British and Russian traditions of children's literature and The curious incident of the dog in the night-time

Both Russian and British literature have a long and profound tradition of creating books for children and about children. Relatively long, though. Strange as it may seem, but the first books written especially for children appeared in England only in the 18th century, and Russian tradition started even later. What were the main tendencies of children’s and adolescent literature progress in the two countries and what is the presentday situation?

Throughout the 20^th century, the idea of children’s cruelty has been much discussed. A striking example is Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Lord of the Flies is an adult novel, in no way

addressed to children, but some kinds of cruelty are treated with comic glee by the British author Roald Dahl in his popular story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, published in 1964 and later turned into two screen versions. Children may be cruel and abusive, but punishment is inevitable. Dahl’s books, more or less naive, funny and entertaining, are definitely books about children and written for them, though of course some of them attract a much wider audience.

At the same time there are novels about teenagers, which deal with absolutely adult problems and concerns, such as About a Boy by Nick Hornby (1998) and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2004). Though initially neither of the two books was aimed for adolescents, the novels gained a certain popularity with this particular group of readers, dealing with problems they are aware of and concerned with. If the first is quite well-known in Russia (though mainly thanks to the film starring Hugh Grant), the latter one is absolutely new. In Russia, the discovery of Mark Haddon’s works is still in progress, and our students are privileged to be among the pioneers.

What kind of book is it? What might be its target audience? It is often defined as a children’s book, among several other awards having won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. At the same time, this fact happens to be rather misleading, as every attentive and curious reader shall undoubtedly acknowledge the possibilities of treating the book as a children’s one as well as a proper adult reading at the same time. On the one hand, this book seems to be quite a universal piece of literature, on the other hand, Russian reader will find it difficult to identify the novel as proper reading for teenagers. The reason is, Russian literature has some certain standards and criteria for books written for children and teenagers, and these criteria are quite different from the ones accepted in Britain. The novel under consideration tackles really serious and even ugly matters and has no naive ideas or heroism from the part of the main character or his friends and close people. At the same time the first-year students, working with the book, refused to treat it as a one for adults, claiming that despite different serious and disturbing issues it is a story of a fifteen-year-old and his existence in the world, which represents interest mainly for his peers, though the narration and approach to certain matters is more characteristic for adult literature.

If we turn to similarities between Russian and British literature for adolescents (treating the novel as an example of the kind) it may be mentioned that in Russia literature for teenagers should teach some lesson, otherwise it will be considered inadequate or even inappropriate. In this respect there is a huge gap between British literature for teens and its Russian counterpart, as a lot of children’s books in Britain are aimed at entertainment or, falling to an opposite extreme, tackle quite adult problems as they are, without avoiding tabooed topics or resorting to adaptation for younger audience. And this is the case of The Curious Incident.. ., a genuinely poignant and deeply psychological story, which teaches us one important lesson: life is unpredictable and complicated and it is even more so for people with special needs. The moral component is rather obscure and definitely not enough for a Russian reader to treat the book as proper children’s reading. From the very beginning pedagogics was an integral part in Russian literature for children and adolescents, deeply rooted in religion and moral ideals.

Another peculiarity of the novel is that it is a typical adolescent rebel narrative, when a teenager actively declares his protest through running away from home or other radical actions. We can trace numerous examples of the kind in British and American literature (in Russia Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye¹ are the most well-known characters of the kind), but it is hard to find similar examples in Russian literature. The most outrageous example of misbehavior in Soviet literature is, maybe, the episode from Deniskiny Rasskazy by Viktor Dragunsky, when the boy throws some porridge out of the window because he finds it disgusting.

However, in this case it is neither protest nor rebel, as the only purpose pursued by the wrongdoer is to please his mother, as she promised to take Deniska to the Kremlin as soon as he finishes his breakfast. Why do not children rebel in Russia? Of course, they do as do the children all over the world, but it should not be described in books, as children are expected to obey their parents and the books are to teach them to be honest, docile and obedient. The last thing they are expected to do is to question their parents’ decisions and opinions.

