times previously, I've been collecting various Oz books that came after L. Frank Baum's original 14.
Ruth Plumly Thompson wrote the next 19. I read "The Royal Book of Oz" last week (#15, her first Oz book, based on notes made by Baum). It's an enjoyable read, but of course Thompson was already a well-known children's author when she agreed to start writing Oz books.
After 19 books, she decided to step down as official "Royal Historian" of Oz in 1939. (She later wrote two more Oz books, in the 70's). At this point, 32 of the 33 Oz books had been illustrated by John R. Neill (all but the original), and so the publishers asked him to write an Oz book.
Neill wrote 4 Oz books, but the fourth was not illustrated or published until 1995, when Eric Shanower edited the manuscript, illustrated it, and published it. The last few days I've been reading the first of these, officially known as Oz book #34, "The Wonder City of Oz". And, as one reviewer I read put it, it's clear that drawing is Neill's strength, and not writing. But on several levels, this is also an entertaining book.
My two biggest problems with Mr. Neill's writing are A) His story is relatively plotless... or at least, has almost no unifying theme or plot, and B) His writing style is so bare and straightforward and made up of simple, uncomplicated sentences, which gets really old after a few pages.
This second part is particularly interesting to me, because it helps illustrate why varied sentence structure is so important to good writing. Most children's books do not feel quite so simple... but of course, writing with a limited vocabulary does not mean you have to write with a limited sentence structure. Even if children may not know a lot of large, complicated words, then can probably follow complex sentence structures far more easily.
Nor is there a lot of description in his writing. As an example, the opening paragraphs:
Jenny Jump jumped. She was so surprised, she jumped halfway across the kitchen. She had never seen such a sight, never in the whole state of New Jersey!
A tiny man was stealing pepper-cheese out of the cheese box! He was standing right on the table, and he was no taller than the cheese box.
Jenny became very angry because she was to have that pepper-cheese for supper.
"Don't do that," she cried.
The little man turned and Jenny was startled again. The man was a Leprechaun!
Anyway... after a few pages of such a simple writing style, it gets hard to maintain an interest in what you're reading. Couple that with a dearth of plot, and it's been hard to get through more than a chapter or two at a time. And we're talking very short chapters.
So in that way, it's kind of a lesson in writing style... an object lesson in what not to do.
In other ways, the story is a lot of fun. Mr. Neill is good with characterization (as far as children's stories go) and is quite inventive and imaginative. But in some ways, his wild creativity is also a hindrance to my enjoyment of the story... at every turn things are so fanciful and laden with puns and goofiness that it's more of a distraction to the actual story-telling. Maybe if I were a kid it wouldn't bug me so much, but it just seems like he's more interested in silly word-play and puns than in describing anything or actually teling a story. As another example, when Jenny and a few others fly up into the sky in an Ozoplane:
The cloud pushers and the sky sweepers were hard at work. The sky sweepers had feather brooms growing where their hands should be. They worked in a long line, stooping as they brushed the trash from the sky. This trash was mostly star dust, thunder scum, and loose links of chain lightning.
None of this advances any plot or has anything to do with anything really... it's just goofiness thrown in for the sake of goofiness. If I were in the right frame of mind (as a kid) I might really like this sort of silliness... but it continues to crop up every other page throughout the whole book. I could do with less silliness and more plot, I think.
So, for those reasons, I can see why Neill was much more of an artist than a writer. And yet, he's got the imagination for children's writing, and sometimes gets everything just right. I've already found a favorite line from this book. Professor Wogglebug, who has been researching a type of creature called Heelers, runs across Ozma and Dorothy and exclaims:
"This afternoon I discovered some startling new information in a book I wrote last week!"
Now that's a brilliant line! ^_^ Not only is it funny, but it tells you several things about Prof. Wogglebug all at once. A) He's a scholar, B) He likely has a high opinion of himself, and C) Although he's apparently very smart, he seems to suffer from the old "absent-minded professor" cliche.
So anyway, that's my little discourse on a given children's book for today. ^_^ But it does kind of tie in to a conversation I had with Sky, Jennifer, and Cheryl (and Mike? I forget) at Writer's Night earlier tonight... we were talking about writing and drawing, and how it's hard to be good at both, since each requires a lot of concentration and dedication. I used to draw a lot more than I do now... but somewhere along the line I realized that I enjoyed writing more than drawing, and that I was better at it. Neill was a much better artist than writer... but he wasn't that bad of a writer, really. ^_^
Ruth Plumly Thompson wrote the next 19. I read "The Royal Book of Oz" last week (#15, her first Oz book, based on notes made by Baum). It's an enjoyable read, but of course Thompson was already a well-known children's author when she agreed to start writing Oz books.
