Here is my final assignment for the Open Polytechnic library course. This one was fun to write as I delved into research on humour, and the lack of promotion of funny girl characters and authors. For this assignment our task was to write a talk about a certain topic for a community group of fellow librarians and educators, but also the general public.
Assignment Three - Humour and Children’s Literature
(N.B I will have a copy of each book I mention to showcase to the
audience throughout the presentation. I will also have a projector set up
linked to my computer to click on the visual links talked about in this talk.)
What do you get when you mix alcohol and literature? Tequila
Mockingbird! Ok, ok, here’s another one….
Why does an elephant use her trunk as a bookmark? Then she nose where
she stopped reading!
I know, I know, you want more fantastic jokes like that, well just you
wait, they will be scattered throughout this talk.
I’ve chosen to talk about humour and its place in children’s literature
today. I grew up in a funny family that loved to laugh, and I was encouraged to
joke and I was laughed with. OK, maybe sometimes laughed at too! But that’s all
part of figuring out what is funny, and what otherwise can meet with a tumble
weed reaction. It’s important for children to be allowed to play around with
humour. The 2015 Scholastic Book Report in Australia found that approximately 60% of the
children, teenagers and adults surveyed wanted to read books that made them
laugh, so as librarians, parents and teachers we need to know what books are
funny so we can continue to recommend them, and to enjoy them ourselves!
Firstly, let’s look at the stages of development, and what makes students
laugh, as not surprisingly it can be quite different from us as adults. Kerry
Mallan in her book Laugh Lines (1993) describes how pre-schoolers’
humour is often based on incongruity where things are mixed up and not in their
usual harmony e.g. Calling the dog “Kitty”, or when dressing putting the jumper’s
sleeves on your legs. They are aware of humour and joke telling, but have not
yet mastered the joke telling process. When they are practising you might be
hearing a lot of jokes along the lines of “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“Yellow!” and then lots of laughter when they repeat the same joke ten times to
everyone in the household and the neighbourhood! I read Du Iz Tak? by
Carson Ellis to a two and four-year-old, and they found the made up language
hilarious, whilst still being able to understand the main points in the story.
Mac Barnett’s book Guess Again! is also a fine humorous example where
things are not as they seem. Kyle Mewburn, one of Aotearoa’s most successful
authors, was interviewed last year by the website The Sapling, and stated that “if the humour isn’t constantly
moving, dodging and weaving on the edge of comprehension, and throwing up
surprises, readers will get bored and drift away.” And you can find this in
many junior fiction books, where sometimes the quirky, out there humour might
not appeal to adults, but children love it (Mackenzie, 2005).
During the primary years incongruity is still a big part of humour
(Moyles, 2012), but it has developed to more visual and conceptual ideas. In Mo
Willems’ retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs, children will
be able to make links to the original fairy tale, but will enjoy the modern
spin and humour that Willems gives to both Goldilocks, the 2 dinosaurs and
their visiting friend from Norway! He does this very cleverly with both the
words and illustrations. Mac Barnett also has a hilarious laugh out loud story
called Chloe and the Lion, where the author and illustrator Adam Rex,
become a part of the text as they fight amongst themselves about their creative
differences as to the best way to tell the story.
Understanding puns and wordplay begin to develop more in the later
primary years, and follow through into high school humour as jokes become
subtler and more sophisticated, such as Paul Jennings titles including Spooner
or Later (1992) and Freeze a Crowd (1996). Rachel Renee Russell’s Dork
Diaries and Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid are funny for the
tween years where the characters are easy to identify with in their awkward,
funny misadventures in normal life.
Then there are books for Young Adults such as The Absolutely True
Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and The Symptoms of Being
Human by Jeff Garvin. Both these books tackle some tough issues such as
alcoholism, poverty and racism, to gender fluidity in Symptoms, but the
gentle use of humour in the characters’ personalities helps to give hope and
healing to the audience.
