Quiet
Please, Owen McPhee! By Trudy Ludwig.
Illustrated by Patrice Barton. Knopf. $17.99.
The
Dinosaur Expert. By Margaret
McNamara. Illustrated by G. Brian Karas. Schwartz & Wade. $17.99.
Stories are not enough for some authors of children’s books: the stories
must serve a purpose, teaching something that the authors deem important to
communicate. This is scarcely a new idea: instructive tales for kids are at
least as old as Aesop’s fables (although those are aimed as much at adults as
at young people). What is different in the approach nowadays is authors’
attempts to use real-seeming children, in carefully structured real-world
settings, as teaching tools, the underlying assumption being that young readers
(and their parents) will identify with a book’s characters and therefore absorb
the work’s foundational lesson more readily. Certainly that is what Trudy
Ludwig and illustrator Patrice Barton hope for in Quiet Please, Owen McPhee! The title character is neither more nor
less than a red-headed young boy who talks too much – incessantly, in fact. Ludwig’s
writing makes it clear from the outset that Owen is doing something wrong:
“Even Hannah, his loyal hound dog, gets more than an earful of what Owen has to
say.” And Barton’s illustrations, packed with cartoon-style dialogue balloons
and suitably unhappy, disgusted or alarmed expressions on the faces of
characters (including Hannah), emphasize Ludwig’s point. Owen’s parents are
totally useless, making no effort to control or redirect his nonstop talking
even after it causes problems in his school work (because he talks instead of
listening to details of an assignment) and with his friends (who desert him
when he spoils their discussion of a movie by thoughtlessly revealing the
ending). It is left to nature to teach Owen (and readers) a lesson: Owen wakes
up one day with laryngitis, forcing him to try to communicate all his thoughts
in writing instead of verbally. But he realizes that he cannot write as quickly
as he can talk, and the experience forces him to listen instead of giving his
own views all the time. And that
leads to him cooperating and working with a girl named Isabella, a bright,
budding engineer who figures out how – with Owen’s help – to make a
class-project bridge stronger. Reformed after his experience, Owen gives
himself one “laryngitis day” per week as a reminder not to talk all the time –
an amusing notion that leads right into a “Questions for Discussion” page that
makes clear the essentially didactic nature of Quiet Please, Owen McPhee! The book is a trifle uneasy at times in
trying to balance its primary instructional message with a touch of humor:
amusement peeks through here and there, but Ludwig and Barton are clearly
concerned mainly with getting kids to understand the importance of being quiet
and listening to others. The book
directly invites adults to continue discussing the topic after the story ends,
so parents (and teachers considering using the book in class) should read the
work carefully to decide whether it is a good jumping-off point for follow-up
exploration.
Owen’s classmate Isabella is one of an increasing number of girl
characters focused on the politically correct topic of the moment, STEM (science,
technology, engineering and mathematics) – and specifically on getting more
girls and women engaged in fields that are the traditional purview of men. The Dinosaur Expert is all about this
focus, which has the admirable aim of involving people of both genders in areas
of increasing importance to modern life – but which has a tendency to descend
into moralistic preachiness when not handled with sufficient sensitivity. Margaret
McNamara and illustrator G. Brian Karas almost go down the slippery slope of over-simplistic
presentation and straw men (those are
always men); but on balance, their
book makes a good point about girls’ capabilities in scientific fields in a way
that, if heavy-handed, is generally nicely presented. The story is about a
class led by Mr. Tiffin that includes one specific student, Kimmy, who is
obviously already a budding scientist, seen on the book’s first page studying
fossils in her bedroom, where she has a collection of them to go with the rocks
and shells and leaves and other natural items that she likes to study. Kimmy –
whose parents are even less important than Owen McPhee’s, since his show up and
do nothing while hers are never seen at all – is especially interested in and
knowledgeable about dinosaurs. She is enthusiastic about sharing what she knows
with the class during a museum field trip, but as soon as she starts to do so
and talks about her ambition to study science, a boy named Jake tells her that
“girls aren’t scientists,” and Kimmy immediately clams up and will not say
anything further at all. Unaccountably, Mr. Tiffin, although portrayed as a
kind and empathetic teacher, does nothing whatsoever about this, for the simple
reason that if he told Kimmy and Jake that Jake is wrong – and gave examples
showing why – there would be no story. This over-obvious authorial manipulation
is what makes the book less compelling than it could be: smart young readers
are likely to ask their parents why the teacher, who is standing right there when Kimmy and Jake have
their interaction, says and does nothing. What McNamara has happen is this:
Kimmy goes along as the class moves among the dinosaur exhibits, studying
things on her own and thinking about what she knows – even sharing some of the
knowledge with Mr. Tiffin. But she will not say anything further to the class –
until, in one room, she sees information on a modern-day female paleontologist
and realizes that girls can become
scientists after all. That leads Kimmy to start talking again, revealing her
knowledge and helping the class understand dinosaurs better; and Jake – a
cardboard character if there ever was one – simply makes comments and asks
questions along with everyone else. The book ends with two pages of “My
Favorite Paleontologists by Kimmy,” driving home the point that there are females in the field and, indeed,
have been some (well, one, anyway) since the earliest days of exploration for
fossils. A simple, feel-good book for girls who need a little nudge or two to
explore their existing interest in STEM, The
Dinosaur Expert will change no minds about girls’ and women’s scientific
abilities. But it can provide the foundation for a more-thoughtful discussion
of the challenges and opportunities for women scientists than is contained in
the book itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment