The Christmas Pig and common themes in children's books

[Christmasisallaround]

Reading the Christmas Pig with DC and loving it.

But the beginning when the little boy hears his parents shout/scream is so painful to read. Immediately I want to go "la la la" and skip ahead!

We chat of course and it's interesting to hear their thoughts. Kids think about things far more than we parents realise I think. I guess that's why children's books are full of divorce and death.

DC and I recently started thinking / listing all the books or films with dead parents. It's awful!

BFG
Frozen
Secret Garden
Little Princess
Annie
Oliver Twist

There's loads more

Yes lots of dead parents. I forgot about some of the older books. I don't recall it bothering me as a child reading the Secret Garden.

I think dead or absent parents give more opportunity for a story or an adventure. That's possibly why. A book where the child is loved and cherished and has a completely uneventful childhood would not make a very interesting read.

Dead, or absent parents are perhaps commoner than happy families in classic childrens fiction (and YA/adult books read by teens). I'm sure there's been a lot written about why that is.

Add to the list:
Anne of Green gables (orphan)
Little women (father away in the war)
The railway children (father wrongly jailed)
Narnia (evacuees)
Harry Potter, of course.
Swallows and Amazons (one father in navy, the other dead)
What Katy did (dead mother)
Anything set in a boarding school
Jane Eyre

Roald Dahl spoke about this didn't he? You have to get rid of the parents to enable the children to get into peril which drives the story. If the child had present, loving, safe parents they would be protected from giant peaches and rubbish monsters and evil counts and the like.

First thing you need to do is get rid of the parents or adults that naturally will come in and solve it.

Either by removing them (death/otherwise absent) or having them so clearly not willing to help or child not wanting to ask for help.
It was probably easier to write a children's book in the past. No one thought anything of sending their children off to camp on an island, or stay with an unknown person, or just go off hitchhiking round the country.
Nowadays the parents would be telling them that they weren't going off on their own, and taking a day trip with them with an experienced guide.

My girls spotted that Moana was the first story in ages where the main character doesn't have a family disaster. Both her parents are perfectly fit and well plus she had a perfect idyllic childhood.

Generally there's dead, disabled or bewitched parents and an evil guardian involved.

Haven't read the Chrostmas Pig yet. If arguing parents is the source of the trauma that's an improvement!

Last year I refused to teach a particular book (cannot remember which one) as it was yet another book with dead/ missing parents. We’d taught 3 with that theme already that year.

However, the rule doesn't seem to apply so much to anthropomorphised animal families. Even Dahl had Fantastic Mr Fox & family. Peter Rabbit's unfortunate father was more of the exception.

I think the shouting and screaming heard was the uncomfortable bit. Can only have been a few sentences. I could have coped with a euphemistically absent parent! Which is a very old fashioned approach I guess. The idea that we keep things from children and they don't know what's going on.

I can see missing parents works well plot wise.

Finding Nemo is another one! Stepped out of the room for one minute and walked back in to find my ds in tears at the beginning!

@Woulditbeworth

Finding Nemo is another one! Stepped out of the room for one minute and walked back in to find my ds in tears at the beginning!

My children didn’t know about the first 5 minutes of Finding Nemo for many years…🤣

@Woulditbeworth

Finding Nemo is another one! Stepped out of the room for one minute and walked back in to find my ds in tears at the beginning!

My eldest coped absolutely fine with the death of Nemo's mother and siblings, but we had to fast forward the bit where he disobeys his dad and touches the boat..... never knew whether I should be offended or it was just hilarious 🤣