One of the distinct pleasures of adulthood is discovering that some children’s books actually improve upon rereading as an adult. For example, I missed most of Terry Pratchett’s puns until I was well into my twenties, and I was fairly well startled by the wicked social commentary in Lousie Fitzhugh’s Sport when I returned to it last month after a twenty-year gap. Rereading these books is rather like encountering a childhood food in wholly grownup form – grilled cheese and tomato soup, say, only with very good dry sherry in the soup and sharp cheddar and a strong sourdough fried crisp in butter for the grilled cheese, or mac and cheese made with truffles – still recognizably a simple pleasure, in other words, but wickeder.
Some books, of course, do not have this extra savor upon the reread. Some of these, like Half Magic and Anne of Green Gables, are less full of hidden jokes for grownups and more or less purely and innocently nostalgic; these are the simple comfort foods, the chicken soup, the buttered egg noodles, of children’s novels. And of course there are the dreamy, strange, slightly surreal books from the ’70s and ’80s such as Eleanor Cameron’s In the Court of the Stone Children or Diane Duane’s So You Want to Be A Wizard, which are full of casual bullying and distant parents and seem to have been written for kids who were already much more jaded and world-weary at twelve than I am now at 35, possibly because they were living in an even more confusing epoch than kids today, which is saying something. (Certain things about being human have gotten harder since the 1980s, but this seems to be due at least in part to what the 1980s did to the people who had to live through them.) These books, metaphorically speaking, are the outdated but not unenjoyable dishes of their time, like Quiche Lorraine and Chicken A La King: dated, yes, but valuable nevertheless.
And then, alas, there are the other sort of books. These are the books I would call guilty pleasures, a term which increasingly seems to me to suggest that actually the thing in question is not so much genuinely pleasurable as sort of addictive. (True pleasure is guiltless; that’s part of what makes it pleasurable.) These books seem to sag more every time I go back to them. What’s more, I sag. I emerge from rereading them a slightly stupider person than I was when I when I sat down.
This is because these particular books, unlike the various kinds mentioned above, fail utterly to stand up to an adult experience of the world. Instead of providing more insight into the human condition now that I’ve grown up and understand the dirty bits (the kind of books I’m talking about don’t have any dirty bits), or giving me an interesting glimpse into another time and place and social condition as the classic books do, they merely turn out to contain a lot of exceptionally unhelpful ideas for dealing with the difficulties of life.
I don’t mean that nothing bad or difficult happens in these books. That might, indeed, be preferable. No, these are the books which do, certainly, contain Bad Things, but only in a highly specific context. There is Bad, and there is Good, and it’s always wonderfully easy to tell which is which. This simplification is not incidental but rather intrinsic to the plot, which inevitably hinges on the vanquishing of Bad by Good. (Occasionally someone Bad is allowed to be Good secretly, but such perplexingly complex figures usually get sacrificed for their pains.) In these books, of course, Good is forever sitting down to a delicious meal while Evil hangs around leering and snarling in a conveniently-recognizable manner, and the essential message is that it’s pretty easy to rid the world of wickedness once and for all if you and your chums just jolly well try hard enough for a few weeks.
Two beloved series which fall into this category are, of course, the Harry Potter books and the Redwall books. Both of these are unnecessarily voluminous, drawn out interminably and obviously for the simple reason that they have made everyone involved with them extremely rich. They are repetitive and predictable and also yet strangely enduring. They are the sugar cookies of children’s literature: uncomplicated, slightly bland, packaged for quantity instead of quality, and, as the British say, extremely more-ish. You eat (read) one and find yourself reaching for another. What is enticing about them is not the writing; you could swap the dialogue in one volume of the series out for the dialogue in another and it wouldn’t be noticeable. Nor is it the author’s astute understanding of the world as seen by young people (since nobody in either series ever seems to think twice about anything) or their sheer inventiveness (since Brian Jacques wrote essentially the same plot twenty times in a row and Ursula Le Guin once casually and accurately dismissed Rowling as “good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.”) It is, simply, the sheer boiling desire one has to live in the frolicsome and delectable world they describe. Sure, you might have to fight the occasional searat or bad wizard, but who wouldn’t instantly choose to thwack a few ne’er-do-wells for the chance to live in a tower room and eat Chocolate Frogs all day?
When I say that they make me stupider, what I mean is that they present a world which is noticeably more two-dimensional than reality, and also that they intentionally entice me to stay in that flattened world as long as possible. This is achieved largely with descriptions of food. (If there had been no food trolley on the Hogwarts Express, no school feasts, and no butterbeer, the Harry Potter universe would be much smaller today and nobody would care what JK Rowling thought about anything.) The characters in these flat and yet ever-so-magical British books are always eating lovely things, with the result that the food in British children’s novels has come to occupy a completely fantastical place in my generation’s imagination, not entirely unlike the way French painters of the nineteenth century who had never left Paris used to think about Egyptian women[1].
