#Like personally if I was going to make the controversial decision to add children's lit to an already controversial list of classics

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I don't know how much this adds to the discussion regarding Animorphs being children's lit, but I think it's important to keep in mind that kids' books can get away with heavier themes than kids' shows tend to, so if someone's coming into the discussion with the framework of "for children" they may need to keep in mind that as a book it can cover more ground than a tv show that grownups just have to glance at to decide if it's "too much" for their kiddos (whether it is too much or not).

This definitely adds to the discussion of Animorphs as children’s lit!  I think you’re hitting the nail right on the head.  Many people don’t realize this (I didn’t realize this until I was in college and had a class on the subject) but television shows have to justify themselves to a metric shitton of people before they’re allowed to go on the air.  Books only have to justify themselves to a moderate-sized committee, if that.

People who have the power to veto content on TV shows include (but are not limited to): individual writers who have a particular idea, head writers who don’t like the idea, script editors who might take it out, directors who refuse to film what they don’t like, videographers or artists who add their own creative vision to ideas, visual effects teams who can cut things based on budget, voice actors who can protest decisions they don’t like, episode editors who might take an idea out, producers who won’t back anything that might cause controversy, studio executives who can pull content that’s not “on brand,” national network crews that can decide not to air certain content, local network crews that can also decide not to air certain content, and future “backers” who might decide not to invest in a show based on its content.

People who have the power to veto content in books include: the author with the idea, the agent who publicizes it, the editor who polishes it, and the publishing agent who sells the idea.  At most.

Nowadays, one can self-publish one’s own work with ZERO outside input, or else very little.  The Martian was read by exactly two (2!) people before Andy Weir put it on the internet, and it became an international bestseller.  It would be possible to make a self-published TV show with that little outside input… but most platforms wouldn’t promote it, and would probably take it down if it got hate-reported or had content violations.  Not only that, but (as Cates pointed out) books get edited as content that has already been written, in a story that already exists.  Shows get edited in the context of deciding whether it’s worth the trouble to write an idea that’s still hypothetical.

Television is ultra-conservative (in the sense of never rocking any boats in any direction) because it has to please hundreds of people with creative input and to justify its multi-million-dollar budgets.  Books can reach the minimum production value necessary to be good with the influence of one person (okay, lbr, two people) and fifty bucks for printing or web-hosting fees.  That’s the reason that only 42% of non-animated roles and 39% of animated roles go to women on TV, including only 12% of non-animated roles and 4% of animated roles going to women of color.  By contrast, 63% of children’s lit on The Atlantic’s bestsellers list is written by women, about female protagonists; that’s not counting books by men about female protagonists.  (They didn’t collect data on authors’ ethnicity; if anyone has this stat, HMU.)

It’s the reason that Arthur just made national news THIS FUCKING YEAR by depicting a same-sex (traditional) (Christian-coded) wedding ceremony, one that local networks in Alabama chose not to air.  Meanwhile, in 2015 Cates presented a conference paper about the history of kids’ picture books with queer protagonists, a history that goes back to 1981 (Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin) and covers such mainstream 1990s series as Bruce Coville’s Magic Shop and Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants.  We see the importance of the lack of gatekeepers: for instance, the author of Heather Has Two Mommies struggled to get a mainstream children’s press to pick up her book, so she went to a lesbian publisher, which ended up creating an entirely new branch for children’s books.  (Apparently there were entire publishing houses just for lesbian books in 1987?  The more you know.)  One other interesting case study for queer content is Gore Vidal: in 1948 he published what would today be classified as a YA gay romance novel (The City and the Pillar) but in 1959 he had to “code” and hide the queer content in the Hollywood film (Ben-Hur) that he also wrote.  Television to this day uses queer-coding in lieu of actual romance, especially when it’s kids’ TV (see: Legend of Korra or Adventure Time), while children’s literature has already made the push all the way into demanding that the queer romances in Grasshopper Jungle and Geography Club be more intersectional.

