“The lank man knotty and tough as a hickory rail/Whose hands were always too big for white-kid glove

[larryhammer]

Slightly pointless genre noodlings:

Should Puck of Pook’s Hill be classified as Mainstream or Fantasy, or both? Or is it better served to call it Children’s Literature, a genre where adherence to realism has never been as strict as in Mainstream?

What about The Jungle Books? Or Just So Stories? What’s the genre status of beast fables anyway?

(Kim’s genre is of course Most Excellent Book.)

(I started to ask whether anyone has written the American (or for that matter Canadian) equivalent of Puck of Pook’s Hill, then realized the Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series sorta counts, maybe, I think. Are there any others?)

Okay, maybe not “slightly.”

---L.

Subject quote from John Brown’s Body, Stephen Vincent Benét, used because the lines make me think of Carl Sandburg’s children’s biography “Abe Lincoln Grows Up.”

Comments

[sartorias]

I thought Puck of Pook's Hill was Whimsy.

[larryhammer]

I suppose it fits that genre too...

[shewhomust]

It's a while since I read it, but I remember it as being surreptitiously educational. Not in a bad way, but still...

[larryhammer]

That was Kipling's intent, to be surreptitiously educational.

[mme_n_b]

I think he failed the "surreptitious" part, but it's still one of the best books ever, White Britishism and all.

[larryhammer]

Mm, I personally think that Kim has a better title to that, Raj Imperialism and all.

[mme_n_b]

I'm a sucker for the "DEI won in England, kids, rejoice!" message of Puck and Rewards and Fairies, but aside from that yes, Kim is a very strong contender.

[mme_n_b]

What about Gaiman's American Gods? Same premise (Gods come to place, change due to changes in worshippers) but written for adults.

[larryhammer]

That I'd call Fantasy, because it's directly engaging with tropes and conventions of contemporary fantastic literature. Puck of Pook's Hill engages with children's literature of the time, including an explicit in-story rejection of (unfortunately all-too-often twee) fairy stories.

[mme_n_b]

I tend to look at it from the character's point of view. Kipling's Weland would not be at all surprised to find himself in Gaiman's world and would need no additional information or rules, so it must be the same kind of book, which would make Puck Early-YA-Fantasy :)

By contrast, if he found himself in the nearest kids book I know ( Lagerlöf's Nils), he'd need a whole bunch of explanations from "why are the animals talking?" to "what do you mean there are nature spirits that aren't gods?" and "why can't I kill this guy?" so it has to be a different kind of book (e. g. "children's disguised educational").