This seems to be a peculiarly British aesthetic, but (as with so many British things), American children lap it up because it is so simple and nice. (American authors, conversely, write about sexy rich vampires and bloodsports.) Americans used to write like this – the Oz books, for example, or Laura Ingalls Wilder – but as a nation we more or less abandoned this kind of writing after Catcher in the Rye. (Of course this might be for the best, given that as an aesthetic it seems to go hand in hand with the kind of regressive political views usually expressed at parties by somebody’s drunk uncle, but it would be nice to know if one could write about a simpler and more frolicsome world without transforming accidentally into a rabid conservative in the process.)
Many fantasy stories for children introduce a simplistic world that seems in many way far preferable to everyday life. There is nothing wrong with this. This is what children’s fantasy is for. Lingering for a while in a simpler universe can be a wonderful thing, especially when you are young and have much less power over what happens in reality. Certainly the Harry Potter and Redwall books are not unique in presenting a world where the protagonists never have to think too hard or ask themselves if they’re doing the right thing, where nobody really struggles with conflicting motivations, systemic injustices, or complex moral conundrums, and evil can be removed from the land by the brave actions of a few plucky young people – and, of course, where every moderately-challenging-yet-heroic adventure is comfortably punctuated by opportunities to eat mountains of fabulous food. When you are a child, this kind of simplicity is sometimes not only good but necessary, both because kids quite often need safe places to escape from their everyday reality, and because it’s important to grow up thinking that bravery and good cheer get things done. If we told kids about the sheer apparent impossibility of, say, growing up to stop the government from destroying both humans and the environment by sending planes full of bombs to other countries, they would probably boycott adulthood altogether. (Upon reflection, this might not be such a bad thing.)
But the books of which I speak are especially seductive because they coddle us. To coddle something means to treat it as if it was very fragile and not capable of handling much challenge, whether in reference to an egg or a dimwitted grandparent. To coddle a person is to bathe them in so much simplicity and ease that they simply don’t have to cope with anything. This is sometimes restorative and restful, and it is certainly comforting, in the same way that it is comforting to pretend that you’re sick for longer than you really are so that someone you love will keep bringing you soup. It provides peace to the overburdened soul and makes you feel loved and cared for. It is like being put to bed by a kindly mother, whether or not your actual mother was the loving tucking-in type.
As a child, there’s nothing really wrong with reading this sort of book, as long as you read about some of the other stuff as well. As an adult, however, I have found that returning to coddling children’s literature goes hand in hand with the active shutdown of all my mental faculties. I crave these books when I cannot cope with anything more challenging than a hot bath and a heavy quilt. I pick them up in order to sink into them as into a soft bed, in which I can lie languorously and feel no desire to get up again. They require nothing of my poor overtaxed brain. Reading them is like being in the land of the lotus-eaters. Everything becomes so dreamily simple. All the mice and goblins and weasels and Death Eaters talk and act in dependable and unsurprising ways, every hardship is followed by an excellent meal, good is neatly separable from evil. This is such a relaxing way to think about the world that I crave more, more. And every time I finish one, instead of getting up, I can simply reach for the next volume.
It is an amazing fact about humanity that people can cope with the world in all its mess and chaos and strangeness, at least most of the time and especially if they do get the occasional restorative break from needing to do so. I think this is why a little coddling is good for us. However, too much of it and suddenly I find it is more difficult to cope with or return to whatever it was (usually society) that was overburdening me in the first place. This is because all the things I desired to hide from for a while (the news, the latest catastrophes, the impossibility of grappling with globalization, the AI takeover, general cosmic ennui) now seem even more exhausting in comparison to the simple world full of nice things I’ve just been reading about.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with this response per se. In fact, I think that the desire to lie in bed eating damson shortcrust and imagining that I’m a squirrel is a perfectly reasonable response to much of our current everyday life, except for the discomfort of crumbs in the bed. It is not a practical desire, nor a realizable one; but it is, I think, at least understandable. Unfortunately it is the very reasonableness of this desire that this kind of children’s book seems to prey upon. Look, they seem to say, why not think about life this way? Wouldn’t it be ever so much nicer and easier if you just ignored all the complex bits of being a human and focused on, say, dinnertime?
And this is what I mean when I say that rereading these books as an adult makes me slightly stupider: they don’t give me anything to help me navigate the world-as-it-is, because their entire appeal lies in presenting a world that is impossibly simplified. They tempt to me keep on lying under the covers wishing I lived in a world where I didn’t have to use my brain for anything but solving riddles and working the occasional charm. It is very pleasant, in a terrifying way, to imagine a life of diamond-paned windows and piles of iced fairy cakes where I never have to wonder if maybe evil isn’t quite so straightforward as it looks.