To be clear, it’s not like children’s books have carte blanche in this regard — Applegate and Grant have both apologized for having to code Mertil and Gafinilan rather than just marrying them off, and have expressed regret over not getting to write an openly bisexual Marco or openly trans Tobias.  But kids’ books can still fly under the radar of the wowsers in a way that kids’ shows often cannot.

Anyway.  Queer representation is obviously just one of a plethora of issues that get very different treatment in children’s books vs. children’s shows.  There are plenty of others.  Children’s shows can depict violence, but have to treat it as silly or inconsequential and avoid showing blood.  (Because that’s a great way to teach kids about not harming others!!!)  Children’s books can have as much blood — and, apparently, as many spilled entrails — as they would like, as long as those things don’t happen in the first couple of pages or make the cover summary.  Neal Shusterman is responsible for some of the most cringe-inducingly silly AniTV episodes, and also some of the most brutally unflinching works of children’s literature I’ve ever read.  American screen media are no longer subject to the Hays Code, but its marks still remain.  American literature has pretty much always been the Wild West, and with the advent of online self-publishing, the west is getting wilder.

Don’t judge a book by its movie.  And don’t judge a book by its show.  AniTV is tame and silly, treating its violence as inconsequential and its characters’ mental health struggles as harmlessly or innocent.  Animorphs has the courage to show that when you shoot a man he doesn’t just silently fall over and disappear but bleeds and screams and dies, that being a victim or a perpetrator of such violence can leave even “innocent kids” fighting for their lives against PTSD and depression.  It has the courage… but it also has the freedom to do so.  That’s an extremely important distinction that should not be overlooked.

[getoutofthisplace]

Dear Gus,

I turned 38 years old today. I’ll post the detailed account I posted to Facebook of how I spent the day below, but I left out the part about how after talking to Nene, I kept standing out on the patio at Yiayia’s house. I watched you and Mom through the window. You sat in her lap, laughing at whatever she was doing. I’m so happy you and me and Mom all have each other. And that we have everyone else. I’m so happy you are happy.

Dad

North Little Rock, Arkansas. 1.8.2020 - 6.23pm.

PLAY BY PLAY:

I don’t know what time it is when I wake up. The room is still dark. I can just make out enough of the bedsheets to notice that Liz is already gone. She had to be at the hospital by 6:30am for work. I lift my phone off the bedside table. It’s nearly 7am. Gus calls for his mother from his crib, but he doesn’t complain when I open his door, turn off his space heater and his sound machine.

“I want Mama,” he says. His pacifier muffles his words.

“Mama’s at work,” I say, opening the wooden blinds.

“No, she’s not,” he says.

“Where is she?”

“She’s in there,” he says, pointing down the dimly lit hallway.

“Okay,” I say, picking him up. “Do you want some breakfast?”

“I need a fig bar and a banana and a vitamin,” he says. He says it every morning.

He tosses his pacifier into the kitchen sink while I peel him a whole banana, careful not to break it, and put it into the Ziploc bowl with a leftover fig bar. His teeth marks are left from a bite he took yesterday. I add the gummy purple vitamin and hand him the bowl. We walk into the living room and I use the remote to turn the television on.

“I want to watch Dino the Dinosaur,” he says. The show features Dino and his friend Dina, dinosaurs of the triceratops variety, who learn about colors or numbers or shapes in every super-short episode. Neither character talks, but a woman with a soothing voice narrates everything. He loves it. Liz and I can’t stand to watch the show, but it’s better than when he got hooked on Trolls, which has no educational value. Or any redeeming qualities whatsoever.

As I leave the room, Gus erupts into a scream. I know immediately that he has noticed I’ve given him yesterday’s fig bar. He cries and says something unintelligible about it.

“Do you want a new fig bar?”

He says something else unintelligible about it.

“Do you want a blueberry or a raspberry fig bar?” I ask.

He stops crying and says he wants raspberry.