One thing for us to consider as adults is to not let our own prejudices
of what we find funny or not get in the way of our children’s and YA’s
literature journeys. I know that I myself can be quite elitist when I don’t
think a book is up to my moral, linguistic or educational standards, but who am
I to argue with the 70 million copies of Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants books
sold?! In an OOM Scholastic Podcast talking with Dav Pilkey about using humour to get
kids to read, Editor-at-Large Suzanne McCabe exclaims after reading his latest
book Dog Man that he must be the most subversive author around. Dav explains
that he “doesn’t hear that from the kids”. He goes on to say that “Kids are
completely in tune with this type of humour”, and as he invented his main
characters as a child, we know that he is on their wavelength. We must be
careful not to unwittingly censor our choices for children’s books, especially as
another point that the 2016 Scholastic USA report noted was that 89% of children agreed that the
books they found themselves were the ones that were their favourites.
Before we move on, here are some intermission jokes….
What do planets like to read? Comet books!
Why was the dinosaur afraid to go to the library? Because his books were
65 million years overdue!
Now I’m going to burn my bra a little with my thoughts on funny girls in
children’s literature.
When you google top funny girl characters in books you will not find websites about funny girls. You
will find websites about “strong female characters”. Don’t get me wrong - I’m a
big supporter of strong females being represented in children’s stories, but
strong is not a synonym for funny. There is a fantastic article in The
Independent online titled Want to raise an empowered girl? Then let her
be funny which
discusses how using humour can make us successful in life. Being humorous
conveys intelligence, competence and confidence. It also helps to relieve
stresses and anxiety (Xeni, 2010). We need to be encouraging girls to be
humorous, and one perfect way to do that is by modelling it through funny girl
characters in books.
Some of my favourite funny female characters are Olivia (Ian Falconer)
“who’s very good at wearing people out. She even wears herself out!”, Fancy
Nancy (Jane O’Connor) and her splendiferous use of language, both in French and
English, and Piggie from the Elephant and Piggie series (Mo Willems). Piggie
and Gerald have a hilarious friendship that always sees them through any tough
situations they face together, like the time they were invited to a mysterious
party, and it did turn out to be a fancy dress costume pool party!
I believe as supporters of children we want to encourage our girls to be
hilarious. I challenge us all to search out specific books that feature funny
girls and funny women authors, and to continue to promote them alongside funny
boy characters. One shining light in my google searches on this topic is the
blog What We Do All Day, written by a mum of two boys. She covers all
kinds of topics in her blog to ‘unplug kids’, and she has an awesome selection
of book lists that you should all check out. Her book list titled 100 of the funniest chapter books for kids has the most gender balanced list including both
female characters and female authors I could find in all my searching.
Finally, I want to recommend choosing funny books as read alouds. It’s a
fantastic way to bond with a child, or to connect with a whole audience of
children.
A perfect example of a fantastic read aloud session is BJ Novak’s
reading of his new classic “The Book With No Pictures”. Let’s watch it now.
Any book that has an adult say the words Boo Boo Butt and Badongy Face
is sure to get a huge laugh.
So to finish….
Just remember. Dinosaurs didn’t read. Now they’re extinct. You do the
math….
Thank you.
References
Barnett, M. (2009). Guess
Again! New York, USA: Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing Division.
Barnett, M. (2012). Chloe
and the Lion. New York, USA: Hyperion Books.
Ellis. C. (2017). Du Iz
Tak? London, UK: Walker Books Ltd.
Falconer, I. (2004). Olivia.
New York, USA: Simon and Schuster.
Handy, B. (2017). Wild
Things. The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult. New York,
USA: Simon and Schuster.
Independent. October 30th,
2017. Want to raise an empowered girl? Then let her be funny. Retrieved from
Mallen, K. (2008). Laugh
Lines: Exploring humour in children’s literature [Monograph]. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.govt
McKenzie, J. (2005). Bums,
poos and wees. Carnivalesque spaces in the picture books of early childhood.
Or, has literature gone to the dogs?. English Teaching: Practice and
Critique (University of Waikato), 4(1), 81-94.
O’Connor, J. (2010). Fancy
Nancy Splendiferous Christmas. London, UK. Harper Collins.
Willems, M. (2012). Goldilocks
and the Three Dinosaurs. New York, USA: Harper Collins.
