animal stories | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Musings: Reading An Old Favorite With New Eyes

I’m still reading Watership Down with my daughter. I wrote before about how she predicted future elements of the plot based on previous knowledge (which I love to see with my educator’s heart), but now I want to write about how reading this aloud with her has affected me as a reader. If you read my previous post, you know this is one of my favorite books. I first read it, by myself, when I was maybe a year older than she is now, and over the past many years, I have read it over and over (although this is the first time in many years that I’ve picked it up). I know the plot and what to expect, but as an adult, having wider experience of the world, its impact doesn’t hit me as hard. And of course because I read it to myself and not with an adult to discuss it with me, I missed a lot on my first time through, especially because the structure is a little confusing, with stories inside stories.

As I explained before, she predicted some pretty unsettling elements of the book, and was excited to see if she was right. She was even waiting impatiently for the reveal. And then we reached it, but the thing is, intellectually knowing what is probably going to happen (she was still debating whether the rabbits in the new warren were cannibals or planned to sacrifice our brave band of adventurers) is different when things start happening, suddenly, to characters you’ve grown to love. Because I already previously spoiled this for you, I’ll say that a greatly-loved, if rather brusque member of our adventuring group is caught by surprise in what will probably be an unsurprising way to any adult reading this, but OH MY GOD it is terrifying, because the witnesses don’t actually see what’s happening but we, the readers, know this is the moment. And when the witnesses do see, because they’re rabbits, they see the peril, and they see what has happened to their friend, but they don’t have the ability to understand what is happening and they don’t know what to do. They are horrified and frozen by what they see. And as readers we have a choice– we can step back and look at the big picture, knowing what is probably going to happen and dreading it– or we can experience it through the rabbits’ eyes, trying to solve the problem without knowing what’s going on even as they are witnessing the terrible thing that is happening right in front of them. The smallest one, Fiver, rushes to the warren to say what has happened, and while our band of adventurers immediately gather and run to their friend, the warren rabbits ignore him, and when he tries to get their attention, they attack him.

Once the immediate crisis has ended, Fiver pulls all the facts together to explain to them why the warren rabbits refused to help (he is a very intuitive creature). An experienced reader has probably figured the situation out by this point, but the average rabbit (and maybe the first time reader who saw the story through the rabbits’ eyes) needs it laid out to them. It’s at this point that my daughter emerged from whatever deep place the story had taken her. Once she understood what had actually occurred (that one of her predictions was correct) she could go the step further that the author never does (because this, after all, is a tale of rabbit adventure and not a deep philosophical discussion) and say “How could the warren rabbits pretend nothing was happening? Why did they stay? How could they be so cruel?” As a first time reader who lived the experience through the eyes of the rabbits, and felt it with them, and then stopped to think about it, the cruelty, indifference, and unfairness of the warren rabbits are something she felt on not just an intellectual level, as an adult or experienced reader might, but on a visceral level. And yet at the end, that same deepness of feeling also showed her, and me through her, the power of mercy and of hope.

Don’t you sometimes feel jaded by the experiences you’ve lived through in this world? You learn that “nature is red in tooth and claw”, that unfairness and cruelty exist in the world everywhere, that people will sometimes turn their backs on those in need if there’s benefit to themselves, that there’s a willingness out there to trade freedom for security. Some kids learn those things the hard way, by living it, but there are some who are protected from having to know those things, until, for the first time, they see the world through rabbits’ eyes. Reading aloud doesn’t just benefit them. It peels back the layers between how so many of us now see the world, and the sharp vision and powerful feelings our children possess.

There are many reasons to read aloud to children: to teach them how stories work, to introduce them to new ideas and new worlds, to help them increase vocabulary, to learn to read with both fluency and comprehension, to engage them in reading independently, to help build emotional bonds, to prepare them to participate effectively in democracy and society. All of these are so important. I can’t emphasize enough the power of reading (and if you have a child of any age who says they’re too old for reading aloud, keep in mind that I read to my husband, as well as my children, until the night before he died).

