Why are there so many dead parents in kid's books? That's the question posed recently in Publishers Weekly.
From the piece...
Dead parents are so much a part of middle-grade and teen fiction at this point, it's not even the "in" thing. It's not "au courant" or "en vogue." It's just an accepted fact: kids in books are parentless.
But I don't accept it, because you know what? It is not believable that so many kids are missing one, if not both parents. Slews of them! Hundreds! To quote Oscar Wilde, sort of: "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose a parent in nearly every children's book looks like lazy writing." (I assume that is what Wilde meant.)
What's so lazy about writing in a deceased parent? I'll tell you.
First, a dead parent is one fewer character to have to write. At their hearts, most novels are the stories of characters' relationships with other characters. Combine Wilbur's relationships with Charlotte, with Templeton, and with Fern, and you more or less have Charlotte's Web.
But creating all those different relationships is hard work, because they are complex and ever shifting. Having established how a protagonist gets along with her best friend, boyfriend, ex-best friend, piano teacher, and ghost who lives in the cellar, who really wants to add her parents into the mix?
No comments:
Post a Comment