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The Crows of Pearblossom
A visitor from another planet who came to my house would assume my family was pagan. The object of our worship -- a brown-eyed girl with short-black hair -- would stare back at the alien from my daughter's bedspread and pillow, from her lunchbox, backpack,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], dolls, windbreaker,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], sippy-cup, sneakers and (somewhat sacrilegiously) potty.
Books lining our shelves are devoted to the Goddess' many mythic exploits. And of course, the deity appears regularly on our television set, where her adventures serve to hypnotize children while clean diapers are fastened, their clothes changed, and otherwise unpalatable food put down their mouths at meal time. The Goddess appears even on my video iPod so my eldest child can worship her in the car and stroller. Truly, her spirit can be felt everywhere. All praise Dora the Explorer!
If you became a parent anytime in the last five years or so, you know exactly who Dora is. But for the sake of everyone else,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], she is the 7-year-old animated star of Dora The Explorer, a hugely popular cartoon series for young children. She lives in the tropics,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], speaks Spanish and English with equal fluency, and spends her time exuberantly performing simple quests with a sidekick monkey named Boots.
Dora may not be a true pagan Goddess. But she does offer her young worshippers a guiding philosophy of life. Her ethic is one of unceasing optimism and boundless trust. In Dora-land, everyone is happy all the time. And on the odd occasion when someone does get stuck in a tree, or becomes separated from their mami and papi, it is but a simple matter for Dora to make matters right -- after which the whole cast sings the "We did it!" song. No one ever gets hurt, or argues, or raises their voice. To the extent Dora confronts any villains -- a mean witch, a lying elf, pirate piggies -- they are invariably converted into Dora-style goody-goodies within 22 minutes.
In this age,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], we take it for granted that children's entertainment should be this bloodless. But it was not always thus.
Last month,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], my family rented a charming beach house on the Maine coast. "Rest Haven" has not been renovated since its construction in the FDR era. And over the years, it's become a sort of curio museum,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], featuring odds and ends left behind by three generations of beach vacationers. Among these is a basket of faded, hardback children's books containing several gems. It was while rummaging through this collection on a rainy afternoon that I came to know The Crows of Pearblossom,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], a WWII-era children's story from famed novelist Aldous Huxley.
Huxley's very un-Dora-like story goes like this: Two crows live in a cottonwood tree. The tree is also home to a rattlesnake, which makes a daily habit of devouring Mrs. Crow's eggs. "Why don't you go down into the snake's hole and kill him?" she asks Mr. Crow. When he refuses, Mrs. Crow accuses him of cowardice. "I never said I was scared,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," he replies. "All I said was that I didn't think your idea was a very good one. Your ideas are seldom good,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I may add."
In the end, Mr. Crow and his wise friend, Old Man Owl, trick the snake into eating clay eggs painted to look like a crow's. The snake dies an agonizing death and, on the final page,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Mrs. Crow is shown using his carcass as a washing line.
The closing image, I will concede, is a touch macabre. I might have preferred that Mrs. Crow use the snake's teeth as knitting needles. But putting that aside, who prepares a modern child best for the realities of life: Dora or Mr. Crow? The message of the former is that everyone is friendly, and that life is an endless succession of joys and triumphs. Not only is this theme plainly false (not to mention dull), it also stands in hopeless contradiction to the principal message modern safety-obsessed parents send their children: that every stranger who crosses their path should be presumed a predator. Mr. Crow, by contrast, teaches that the world contains many breeds. And each should be treated accordingly. His story also says something about married life,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and thereby serves to clarify why mommy and daddy sometimes talk to each other in that way they do.
Dora is very much a goddess for our age. Until modern children work their way up to Harry Potter or Tolkein,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], their make-believe world is one in which conflict is unknown.
The Crows of Pearblossom presents the perfect antidote. Unfortunately, it has been out of print for decades, and remains one of Huxley's most obscure works. But it wasn't published till the 1960s,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], by which time the current trend toward syrupy fare was already well advanced.) But used editions may be had on the Internet.
My advice to young parents is that they find one and read it to their children,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]. Sunshine and lollipops are well and good. But they don't help much when you meet a rattlesnake.
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