I put the new fig bar in his bowl and take out the fig bar with the missing bite. I start to throw it in my mouth, but remember I haven’t weighed yet. I record my weight every day into a Google spreadsheet I share with my cousin John. We have compared weights for years, but got serious about it in 2018 when we began recording our weights every day in the document, the title of which is “Fat Boys.”

When my grandfather was alive, he must’ve thought his grandsons were all a bunch of lanky, weak kids because he offered $100 to the first of us who could get to 180 pounds. He wanted a grandson that could help him contend with livestock. Zachary earned the money, but now that our grandfather’s gone, we’re all on the other side of 180, trying to get back.

I step onto the scale. It reads 187.8. Down a pound from yesterday. A win. I pop the half-eaten fig bar in my mouth and walk to the back bathroom to take a shower.

I see Gus’s blurry shape through the frosted glass of the shower. I stand on my tiptoes to look at him from over the door.

“I need my milk,” he tells me. We call it milk, but it’s really rice milk. He’s allergic to dairy, so we’ve cycled through all the milk alternatives for the last couple of years. His doctors thought he might also be allergic to soy, so we gave up on soy milk, then we discovered he probably had a tree nut allergy, so we quit almond milk. He wouldn’t drink oat milk, so here we are. For now. Our gastroenterology specialist has asked us to bring in another stool sample for testing. He scolded Liz this week for rescheduling Gus’s scope recently, even though his staff told us to reschedule because of a cold. It was an unnecessary risk, they said. The abnormal results from the lab tests weren’t that big of a deal, the doctor himself said. But when Liz sat in front of him this week, he felt differently. He felt we weren’t taking Gus’s health seriously. He threatened to not reschedule if we were just going to cancel. When she recounted the conversation with me over the phone, I could feel my blood boil. There was a time when I believed in the authority of doctors and could stand to be talked down to within reason, but that time is no longer. Now I need them to recognize the importance of customer service. My instinct was to drive to Children’s Hospital and kick his office door down, but instead I told Liz to write down everything that he told her and the tone in which he said it because as soon as we no longer need him to tell us what is wrong with our boy’s digestive system, I will make sure everyone within earshot understands what an arrogant prick he is. (Stay tuned.)

“Did you poop?” I ask Gus.

“No, I didn’t poop,” he says.

“I think you pooped,” I say, hoisting him onto the changing table. I am late and don’t really have time to take the stool sample now, but I want to get it as quickly as possibly so we can get back the lab results.

I strip his pajamas off him and check his diaper. He wasn’t lying. There is no poop.

“Where are we going today?” Gus asks me.

“I’m going to work and you’re going to school.”

“Oh no, school’s closed today, Daddy.”

I glare at him, but he’s committed to the lie—he doesn’t smirk.

At work, my coworkers have hung a couple of “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” banners in my office, which I share with Derek, though he isn’t in yet. They hand me the birthday sombrero to wear and we stand around the small conference room singing happy birthday. My brother-in-law has sent two breakfast casseroles and a large mixing bowl full of fresh fruit. We eat and catch up. We are a closely knit team, but it feels like we haven’t talked as a group since before Christmas, with everyone coming and going. A child has started at daycare. A spouse has gotten a dog. I express my growing anger toward the doctor. A 9:30 meeting breaks up our reunion and we all go back to work.

Derek and I debate where to go to lunch. I pull out my Excel sheet and begin reading off the names of local restaurants. We discuss a future study in which we spend each week only eating one dish, comparing one restaurant to another. We will find the city’s best ramen, the best pizza, the best cobb salad. But for now, we just need lunch. It’s already after noon. We go to Senor Tequila because it’s closer than anywhere else. We each get the special of the day: Bean burrito, cheese enchilada, Mexican rice for $6. We’re both amazed at how cheap that is. Derek quickly does some math on how much money he would save for the rest of his life if he only ate a $6 lunch. The figure is relatively astronomical. But then he surprises me by buying me lunch for my birthday, which would throw his number off, probably.

