tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post8739323768113188465..comments2024-03-18T09:51:31.137-04:00Comments on Editorial Anonymous: Audience? What Audience?Editorial Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06294247222893767117noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-18746290918599943682008-04-04T11:23:00.000-04:002008-04-04T11:23:00.000-04:00The first title that popped into my head is We're ...The first title that popped into my head is <I>We're Going on a Bear Hunt</I>, by Michael Rosen/illustrated by Helen Oxenbury.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-91346148789594009332008-04-03T06:36:00.000-04:002008-04-03T06:36:00.000-04:00My BET is that EA, you were at the Bologna Book Fa...My BET is that EA, you were at the Bologna Book Fair...<BR/><BR/>Just a thought Mr. Fox. Every read the book MY LUCKY DAY? It's Fabulous.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-6892730857417537232008-03-28T14:05:00.000-04:002008-03-28T14:05:00.000-04:00I miss your posts. I hope you're on a fabulous va...I miss your posts. I hope you're on a fabulous vacation.pathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05587289732878835426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-4974358020496547612008-03-26T18:10:00.000-04:002008-03-26T18:10:00.000-04:00There's also an interesting Wikepedia article on t...There's also an interesting Wikepedia article on the Fourth Wall:<BR/><BR/>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall#Breaking_the_fourth_wallBob Schechterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10672054246806238472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-63785618252145179892008-03-26T14:24:00.000-04:002008-03-26T14:24:00.000-04:00I think there's a difference between the author/st...I think there's a difference between the author/storyteller addressing the reader directly, which has been done practically since the first stories were told, and having a fictional character within the story turn to address the reader directly and let us know that he/she is conscious of his/her fictional status and the audience's status as audience. <BR/><BR/>The best early examples I know of come in The Tempest. In Act IV, the audience is slyly being addressed here:<BR/><BR/><I>Our revels now are ended. These our actors,<BR/>As I foretold you, were all spirits, and<BR/>Are melted into air, into thin air:<BR/>And like the baseless fabric of this vision,<BR/>The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,<BR/>The solemn temples, the great globe itself,<BR/>Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,<BR/>And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,<BR/>Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff<BR/>As dreams are made on; and our little life<BR/>Is rounded with a sleep.</I><BR/><BR/>But there's no slyness as the last moving words are spoken directly by Prospero to the audience, though Prospero has now become the playwright simultaneously:<BR/><BR/><I>Now my charms are all o’erthrown, <BR/>And what strength I have’s mine own, <BR/>Which is most faint. Now, ’tis true, <BR/>I must be here confin’d by you, <BR/>Or sent to Naples. Let me not, <BR/>Since I have my dukedom got <BR/>And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell <BR/>In this bare island by your spell; <BR/>But release me from my bands <BR/>With the help of your good hands. <BR/>Gentle breath of yours my sails <BR/>Must fill, or else my project fails, <BR/>Which was to please. Now I want <BR/>Spirits to enforce, art to enchant, <BR/>And my ending is despair, <BR/>Unless I be reliev’d by prayer, <BR/>Which pierces so that it assaults <BR/>Mercy itself and frees all faults. <BR/> As you from crimes would pardon’d be, <BR/> Let your indulgence set me free.</I>Bob Schechterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10672054246806238472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-79271565955908036802008-03-26T13:59:00.000-04:002008-03-26T13:59:00.000-04:00I think kids love to be pulled into a book this wa...I think kids love to be pulled into a book this way. It makes them feel the story was written just for them.<BR/><BR/>Suzanne Lieurance<BR/>The Working Writer's Coach<BR/>http://www.workingwriterscoach.com<BR/>"When Your Pen Won't Budge, Read The Morning Nudge"Suzanne Lieurancehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11844924439366800477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-68420794000453878192008-03-21T03:54:00.000-04:002008-03-21T03:54:00.000-04:00Markus Zusak's I AM THE MESSENGER. Of course, for ...Markus Zusak's I AM THE MESSENGER. Of course, for those who have read it, I wonder what the ending would be called...a door in the fourth wall?Nataliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14119053515951615279noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-10116605257289155302008-03-20T08:56:00.000-04:002008-03-20T08:56:00.000-04:00"Don't put Your Finger in the Jelly Nelly" is perh..."Don't put Your Finger in the Jelly Nelly" is perhaps more of a novelty book... where one puts his/her finger thru the hole and it ends up in the food.