My English 325 - Children's Literature Final Paper

As we write for children it is important to remember that we are crafting the world for the unassuming mind. Ergo, if we seek to clearly convey information, said information must be present unmolested by that which might distract. However, we are thus stuck in the ruts of a conundrum. For though we may seek to convey information, do we not also wish to foster imagination? Who is to say which is of a greater value? But it is clear that the path that provides both goals is one that is both straight and narrow.


Gary Paulsen stooped over Sally Lloyd-Jones’ body. Blood dripped from his hatchet. Kate DiCamillo drew a rapier from her belt. Tears streamed from her eyes as she screamed obscenities at Paulsen. A. A. Milne and Sharon Flake both ran to the bathroom, most likely to be sick.

“She had to go,” Paulsen growled through clenched teeth. “People die, this is life. How dare she make the world look so bubbly!”

“But you murdered her!” DiCamillo barely held onto her sword. “She didn’t just die.”

Paulsen glared at DiCamillo.

“Put it away Kate.”

I was suddenly aware that the café had emptied. Tables and chairs had been toppled. Steam continuously rose from a steamer wand, abandoned by the barista. I wondered if anyone had even called the police in the panic of the café’s evacuation.

I looked at Avi. He seemed unimpressed.

“I would write this very situation,” he said as he sipped his coffee.

“I would too,” Kate DiCamillo said, though her voice shook with rage, “But I would never murder someone so sinless.”

“You’ve harmed the innocent many times within your books,” Paulsen said. “Look at Mig, the poor child, you ruined her, and she had done nothing to deserve it.”

“A sacrifice for the sake of the story.”

“Consider this a sacrifice then, for the preservation of realism.”

“The sacrifice of imagination, maybe,” Lois Lowry scoffed.

“Either way” I said, “It seems like a corrupted genre if it requires sacrifice.”

Professor Schmidt made to object, but Gene Luen Yang interrupted him.

“How dare—“

“True there is death and hardship, but children don’t deserve something so horrible, even in realism” Gene Yang said.

“What age group are we talking about?” Sharon Flake asked as she emerged from the bathroom wiping her mouth.

“Young adult or teen,” they all seemed to respond in unison.

“Are there no strictly children’s authors among you?” I asked.

“One is dead, and the other is in the bathroom,” Avi said once again. His coffee had iced over though he still managed to sip it.

Professor Schmidt looked down at the completely dead and slashed body of Sally Lloyd-Jones, and he began to weep. His pure, white-as-snow heart could not take the death of a character so close to the beginning of a story. Wiping his eyes, he got up and walked over to Lloyd-Jones’ body, and reaching under her arms, lifted her torso and dragged the bloody mess out of the middle of the room. He tore a curtain from the wall and covered her with it, and as he did so, a ray of golden sunlight shone down upon him from the heavens and illuminated the tired, sorrow-laden man. It was almost as though a halo shone about his head—the picture of the perfect, God-fearing, young adult author. Gary Paulsen took Professor Schmidt’s seat.

“You know,” said Lois Lowry, “A lot people gave me flak when I first released the giver.”

“Most likely due to its inappropriate content,” A. A. Milne spat as he emerged from the men’s room. “All of you! How dare you claim to be children’s authors.”

“Young adult,” Avi corrected. Immense ice was crawling down his seat and his eyes had become completely black and cold.

“I would have never let my Christopher Robin read any of your monstrous corruptions,” Milne said.

“No, you’d prefer him playing with a stuffed bear in the woods for the rest of his life,” said Sharon Flake. “No wonder he married his cousin.”

I had to chuckle, but A. A. Milne did not appreciate it.

“A lot coming from a hardly known children’s author.”

“Milne, what do you know? You’ve been dead like sixty years!”

“I know that children should not read about the daughter of a whore whose hands cannot withstand the temptations of mammon.”

Sharon Flake was to her feet in an instant. Paulsen was laughing.

“You did give your protagonist a hooker name.”

“That’s not the point of the story,” I said, though none of them seemed to hear me. “It’s about sticking close to family in hard times, and how what we think we need is sometimes the farthest from it.”

“Don’t even start this, Paulsen,” Flake said. “Just because you wrote about slavery doesn’t mean you’ve suddenly got street cred.”

“Enough!” DiCamillo suddenly shouted. “Does anyone else realize that he just killed a person!?”