This morning, Liz tasked me with deciding what I’d like to do for my birthday dinner. She is unsatisfied when I tell her I don’t know. She tells me we can go somewhere, or she can make me something, or her mother has offered to order take-out at her house. I tell Liz I will decide later and text her before she gets off work at 3pm.

As that hour approaches, I am overwhelmed with the mountain of work I am facing at the office. I need the mental boost that comes with being able to scratch anything off my to-do list. Something easy, something quick. I text Liz that I want to go to her mother’s house and eat what we refer to as Korean tacos—chopped salmon and rice wrapped in seaweed. Accomplishing that simple task and being decisive gives me confidence to also ask her to make me a cherry pie, though I tell her it doesn’t have to be today. Just soon.

When she gets off work, she calls to say she’ll make the pie tonight if I’ll go get Gus from daycare.

In my truck I’m listening to Dani Shapiro read her memoir, HOURGLASS. I’ve mostly read fiction lately and Shapiro has reminded me how much I love memoir done right. So right that I feel like I’ve known her, personally, for a long time. Like we have a history that would warrant me picking up my phone and texting her to say, “I’m finally getting around to reading your book, old friend, and it is beautiful.” I wonder if my mother would like the book. I think she would.

I race across town to get to Gus’s daycare in Hillcrest before 5:30pm, but when I get there, I have time to spare. There are only five minutes left in my book, so I turn my truck’s engine off and watch the other parents wrangle their children into their respective cars while I listen to the very end—“This audiobook has been a production…”

I meet eyes with a mother I don’t recognize coming out of the school, and I realize just how creepy I may look, sitting there outside a daycare in my nondescript pick-up truck, no sense of urgency to get out and retrieve my child.

“Daddy!” Gus says, running into my arms when I finally go in and stand in the doorway where he and his friend Luna are the last two children.

“Does someone at your house have a birthday today?” Ms. Cathy asks Gus. “It’s Daddy’s birthday!” Gus says. And I feel incredibly loved by my son. He doesn’t have to love me, I think, but he does.

On the way home, I explain to Gus how the red lights and the green lights dictate when we stop and when we go. He is fascinated. He applies the rule to all the lights he sees.

“What is that yellow light?” he asks.

“That’s a controversial subject, son.” I say. “Some people think it means slow down, but I’m in the camp that just thinks it means it’s time to commit.”

“Oooohhhh…” he says. “I don’t want to go home.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I want to go see diggers,” he says. We are in a construction equipment phase.

“We’ll have to keep an eye out for some on the way to Yiayia & Papou’s.”

“Are we going to Yiayia & Papou’s?”

“Yiayia & Papou, we’re coming for you…” I say. It’s a game we’ve played for probably a year. I say the names of the people whose house we are going to and he will say what it is he wants from them.

“We’re coming for you and your toys and your Paw Patrol,” he responds.

When we get there, he runs into the living room for the toys and the Paw Patrol, which are also toys.

“Happy birthday,” Zill says.

Athena hugs me. Liz kisses me. I can tell she is eager for me to see that she is making my cherry pie.

“I didn’t have time to make Nana’s crust, but look at those cherries,” she says.

They are the red of earthy roses, a color not found from a can of cherry pie filling.

Athena pulls two beers from the refrigerator. “They’re both Birthday Bomb! beers, but one is aged in a whiskey barrel!” she tells me.

Liz and I are on a diet that only allows us to drink once a week and this week has already been spoken for.

“It’s a special occasion,” she says. “You should drink them.”

Athena pulls a frozen mug from the freezer and I pour the stout into the glass. I sit with Zill in the living room. We toast that our country has somehow managed to not initiate World War III yet. Athena brings in a plate of large, chilled shrimp, which grabs Gus’s attention.

“What are those things?” he asks.

“Those are shrimp,” I say. “You love shrimp.”

“I need to have them,” he says.

