Dialogue as an action-enhancing tool

The action is by far the most dominating element in popular fiction, and is emphasised far more than, for example, the development of characters. The villains and the heroes often talk in a special way, as explained in Appendix K, and in order to bring the action forward, and to keep up the tempo, a lot of dialogue is used. In fact, much of the action happens via the dialogue, as in excerpt [10], where the Hardy boys find themselves in a difficult situation:

[10] “Let us out of here!” Frank shouted at Hobo Johnny.

“You can’t get away with this!” Joe yelled.

The man on the water tower gave a loud guffaw. “You think I ain’t got no brains. Well, I got enough to know when I’m well off. I ain’t in no hurry to collect the treasure you found in the tower. A few days from now will be all right for me to sell it.”

“A few days from now?!” Joe exclaimed, horrified. “By that time we’ll be suffocated or die of starvation.”

Frank put an arm around his impulsive brother’s shoulder. In a low tone he said, “We won’t do either Joe. I don’t think it’s going to be too hard to get out of here. If not by the trap door, we’ll hack our way out through one side of the tank.”(1959:170)

Another means of keeping the reader’s interest on top all the way through the book is to end each chapter with a small climax in the shape of direct speech, so that the reader can not wait to turn the page and read on. Out of the six books I am analysing, this technique is most frequently used in Animorphs and Goosebumps, often with exclamation marks at the end, to really stress the difficult situation the protagonist is in, as in extracts [11] and [12]:

[11] “Help!” the woman screamed. “Oh, please, someone help! Help us all!” (Animorphs1996:160) [12] I’m dead, I thought. Dead. Now I’m dead too. (Goosebumps 1992:96)

Popular fiction books are not the only ones to employ this technique, however; also in Narnia and Harry Potter we frequently find small climaxes at the end of the chapters:

[13] The whole shack shivered and Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in. (Harry Potter 1997:38)

The general conception is that the language in popular fiction is cliché-filled and flat. It is true that popular fiction does contain a fair number of clichés, when by cliché one means an expression that has been used too often, or passages that sound a bit turgid and pompous in the ears of an adult reader, as [14], [15] and [16] may do:

[14] He just looked at me with those deep, troubled eyes - eyes I can now see only in my memory. (Animorphs 1996:59)

[15] Selecting a recently constructed highway, Nancy rode along, glancing occasionally at the neatly planted fields on either side. Beyond were rolling hills. “Pretty”, she commented to herself. “Oh, why can’t all people be nice like this scenery and not make trouble?” (Nancy Drew 1959:34)

[16] “What - what are you going to do to us?” I managed to ask. My knees were trembling so much, I could barely stand. A dead man was squeezing my shoulder. A dead man was staring hard into my eyes. (Goosebumps 1992:111)

The adult reader will automatically brush off passages like these as badly written, but for a ten-year-old reader who bulk-reads, the passages are easy to read, there are not too many difficult words, and there are relatively few words between each comma or punctuation mark. A young reader who reads these books for entertainment, entranced in the exciting plot, will probably not notice the clichés. Besides, how can an inexperienced reader with no knowledge of the concept of clichés recognise one?

2.7 SUMMARY

In this chapter, I have attempted to explain why it is difficult to define the term children’s literature, why some writers are strongly opposed to being labelled ‘children’s writers’ and to exemplify how different scholars have engaged in various aspects of the debate. Although the opinions on children’s literature may diverge, scholars agree on at least two facts: firstly, that children’s fiction is very different from adult fiction and secondly, that popular children’s fiction has other characteristics than quality children’s fiction. Thus, when adults read children’s fiction or popular children’s fiction, they perceive these types of literature differently from children who read the same books.

It is interesting to note, as Weinreich (1996, 1999) observed, that even in the age of video games and computers, reading books is still a popular activity among children. Yet, as the library survey (Appendix A) proved, the most popular books in Norwegian libraries in 1999 were, perhaps surprisingly, books from different book series, and in particular popular fiction book series such as Animorphs and Goosebumps. Although children’s popular fiction book series do not have a high status in our society, most adults dismiss them as formula-based

rubbish that, to the adult eye, ‘contains no visible value, either aesthetic or educational’

(Dickinson 1973:101), some scholars (cf Dickinson 1973; Rees 1999) defend the popular fiction books and believe that children can benefit from reading them.

Since popular fiction books are written in agreement with a certain formula, we easily believe that the language of children’s popular fiction books is more formulaic and simplified and less diverse than the language of quality children’s books. Whether this is the case, I will come back to in Chapter 4.

i The secret of who was behind the name Franklin W. Dixon remained a secret up until the 1970, approximately, when it became known that McFarlane was one of the ghost-writers. He was then released from the contract with the Stratemeyer Syndicate and was given permission (although limited) to talk about his carreer.

ii Like McFarlane, Benson signed a contract absolving her of any rights to the books she wrote for the Stratemeyer syndicate. Yet, following a lawsuit in 1980 Benson reached an agreement with the publishers, ‘under which she was given credit for writing the original stories’ (Johnson et al 1995:51), and was entitled to identify herself as the writer.