Monsters Eat Whiny Children

MONSTERS EAT WHINY CHILDREN
Written and Illustrated by Bruce Eric Kaplan
Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing (2010)
Ages 4-8

I zeroed in on this book the other day because it had just about everything going for it that screamed READ ME:

• The title, which does not leave me wondering if the trajectory of the plot will be on point. I already know where this story is going and I want to watch it unfold.
• The back cover, which reads, "The crumbs are the best part." Okay. Now I know this is going to be brash, dark humor. Love it.
• The color and illustrations, which are simple, bold cartoon style.(Very raw and monsterish.)
• The inside cover pages, which display a map of the children's neighborhood, including this gem: "Store where people think Eve is a boy." It's one of those random, quirky details that tell me this book will not be the usual fare.

As I read the story—about a brother and sister who, despite the warnings from their "kindly father," continue to whine until they are taken by a monster to his lair "in the bad side of town"—I immediately felt an old conflict rising inside my gut (and it wasn't dinner). Here was a fabulous concept with off-beat twists...but the story had all the hallmarks of a writer for adults (Kaplan wrote for Seinfeld and Six Feet Under) who has just written his first children's book.

I love television writers. They're quick, witty, sharp and edgy—all qualities that, when combined with proven conventions of children's literature, could make for a dynamite story. But the key word is, conventions. There's a reason children's writers study them, practice them, and are rejected for years until they get them right: THEY WORK.

I think one of my biggest disappointments in MONSTERS EAT WHINY CHILDREN is that, while it's still a fun read, it could have been so much better. If only a few simple conventions were adhered to:

Make the children the protagonists. In MONSTERS, the protagonists are the "adults" (the monsters) and not the kids. How much more lively and empowering it would have been to see the kids get themselves into trouble, then deeper and deeper trouble as they tried to fix the problem; instead, the story shows us the monsters making all the decisions and mistakes, which his falls under "those dumb grown ups" category. (Yawn)

Stick to the rule of three. It's hard to tell how many problems and turns this story takes. It's a little muddled in this regard. The monster makes a whiny child salad, but the monster's wife doesn't like the dressing. So they make a new dressing, but the neighbor shows up and says they should be making whiny child burgers. But they have trouble with the grill... You get the picture. It's a very adult daily life sort of problem, which is fun to laugh at, but how much better would it have been if the children had been outwitting them or doing something (anything) to affect the storyline?

In the end, the children find a way out, but they didn't earn their way there. So, from my perspective, it felt much less satisfying.

Does this lessen the enjoyment of a reader? Probably not. On the other hand, why not make the most of a promising story and, at the same time, maintain the quality of of craft that we all want young readers to recognize and expect as they grow into the world of literature and life?

About my reviews:
My comments and reactions to the books I read are not so much reader-type reviews as they are my experience of the story as a writer studying the craft. I write them to examine what makes a story work.

Found

I've been thinking quite a lot about ways to adapt stories to electronic media—not merely convert text in service to e-format, but really use the medium in service to the story. In other words, what's unique about a cell phone or e-reader that can add to the story. Sound? Visual effect? We see the impact of visuals when it comes to illustrated stories, but what about a different kind of visual? I'm not talking about movie making. I want to see the words. There's something much more intimate about silent words that reaches deeper into a story than someone's interpretation, especially when it comes to creepy stories.

As an experiment, I took a tiny piece of flash fiction that's not good enough to submit anywhere—just a little something I scribbled to entertain myself—and added some music, sound effects and subtle visuals. I wanted to see the difference between the plain text and the multi-media approach, so I'll share those with you so that you can see it, too.

Before I do, however, I want to make it clear that I love books. Real books. The kind that don't blink back at you. This experiment is something I think is unique to working with flash fiction, especially the micros, like the one I've practiced here which has 108 words. It's called Found.

Note: The story is a little creepy, so if this isn't your thing, don't go any farther.

For comparison, here's the text of the story:

Found

By the time they realize they’re lost, it’s dark.

“What is this place?” the girl asks as she picks her way through the gnarled landscape of recyclables and rot.

“I dunno. A junkyard?” he says, right before he trips and falls.

“What happened?” Her voice is shaky.

He groans and grabs her ankle.

She reaches for his hand. It’s cold and sticky.

“Are you hurt bad?”

He tightens his grip.

“We gotta go back,” she urges. “This is a dead end. We’re totally lost.”

“Oh no, you’re not,” he says, pulling her into the graveyard of shifting, twisted limbs. “You and your little friend have just been found.”

See? The story is pretty meh, but the media make it more of an experience. At least, that's what I took from the experiment. How about you?

Teacher Teacher

I had tea with one of my teachers at Whidbey recently—Carolyne Wright.

Bonny Becker's Bear & Mouse to the left; poet and Whidbey MFA faculty, Carolyne Wright to the, er...right.

Carolyne will be teaching the teaching of creative writing for graduates of my creative writing program (life, much like this sentence, can be so circular), and I took the opportunity to ask her some questions about the course. Mainly, I wanted to make sure it will include how to teach creative writing to children rather than for them because teaching to adults would probably drive me witless (imagine having a student like me--uh oh).

By the time Bonny joined us, we were deep into discussion about qualities of teachers we liked and ones we didn't like (so that I could start thinking about my particular philosophy). Because she's well-bred and always prepared for any occasion, Bonny happened to have a large, laminated picture of her elementary school class handy--all black and whitey with a perfectly stern looking teacher lording over everyone in her pearl necklace. I can't account for why she was carrying this around with her. (Yes I can, she used it during a reading at Elliott Bay Books, but it sounds better to think of her randomly carting around a 2 x 3 foot picture of herself as a child.) At any rate, it was perfect timing.

I took one look at that picture and thought of my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Reese. I adored her. She was my hero; that is, until she made me stand in front of the class and hold out my hands while she slapped them with a ruler. I don't remember what I'd done, but I sure didn't care for her much after that. Nor did I favor the one before her, Mrs. Schroeder, who made me stand in the back of the class because I'd been using the restroom when Pledge of Allegiance started and she was convinced I'd dishonored our country on purpose. Or my fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Crocket, who shook his finger at me during class one day and yelled (really yelled) that I'd been giving him the "evil eye." I had no idea what an evil eye was, but I was pretty sure I'd only been thinking about lunch. I ran to the safety of the girls room before I was hanged in the town square.

It may sound as though I attended school in the Village of the Damned, but I swear it really was that awful at times (even worse in middle school... do not get me started). And yet, in spite of the fact that I left school at the end of eighth grade, not one of those whack jobs destroyed my ability to learn.

I credit the good teachers for that, as well as the principal who let me schedule a meeting in his office to verify if the rumors were true that he had a paddle. He did. But he swore he had never used it. I really liked that guy. He let me use the cafeteria for my singing group's rehearsals, even though I couldn't sing and none of us had plans to perform anywhere except maybe the Merv Griffin Show.

There's really no point to any of this, except that if I ever have the chance to teach creative writing to kids, I will never accuse them of wickedness, unless it's essential to a story. In that case, we would celebrate.

This is me in kindergarten, while I was apparently honing my evil eye.