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What Makes This So Funny?
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From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 15:36:38 -0500
Chuck and Danielle" by Peter Dickinson is a terrific example, Steve. I smile just thinking about this short novel.
Thanks, Lee, for naming three reasons why the audiotape of Chuck and Danielle is humorous: "voices, timing... and sound effects." But the material had to be there in the first place in the book and its premise. What makes the book itself so hilarious?
Because humor is so very difficult to accomplish in print, and because in general most of us don't take time to distinguish between types of humor or to name them, I've been hoping to find out the causes of the humor in certain books or passages in specific books. What's behind it all? What are the elements of the humor? What makes a book or portion of a book funny to some readers, and not to others?
If you've heard author Katherine Paterson speak - and she's a superb speech writer as well as an excellent children's book writer in more than one genre - you already know that she's mastered the balancing act of incorporating humor into her serious speeches, as well as into her serious novels. The jokes Louise tells Call in the first chapter of "Jacob Have I Loved" are funny to Louise but not even amusing to Call. One of Louises' jokes is a play on words, a pun. Another depends upon the stock framework about three people with different professions ending up in heaven, a convention completely unfamiliar to Call. In Paterson's newest novel "The Same Stuff as Stars" (Clarion, Sept. 2002) she incorporates necessary levity at one point, but in an entirely different way. Her references to "The Stupids Step Out" by Harry Allard a.k.a. James Marshall (Houghton Mifflin, 1974) cause young Bernie to shriek with laughter. Here Paterson depends upon her description of someone else's humorous picture book replete a major premise of silly opposites to cross over into her very different longer narrative for older kids, and she succeeds.
There are many ways to provide humor. Accomplishing it is very difficult, and so is analyzing it.
- Ginny
Ginny Moore Kruse gmkruse at education.wisc.edu Director, Cooperative Children's Book Center www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ A Library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin Madison Check the CCBC web site for public service hours between today and the Fall Semester
Received on Mon 20 May 2002 03:36:38 PM CDT
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 15:36:38 -0500
Chuck and Danielle" by Peter Dickinson is a terrific example, Steve. I smile just thinking about this short novel.
Thanks, Lee, for naming three reasons why the audiotape of Chuck and Danielle is humorous: "voices, timing... and sound effects." But the material had to be there in the first place in the book and its premise. What makes the book itself so hilarious?
Because humor is so very difficult to accomplish in print, and because in general most of us don't take time to distinguish between types of humor or to name them, I've been hoping to find out the causes of the humor in certain books or passages in specific books. What's behind it all? What are the elements of the humor? What makes a book or portion of a book funny to some readers, and not to others?
If you've heard author Katherine Paterson speak - and she's a superb speech writer as well as an excellent children's book writer in more than one genre - you already know that she's mastered the balancing act of incorporating humor into her serious speeches, as well as into her serious novels. The jokes Louise tells Call in the first chapter of "Jacob Have I Loved" are funny to Louise but not even amusing to Call. One of Louises' jokes is a play on words, a pun. Another depends upon the stock framework about three people with different professions ending up in heaven, a convention completely unfamiliar to Call. In Paterson's newest novel "The Same Stuff as Stars" (Clarion, Sept. 2002) she incorporates necessary levity at one point, but in an entirely different way. Her references to "The Stupids Step Out" by Harry Allard a.k.a. James Marshall (Houghton Mifflin, 1974) cause young Bernie to shriek with laughter. Here Paterson depends upon her description of someone else's humorous picture book replete a major premise of silly opposites to cross over into her very different longer narrative for older kids, and she succeeds.
There are many ways to provide humor. Accomplishing it is very difficult, and so is analyzing it.
- Ginny
Ginny Moore Kruse gmkruse at education.wisc.edu Director, Cooperative Children's Book Center www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ A Library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin Madison Check the CCBC web site for public service hours between today and the Fall Semester
Received on Mon 20 May 2002 03:36:38 PM CDT
