Baby anything is cuter than its adult version. A blanket statement, I know, but I’m really hard-pressed to think of an exception. Kittens, puppies, tadpoles, lambs--all more precious than the bigger model. Even double chins, chubby thighs, sparse hair and drool are adorable if the person sporting them is still what my grandparents would call knee-high to a grasshopper. Almost every creature seems to have a tender spot for new ones. This is probably nature’s way of keeping often annoying, frustratingly dependent beings from being eaten, I’ll wager. Baby things particularly register with me. Perhaps it’s from being a big sister, or growing up in a religious tradition where women 
are assigned value based exclusively on motherhood, or maybe even a natural immaturity, but whatever caused it did a bang-up job of making an impression. One of the most enduring pictures in my head of a cute baby thing is an early illustration in the paperback version of Charlotte’s Web where Fern is bottle-feeding a newborn, newly-rescued Wilbur and gazing at him adoringly. How could you not save such a ridiculously darling baby thing? I doubt her zeal would have been as…um…zealous if he had been a full-grown, tusk-wielding boar, but tiny piglet Wilbur is another story. In the Little Golden Book Classic Baby Farm Animals, each youngster is shown at its most endearing. I’m not much of an outdoor girl, but these illustrations make me want to at least visit a farm. Someday. If we don’t stay too long.
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Animals-Little-Golden-Classic/dp/0307021750
http://www.randomhouse.com/golden/lgb/timeline.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Williams
Donna VanLiere --- author of the bestselling holiday tales THE CHRISTMAS SHOES, THE CHRISTMAS BLESSING and THE CHRISTMAS SECRET --- humorously recalls having to muddle through her young daughter's fear of spiders to introduce her to the cherished E.B. White tale, CHARLOTTE'S WEB, which has since become one of her favorite books.
Things change when you have children. I had always heard that but never really understood it until I had a few of my own of my own. A reporter recently asked me what my favorite part of Christmas was, and I said that it was seeing it through the eyes of my children. It sounds hokey to anyone who isn't a parent, I know, but Christmas is magical and mysterious and miracles abound when it is shared with a child.
We started reading books to our kids when they were just old enough to use the edge of the cover as a teething ring. Several books line our shelves with tiny teeth marks in them, but I’m convinced a love for reading starts at that young age. Each day before nap and bedtime, it became ritual for them to run to the shelves and pull out several books to read. My oldest is now eight and the ritual hasn’t changed. When the kids were infants, we started wrapping books for Christmas presents, and to my chagrin, none of them have ever opened one and said, “Wow! A new book! I can’t wait to read it!” but has rather simply tossed it aside for the new Barbie or the truck with the obnoxious horn. But, it’s the book that stands up to time while batteries die, and Barbie loses an arm to the dog, and her hair gets tangled and ratty.
When my daughter Gracie was three, we wrapped up CHARLOTTE’S WEB for her at Christmas. It had a bright red cover and a picture of Fern, Wilbur, and Charlotte on the front. She looked at it and said, “Does that pig talk?” I assured her he did. “Does the spider talk, too?” I was getting excited! I assured her that Charlotte most certainly talked. She threw it aside. “Then I don’t want to read it. I don’t like spiders.” I put the book on the shelves and gave her days --- okay, weeks --- to play with her new toys and forget about the spider comment. One afternoon at nap time, I announced that we’d be reading a brand new book. I pulled CHARLOTTE’S WEB off the shelf and held it aloft like a spokesmodel for a food processor: “Ta-da! Isn’t it great?!”
“I don’t want to read that,” Gracie said. “It has that spider in it that talks, and I don’t like spiders.” It had been weeks. How did she remember that?
“But it was one of your Christmas books, and it’s so sweet and funny with lots of animals and a little girl who saves a pig,” I said, using as many words I could think of that would capture the attention of a three year old. “And Charlotte isn’t scary. She’s Wilbur’s best friend.”
She was wary. Could I be trusted? “Does it happen at Christmas?” she asked.
My mind raced for any Christmas scenes. “I don’t remember exactly but let’s read and find out.”
Again, the look of concern. She got the book for Christmas, but it doesn’t take place on Christmas so that means there’s no gifts or candy or Santa anywhere in the story, and there’s that issue of the talking spider again.
“Okay,” she said. “But if it’s scary, I’m stopping
Charlotte was Blood-Thirsty: Character Paradoxes
Charlotte, from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, is remembered as a character of great warmth for her friendship with the unlikely pig, Wilbur. Poor Wilbur, once the runt of the litter and saved only by the whim of a girl, is fattened up and ready for slaughter. (This is a story set on a working farm and, as such, it’s not a story of cruelty, but of practicality.) Only the spelling abilities of Charlotte save him.
Crab spider eating fly
Charlotte makes friends with Wilbur and even travels with him to the fairgrounds, so she can weave webs above his stall there. She has great wisdom, great commitment to her friend, and she’s blood thirsty. Well, she’s a spider, she has to be blood-thirsty, doesn’t she? Otherwise, she won’t eat. But in the context of friendship, it’s a sobering fact, a repugnant habit.
What paradoxes have you built into your characters to make them interesting?
- Beautiful until she opens her mouth and croaks.
- Obedient, yet with a love of taking risks.
- Explorer with a formal dress at the bottom of her backpack.
- Athletic, but has a weakness for doughnuts.
- Self-reliant, yet lonely.
- Dangerous, yet gentle.
To find appropriate paradoxes, you can work against the setting or with the setting. Of course, Charlotte would be “blood-thirsty” because spiders inject victims with venom that liquefies their insides; okay, technically then, not blood-thirsty but just on a liquid diet. But it works.
Do research about your character’s job, role, location, etc. Take for example, a football player from Kansas.
The cliched image of football players are rough, tough, not-so-smart (except the quarterback) big-muscled guys. A paradox would be a love of opera or ballet.
A Kansan lives in the prairies and is used to howling winter winds, farm life, livestock and tornadoes. A paradox would be someone with agoraphobia, or fear of open spaces.
What paradoxes can you add to your characters to enliven them?
Related posts:
- American Fantasy: The Underneath
are assigned value based exclusively on motherhood, or maybe even a natural immaturity, but whatever caused it did a bang-up job of making an impression. One of the most enduring pictures in my head of a cute baby thing is an early illustration in the paperback version of Charlotte’s Web where Fern is bottle-feeding a newborn, newly-rescued Wilbur and gazing at him adoringly. How could you not save such a ridiculously darling baby thing? I doubt her zeal would have been as…um…zealous if he had been a full-grown, tusk-wielding boar, but tiny piglet Wilbur is another story. In the Little Golden Book Classic Baby Farm Animals, each youngster is shown at its most endearing. I’m not much of an outdoor girl, but these illustrations make me want to at least visit a farm. Someday. If we don’t stay too long. 
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