After 19 books, she decided to step down as official "Royal Historian" of Oz in 1939. (She later wrote two more Oz books, in the 70's). At this point, 32 of the 33 Oz books had been illustrated by John R. Neill (all but the original), and so the publishers asked him to write an Oz book.
Neill wrote 4 Oz books, but the fourth was not illustrated or published until 1995, when Eric Shanower edited the manuscript, illustrated it, and published it. The last few days I've been reading the first of these, officially known as Oz book #34, "The Wonder City of Oz". And, as one reviewer I read put it, it's clear that drawing is Neill's strength, and not writing. But on several levels, this is also an entertaining book.
My two biggest problems with Mr. Neill's writing are A) His story is relatively plotless... or at least, has almost no unifying theme or plot, and B) His writing style is so bare and straightforward and made up of simple, uncomplicated sentences, which gets really old after a few pages.
This second part is particularly interesting to me, because it helps illustrate why varied sentence structure is so important to good writing. Most children's books do not feel quite so simple... but of course, writing with a limited vocabulary does not mean you have to write with a limited sentence structure. Even if children may not know a lot of large, complicated words, then can probably follow complex sentence structures far more easily.
Nor is there a lot of description in his writing. As an example, the opening paragraphs:
Jenny Jump jumped. She was so surprised, she jumped halfway across the kitchen. She had never seen such a sight, never in the whole state of New Jersey!
A tiny man was stealing pepper-cheese out of the cheese box! He was standing right on the table, and he was no taller than the cheese box.
Jenny became very angry because she was to have that pepper-cheese for supper.
"Don't do that," she cried.
The little man turned and Jenny was startled again. The man was a Leprechaun!
Anyway... after a few pages of such a simple writing style, it gets hard to maintain an interest in what you're reading. Couple that with a dearth of plot, and it's been hard to get through more than a chapter or two at a time. And we're talking very short chapters.
So in that way, it's kind of a lesson in writing style... an object lesson in what not to do.
In other ways, the story is a lot of fun. Mr. Neill is good with characterization (as far as children's stories go) and is quite inventive and imaginative. But in some ways, his wild creativity is also a hindrance to my enjoyment of the story... at every turn things are so fanciful and laden with puns and goofiness that it's more of a distraction to the actual story-telling. Maybe if I were a kid it wouldn't bug me so much, but it just seems like he's more interested in silly word-play and puns than in describing anything or actually teling a story. As another example, when Jenny and a few others fly up into the sky in an Ozoplane:
The cloud pushers and the sky sweepers were hard at work. The sky sweepers had feather brooms growing where their hands should be. They worked in a long line, stooping as they brushed the trash from the sky. This trash was mostly star dust, thunder scum, and loose links of chain lightning.
None of this advances any plot or has anything to do with anything really... it's just goofiness thrown in for the sake of goofiness. If I were in the right frame of mind (as a kid) I might really like this sort of silliness... but it continues to crop up every other page throughout the whole book. I could do with less silliness and more plot, I think.
So, for those reasons, I can see why Neill was much more of an artist than a writer. And yet, he's got the imagination for children's writing, and sometimes gets everything just right. I've already found a favorite line from this book. Professor Wogglebug, who has been researching a type of creature called Heelers, runs across Ozma and Dorothy and exclaims:
"This afternoon I discovered some startling new information in a book I wrote last week!"
Now that's a brilliant line! ^_^ Not only is it funny, but it tells you several things about Prof. Wogglebug all at once. A) He's a scholar, B) He likely has a high opinion of himself, and C) Although he's apparently very smart, he seems to suffer from the old "absent-minded professor" cliche.
So anyway, that's my little discourse on a given children's book for today. ^_^ But it does kind of tie in to a conversation I had with Sky, Jennifer, and Cheryl (and Mike? I forget) at Writer's Night earlier tonight... we were talking about writing and drawing, and how it's hard to be good at both, since each requires a lot of concentration and dedication. I used to draw a lot more than I do now... but somewhere along the line I realized that I enjoyed writing more than drawing, and that I was better at it. Neill was a much better artist than writer... but he wasn't that bad of a writer, really. ^_^
