In my post on March 12, 2018, I covered a story from Time Magazine about Matt de la Pena, a writer of children’s books, arguing that it’s OK for there to be a dark aspect to children’s books.  In a follow-up to that article, there is another on the Time website by Kate Dicamillo, an award-winning author of sixteen children’s books.

Kate Dicamillo

The connection between the two authors is this: Matt asked Kate whether it is the job of a children’s author to tell the truth or to preserve innocence.

Kate answered with a question: “Have you ever asked an auditorium full of kids if they know and love Charlotte’s Web?  In my experience, almost all the hands go up.  And if you ask them how many of them cried when they read it, most of the hands remain unabashedly aloft.”

(Charlotte’ Web is by E B White with illustrations by Garth Williams.  Its Amazon site says, “This is the story of a little girl named Fern who loved a little pig named Wilbur and of Wilbur’s dear friend, Charlotte A. Cavatica, a beautiful large grey spider. With the unlikely help of Templeton the rat, and a wonderfully clever plan of her own, Charlotte saves the life of Wilbur, who by this time has grown up to be quite a pig.”)

Kate says she asked her best childhood friend, “What was it made you read and re-read that book? Did you think that if you read it again, things would turn our differently, better?  That Charlotte wouldn’t die?”

“No,” she said, “It wasn’t that.  I kept reading it not because I wanted it to turn out differently . . . but because I knew for a fact that it wasn’t going to turn out differently.  I knew that a terrible thing was going to happen, and I also knew it was going to be OK somehow.  I thought that I couldn’t bear it, but then when I read it again, it was all so beautiful.  And I found out that I could bear it.   That was what the story told me.  That was what I needed to hear.  That I could bear it somehow.”

Kate told another auditorium story: “A boy asked me if I thought I would have been a writer if I hadn’t been sick all the time as a kid and if my father hadn’t left.  And I said something along the lines of I think that there is a very good chance that I wouldn’t be standing in front of you today if those things hadn’t happened to me.  A girl raised her hand and said, ‘It turns out that you were stronger than you thought you were.”

“When the kids left the auditorium, I stood at the door and talked with them as they walked past. One boy – skinny legged and blonde haired – grabbed my hand and said, “I’m here in South Dakota, and my dad is in California.  He’s there and I’m here with my mom.  And I thought I might not be OK.  But you said today that you’re OK.  And so I think that I will be OK, too.”

Kate continued, “E B White loved the world.  And in loving the world, he told the truth about it – its sorrow, its heartbreak, its devastating beauty.  He trusted his readers enough to tell them the truth, and with that truth come comfort and a feeling that we are not alone.”