From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 11:17:00 -600

I have been following the discussion of characterization in
"Protecting Marie" with great interest. I thought Kevin Henkes did an amazing job of depicting familial love-hate relationships that are more common in real life than children's literature would lead us to believe. The only other book I can think of that explores this spikey sort of parent-child relationship is "The Moonlight Man" by Paula Fox, in which a young adolescent girl comes to terms with her father's alcoholism.

One thing I noticed on a second reading of "Protecting Marie" was a great deal of subtle symbolism based on shapes, especially triangles.
 Marie herself was composed of a hodge-podge of shapes cut out of paper and glued together. There were many times when the characters were arranged as points on a triangle, or Fanny would sit with her legs out like two sides of an incomplete triangle, or Dinner coming to sit down next to her would form a triangle. The triangle image overall seemed to represent the relationship between Fanny, her father and her mother, with each character as points, and the relationship between Fanny and her father being the third (and often absent) side of the triangle, since the two points were seldom connected. The three section headings also relate to the triangle image: Without, With, and Within.

Does anyone have any thoughts on why the author chose the title
"Protecting Marie?"

      KT Horning, CCBC
      UW-Madison
Received on Thu 25 Jan 1996 11:17:00 AM CST