Poor kids

Three "cultural" events recently have chimed with my research (take THAT, government funding bodies only interested in PhDs in Science and Technology!), which is in social class and social capital in children's fantasy fiction. The first one was at Stoke Newington Literary festival, where The Independent's Johann Hari and The Guardian's Suzanne Moore were on a panel discussing Chavs by Owen Jones. For non-British readers, Chav is a term that has come into use in the last 10 years to describe what might also be termed the proletariat. It is in my opinion, a highly objectionable term; used sneeringly to describe people who do not share middle class values, in a way that would, if directed to non-white people, be racist.

Jones' contention (and I haven't read the book) is that Britain has become so separated in social class that many people using this term are so totally divorced from working class people that (usually young) people have become demonised. Traditional working class jobs have gone, and people who would formerly have worked in ship building, car manufacturing or mining are now in retail or service industries, which do not pay the same wages and do not provide the same sense of identity, since these jobs are not easily identifiable as "working class". Hari stated that he frequently asks senior journalists what the average salary is; the editor of a national newspaper believed it to be £80 000 (Hari says it is £22 000). Yet many of our images of feckless, scrounging, criminal and stupid working class people come from these journalists, who are with some notable exceptions (Moore and Hari being two) privately educated Oxford or Cambridge graduates.

A few days before the literary festival, the Literacy Trust released research indicating that book ownership and its relationhip to success, attainment and social mobility. It was reported that three in ten children in the UK do not own their own books. Then yesterday I watched the BBC documentary Poor Kids. Watching these bright, articulate children struggling to attend school (poor housing leads to health problems; 85% of children living in poor housing suffer from asthma; school uniforms are too expensive for some parents) was heartbreaking. One small girl was trying to complete her homework standing up in a cold bedroom while her sister was shivering in bed. In contrast to some of my students' assertions that parents "don't care" about their children's education, her mum ran up the stairs to help her with her Maths.

I was thinking about class in children's literature. It is my assertion that not only has it largly disappeared as an overt theme in children's fantasy (for example, Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, written in the 1960s, is notable for it's treatment of class in high fantasy) but also that protagonists are increasingly middle class and priviledged children. An exception is the work of Eoin Colfer. His book Half Moon Investigations is the story of a 12 year old detective solving what begins as the theft of a lock of a pop star's hair, but develops to assault, arson and kidnapping. The theft is originally blamed on Red Starkey, bully and scion of the local "no good" family. However, as Fletcher joins up with the Starkeys to clear Red's name, he discovers that they don't deserve their reputation. By contrast, the local goody good middle class girl gang are much more sinister than their Barbie-fixated appearance would suggest. The portrayal of the Starkey family is particularly nuanced; they are clearly working class and not always on the right side of the law, but on the other hand, Fletcher sees how being constantly accused of everything that goes wrong in his town has affected the Starkeys.

If you wanted to do something about the appalling levels of child poverty and associated social exclusion and lack of educational attainment in the UK (we are ranked as 18th out of 22 industrialised countries for child poverty by Unicef, and children born poor here are far less likely to escape from poverty than most other countries) you may like to donate to Save the Children or The Literacy Trust. Or if you're one of those people who buy far more books than you can ever hope to read, or if you have a child who has grown out of a big pile of books, you may like to donate them. The wonderful Book Elf Leeds has links to a Primary school in Birmingham you can send books to- they will be given to the children to take home. Of course they should be in a decent condition and appropriate for 3-11 year olds. You may like to donate books to a local community centre or homeless organisation. My children's books are in constant use, but I have a pile to take to the Homeless mobile library run by Quaker Homeless Action. I will find out if they need children's books as well.

Edit: I read this yesterday saying that charity is not enough to deal with this issue. I agree. You may like to contact your MP via They Work For You and urge them to think again about closing libraries and benefits caps which affect the poorest and most vulnerable in society the most.

Fairies, Gods and Gadgets

Anyone watching commercial TV in the UK recently may have noticed something that seems a new phenomenon to me- books being advertised almost like films. I've noticed the new Jodi Picoult and James Patterson ones, and another one with a girl running through the forest, then being found tied up in a shed- but I can't remember the author. Interestingly, I think this is an area that may have crossed over from pre-teen and young adult books, which as I noted in my post about the London Bookfair, are being promoted in social media: Walker Books have even set up a blog for their trailers.

Eoin Colfer, the author of Artemis Fowl, uses social media in an excellent way. http://www.artemisfowl.co.uk/  was originally designed as though it was the blog of the teenage master criminal. His website and that of Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson books,  have games, computer wall paper, quizzes, trailers, author interviews- a whole world of gadgets and consumables to collect.

