New season of Kipo this weekend! The first season was delightful so I’ve been looking forward to the second. Also I’m on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves which is great fun, even if I’m very bad at it.
So I haven’t finished this series, so maybe this is a bit premature. But I’m one book away from finishing, and I’m scared if I put this off I’m going to forget about this idea altogether, especially since I have so many other books that I’m going to be reading in the meantime: Map of Time, Fires of Heaven, and Rage of Dragons, to name three.
So anyhow.
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Fablehaven and Writing Magical Creatures
I kind of avoided reading Fablehaven for a while. I saw the covers, and it looked cool. But the last time I picked up a book about a preserve for magical creatures I was underwhelmed (I cannot for the life of me remember the title of it, which tells you something; it had a green dragon on the cover is all I recall). Further, as I was getting more into mythology, I liked the idea of themed fantasy, rather than a big jumble where authors threw all sorts of mixed things together for funzies. And since no one I knew was reading them, I couldn’t help but think I wasn’t missing much. I did eventually put it on my to-read list on Goodreads, but I didn’t have much urgency in getting to it. It wasn’t until I started making an active effort to clear through my to-read list that I put Fablehaven on hold and picked it up.
Fablehaven is surprisingly good? I remember reading the first book and thinking to myself that I didn’t know that all of the heroes would make it to the end of the story. And it’s not that unusual in children’s book serieses nowadays for characters to get killed off; Percy Jackson and the Olympians kills a few of the campers once the action gets rolling. But in the very first book? And not as a dramatic backstory or ‘mentor sacrifices himself’ moment, just… killing off the characters. And that struck me. Aside from the two leads, I was convinced that any of these people could bite it at any moment, and that’s a feeling I got through the rest of the series too. Brandon Mull doesn’t disappoint either; characters do die.
I’m not suggesting that this is the Song of Ice and Fire of children’s books, because it’s really not. But this was a book aimed at middle schoolers published in 2006, and this is a book that’s not afraid to say, “Look, there’s a magical world and it’s cool and all, but it’s also incredibly dangerous and the stuff here will happily kill or exploit you without a second thought, so you better not forget that.”
Because many of the creatures of Fablehaven are… well, they’re nonhuman creatures. Many of them are as intelligent as humans, but there are some that are not. Very many, while intelligent, are malevolent towards humans, and yet the Sorensons, and others who run their own magical preserves, are very keen on making sure that these creatures have a place to live. Which kind of baffles me; why on Earth do the keepers at Lost Mesa keep a bunch of zombies around?
I think, too often with magical creatures, there is this inclination in fiction to put them on this sort of spectrum: either they are tame, or they are enemies to be killed. Sometimes they go from the latter to the former. There are obviously exceptions to this, but what made Fablehaven interesting to me was that it kind of acts more like these are animals and people--yeah, they’re not the best neighbors (to put it lightly), but they deserve a place in this world as much as we do, don’t they? And sure, defend yourself if you have to, but you can’t blame a creature for its nature.
Yeah, a lot of theses creatures will kill people, sometimes just for funzies. In the first book we’re introduced to the nyads, who are water nymphs who get their kicks from luring people to the edge of their body of water and dragging them down to drown them. There are trolls that eat people. There are dragons that see human beings like we view mice. There’s a witch that
There’s a conversation in one of the books when it seems like a creature has killed one of the kids, and Grandpa Sorenson compares the creature to a wild bear. If you are killed by a wild bear for invading its territory, you can’t exactly blame the bear: it’s just doing what a bear, by its basic nature, does. Likewise, a troll isn’t vicious to you because it has made an active choice, that’s just the way it’s wired. One of the other characters shoots back that if he’s being attacked by a rabid bear, he will shoot to kill, and Sorenson concedes that it’s a fair reaction; but still, you have to understand that an animal is only acting on its nature.
You know how crazy this is? In kids’ literature? The idea that animals are dangerous? Like I feel as if a lot of fiction aimed at children seems to paint the natural world as being capital-G Good, where if you’re nice to the wildlife it will either be helpful to you or leave you alone. It’s common in a lot of adult literature too. The people who work with animals have a joyful time frolicking with all the creatures of the wild.
Not so in Fablehaven! Yes, the Sorensons love their job, but it’s work, and they’re constantly on their guard, with tons of safeguards in place to make sure that they don’t get killed. It’s not just a Plot thing, though that doesn’t help--their lives aren’t in danger just because the bad guys are out to get them. Their lives are in danger because they’re working with dangerous creatures every single day. There are examples all around them of people who held the same job and slipped up to get killed or cursed in horrible ways.
Which isn’t whimsical, but does seem like the kind of things kids need to learn about dangerous professions involving wild animals. There are a lot of children’s books that try to paint their imaginary worlds as dangerous places to live, but not all of them succeed because they make it sound so goshdarn cool and don’t give us that many examples of harm happening to people. But Fablehaven? Right out the gate it’s a dangerous place to be.
Which is different and good and I like that.
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