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Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > February > 28 > Entry
Scott Elliott: Publishers get kid humor even if parents don’t
Last week I got sucked in by the classic film “Casablanca” while channel surfing. At the end of the famous scene in which everyone in Rick’s club drowns out the Germans by singing the French anthem “La Marseillaise,” Louis is ordered to find a reason to shut the place down. So he tells Rick he is “shocked, shocked” to learn gambling was going on. Just then, a waiter hands Louis a wad of bills, “Your winnings, sir.”
My 8-year-old began cracking up. Quizzically, I asked her what was funny, not convinced she really understood all that was happening in this 65-year-old movie about the desperate and displaced in wartime North Africa.
“He said he was shocked that gambling was going on, but he was gambling!” second-grader Kate shot back.
Adult humor, we adults like to think, is complicated, and it is. When you get beyond pure slapstick, humor is such a sophisticated mix of exaggeration, understatement, irony and unexpected juxtapositions that it’s easy to believe kids can’t appreciate it.
But the truth is, they get it, they like it and it’s good for them. Book publishers have figured this out. Parents should follow their lead.
Two summers ago, I noticed something curious going on at home. My wife and oldest daughter were reading the same book — “Marley & Me,” the dog-themed best-seller that has since been made into a movie. Every night, dinner conversation revolved around the hilarious exploits of Marley, described in the book as the troublesome “worst dog in the world.”
But there was something different about the version my daughter was reading. It was specifically for kids. I hadn’t noticed an adult book with a youth version before, so when “Marley & Me” author John Grogan came to Kettering last year, I asked how the kids’ version came about.
Grogan said he never intended for kids to read the book. He wrote it for an adult audience and was surprised to find children as young as fourth and fifth grade showing up at book signings. The kids said they loved the hilarity of Marley’s escapades. The thought, though, of young children reading a book that had a few R-rated scenes in it made Grogan uncomfortable.
He suggested to his publisher that maybe they should issue a new version of the book rewritten for kids. It was a lucrative idea. There is now a Marley elementary-age book, a Marley board book for pre-schoolers and a Marley Christmas book. A couple of weeks ago, an author even more popular with kids came to town: Jeff Kinney, author of the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series. Haven’t heard of him? Two of Kinney’s books were among the 25 best sellers for 2008.
I was fascinated to learn that “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” also was not written for children.
Kinney is a wannabe cartoonist who couldn’t get anyone to hire him because his artwork was so bad, he says. So eventually he turned a comic strip idea into a graphic novel in the form of the diary of a middle-schooler he calls Greg Heffley.
Kinney thought of the book more as a tribute to childhood, aimed at making sentimental adults chuckle. It was only as the book was headed to print that the publisher suggested targeting it to the youth market.
Among the biggest fans of the series, interestingly, are elementary school teachers. Why? Because it is one of the few books that appeals to a particularly hard-to-reach subset of struggling readers — elementary school boys.
Young boys sometimes get a bad rap. You’ve heard it before. They won’t touch a book, but instead rot their brains for hours blowing up video game aliens. But spend a few minutes in any elementary school and you will quickly discover something else the boys love — humor. Wimpy Kid has shown they love it enough to put down the joystick.
Kinney told me he sometimes catches himself aiming too low when he writes a joke for a Wimpy Kid book. He asks himself whether the joke is only funny to a middle-schooler; if the answer is yes, he takes it out.
I think it’s the fact that the humor of the books aims a little higher that appeals to kids, especially boys. They love learning to take a joke to a new level.
For parents, the lesson is simple. Already lots of research shows that, for kids, learning language is enhanced by engaging in conversation with adults. The more you talk to kids — not baby talk, but real two-way conversations — the better it is for their developing brains.
Just remember that this also extends to humor. Try not to brush off the little ones when they want to know what’s funny in that book you’re reading or movie you’re watching. Let them in on the joke.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Education, Scott Elliott
Comments
By Ms. Cornelius
March 23, 2009 5:52 PM | Link to this
I completely agree. Remember, we grew up on Bugs Bunny and Warner Brothers, which operated on two levels of humor: the kid level and the adult level. Being exposed to both made us more sophisticated users of language. The same could be said for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Adults constantly underestimate kids’ abilities and potential, often in the misguided attempt to make learning “easier” for them. Learning is never easy. If it is easy, you’re not learning anything.