When Kids in Books Read Other Books

One of the things about the characters in children’s books is that, sometimes, you’ll find them reading children’s books. I always get a kick out of it when that happens.

The other day I was (finally!) reading The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, and at one point, the Penderwick sisters’ aunt gives Jane a stack of books by her favorite author: Eva Ibbotson, and she exclaims with delight and glee and plunges right into reading Island of the Aunts. And I, too, was delighted and gleeful, and felt for Jane Penderwick the kind of fellowship that sometimes happens when you find someone who loves the same things you do, a feeling which was in no way lessened by the inconvenient fact that Jane Penderwick is fictional.

I suppose I really should have been feeling fellow-feeling towards the Penderwicks’ creator, Jeanne Birdsall, who chose such a perfect favorite author for the kind-hearted, thoughtful, imaginative Jane. It always warms my heart when children’s book authors sneak references to other kids’ books into their fiction; it’s a neat way to establish character, and is the best kind of advertising for the books, to boot. Also, it’s mildly surreal, like when people on a TV show watch television: it reminds you that the people you’re reading about are not actually real people but are, themselves, characters in a children’s book, reading about other characters in other children’s books, who might themselves be reading further children’s books, and so on ad infinitum…

Anyway, here are five of my favorite intertextuality/kidlit-product-placement moments in kids’ books:

• When Angel in The Same Stuff as Stars, by Katherine Paterson, takes her  little brother to the library, and the librarian immediately, and accurately, pegs him as the kind of kid who would like The Stupids, and he immediately plonks down on the floor, entranced. He’s a very angry kid, with a lot to be angry about, and these irreverent books give him something to laugh about instead.

• When the two kids in Linda Sue Park’s Project Mulberry meet a helpful guy who reminds them of Mr. Titus in And Then There Were Five, the wonderful third book in the Melendy series.

• When Rose in Forever Rose by Hilary McKay doesn’t like reading, and her friend Sarah keeps trying to get her to read by giving her books she might like, and one of them is Where the Wild Things Are, and Rose, who is a brilliant artist although she has trouble with reading, is inspired to draw huge trees on all the walls of her room.

• Not a moment exactly, but the kids in Half-Magic and Edward Eager’s other books are forever referring to the E. Nesbit books, which is as it should be, considering how much his fantasy owes to Nesbit.

• I think it’s in Toy Dance Party that the toys recall to each other the various books that the Little Girl has read to them, or has had read to her as bedtime stories; they don’t name them by title, but at least one is about a mouse and it seemed to me that it was a reference to The Tale of Despereaux.

Actually I like that kind of hint even more than when actual titles or authors are mentioned—it’s like being a member of a secret club. Though if a book is mentioned by name, and I haven’t read it, and like the book that mentions it, I always want to go out and read that title right away; it’s like having a good friend recommend a book. Because, I guess, I think of the characters in books I’m reading (well, some of them) as my friends. At least while I’m reading about them. And getting a book suggestion from a friend who knows what you like is one of the best bets going. Authors know this, and that’s one reason they throw in those references—to get kids reading other good books.

But also, I think, authors—being book-lovers—just can’t resist recommending books they love, so much so that those suggestions sneak into their fiction, too. Because the feeling of turning someone on to a good book that you loved is almost as good as—maybe some ways even better than—the feeling of reading that book yourself.

Comments

[Charlotte]

I loved that Mr. Titus moment myself!

And our minds are clearly working along the same lines--I just posted about girls in fantasy books who read. Although of course one can't really expect them to be reading Then There Were Five.