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-52449148735802902192008-03-20T08:48:00.000-04:002008-03-20T08:48:00.000-04:00I don't think anyone has mentioned TICKLE THE DUCK...I don't think anyone has mentioned TICKLE THE DUCK, a personal favorite. It's kind of like PAT THE BUNNY on steroids.Brendahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03563448164251033557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-40631292418775727742008-03-20T08:07:00.000-04:002008-03-20T08:07:00.000-04:00Well I didn't even know there was a "term" for it ...Well I didn't even know there was a "term" for it but the author of the "Penelope" series I illustrate "broke down the fourth wall" on the last page in the second book, where the monster is facing the kids and asking them to "shhhh, don't tell him though".<BR/>ha, I had no idea.<BR/>My grandson LOVES the cartoons that require participation, as Deirdre has mentioned. He and his baby sister yell excitedly, things like, "NO, don't go there", or, "Yes, behind the flowers" or whatever the scenario is. I can forget (not being around children on a daily basis anymore) how really involved they can and love to get in the shows, plays, movies and books.Christine Tripphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05058419743726981987noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-74554209615546442112008-03-19T21:36:00.000-04:002008-03-19T21:36:00.000-04:00I think it's important to note that audience parti...I think it's important to note that audience participation and breaking the fourth wall are different things. A lot of books for very young children are designed with audience participation in mind...breaking the fourth wall takes that extra "pigeon" step by addressing the reader directly, whereas something like Black and White or one of those animal sounds books invites the reader in in a participatory experience, but does not explicitly acknowledge the reader. Both are cool techniques when done well...like who can forget clapping their hands to save Tinkerbell?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-48015096723643956522008-03-19T18:34:00.000-04:002008-03-19T18:34:00.000-04:00"Peter Pan" has a bit of breaking the fourth wall ..."Peter Pan" has a bit of breaking the fourth wall (though it is exemplified in the stage show when Peter asks the audience to clap and save Tinker Bell's life).<BR/><BR/>And . . .<BR/><BR/>*cough* my book *cough*Adriennehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01607530400279311428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-23294660235369051932008-03-19T15:08:00.000-04:002008-03-19T15:08:00.000-04:00If I remember correctly, Someone is Reading This B...If I remember correctly, <A HREF="http://www.umanitoba.ca/cm/vol5/no14/someoneisreading.html" REL="nofollow"><I>Someone is Reading This Book</I></A> by Alice Priestly breaks the 4th wall. <BR/><BR/>[Unlike the reviewer at the link I've provided, I really enjoyed the book. Either the book's humor wasn't up the reviewr's alley or mine is a bit off-beat. Who knows? It may be a bit of both. :o)]Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-16403604296748863272008-03-19T14:55:00.000-04:002008-03-19T14:55:00.000-04:00No, I don't think McCauley's books are for childre...No, I don't think McCauley's books are for children under eight. They are most popular with third thru sixth, or seventh or maybe even eighth graders. And most like "Mosque" etc. are educational/trade in my mind. You see them in schools, libraries and bookstores and at bookfairs.<BR/><BR/>They are not read alouds for sure.<BR/><BR/>And they are not fiction for the most part.<BR/><BR/>But what they are is very well made and illustrated, informative and kinda cool in presentation, angle and thought, which attracts its own fan base.<BR/><BR/>I like pbs for older kids. It is not a broad a market but it is a vital one if the product is quality.<BR/><BR/>You know that book "A Street Through Time" by Dr. Anne Millard and illustrator Steve Noon (talk about meticulous)? This is a book you can look at and read over and over again. <BR/><BR/>And "So You Want to Be President"<BR/><BR/>These are fabulous pbs for older kids. And well executed.<BR/><BR/>They are not interactive but they do cause a reaction....like that is so cool!<BR/><BR/>Anyway,I digress.