However, there is one famous run-away in the famous and highly appreciated by both children and adults book and later a Soviet cartoon - Uncle Fedor (Дядя Федор) from “Vacations in Prostokvashino” (“Каникулы в Простоквашино”²), but for many years the story has been discussed and even critisised as antipedagogical. Thus children and teens in Britain and the US are given more freedom and are not denied the right to have an opinion of their own and even to challenge the position of adults, who are usually attributed the God-like status in Russian tradition. When Christopher Boone discovers that his father has been lying to him and stops trusting him, he manages to overcome all his fears and ventures on a challenging trip to London in search of his mother. Challenging, because Christopher is so vulnerable and easily frightened and confused. His father tries to make Christopher forgive him, but all in vain. At the beginning of this essay it was stated that no moral lessons are taught directly in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Nevertheless, if we start thinking about it, we will definitely find one, and it is tolerance - the word highly disliked in Russia due to its dimness and ambiguity. However, in Britain this notion is meaningful and important. Now, when the country faces more and more refugees from all over the world, children in Britain are taught to be tolerant to migrants and to treat them as equals, and Paddington Bear from the darkest and deepest jungles of Peru suits this purpose perfectly.

Strange as it may seem, but the character so relevant and modern came into existence long ago, in 1958. However, his second birth occurred in 2014, when the lovely screen-version was presented to the public, and at this time the problems tackled in the story gained new acuteness and actuality.

The novel by Mark Haddon is also about tolerance, though it has nothing to do with nationalities. Readers of the novel penetrate into the world of the boy with Asperger’s Syndrome, they have the opportunity to see the world and people around through his perception. Unfortunately, nothing of the kind may be found in Russian literature for adolescents, where a child is expected to be a vivid and joyful creature with normal children’s problems, such as getting a puppy or coping with school tasks. We will see few disabled children in children’s literature, as this problem is really disturbing and is often treated as unpleasant and tabooed. Children are often cruel to each other and they demonstrate even more cruelty towards those different from them, towards invalids. Now when more and more children with disabilities in Russia have no choice but to study together with other children (as hundreds of special institutions are being closed annually), generally labeled as normal, the problem of tolerant and friendly attitude to them can not be overestimated.

In the best traditions of social realism children can suffer or be mutilated or even killed in some heroic deeds, demonstrating an example of ultimate patriotism and sacrifice, for example, during The Great Patriotic War. In the Soviet Union, there was quite an extended series of books about heroes among pioneers, and all Soviet children knew the names of Volodya Dubinin or Zina Portnova. No doubt there heroic deeds were important and the books about those girls and boys should be read and translated to future generations (unfortunately, these names tell nothing to the children born at the end of the 90s and later). However, children and adolescents should always think about those peers, whose life is an example of endurance and struggle, though this struggle is not heroic or outstanding in the traditional sense.

However, if we make an effort we will find several stories about children mostly with physical disabilities (as any mental disorders were absolutely unacceptable in Soviet children), but such characters treat their condition as something terrible if not shameful and dream to overcome it and become ‘normal’. Eight fingers will be enough to count children’s stories where kids or adolescents with special needs are involved. In the famous fairytale by Valentin Kataev Magic Seven-Petal Flower (“Цветик-семицветик”) a girl comes into possession of a flower with seven petals, each of which could fulfill one desire. She thoughtlessly wastes six of them and with the help of the last one magically cures lameness of a boy she feels pity for, so that at the end of the story he can run and play and enjoy himself as any normal child. Still the boy in this fairytale is more a silent object than a character and his feelings and sentiments remain unknown for the reader. His condition may cause only pity and can not be of any interest for the readers. It should be overcome by all means. Somehow similar messages we will find in a few other books, such as Two Captains (“Два капитана”) by V.Kavern (1944), in which Sanya Grigoriev suffers from dumbness but is eventually cured; The Side from Which the Wind Blows (“Та сторона, где ветер”) by V. Krapivin, where blind Vladik was successfully operated on³. In modern Russian literature we will find several children with special needs, but the target audience of these novels are adults rather than children or adolescents (A School for Fools by Sasha Sokolov, Bukhara’s Daughter by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Son of a Tree by D.Bakin and some others). A School for Fools has been translated into English by Carl R Proffer. However, this book has not been written for children.

