A very large number of childrens’ books and movies involve anthropomorphized animals instead of humans. Do children relate to these better than they do to entities that look and act human? If so, why?
Just a WAG but it might have something to do with uncanny valley. As a child I always found depictions of children in children’s books to be… weird. Possibly because adults are typically not that good at portraying children. Adults in kids books are also weird because kids don’t care about adults acting like adults, and adults acting like children is weird. So that leaves us with anthropomorphic animals, where anything a child can identify with is good, and anything that is weird can be attributed to it being an animal.
Wait, children ARE humans…ohhhh, nevermind.
I’ve sort of wondered about this myself. More confusing are books that have both humans and anthropomorphized animals, on terms of equality – Goldilocks and the Three Bears, for example. Then there’s the Arthur book I read to my daughter that has anthropomorphized animals (Arthur’s family and friends), a human being (the bibulous Amazing Larry), and non-anthropomorphised animals (Arthur’s dog Pal). What a universe!
A lot of children’s books deal with learning right and wrong and other social lessons. I think it’s more comfortable to deal with bad, dangerous, or exaggerated behavior when it’s being done by an animal than a human child. For example, Curious George gets into some pretty horrendous situations as a result of his curiosity. Kids can explore the consequences of this without worrying about a human being being hurt in the process. Similarly, animal characters can be more one-dimensional (sneaky, mischievous, brave, etc.) without seeming odd. There are notable exceptions, though, like Pippi Longstocking.
Again, there’s the problem that characters run the gamut, as the Curious George example shows – Curious George remains a monkey, and that’s the role he plays in the books.
I see a bunch of different permutations to contend with:
[ul]
[li]Animals as animals (pets, for instance)[/li][li]Animals that are very lightly anthropomorphized – e.g., wear clothes but don’t talk[/li][li]Animals that are anthropomorphized or not, depending on perspective (e.g., Peter Rabbit)[/li][li]Animals that are completely anthropomorphized (e.g., Arthur), even to the point of having non-anthropomorphized animals as pets, even though they might be the same species (as, for example, the Arthur series has both anthropomorphized and unanthropomorphized cats and dogs)[/li][li]Anthropomorphic non-human, non-animal creatures (e.g., Dr. Seuss)[/ul][/li]Bonus question: which poster to this thread spends altogether TOO MUCH TIME reading kids’ books?
At last, a question for my literary alter ego!
The Freddy the Pig web site quotes from a book called What’s So Funny? Wit and Humor in American Children’s Literature by Michael Cart which addresses this very question:
My WAG is that children are so much more innocent. They don’t know that bears, given the chance, will eat people. Nor have they developed our unshakable knowledge that we are at the top of the food chain.
Most adults are condesending to children, and to animals. Is is possible that, on some level, children take note that adults speak to them in the same tone as we do animals and conclude that they, and their animal friends are on the same social level?
Children have well developed and well used imaginations, something we adults have, for the most part, put away with all the other toys in the attic.
They also haven’t been forced to develop the fears we have to face to survive. Their fears ar still fanciful, and wrapped in the protection of their adults.
Animals are usually happy to see children, will play with them, and do not lecture to them. Who wouldn’t like someone like that?
A good story for this question: Attorney and author Andrew Vachss’s wife Alice set up the first NYC day care system for severely abused children. One of her aides was a blind woman with a seeing eye dog. They found out that some of the children who could not or would not speak to adults had no trouble relating to and talking with the dog.
When the aide left, Alice adopted a retired Seeing Eye Dog named Sheba. She became the first of what is now the Vachss’s Dog Program. They breed and raise dogs specially trained to help children out of a type of blindness that is muc worse than not being able to see.
Children often will refuse to testify at trial unless the dog is present in the courtroom.
From Vachss’s website, a story of one such dog, appropriately named Vachss