The Secret Grove Pt. 2

Last week I established the legitimacy of Secret Grove as a subgenre of children’s Fantasy literature and indicated the conventions of the genre. My sister pointed out Lewis Caroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” as both a Dream Vision and a Secret Grove. I only wanted to establish that genre is not by any means new, and selected Dream Vision at random. However, “Alice,”one of the earliest if not the first, Secret Grove is also a Dream Vision. This is cool, but not what I wanted to talk about today. Today I want to go over the conventions within Secret Grove, explain the rationale, and explore some of the unintended consequences.

Child Protagonist: This is a function of children’s lit, not Secret Grove specifically. We like to spend time with people that make us feel comfortable and good about ourselves, and it is just as true with books as in real life. With books, however, the reader has the choice to quit hanging out with the characters anytime they choose, free of guilt or social pressure (unless it is required reading). Kids like to be with other kids, and kids in books are the best because they want to be the readers’ friend without exception or prejudice. This means that when reading, kids can and do hang out with the older, slightly cooler social caste. Therefore, the prevailing wisdom follows; choose your target age range and make the protagonist one or two years older. This is solid, time tested advice, but I am also of the firm belief that, if they are interesting and written well enough, a protagonist of any age will work for any audience.

Orphaned or Child of a Single Parent: The easy answer to this convention is that absent parents immediately evokes sympathy. This isn’t just true for Secret Grove, it’s also prevalent in graphic novels and any other narrative where the writer wants to quickly establish character angst and moral high ground, so they can move on to the important, interesting part of the story. In many cases it’s lazy writing, but with Secret Grove it offers the added benefit of opening up new possibilities for the protagonist. Percy Jackson’s dad was never in the picture, not because he was a lazy deadbeat, but because he is a bonafide Greek god. Harry’s an orphan because his parents were killed fighting the ultimate evil, which means his adventures are not just about saving the world… it’s personal. A notable exception is the majority of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia universe. The protagonists do have a variety of parental/authority problems before crossing their portals, some that come into play later in the narrative. However, the only true use of the “abandoned at birth” trope appears in “The Horse and His Boy,” a narrative fully contained inside the Narnia universe without breaching our own, thus qualifying as a straight Fantasy, not a Secret Grove.

By circumventing this obvious childhood problem, Lewis shows a sensitivity all too rare in children’s literature. Kids can have absent parents, abusive parents, or irresponsible parents. Sometimes there are problems that are not the parent’s fault at all, but they are still unable to care for their kids the way they should. Sometimes kids have difficulties unrelated to their caregivers. They worry, lack confidence, misplace their priorities, get angry; the obstacles are typically different for children, but they often have the same root problems.

I am not saying that being thrown into foster care or having only one parent is no big deal. These are huge, true causes for angst in real life, and I am glad that they are addressed in children’s literature. It reassures kids who are in these situations that their concerns are legitimate, and helps kids who are not in these situations to empathize with peers who are dealing with these problems. However, foster kids and COSPs are overrepresented in children’s literature, which delegitimizes other problems. It feeds the misconception that, if you have both of your original parents, you don’t have any real problems or any excuses for feeling alienated and misunderstood. Being misunderstood, though, is a hallmark of childhood regardless of familial status. Kids typically lack the vocabulary and life experience to communicate exactly what it is they are feeling or want. They also are restricted by their own desire to be accepted by their authority figures, afraid that if they confess to having negative emotions, dissatisfaction or doubts, parents will perceive them as flawed or take their expression as a critique on their  leadership. Then when you consider that many adult problems and anxieties stem from beliefs subconsciously gained at a young age, it seems almost irresponsible to imply that the only thing that could go wrong in a kids’ life is their parent’s death.

Fantastic World: This world belongs to adults. Kids have limited earning potential, spending power, and social as well as physical mobility. Counters, doors, chairs, steps, shelves, eating utensils, computer keyboards; the entire world is scaled for adults. We create adult problems, often times through abuse of adult beverages and/or seeking adult activities, and we look for adult solutions. When the occasional kid crops up in adult oriented narratives, they are typically a nuisance, a McGuffin, or comic relief. Kids have no agency in our world, and it is as difficult for them to believe that they could help us fix our problems as it is for us. A Fantastic world, however, operates under a different set of rules. Perhaps in another world a child might have something to offer that an adult can not.

When we engage with narrative we are voluntarily spending time with other people in different places than where we are right now. Seeking out fantastic settings indicates dissatisfaction with the world in which we currently exist. If you more or less like the world you live in you will enjoy fantasizing about one strikingly similar to this, with more beautiful people and less traffic, of course. However, some people find themselves profoundly dissatisfied with real life, and enjoy spending time in universes that don’t remind them at all of their birth world. This, I propose, is why there appears to be a correlation with social undesirables (nerds) and Fantasy, Science Fiction, Manga/Anime, etc. These are worlds where incredible, unlikely things happen, where a simple farm boy can be the savior of the universe and a teenaged girl with a bow can be the catalyst for revolution. Children are more willing than most adults to abandon the realities of our world for magic, fantastic realms where they might have more agency.

Additionally, children are used to Fantasy. They are raised on Seuss, Boynton and Carle from birth, and smoothly transition to E.B. White and Beverly Cleary. Somewhere between “Pete the Cat” and “The Lord of the Flies” anthropomorphic animals and machines fade out and literature becomes boring, but until then kids are quite forgiving with their disbelief suspension.

Through a Portal: If kids are so good at jumping in and out of fantasy worlds, why not start in a fantasy world from the outset? The first reason is character identity. We like to have things in common with our protagonists, and it is difficult to identify with a kid who has had a completely different life experience than us. 

The second reason is that it helps with mental organization. As we read and watch more narratives we acquire vicarious experiences, which help us dive into unfamiliar settings faster. At a young age, however, beginning in a familiar setting helps orient the reader with recognizable points of reference.

The third reason is the appeal of dreaming that this can happen to you. As a kid, I searched for pixies so I could shake them down for dust, and had a happy thought ready at all times. I picked through attics and stared at pictures, and you can bet your swashbuckling pirate boots I climbed into every wardrobe I could find at least twice. I knew Neverland and Narnia weren’t real. I knew the only way I could go there was in a book, which really bummed me out because those adventures were on rails. I already knew them, knew what was going to happen, and Lewis was dead before I was born so there weren’t going to be any more. Still, that didn’t stop me from checking because you never know.

I know the solution now. Write your own story. That is how I got into writing fiction; acting out Middle Earth/Princess Bride/Neverland mashups in the backyard, the very worst fan fiction in the universe. After a lot more reading, classes and practice, I finally know enough about what is compelling about these narratives and how they should be executed to try one of my own.

Next week I will continue to ramble about Secret Grove conventions. I don’t know if you’ll enjoy yourself, but I will.