Hello, writers. I was clearing off my desk today, and found this book.
I have a vague memory of having picked it up at a library book sale,\ in the land of Before All This. I bought it because I remembered that, at the age of 8 or 9,
I once spent a rainy afternoon in a cardboard box with an afghan over top as a roof (indoors— it’s a kid thing) reading one of David Cory’s Little Jack Rabbit books from cover to cover. I was already too old for it, and knew it. But I couldn’t put it down.
The original owner of this copy was too old for Little Jack Rabbit, too. Ann Spencer of West Philadelphia was 13 on October 22, 1937, as you can see— or maybe you can see it. The next owner of the book, Spencer Gregory (or possibly Gregory Spencer?) practiced female erasure when he came into possession.
What I had wanted to know was why I had been so fascinated by Little Jack Rabbit.
And once I saw the names, I wanted to know why Ann, and Spencer (or possibly Gregory) had been fascinated.
The book has everything that I dislike in a children’s book: twee cutesiness, teetering piles of adjectives, and a tone that positively pinches the dear little reader’s cheeks. To say nothing of anthropomorphized animals that are inexplicably BFF with other species.
Nonetheless, I picked it up and found I just couldn’t stop turning the pages as we careened from one adventure to the next. The threat to Mrs. Redwing’s posterity! The treachery of Billy Breeze! The possible loss of Uncle Lucky’s hat! Even though I know deep in my heart that rabbits do not actually have hats.
YMMV, but I really want to know what happens next.
So what makes it work, insofar as it does work?
I think it’s the author’s enthusiasm. Mr. Cory, a former stockbroker by the way, clearly cares very, very much about Mrs. Redwing and her adjective egg and Uncle Lucky and his adjective-adjective-adjective-adjectivea-djective hat, and so the reader cares too.
This authorial enthusiasm may be the crux of reaching the reader. Fortunately there are other ways to achieve it. But one way or another, if you’re writing for others, you have to make the reader care.
Tonight’s challenge:
Show a scene in which someone either
1. almost breaks an egg
or
2. loses their hat
or
3. both.
Make us care.
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