I hold one by the tail as he eagerly bites into it. He wants to take another bite before he finishes the first. He’s ready to move on to the next shrimp entirely, but I regain his attention and show him the meat that is still in the tail. He devours one shrimp after the other. So much so that I look around to see if anyone else thinks I should stop him. Liz is happy he’s eating protein and not carbs, so I let him continue.

My mother calls me and I step out onto the back patio. She wishes me a happy birthday and we talk about my day. We talk about the extended family getting together Sunday maybe to celebrate everyone who has a birthday in January—me, my sister, my grandmother, my aunt and uncle and oldest niece, Caroline, who came within hours of being a February birthday that night in 2008 when we all waited so long in the waiting room at the hospital in Memphis.

“Stop by so we can give you your birthday gift,” my sister texts me. They live less than a mile from us.

By the time Liz gets Gus bathed and I insist on waiting around to see the Final Jeopardy question, which I initially answered partially correct, but then second-guess myself enough to ultimately miss entirely, our family is tired. I drive Liz and Gus home so she can put him to bed, then I double back.

I look through the window and see Laura and Chris sitting in their living room, which is halfway through a remodel and in a state of disarray. I walk in without knocking. The lights are mostly out, but there is a lamp over the new keyboard my mother got her granddaughters for Christmas this year.

“Where’s Liz?” they ask. They prefer their aunt to their uncle.

“She had to go put Gus down,” I say, noticing the paper taped to two chairs facing the keyboard. On each paper is our names—“Guy” and “Liz”—our assigned seats.

Caroline casually walks out of the hallway onto the makeshift staging area in front of me. She holds a cardboard beard to her face and delivers lines she has written and rehearsed, but that don’t quite steer a clear narrative. Her younger sister emerges from the hallway with a similar prop and a less confident set of lines. They ramp up the drama by throwing their cardboard disguises away quickly and each donning a man’s necktie with the tags still on. They go back into the hallway and return with a gift bag for me. Inside, I find a vintage tie rack on which I will be able to hang the ties they have gotten me.

When things settle down, Cate sits at the keyboard. “I tried to learn ‘Happy Birthday,’ but I couldn’t,” she says to me, before playing the first notes of another simple tune from the songbook in front of her. We all clap when she finishes. I hug both my nieces and their parents.

“Did you ever take piano lessons, Gunkel?” Cate asks me.

“I did, but not for very long,” I say. “I could never coordinate my left hand while I was also using my right.”

Like I always do when I am in front of piano keys, I play the recognizable right hand to the melody of Beethoven’s Fur Elise.

“Can you teach me how to read those notes?” I ask Cate, nodding toward her songbook.

She shows me which notes correspond and together we try to play something. I enjoy the time with her, and I enjoy reading the music, even if it’s in such a simplistic form.

Again, I thank them for my gifts, then say goodbye. As I back out of their driveway, I notice a text from the woman who was married to my father when he died. They were married for nearly two decades. She has already wished me a happy birthday and so before I open it, I think hard about what information she might have to give me, but come up with nothing.

“Abbey passed tonight,” her text reads.

My father’s dog. A Jack Russell terrier he got when I lived with them. She was nuts, but also cute and loyal and absolutely fearless. Every time Dad introduced her to someone, he would say, “She’d fight a bear,” and he would tell of the time she came wandering home after fighting a wild animal, her insides dragging behind her.

Now, when I think of Abbey, I think of my father in his hospital bed at home in White County, depressed and ready to die, and in the corner, guarding the window, there is Abbey, standing guard for him, happy to wait as long as she needs to. I will always love her for the happiness she gave him.

When I get home, the lights are out. Liz and Gus are asleep. Suki and I walk to the backyard and I throw the tennis ball for her over and over until she no longer brings it back. I wash my hands and see our family cookbook on the counter. It lies open to the page listing my Nana’s pie crust recipe. I imagine Liz pulling the cookbook out this afternoon. And I feel incredibly loved by my wife. She doesn’t have to love me, but she does.

This is my wonderful life at 38 years old: cherry pies, tie racks, and memories of my father and his dog.