“It certainly makes for excellent writing material,” Avi said as casually as ever. He was now living, breathing ice. Even the floor beneath his feet had severely frosted over.

“Kate,” Paulsen growled. “You’re not a fighter. Put down the sword.”

But DiCamillo would not hesitate. With a renewed fierceness in her eyes she crossed the room towards Paulsen, rapier drawn, and her features suddenly very mouse-like.

“You will pay, monster!”

“We’ll just see about that.” He moved towards her, hatchet in hand.

“No, you will all pay,” A. A. Milne said, suddenly producing two .357 magnums from his suit coat.

Sharon Flake grabbed me by the arm and pulled me behind an upturned table.

“Dave, I think the shit just hit the fan,” she said, pulling an Uzi from her purse.

The first shots hit Yang, who was transforming into the Monkey King. He fell with a tremendous howl. Lowry got it next before she could run to her jet fighter. A. A. Milne then ducked behind the coffee counter just missing multiple ice spikes shot from Avi’s hands. Avi continued hurtling ice at the coffee counter until Paulsen’s hatchet cut off one of his arms.
Part of my table exploded from one of Milne’s shots and I quickly darted to another table as Sharon Flake provided cover fire. Paulsen had lost the hatchet and had somehow materialized an AK-47 which he fired haphazardly as he ran for the cover of the bathroom. DiCamillo was in pursuit with a lightsaber when Avi caught her in the side with a chunk of ice, sending her reeling out the window. Only four remained now, firing at each other from their various covers.

At that moment the great Monkey King arose again, and with a mighty roar, summoned all of his monkey minions. Avi, Flake, Milne, and Paulsen were forced to focus their attention on collectively dispatching the troops of monkeys currently pouring into the café, wave after wave. Flake joined me at my cover and provided support. I used a table leg to bat off any monkey that she missed.

“I think this is it!” Paulsen yelled from a table near the bathroom door. “I never thought I’d die so ridiculously!”

“Too bad for you; I’m already dead!” Milne replied.

“Sharon!” Paulsen called.

“Yeah, Gary?”

“I never thought I’d say this, but I think you’re a sweet woman, and a great author!”

“Thanks, Gary! I still hate you!”

“What! Why?”

But before she could answer, Kate DiCamillo came bursting through the window riding a giant rat, and hordes of rats behind her.

“MAY YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW!!!!” She screamed, and the rats immediately attacked everything in sight. Most of the monkeys were instantly overtaken, and it seemed we wouldn’t last much longer against these numbers. But before the rats could do their worst, the ceiling of the café burst skyward, and a blinding light shown down.

“STOP THIS! ALL OF YOU,” came an all-too-familiar British accent. A gleaming figure descended towards us, shimmering in the brilliant light of the heavens. It was Sally Lloyd-Jones.

“Sally,” DiCamillo breathed as she wiped tears from her eyes.

“It-it’s not possible,” Paulsen said, shaking in fear.

“It is possible, for you see, my work is not yet finished, though some of you wish it so.” Her words had the authority of thunder and the warmth of God’s love reflecting off her was even enough to melt through Avi’s frozen shell. “You see, all things are possible for those that love the Lord. If you have faith enough to believe in one miracle, you have faith enough to believe in all the possibilities of the imagination. If you do not believe in possibilities of the imagination, how can you believe in even one miracle?”

She looked at Gary Schmidt who had come out of hiding.

“You have no justification. Realism is a lie. It is the weeds that grow up around the vine and choke it.”

Then she forgave Paulsen and led all of us in a collective prayer. As soon as the prayer was over we took to repairing the café. With the assistance of Yang’s monkeys and DiCamillo’s rats we made quick work of the project, and we were nearly finished when the police arrived. But that is another story.

--------------------------------------

“That’s it?” asked Professor Hull. “I would have killed way more of them at the beginning.”

Book Trailer

So I decided to finish this after some inspiring jeers from my professor.

Smoking as a Storm Approaches

The whirlwind apparitions
float and wind
and wrap
their solid wisps
warped wonders deep
and wander out
in the wind

Shadows of Jacob Marley
ascending and
descending
deep
into the dark
as days wait to be dawned

Goodbye my lovely shadows, dear
set loose to sail from
the salty spit
of mine own
mouth

They wave farewell
and twist away
fading into
the world I cannot see

Souls pass as quietly
and I ponder
how my soul will
so pass the same and
say farewell to yet another