Author Archives: rponcedeleon1

Andrew Clements On Poe and Dystopian Fiction

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Clements argues, primarily from his own experience as a young reader, that fiction that explores the evils of the world is necessary for children as their understanding expands. He recalls growing bored with books in which conflict was minimal, relegated to small disputes that typically culminated in a Happy Ending, as he began to discover that the world can be really dark. He also states that today’s dystopian stories are most likely so dark due to the increased visibility of violence and evil via the internet and other media that did not exist during his childhood or Poe’s time. I completely agree with Clements, echoing that Sendakian notion that children are complex people who are not blind to evil, even if we wish they were. I had a similar experience to Clements as well–one minute I was reading pretty bland middle school fare, and the next I was devouring 1984, followed soon by A Clockwork Orange, armed with my trusty printed-off-Sparknotes Nadsat dictionary.

The commentary definitely relates to The Giver, especially in terms of Jonas’s growth. I like to think of the book as, on one level, about growing up and learning that the world that has been constructed for you by trusting adults is largely a farce. This hits home for me in a very specific and vital way: Everyone has to learn not only that people suffer and die, that Santa doesn’t exist, that falling in love is hard and painful, but also that most if not all of what we learn about history as children is romanticized. We don’t find out about the horrors our forefathers have committed (genocide, de facto racism, and reproductive violence en masse to name a few) unless we seek out these truths for ourselves.

The Funny Little Woman

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After much searching, in the end I’ve decided to write on one of my own favorite books growing up. The Funny Little Woman won the Caldecott medal in 1973. In addition to owning a copy of this book, I chose it for its stunning ink and watercolor illustrations and for its retelling of an offbeat story about a little old lady who just wants to find her precious dumpling, but winds up meeting an actual demon. I’m really excited to revisit this book after so long and hopefully get a better sense of not only what its appeal was for me in the past, but also what made it a contender for the award to begin with.

First Book I Read (Green Eggs and Ham)

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Virtually every night of my childhood, my mother would read my sister and me a book (or two) before bed. We had a lot of different picture books when I was growing up, but I still remember that the first book I read on my own was Green Eggs and Ham by the great Seuss. I must have been either three or four at the time, and I was all alone in my room on a cloudy day when it happened. I remember feeling really proud, even independent as I made my way through the whole book without any trouble.

Thinking about this incident for the first time in a while, I realize that this was most likely a case of pure memorization. Not only had my mom read that book to me countless times, but I even had an interactive storybook computer game of it. By the time I read the book on my own, there is a good chance that I’d memorized it from those sources alone.

But that only illustrates two points. First, that memorization is a starting point from which a person can start to really comprehend. I was too young to make much sense of language, but the frequent exposure I had to it through reading made the learning process much easier. Second, I learned to read so rapidly because I loved books, and I surely couldn’t have gotten there at such a young age without the fascination with both pictures and words my parents encouraged every time they read to me. As a poetry major who draws constantly and often flirts with the idea of making picture books instead of going to grad school, I can say that this fascination has never left me, and still colors much of my interaction with the world. While I wouldn’t say that reading Green Eggs and Ham on my own was the moment that I realized my true purpose, the factors behind that moment definitely shaped me, and they continue to show their influence.