Naughty kids are fun

Naughty children are a pain but they are also the most entertaining, especially when you are just an onlooker. When my neighbour’s child washed his grandma’s silk saree in the toilet bowl or when my nephew smeared yoghurt all over their brand new 52” LED TV in a bid to paint it white, with all due sympathies to harried parents, it was funny! So I am certainly one of those readers who bask in ‘Boy Books’ that detail wacky escapades of spirited children.

Book series like Horrid Henry and Captain Underpants are adjudged Boy Fiction because they have succeeded in appealing to boys, who are usually reluctant readers. These books are humorous, at times even bordering on gross humour. The latest entrant into this genre is Jeff Kinney with his five book series The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Kinney has sold over 16 million copies of his books worldwide.

Greg, the wimpy kid, is an everyday child who loves video games and hates school. As he steps into 6th grade, the going suddenly gets tough for him. While he  remains his scrawny self, some of his classmates have grown facial hair and become twice his size and they use every opportunity to overpower Greg. To add insult to his injury, he routinely gets ignored by girls who now prefer the bigger boys. Every now and then, when he tries to add some fun to his life, things backfire and he gets steeped in trouble, both at home and school.

If you read these books as an adult, you get the satire Jeff has weaved into it. It could be when someone passes off what they read in a tabloid as something they read in The New York Times or a book’s cover designer doing his job never having read the book or how a mother’s photo and videography begins and ends with the first child!

The Wimpy Kid series succeeds in winning young readers not just because of the story but because of its simple and brief narrative.

RK Narayan’s Swami is no less than Greg in his attitude and antics. Swami’s attempts at starting the Malgudi Cricket Club, his wanting to know if the mangoes in his arithmetic problem are ripe, the times when his two warring friends use him as the middleman — the incidents in Swami’s life are incredibly comical. Another exceptionally amusing tale of boyhood that is quite lost on today’s generation is Richmal Crompton’s Just William. However, William and Swami are a little too descriptive for today’s time starved generation. Perhaps if they could be transformed into comic novels, they will be read more.

Many parents and teachers worry about the irreverence the lead characters in these books display. However, moral guidance to a child comes through many sources and very minimally through books. Children enjoy reading books with imperfect protagonists and living vicariously through them. We adults may feel Horrid Henry is unholy, but as long as he makes a child read, we probably should tolerate him!

Vani Mahesh is the founder of online library easylib.com