But here is something many, many of us don’t take into consideration. The benefits of reading aloud are not one-way. There are reasons for adults to read aloud with children, and a very important reason is that is allows us to see our own world with new eyes and a refreshed heart.

Editor’s note: Next up, back to horror fiction. I promise.

Cruelty to Animals: Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

I want to preface this by saying that there are many animal stories that are heartwarming or even funny. But there are also many animal stories written for children in which terrible things happen. Even when there is a satisfying ending, so much of what’s there is heartbreaking. The cruelty and indifference of human beings, and the trapped feelings of not just the animal but the people who love that animal can be just horrifying. These aren’t intended to be horror stories, but sometimes they feel that way.

I am not a big reader of animal stories. But in the past month I have had two really well-done ones come my way, both hitting me and my kids on a visceral level. Both of them are also Newbery Award winners, so chances are that if you have an elementary aged kid whose teacher requires that he or she read a Newbery winner, that your child might choose one of these.

Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was the pick of the girl whose turn it was to choose a book for my kids’ second and third grade book discussion group (I don’t think I would recommend it for this age– it’s pretty intense for seven and eight year olds). One way to describe this book is as the story of a boy and his dog. But there is a lot more going on than that. Marty is an eleven year old boy living in rural West Virginia, part of a family that has to make every dollar stretch. Shiloh, a runaway dog, follows Marty home, but the dog belongs to Judd, an unpleasant man who is abusive to his dogs, and Shiloh has to be returned to him. When Shiloh runs away a second time, Marty hides the dog, but protecting the dog leads to more and more lies, and eventually Marty is found out and the dog has to be returned. Marty finally gets the dog, but only after he catches Judd hunting out of season and covers it up. Marty’s dad points out that there is no way to save every abused animal in the area, and Marty knows his dishonesty is wrong, but he does save Shiloh from Judd’s abuse. Maybe for kids it is clear cut– from my son’s account of what happened during the book group, the major thing was that the dog was saved from this horrible man, but as an adult, these things make the book even more difficult, and a very uneasy read (there are several sequels to Shiloh, which I have not read, that may explore these issues further).

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate is a recent Newbery winner that arrived as a request for review. It has just been released in paperback and is a spotlight title in the flyer for the Scholastic Book Fair that I received last week. I had read it previously, and it is a brilliantly written book, but it was an entirely different experience reading it with my daughter. This book is based on the true story of a gorilla who was trapped in a cage in a circus-themed mall for 27 years before protesters succeeded in having him relocated to a zoo. Applegate wrote the book from Ivan’s point of view, and it is mesmerizing. The difference between reading it myself and reading it to a seven-year-old is that I have background knowledge and can step back from the story when (for example) Ivan relates how he saw his parents killed, with their hands, heads, and feet chopped off, and can see a gorilla hand ashtray in the window of one of the mall stores (I have seen both a gorilla hand ashtray and an elephant footstool in a museum collection, and it is baffling and terrible that any person would do this). For my daughter, it’s bloody, heartbreaking, and horrifying. The mall owner is neglectful, and as in Shiloh, a father and child are caught in a moral dilemma: if he reports the condition of the animals to save them, he will lose his job working in the mall. They do finally make that difficult choice, although in this case, saving the animals means being honest, and there’s no unsolved ethical dilemma. My daughter insisted on speeding through it so she could find out what happened to Ivan, and is still processing the story. The Monster Kid was not able to handle the human cruelty in the book, however, so know your child, and expect to be discussing it with him or her.

Dylan, the original Monster Librarian, loved books where the animals terrorized humans, such as those by Guy N. Smith and James Herbert. Those REALLY aren’t my thing, but he felt that, somehow, through those books, justice was served. But as Stella, the elephant from The One and Only Ivan said, “Humans can surprise you sometimes”. Certainly, although there is cruelty and indifference in animal stories written for children, there is also, often, kindness and love. Although it seems obvious to say that it’s best to pay close attention to what you are recommending to a child, I think that it’s worth it to remember that even when a story has a happy ending, not all animal stories are sweetness and light. Both books are highly recommended for grades four and older, depending, of course, on the child.