From: Monica R. Edinger <edinger>
Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 06:02:37 -0400

I've always had a hard time separating satire from irony. I just looked both words up in my old (circa 1960s) dictionary and each is given as a synonym for the other. I generally think of irony as stating the opposite of what is meant, but that can be sarcasm too, can't it?

In 1997 I wrote an article for Horn Book ("Pets and Other Fishy Books")in which I discussed a certain breed of children's books, those that were making serious fun of children's books themselves. Subversive books. I started out thinking I was writing about irony and then satire and then decided just to write about books and stop worrying about vocabulary. The book that provoked the article was Chris Raschka's Arlene Sardine, a book I found hilarious, but which others were emphatically finding --- NOT. I read this book as parody, irony, and satire. To me Chris Raschka is playing with all those earnest books where the protagonist gets his or her heart's desire (The Little Engine That Could, Rainbow Fish, various Eric Carle titles). Arlene wants to be a sardine. And although she dies midway through the book her quest doesn't end till the last page when she achieves her goal. I tried the book out with my own 4th graders and they were puzzled. I tried it out with a 2nd grader who took it quite seriously. I showed to many adults some of whom loved it and some of whom were taken aback at it being a children's book. And I talked it to death
(poor Arlene dies again!) Since my article I've continued to think about it and talk about it as it intrigues me as a rather unique book. If it is a book for adults it is for adults who know the kids' books it is parodying. If it is a book for kids is it only meant for them to read seriously? (Chris told me of multiple readings some of which were very serious ones by kids thinking about life after death.) I still find the book hilarious along with other adults, but have yet to find a kid find it so. I could, of course, show them the humor, but that is a drag. Either they see the parody and laugh, or they don't. I'd love to hear from others who not only find the book funny, but have found kids who found it funny too.

Other books I wrote about in the article and which my students did find funny were: Art Spiegelman's Open Me...I'm a Dog, David Wisniewski's The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups, and Jon Scieszka's The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and Squids Will Be Squids. The later amused some kids and not others and I finally decided it had nothing to do with maturity, basic knowledge of fables, but personality. That is, some kids would grow up with a distaste for that sort of parodic humor while others would grow up (like me, I guess) always finding it funny.

Since I wrote the article there have been more books of this sort: a second Grown-Ups book from Wisniewski (which I did not feel was as good as the first) and some more by Jon Scieszka (along with Lane Smith and Molly Bloom). Oh, a book my kids have always adored is Lane Smith's The Happy Hockey Family, also in this family of subversive books.

Monica



Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Fri 03 May 2002 05:02:37 AM CDT