antipotterium
Aug. 21st, 2002 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jinianI do not hate the Harry Potter books, certainly not as much as I expected I would. However, they perpetuate a lot of the things that I find wrong with fantasy: the all-importance of destiny, the irresponsible wish-fulfillment, the People Who Are Bad. A lot of those things are getting better as the series goes on, but HP still isn't the only thing I want to present to kids in the "kid wizards go away to British school" genre. Other similar stuff is necessary, if only to ease the little beggars into reading other forms of fiction.
Hence, I've purchased the Chrestomanci quartet, which fits some particulars, and The Year of the Griffin, which fits more. The Duane Young Wizards books would have been around anyway, since I imprinted hard on those at about ten. Someone, somewhere on the web, must be keeping a list of HP alternatives, and I think I'll go hunt them up, because Wizard's Hall by Jane Yolen was really charming.
I finished it over lunch, so it was quite short, and there was a lot of repetition which would make it good for young kids or a chapter-before-bed book. Mainly I liked that the protagonist had a destiny, but he was clearly not the best wizard everyone had ever seen. He had entirely different talents. It was simple, but in a lot of ways it looked like a deliberate reversal of/answer to HP. I wonder how many other books came first but still address the same themes?
Hence, I've purchased the Chrestomanci quartet, which fits some particulars, and The Year of the Griffin, which fits more. The Duane Young Wizards books would have been around anyway, since I imprinted hard on those at about ten. Someone, somewhere on the web, must be keeping a list of HP alternatives, and I think I'll go hunt them up, because Wizard's Hall by Jane Yolen was really charming.
I finished it over lunch, so it was quite short, and there was a lot of repetition which would make it good for young kids or a chapter-before-bed book. Mainly I liked that the protagonist had a destiny, but he was clearly not the best wizard everyone had ever seen. He had entirely different talents. It was simple, but in a lot of ways it looked like a deliberate reversal of/answer to HP. I wonder how many other books came first but still address the same themes?
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Date: 2002-08-21 03:38 pm (UTC)For example, the eerily biddable and compliant horses that can Run Until Sundown are . . . well, robotic.
Gtst is using The Tough Guide To Fantasyland as research material.
It's not wizard kids; it's a Stereotypical Quest Fantasy. Really. It's got a hero and a magical doohickey and everything, and a POV character who gets yanked out of a perfectly ordinary life to go rampaging across the countryside with elves.
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Date: 2002-08-21 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-21 03:54 pm (UTC)The Tough Guide is the perfect source material for such a thing. I saw some excerpts from a thing that might be like that when poking around your friends-list, and it looked pretty good to me too.
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Date: 2002-08-21 03:58 pm (UTC)I do like the concept of the mysterious, tall stranger with the strange facial scar riding the black unicorn being the hopeless geek with a stutter. . . .
Wow, that was a lot of modifying phrases.
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Date: 2002-08-21 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-22 06:12 am (UTC)I finally read the HP books
Date: 2002-08-22 09:01 am (UTC)They were/are cute. They're a nice read. They're neither complicated nor particularly deep, but they're cute. They're the Microwave Popcorn of books, as opposed to the Creme Brulee.
But I will not complain about kids reading them. Why? Kids are *reading them*. Kids who never before picked up a book, kids who claimed to hate reading. I watched kids in line for action movies, standing and *reading a book*. Kids on busses, quietly sitting for hours, with their noses buried in a book. While that isn't unusual for me or my friends, it's amazing for kids raised on GameBoy and with the attention span of cheese. So they're fluffy...without them, there might not be any introducing kids to better literature.
Re: I finally read the HP books
Date: 2002-08-22 09:47 am (UTC)Re: I finally read the HP books
Date: 2002-08-22 06:27 pm (UTC)I liked harry potter well enough and yay for kids reading, maybe it means they'll pester parents/teachers/librarians for other stuff when they run out!