Many people in Russia are convinced that handicapped people are bound to be morally corrupted, and this belief is coded even in the language. Everybody in Russia knows the saying “Бог шельму метит”, which roughly means that God tries to let others know about the evil soul of a person through physical disability and any kind of deformity. We will face no such sentiments in Christopher, the protagonist in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, who perfectly realizes that he is different and at the same time often feels superior (to some extent thanks to his unique propensity for mathematics and his ability to analyse and think logically). Christopher has his own virtues and weaknesses, he may be selfish and pitiless, he can even tell lies, though “white” ones.

In British literature children with disabilities more and more often become the main characters or even protagonists and contribute to this important awareness of how it feels to be deprived of some basic skills and abilities, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is one in a long row of novels covering similar issues. The several other novels worth mentioning are Seriously Weird by Gene Kemp⁴ - an engaging story intended for the 10 - 13 age range; Of Mice and Aliens by Kathy Hoopman - the book written ‘with the deliberate aim of demystifying the syndrome [Asperger’s]’ [Greenwell 2004: 272]; The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. Aged 133/4 by Sue Townsend, where the central character has to live with dysfunctional adults around him, which is though another side of the problem under analysis.

What kind of world does Mark Haddon reveal in his novel? It is a first-person narration conducted by a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome, a disease formally recognized only in 1994. In comparison with Gene Kemp’s Seriously Weird, where we cannot hear the boy’s voice but read the description of one of his sisters, here Christopher tells his own story without a mediator. In this ingenue narrative, the reader gets to know Christopher Boone, who is immensely obsessed with colours, numbers and codes, socially inept, capable of causing people great distress. The novel has a provincial, suburban setting. In the course of the story we learn about Christopher’s propensity for silence, his capacity for sudden rage, his vulnerability, his fondness of detective stories and The Hound of the Baskervilles in particular. He does not resort to any figures of speech as they are obscure and incomprehensible for him, his narration is artless and precise, but it immediately captures the reader’s imagination. The way he explains his attraction towards Arthur Conan Doyle’s story is quite representative: T like The Hound of the Baskervilles because it is a detective story which means that there are clues and Red Herrings’ [Haddon 2003: 90], after which Christopher provides an exhaustive list of both, as precision is one of his characteristic features. His personality, feelings, and attitudes are in the center of the reader’s attention, and the fact that he is different does not deprive Christopher of the right to speak and to be listened to. The author manages to evoke not pity or sympathy but rather interest and involvement from the part of the reader, and it is hard to find parallels in Russian children’s literature.

One more difference between Russian and British literature for children and teens is the tendency of Russians to spare the younger generations of all “adult” topics, so widely represented in Mark Haddon’s novel. Such issues as adultery and hatred of the mother towards her own child are consciously avoided in Russian stories for adolescents to say nothing of the ones written for children. In The Curious Incident Chistopher’s mother abandons her child and flees away with a lover, and still we see no unequivocal condemnation. Russian literature for children traditionally avoids such “inappropriate” themes.

However, all attempts to avoid some painful and disturbing topics and pretend that such problems do not exist may result in serious moral inadequacy. Literature for children should bring awareness and understanding that life is diverse and complicated, that people are different and various attitudes exist. In comparison with Russian literature for children and adolescents, the British one is more straightforward and frank with its readers; it does not try to keep ugly and disturbing sides of life a secret. It is different, and this aspect should be kept in mind when reading and discussing The Curious Incident with

Russian students. It is important to explain the background and to prepare them for this new literary experience, otherwise they can misunderstand the book and reject it as inappropriate.