Read it LOUD Foundation

https://youtu.be/i2T6gGXOmlY

Read It LOUD! Foundation's Hawaii Literacy Campaign Read It LOUD! Foundation's Hawaii Literacy Campaign

Puss in Boots

By Karen M. Smith

One of the most beloved of anthropomorphic characters in children’s literature isn’t man’s best friend: it’s a cat. Unlike most fairy tales, neither the Brothers Grimm nor Hans Christian Andersen popularized this one. The earliest known record of the delightfully sly and deceitful feline hero known as Puss in Boots comes from The Facetious Nights of Straparola (1550-53) by Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola. History credits Straparola with inventing the tale. Giambattista Basile published the story again under the title Cagliuso (1634), followed by French author Charles Perrault around 1697 in his collection of eight fairy tales, Histoires ou countes du temps passé.

In 1729, Robert Samber translated the fairy tale into English and published it with the rest of Perrault’s collection of stories. Samber’s English version of the book made it one of the earliest fictional collections directed toward children. Perrault’s gently ironic adaptation of Puss in Boots found its way into translations across Europe, which meant that the famous Brothers Grimm got their hands on it and included it in their collections of fairy tales.

Before Antonio Banderas first teamed with DreamWorks Animation to give new personality to the wily cat in the animated Shrek movies, Puss in Boots featured in popular operas, the first being Costantino Fortunato (Italian). The French co-opted Puss in Boots for opera, too, with a subtitle referring to the venerable Mother Goose. Puss in Boots makes cameo appearances in other works, such as the third act of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Sleeping Beauty.

The cat moved from the stage to the silver screen in 1922, when Walt Disney Studios produced a silent animated film. Japanese writer and director Hayao Miyazaki produced a manga version in 1969. Puss in Boots jumped to television in an episode of Faerie Tale Theatre (1982 - 1987) starring Ben Vereen and Gregory Hines. Christopher Walken played Puss in an episode of Cannon Movie Tales (1988). After the 2004 sequel to Shrek, Banderas and DreamWorks realized they had a good thing going and continued the partnership for the rest of the series, even spinning off a short film in 2011 with Puss in Boots as the title character.

Puss in Boots appears in several stories featuring his wily machinations as man’s helper. Never subservient, he plays--if you’ll forgive the pun--cat and mouse with his targets in the effort to improve his pecunious master’s fortune and thereby his own.

Not only did Puss jump from the manuscript to the stage to the movie set, but he also acquired a series of stories and multiple versions of his story:

Puss in Boots by Josiah Wood Whymper (1900)
Puss in Boots and the Marquis of Carabas by Puss in Boots (1844)
The musical Puss in New Boots: A Fairy Tale by George R Sims
The Cruikshank Fairy-Book: Four Famous Stories (1911) by George Cruikshank
The Surprising Adventures of Puss in Boots; The History of a Little Dog; And the History of a Little Boy Found Under a Haycock (1854) by Richard Johnson
Handbook of German Literature (1854) by George J. Adler
Chronicles of the Grim Peddler 7: Puss in Boots: Die Legenden Vom Traumhandler (2005) by Lee Jeong-A Maru
Cinderella Picture Book; Containing Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Valentine and Orson (1911) by Walter Crane.

Beyond Speech: Talking Animals in Children’s Literature

Anthropomorphism, a fancy term concerning the personification of animals by attributing human characteristics to them, occupies a treasured spot in children’s fiction. The addition of speech to creatures that do not normally engage in conversation such as we humans think of it serves as a mode through which authors teach moral lessons, if only because the animals can talk back.

Catherine L. Flick states in her book Talking Animals in Children’s Fiction: A Critical Study (2015), that Russian theorist and literary critic Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin’s contention that talking animals “embody ideas that are particularly well suited to illuminating ways in which literary characters gain authority through language and participate in reversals of power in social hierarchies” (p. 3).

The use of anthropomorphism evolved over the centuries from wisely cryptic owls and other beasts of myth and legend to nineteenth century animal “autobiographies” such as Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty (1877) to the fully fledged characters of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908) in which Toad and Frog are all but human in dress, speech, and manner. The latest development of fully fledged, humanistic animals continues today in such titles as E. B. White’s Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte’s Web (1952), George Seldon’s The Cricket in Times Square (1960), Robert C. O’Brien’s Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971), Brian Jacques’ Redwall series (1986 - 2011), and Kate DiCamillo’s Tale of Despereaux (2003).

Animals that remain animals and not representations of human personalities occur less frequently, perhaps because that distance makes the connection for empathy all the more difficult. Hugh Lofting used this device in his book The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920), an English veterinarian who makes a study of animal communication which leads him on grand adventures.

The fact is animals cannot write their autobiographies, nor has science yet verified claims of some animal psychics that animals speak directly to them. That is not to say animals do not or cannot communicate: they most certainly can. They do not, however, engage in the common human understanding of language. Controversial ideas related to evolution, the treatment of animals, religion, racism, empire, and other concepts that disturbed the certainty of any particular national or racial superiority found a home in those talking animals populating the pages of literature. “For instance, Rudyard’s Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) and Just So Stories (1907) are collections of morality stories featuring talking animals, which was set in the Indian jungle,” writes Margo DeMello in her book Speaking for Animals: Animal Autobiographical Writing (2012, p. 4). She notes that the writer serves as the animal’s ethnobiographer who “has final authority in determining the meaning of the behavior being studied. Cultural translation, thus, is inevitably enmeshed in conditions of power, with the anthropologist inevitably holding the power in the relationship” (p. 5).

