Years ago, an older woman accompanied by grandchildren visited the bookshop I then owned. While the young ones browsed, the grandmother and I talked literature. At one point, she said, “I don’t care what the grandkids read as long as they’re reading.”
I made no reply, though her pronouncement was akin to saying “I don’t care what the grandkids eat as long as they’re eating.”
I made no reply, though her pronouncement was akin to saying “I don’t care what the grandkids eat as long as they’re eating.”
Helping our children choose what to read is important. The shelves of our libraries and bookstores teem with wonderful children’s books, old and new, but this garden of literature includes weeds as well. Sometimes, too, we overlook certain types of books and literature because we are unfamiliar with them or judge them by the genre in which they are catalogued.
In seminars I once taught to homeschoolers, I often included Calvin and Hobbes on the required booklist for my introductory composition class. My students, grades five through seven, were delighted—and often stunned—by this choice, whereas the parents frequently appeared worried and confused. Every year, several of them would ask why I had chosen for instruction a book of cartoons about a mischievous boy and his imaginary friend, a tiger named Hobbes.
The answers to their questions are uncomplicated, though hidden from those who had never read Bill Watterson’s work.
First on the list of reasons is content. All the Calvin and Hobbes collections offer numerous subjects for discussions: Calvin’s self-centered behavior; the general good sense of Hobbes; the importance of choosing our friends wisely; the reasons, good and bad, for Calvin’s rebellion against school and adulthood; the idea of buddies in literature (Think Holmes and Watson, Sundance and Butch, Huck and Jim, Frodo and Sam); the uses of irony and sarcasm, and the differences between them; why and how human beings create humor; and a dozen other topics.
Of equal importance to students in these elementary composition classes is Watterson’s prose style. Anyone writing effective cartoons, particularly those based more on language than graphics, must bring a clear, concise style of writing to their panels. In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White stressed that “Vigorous writing is concise,” and in the Calvin and Hobbes comics Watterson proves himself an avid practitioner of this injunction. In one cartoon from It’s A Magical World, for example, Calvin says to Hobbes, “Know what’s weird? Day by day nothing seems to change, but pretty soon, everything is different.” In the next panel, Calvin continues: “You just go about your business and one day you realize you’re not the same person you used to be. People change whether they decide to or not.” At this point, Hobbes calmly walks away, saying: “Thank heavens for small favors.” We last see Calvin with his hands jammed into his pockets, looking disgruntled in the direction of the departed Hobbes and saying to himself: “For example, I used to be more tolerant of oblique aspersions.”
“Oblique aspersions” brings us to another of the treasures derived from reading Calvin and Hobbes: vocabulary. Watterson’s strips challenge the word-sense of late elementary and middle school students. Returning to It’s A Magical World, we find these words used from pages 27 to 45: anthropomorphize, quantify, malevolent, novelty, subconscious, cognition, kneecapper, Serengeti, wildebeests, precluded, extraordinaire, interplanetary, bizarre, and intrepid. On page 67, Calvin discusses his sidewalk chalk drawings with Hobbes. “You do goofy drawings on the sidewalk,” Hobbes says, to which Calvin responds: “Right. I’m a suburban post-modernist,” adding, “I was going to be a neo-deconstructivist, but mom wouldn’t let me.” Such dialogues should send students to dictionaries or to a parent or teacher with questions.
Finally, Watterson is simply good fun. Calvin’s misbegotten ideas of adventure and his overactive imagination set beside the wit of the droll Hobbes’s bring smiles and laughter to readers young and old.
In seminars I once taught to homeschoolers, I often included Calvin and Hobbes on the required booklist for my introductory composition class. My students, grades five through seven, were delighted—and often stunned—by this choice, whereas the parents frequently appeared worried and confused. Every year, several of them would ask why I had chosen for instruction a book of cartoons about a mischievous boy and his imaginary friend, a tiger named Hobbes.
The answers to their questions are uncomplicated, though hidden from those who had never read Bill Watterson’s work.
First on the list of reasons is content. All the Calvin and Hobbes collections offer numerous subjects for discussions: Calvin’s self-centered behavior; the general good sense of Hobbes; the importance of choosing our friends wisely; the reasons, good and bad, for Calvin’s rebellion against school and adulthood; the idea of buddies in literature (Think Holmes and Watson, Sundance and Butch, Huck and Jim, Frodo and Sam); the uses of irony and sarcasm, and the differences between them; why and how human beings create humor; and a dozen other topics.
Of equal importance to students in these elementary composition classes is Watterson’s prose style. Anyone writing effective cartoons, particularly those based more on language than graphics, must bring a clear, concise style of writing to their panels. In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White stressed that “Vigorous writing is concise,” and in the Calvin and Hobbes comics Watterson proves himself an avid practitioner of this injunction. In one cartoon from It’s A Magical World, for example, Calvin says to Hobbes, “Know what’s weird? Day by day nothing seems to change, but pretty soon, everything is different.” In the next panel, Calvin continues: “You just go about your business and one day you realize you’re not the same person you used to be. People change whether they decide to or not.” At this point, Hobbes calmly walks away, saying: “Thank heavens for small favors.” We last see Calvin with his hands jammed into his pockets, looking disgruntled in the direction of the departed Hobbes and saying to himself: “For example, I used to be more tolerant of oblique aspersions.”
“Oblique aspersions” brings us to another of the treasures derived from reading Calvin and Hobbes: vocabulary. Watterson’s strips challenge the word-sense of late elementary and middle school students. Returning to It’s A Magical World, we find these words used from pages 27 to 45: anthropomorphize, quantify, malevolent, novelty, subconscious, cognition, kneecapper, Serengeti, wildebeests, precluded, extraordinaire, interplanetary, bizarre, and intrepid. On page 67, Calvin discusses his sidewalk chalk drawings with Hobbes. “You do goofy drawings on the sidewalk,” Hobbes says, to which Calvin responds: “Right. I’m a suburban post-modernist,” adding, “I was going to be a neo-deconstructivist, but mom wouldn’t let me.” Such dialogues should send students to dictionaries or to a parent or teacher with questions.
Finally, Watterson is simply good fun. Calvin’s misbegotten ideas of adventure and his overactive imagination set beside the wit of the droll Hobbes’s bring smiles and laughter to readers young and old.