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-84459874259475798892008-03-19T14:12:00.000-04:002008-03-19T14:12:00.000-04:00To some degree (sorry, I don't have any such books...To some degree (sorry, I don't have any such books on hand and I'm thousands of miles from the nearest English library), a lot of chic lit, first person, chatty YA do that. The asides to the reader, the verbal eye-rolling over situations, etc. I don't mind those, and I don't mind the CS Lewis examples, but some of the more recent literary MG novels don't do it for me--they feel too heavy-handed for me, and tear me out of the story. <BR/><BR/>In a picture book, though, I think it's a fun technique. After all, an adult has to read a picture book to a child who can't, so you're already putting something between the text and the intended audience. Playing on that is just fun.Rose Greenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10752073931486321348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-42731340591486485822008-03-19T14:06:00.000-04:002008-03-19T14:06:00.000-04:00My siblings and I loved "Black and White" -- It wa...My siblings and I loved "Black and White" -- It was a great book to sprawl out on the family room floor with.<BR/><BR/>But We were older--I was probably 14 or so when my dad brought it home, so my youngest brother was 7.<BR/><BR/>But many of McCauley's "Picture Books" aren't for children at all. Think Motel of the Mysteries or Baa...... even the classics, (Castle, Cathedral, City, Unbuilding, etc.) aren't really for children below the age of ten or so.......<BR/><BR/>McCauley isn't really a "Children's" illustrator at all! The only reason his books get shelved in the kids section is because of the dogmatic "pictures=kids" position.<BR/><BR/><BR/>As for Black and White, etc. breaking the fourth wall...<BR/><BR/>I don't think so. Creating a work that the reader needs to think about and puzzle through isn't the same as breaking the illusion of a self-contained world.<BR/><BR/>You're just asking the reader to figure out the rules of the world (like in The Westing Game....)<BR/><BR/>Even having an unreliable narrator doesn't break the illusion--if anything it deepens it because you're really seeing the world through those eyes....<BR/><BR/>Books are not designed just to be dispensers of information to be accepted by a passive reader--- They all demand some degree of thought and interaction.....<BR/><BR/>(Or maybe this is just my liberal-arts-major "How to Read a Book" loving self coming through......)Deirdre Mundyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14357363160387734552noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-72255868284385210262008-03-19T14:05:00.000-04:002008-03-19T14:05:00.000-04:00Not to love you right back in public, Christy, but...Not to love you right back in public, Christy, but I just visited your blog: Jane Austen! Point Reyes!Stonehenge! Gilgamesh! Shakespeare! Whitman!<BR/><BR/>I think we might secretly be the same person.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-90567548073283422662008-03-19T13:20:00.000-04:002008-03-19T13:20:00.000-04:00Working Ill, I love you too!Lenz, the librarian I ...Working Ill, I love you too!<BR/><BR/>Lenz, the librarian I spoke to said kids don't get this one. My writing teacher presented this one to us as his personal favorite. Only me and one other person in the class understood it. Same with the Sweetest Figaroooo. I consider these books to be the kind you mull over and look thru many times. They are not quick reaction getters. They are cerebral, I guess. But I love both of them and put them with my 'wow' collection. It might be because I am a visual animal.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-59490372434749082402008-03-19T13:01:00.000-04:002008-03-19T13:01:00.000-04:00Working Illustrator, I think I love you. And you'v...Working Illustrator, I think I love you. And you've read the Epic of Gilgamesh--it's like a cherry on top.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-84602396882077367452008-03-19T12:55:00.000-04:002008-03-19T12:55:00.000-04:00I think, like most matters of technique, breaking ...I think, like most matters of technique, breaking the fourth wall has a span of degrees. <BR/><BR/>The <I>Pigeon</I> books (MW's <I>Elephant and Piggie</I>, too) are a very direct, word-and-picture conversation with the reader (which is one of the reasons they make such great group read-alouds).<BR/><BR/>The much more common occasional direct address (<I> Tale of Desperaux,</I> et al.) is a milder version of this: the book takes a quick break from its own world to speak to us in ours. I think this technique went out of fashion with the Victorians, who loved it and used it constantly (<I>Jane Eyre</I> wouldn't be <I>Jane Eyre</I> without it). Lately, it's crept back in as writers play with the post-modern idea of formally self-conscious text (or rather the new post-modern version of what's actually a very old idea: the epic of <I>Gilgamesh</I> begins with a direct address to the reader).<BR/><BR/>This idea also has visual expressions: the wonderful anarchy of <I> The Stinky Cheese Man</I> is driven by exactly the same self-consciousness and self-reference. The much more formal game-playing of <I>Black and White</I> is the same.