Colfer and Riordan are both regularly included in lists of authors that will engage boys in reading, and despite my misgivings about firstly, problematising boys' literacy (surely telling boys that boys don't like reading will only make them believe reading is girly?) and secondly, genderising books into "boys" and "girls" books, they are certainly authors that I would be recommending to any boys asking me which books they should read.

Artemis Fowl (2001) has been described by author Eoin Colfer as "Die Hard with fairies". Artemis is a 12 year old boy, son of Artemis Fowl Snr, an Irish criminal. He is a criminal genius, who has after significant research has established that fairy people exist, and decides to kidnap one in order to extort fairy gold from them. The fairy he kidnaps is Captain Holly Short of the Lower Elements Police Reconnaisance (LEPRecon). He holds her at Fowl Manor, and the LEPRecon unit lead by Commander Julius Root and supported by a technical wizard centaur called Foaly and a flatulent kleptomaniac dwarf, Mulch Diggum, must break in and rescue her.

In Colfer's world, fairies (used for all magical peoples) are technically far in advance of humans. They travel underground by shuttles, can alter vision so humans can't see them (Artemis and his sidekick Butler know this, so they wear nightvision goggles), have high speed wings and a mini camera that can fit into a contact lens (an iris cam) and between the second and third book of the series, Artemis uses fairy technology from an LEP helmet that he has stolen to create the C Cube, which can piggyback on any computer platform, access any other device, play and record MP3 and video clips and double as a phone and computer.

During the series of novels the fairies and Artemis learn to work together rather than as adversaries, and Artemis becomes a more positive character- the early books were criticised amongst Christian parent and book blogs communities in the USA for "promoting" negative values. It appears to me that this is missing the point- Artemis is not a hero in these books despite being a protagonist. Holly is in fact the hero, and is by far the most positive character. (The books continued to be criticised by global warming/ environmental change deniers as the series continued, and of course Christians who believe that children should read no books about magic have never been in favour of them). The shared technology that Artemis developed enables the fairies to communicate with him, and for the teams to cooperate to save the fairy world, and Artemis' family, from oil developers, Russian mafia and the evil pixie genius Opal Koboi.

Rick Riordan wrote the Percy Jackson series of books (Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, 2005) about a boy who is constantly getting into trouble at school- strange things happen around him. He is dyslexic and has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and discovers after a calamitous incident on a school trip, he discovers that what is problematic in modern day New York is actually advantageous in his "real life"- he is a half blood, the son of Poseidon and his mortal mother. His struggles to read English are due to his brain being more receptive to Ancient Greek. His hyper-awareness is beneficial in battle. (Jackson's son is dyslexic and has ADHD, and was fascinated by Greek myths at the time he started to write the Percy Jackson books). Percy is taken to Camp Half Blood, where he finds that his friend Grover is in fact a satyr, and makes friends with Annabeth, the daughter of Athena. Together they must go on a quest to recover Zeus' lightning bolt, and return it to Mount Olympus, now located at the top of the Empire State Building.

While the Percy Jackson books don't have gadgets, they do have magical objects and weapons (Percy's sword which can transform into a pen, Annabeth's Yankees cap of invisibility, Grover's winged trainers). Percy also has special powers: he can attract water, communicate telepathically with water-dwelling creatures and foretells the future in dreams. Annabeth is highly intelligent, a great strategist and also has dreams that foretell the future. She has a strong sympathetic relationship with the Oracle. Grover the satyr can play pipes that summon nature (he plays dreadfully in the first book, but improves throughout the series), and the Panic call which invokes the god Pan.

All in all, I enjoyed both series, but I preferred Artemis. Riordan has noted his debt to J.K. Rowling, who in her turn was influenced by earlier authors such as Diana Wynne Jones and Eva Ibbotson, but in places I found the series pedestrian. The Artemis books seemed more original and inventive, and I found the Percy books' US-centrism to be grating and at times silly: witness that Mount Olympus has moved to New York City because it is the centre of Western civilisation- not a perception universally accepted.

Both series have been optioned for film adaptations, following in the wake of Potter-mania, although only Percy Jackson has made it to the screen so far. I haven't seen it, but the reviews were not promising (here is Juliette's from her great Pop Classics blog), and of course Mark Kermode was spectacularly scathing, suggesting a film title Benjamin Sniddlegrass and the Cauldron of Penguins as the next Potter- By-Numbers film. You can see a trailer for a spoof movie here.