Regardless of the power differential, children learn from these talking animals in myths, fables, fairy tales, and other stories long before they understand that animals don’t really talk. These characters impart timeless wisdom, spark the imagination, and can imbue our children with a love of literature for decades to come.

Heroic Heroines

Heroes fill literature, especially children’s literature. Traditional, swashbuckling tales of derring-do feature knights in shining armor and damsels in distress. But what about our daughters who’d like to see heroic models of the female variety? And what about the heroines who show our sons that women can rescue as well as be rescued? Where are they?

First, let’s consider the heroic tradition which arises from, well, tradition. Let’s be honest, tradition values strength and valor as masculine traits. Look at practically any fairy tale: Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty. They each display traits of traditional feminine ideals: diligence, kindness, generosity, physical beauty, fidelity, and not a courageous or aggressive bone among them.

Female protagonists have waited a long time to break out from those socially imposed confines, but some authors realized the amazing potential of females in the heroic tradition and to pave the way for many of today’s kickass, weapons-toting heroines.

In 1949, Swedish author Astrid Lindgren’s groundbreaking children’s novel Pippi Longstocking delighted readers and broke the traditional mold of the meek, mild, and obedient heroine with the title character of her book. Made into movies and published in over 50 languages, the series featuring a wildly unconventional and super-strong girl with a big heart and a penchant for getting into lots of trouble.

Published in 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery delighted readers with the growing pains of a curious, 11-year-old orphan named Anne Shirley. Anne of Green Gables was followed by several more novels featuring the curious and irrepressible Anne from adolescence through early adulthood in turn-of-the-century Prince Edward Island in Canada.

Preferring to write blood-and-lust thrillers, Louisa May Alcott thought her classic story of four sisters, Little Women, boring. However, the author puts much of herself into the main heroine, Jo March, who exemplifies intelligence and depth and demands to be considered and treated as the equal of any man.

With a sense of the absurd and understanding the resilience of children, British author Roald Dahl created Matilda, which was not published until 1988, just two years before his death. This spunky heroine, ill-treated by her father and neglected by her mother, uses her precocious intelligence to play pranks in retaliation.

Just as the Women’s Liberation Movement gathered steam, Beverly Cleary published Ramona the Pest in 1968. The title character, Ramona Quimby, appeared first in Henry Huggins as the troublesome little sister of Henry’s friend Beatrice. The Ramona series follows our mischievous heroine from nursery school through the fourth grade.

Redolent of fantasy, The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett features a coming-of-age story of a sickly, 10-year-old orphan who was born in India and sent to live with an irascible uncle in the moors of Yorkshire. The garden takes a prominent place as a symbol for rejuvenation and healing.

Predating the societal upheaval of the Women’s Liberation Movement by a few years, Madeleine L’Engle’s breakthrough fantasy A Wrinkle in Time (1963) centers mainly upon the adventures of a misfit girl whose father, a government scientist, goes missing. Accompanied by her brother, her friend, and three mysterious ladies—Mrs. Watsis, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which—they travel through dimensions and time.

C. S. Lewis used classical tropes of sacrifice and courage in his iconic Chronicles of Narnia, the second and most famous of which is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). Although the story features the adventures of all four children, the youngest, Lucy Pevensie, becomes the central character who demonstrates loyalty, truthfulness, and valor.

Swiss author Johanna Louise Spyri published Heidi in 1881, about a 5-year-old orphaned girl compelled to live with her grandfather and then, three years later, sent to live as a companion to a wealthy invalid. While the story does not deviate much from the traditional traits and role of the female protagonist, it does offer a glimpse into the expectations placed on children of the age who were required to work for their keep.

Frances Hodgson Burnett strikes gold a second time with A Little Princess (1905), which takes place in dreary Victorian England. A wealthy widower’s daughter, young Sara Crewe falls into harsh indentured servitude when suddenly impoverished by her father’s death. Again, the typical elements come into play with the heroine being sweet, kind, and generous who eventually reaps the just reward of her good nature.

Lewis Carroll’s classic of Alice’s in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (1898) begin with a girl whom things happen to and evolves into a fierce, courageous heroine who makes things happen.

Aimed solidly at the “tweenage” audience, the Nancy Drew mysteries first appeared in 1930, published under the pseudonym of Carolyn Keene and were ghostwritten by a series of authors. Bobbie Ann Mason described the wealthy, brilliant, and pretty teen sleuth “as cool as Mata Hari and as sweet as Betty Crocker.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s serial autobiography features her younger self, beginning with Little House in the Big Woods (1932). The series follows the author’s life, depicting a realistic protagonist who’s not the prettiest girl, not the most obedient, and filled with curiosity and independence.