<BR/><BR/>Another, maybe milder, version of this is a text that contradicts in some obvious way the facts the reader already has: examples here would include all of the 'radical retellings' of well-known stories from the early Lane Smith/Jon Scieszka effort <I>The True Story of the Three Little Pigs</I> to almost anything by Gregory Maguire to John Gardner's <I>Grendel</I>.<BR/><BR/>In all of those stories, the reader 'knows' things that the text in front of him is contradicting. The text engages him/her in a whole battle of wits that takes place outside the words on the page as the reader reacts to the challenge: objecting, defending, reconsidering, re-assesing.<BR/><BR/>Again, this works in pictures as well. Some of the best picture book moments are moments when the pictures and text contradict each other in a way that lets the reader in on a secret. As christy lenzi points out above, <I>Dear Mrs. LaRue</I> does that. One of my favorites, <I>Good Night Gorilla</I> does more or less the same in a still softer way.<BR/><BR/>At some point on this scale, decreasing intrusiveness becomes indistinguishable from the active engagement of normal reading.<BR/><BR/>I bother laying all of this out because I think recognizing this span <I>as a span</I> in important both for writers and editors. <BR/><BR/>'Breaking the wall', like a lot of lit-crit usage, is a blanket term: a useful enough phrase for beginning a discussion, but too blunt an instrument to be useful on its own. "Red" will do for most people in describing a tulip, but an artist or a florist is going to have to have a more nuanced vocabulary.<BR/><BR/>How much do I break the wall? In what way? To what purpose? What am I gaining by doing it and what am I losing? <BR/><BR/>These are the questions that are subtle enough to be interesting. And they're only answerable in the places writers and editors really do their work: in the very particular moments and problems of very particular texts.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-22372745816113672432008-03-19T12:41:00.000-04:002008-03-19T12:41:00.000-04:00ae, I suspect you're right that books like Black a...ae, I suspect you're right that books like Black and White require a bit more sophistication--a certain level of multiliteracy--to be fully appreciated. But I assumed there were plenty of kids out there who were up for it. I don't know how Black and White has been received by its intended audience--I'd be interested in finding out how well those kinds of books fare.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-83565497126837128432008-03-19T12:39:00.000-04:002008-03-19T12:39:00.000-04:00How about Don't Make Me Laugh, and No Laughing, No...How about Don't Make Me Laugh, and No Laughing, No Smiling, No Giggling by James Stevenson? "I am in charge of this book. I make up the rules....Do not laugh! Do not even smile! Don't do anything you are told not to do." The reader is tempted to tickle, poke and otherwise disrupt the characters in these books, trying to get them to laugh.<BR/><BR/>Also, getting back to the Dora phenomenon, Blues Clues and other, newer children's shows base their appeal on the same interactivity -- talking to the children, waiting for their responses. As commercial as these are, this "breaking down the 4th wall" has led to more interaction and thinking instead of just glazed over eyes and slack jaws!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-38539462509294333592008-03-19T11:30:00.000-04:002008-03-19T11:30:00.000-04:00Do Not Open This Book by Michaela Muntean, illustr...Do Not Open This Book by Michaela Muntean, illustrated by Pascal Lemaitre. Though to me it replicates a lot of There's a Monster at the End of This Book (also called, I think, <A HREF="http://www.amazon.ca/Please-Not-Open-this-Book/dp/0375836837/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205940506&sr=8-1" REL="nofollow">Please Do Not Open This Book</A>), which I *love*. I still enjoy it.Cherylhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15942773546991195462noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-64924913630250022682008-03-19T08:44:00.000-04:002008-03-19T08:44:00.000-04:00I like the 'Black and White' book, too, Lenzi. But...I like the 'Black and White' book, too, Lenzi. But I feel that it is more of a book for adults. I feel it is too sophisticated for most children. My local librarian said the same.<BR/><BR/>Still I am glad it is on the shelves.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986595816238301046.post-23920680351233644392008-03-19T08:06:00.000-04:002008-03-19T08:06:00.000-04:00Breaking the fourth wall in a slightly different w...Breaking the fourth wall in a slightly different way: Allan Ahlberg's The Bravest Ever Bear, in which the characters rebel and start rewriting the story, each casting him or herself as the hero.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com