I occasionally pine for this even though it is not only completely unreal but actively at odds with what I really believe, which is that the world is full of mystery and mess and madness and this is just as it should be. Meaning, to me, is not what you get when you ignore all the ineluctable chaos, it’s what you get from the fact that there’s all this pain and confusion and yet joy and love and pleasure take place anyway. And yet I do sometimes long to curl up like a kitten in a sock drawer inside this tempting-yet-stultifying notion of the world, in which a) I am unquestionably good, b) my friends and I can definitively vanquish evil through a little pluck and hard work, and c) once that’s done, all I have to do sustain my goodness indefinitely is be nice to people and eat a lot of pudding.
I suspect the authors of these books share this longing, and that is why they write the way they do. I suspect also that their chief trouble is they have gotten the fantasy confused with the reality. Problems begin when you start thinking that reality should be simpler and easier, and then get sulky because reality doesn’t measure up. Yes, reality is unstraightforward and generally contains far less feasting, and it is easy, after too much Redwall and too many buttered scones, to find yourself in a kind of grouchy stupor where all you can think about is how much better it would be to live in a blandly simplistic imaginary world where you never have to do anything but eat buttered scones, and maybe occasionally overthrow a Dark Lord or two. (Of course, in this mood it is easy to overlook the fact that such worlds have their own downsides. Quite apart from the weird quasi-racist stereotypes and intense heteronormativity, the characters in these books all seem to be strangely impoverished both spiritually and creatively. I guess you don’t need a spiritual life if you never ask any questions about why things are the way they are, but it puzzles me that, with the possible exception of Luna Lovegood – who is clearly batty – nobody in the Harry Potter universe apparently ever makes any art or reads anything but textbooks, and intellectual life in the Redwall books seems mainly to consist of making coded maps and then finding peculiar places to hide them in.)
The moral of all this, I suppose, is that while I do think we all occasionally need, or at least deserve, an afternoon wrapped in blankets with a slightly stupid book and a treat to eat it with, the important thing is to not give in to the stultifying temptation of staying there. To this end, I find that it is good to have some sort of transitional restorative, something that simultaneously provides a good snack and a respite from the challenges of life and gets you out into the actual world, which, for all its troubles, contains a good deal of complexity worth living for. I find that making something I can’t possibly eat all of myself and therefore have to give away to friends and neighbors is good for this. I suggest, for example, a batch of these
TRIPLE GINGER COOKIES
Yield: 12 cookies
Time: about an hour (roughly 20 minutes prep + 30 minutes to chill + 10 minutes to bake)
Once the weather turns cold, the pleasure of curling up with a cup of tea and one of these sticky spicy gingery things cannot properly be conveyed in words. A scrumptious delight befitting the coziest of children’s books. If you happen to possess a jar of candied citron, I once added that as well as candied ginger and it was a distinct success, but it’s not something I usually have lying around.
INGREDIENTS
2 ¼ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground clove
½ teaspoon ground allspice
A pinch of grated nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup butter, room temp
1 scant cup brown sugar
1 large egg
¼ cup unsulfured molasses
1 large chunk peeled fresh ginger
A generous handful of chopped candied ginger
Sugar for dippingINSTRUCTIONS
In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the 2 ¼ cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 2 teaspoons ground ginger, 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon ground clove, ½ teaspoon allspice, pinch of grated nutmeg, and ½ teaspoon of salt. Set this aside.Cut the ¾ cup of butter into small cubes and add to another bowl with the scant cup of brown sugar. Cream the butter and sugar together extremely well with a sturdy fork until fluffy. (The original recipe calls for a stand mixer, but I find a fork creams it more thoroughly with less spatter and mess.) Add the egg, ¼ cup of molasses, and grate the fresh ginger on top. Mix thoroughly, then mix in the handful of chopped candied ginger. Pour in the dry ingredients and combine until you get a stiff smooth rich brown paste. (A spatula and some elbow grease may be required to get the flour amalgamated into the dough. It may seem impossible at first, but persevere and you will succeed.)
Place the bowl of cookie dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. While it chills, preheat your oven to 375° F. Cover a baking sheet in parchment paper. When the 30 minutes are up and the oven is hot, divide the dough into twelve equal(ish) lumps, roll each into a ball, and flatten each ball into a thick disc. Pour some sugar (turbinado sugar is nice for this) into a plate or small bowl, press the top of each cookie into the sugar, and place the cookies onto the baking sheet, 2 inches apart. (If you need to bake the cookies in multiple batches, refrigerate the unused dough while each batch of cookies bakes.) Bake 9-11 minutes; the tops should begin to crack nicely, but the cookies will still be very soft when you take them out. They should seem slightly underdone rather than raw, but don’t let them bake until fully hard. Cool on a rack – but let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for five minutes before transferring them to the rack, or they’ll fall apart.
Source: A Farmgirl’s Dabbles. I can’t recommend the writing, but I tried about six inferior ginger cookie recipes before this one and can sincerely say it is the best. I have modified the spices somewhat and added both the fresh and candied ginger. She claims you don’t need to chill the dough, but the cookies are much better if you do.
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[1] i.e., vividly, lustfully, and absolutely inaccurately.