The troll of children’s literature

Is it not strange that some of the greatest writers of stories for children never had children of their own? Think of the British Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), author of Alice in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark, or of the Danish Hans Christian Andersen, author of classics such as The Little Mermaid, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Hardy Tin Soldier, The Ugly Duckling and The Snow Queen. Both remained unmarried and childless. Jacob Grimm, one of the two Grimm Brothers who collected and rewrote German folk stories into immortal fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel, also never married. And when Dr Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel), the  American author of illustrated classics like Horton Hatches the Egg and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, was asked why he and his wife did not have children, he is reported to have replied, "You have 'em; I'll entertain 'em."

I cannot claim to belong to that club, having written The Glum Peacock not for other people's entertainment but for that of my own children. That it got published as a book is, of course, another matter. As someone who started off publishing poetry and 'serious fiction' (novels like The Bus Stopped and Filming: A Love Story), I was not expected to write The Glum Peacock, which is a simple fable in rhyming, loosely metered verse for young children. Of course, that is not the way I see it. I never set out to write 'serious' or 'high' literature. For me, there are only two kinds of literature – good and bad – though both come in various shades, and one need not like all shades of good literature. For me, good literature is further divided into what my friend, the French writer Sébastien Doubinsky, conveniently dubs 'soft' and 'hard' literature. Hard literature, he claims, engages with the world, literature and language in creative and, at times, radical ways. Soft literature, by inference, is competent stuff that never pushes the boundaries of the established – in the world or in language.

One can claim that good children's literature also comes in these two varieties – soft and hard. Soft children's literature has a soporific effect on the child: it is meant to make Jack a 'good' boy and go to bed on time, as the fantasy writer Michael Moorcock put it in a recent interview. But the kind of children's literature that I (and Moorcock) like is meant to make Jack and Jill engage with their world, learn to think for themselves, and live out their lives in creative and satisfying ways. That is the kind of children's literature I try to read out to my children, and to create for them. This is not to be confused with moralising or dourness; good 'hard' literature is always 'fun' in an intelligent way, and children's literature doubly so. Life and the world can be hard and 'unfair', but they are also fun and exciting; in any case, they are what we have. One of the worst crimes parents are capable of is depriving their children of their inherent sense of wonder and excitement at being alive. Hence, all good writers know that seriousness is not dourness, just as 'fun' is not empty-headedness.

Dad, the author
Even if I had been the dopy-surly, highbrow kind of spoilsport author, I am sure parenthood would not have permitted to continue. Parenthood does not involve just the birth of a child – it involves your own rebirth. As a father who shares equally in child-rearing with the mother of my children, I have had to re-invent myself too – sometimes by discovering aspects of my personality that had been neglected since childhood and sometimes by inventing new ones. My parents and aunts love to inflict on unwary visitors some fairly standard family anecdotes about how I was such an avid listener of stories as a podgy child that I would refuse to go to sleep as long as a story was being narrated, and would throw a tantrum if it was discontinued. Evidently, I had a voracious appetite for stories and would demand a new one as soon as the old one ended. As a parent, I had to rediscover this part of myself – and I had to invent a new part. For, suddenly, I was no longer the listener; I was the storyteller.

I enjoyed – I still do – lying in bed with my two children and reading them stories almost every evening. Once in a while, I concoct stories for them too. As my children are growing up in Denmark, a lovely country but one experiencing an unusual degree of difficulty in coping with cultural difference, many of my stories have to do with characters who do not fit in or who are unhappy with being themselves. The main character of The Glum Peacock, for instance, is morose at being so colourful; he wants to be like the mono-coloured swan and the crow, and has to learn, the hard way, to be himself. I believe that such stories will help my kids to cope with being different, and to gain strength from the difference of others.

For me, this ritual of telling my children bedtime stories is one of the most satisfying aspects of parenthood. It is not always easy. Sometimes one is too tired, after a hard day's work, to read out stories, let alone create them. It can be mentally tiring. It can even be physically challenging; for a few months, my kids, inspired by a jingle in one of Dr Seuss's books, took to jumping on my tummy to the tune of 'Stop, Do not Hop on Pop!' At that time they were three and six, and I survived the onslaught. Now, they are six and nine, and much heavier, and I live in perpetual fear of the tune being revived.

The Glum Peacock was composed around that time. For a long time, it stayed between me and my children. But then the fact that I had a reputation – good, I would imagine – as a 'serious writer' finally paid off. When the first copies of the printed book arrived (beautifully illustrated by Nilima Eriyat), my children – who had never been impressed by any of my 'grown-up' books in the past – suddenly took notice. For the first time, I was introduced as my-dad-the-author to their friends. And he can draw too, said one of them. I kept strategically mum. I had been a parent long enough to take credit whenever it came, deserved or not.

I continue to compose fables for my children. A major imprint recently contacted me to bring out a collection. I would love to (if only to impress my children once again!), but I simply do not have enough. It is in many ways harder to write a story or a poem for children: my ordinary life as an academic militates against it. One can, with some effort, reconcile the language of academia with the language of adult fiction, but to write for children takes much greater effort and requires more space. One has to connect to and disconnect from the world in different ways. One has to discover a new fount of imagination and poetry. One has to be able to sit back, laze around, tinker with words, ideas, images, sounds, noise and even nonsense. One has to be guided by the 'muse' of children's literature, which is a fickle, shy, naughty troll, and not allow oneself to be distracted by the siren of daily alarms. This is a creative stereotype that is doubly true in the case of the creation of children's literature, at least in my experience.

Perhaps that is why so many great writers of children's literature did not have children of their own. For children and the kind of financial responsibility that parenthood entails mean – at least for professional middle -class people like me – an intensifying of the siren of daily alarms. You have to choose between playing with your children and playing with the troll of children's literature. You have to choose between hunting for that shy and elusive troll and hunting the extra buck that will enable you to pay an extra bill. With all my human weaknesses and imperfections, I have always chosen in favour of my children. So I continue to tell them stories, most of which remain unpolished and hence unwritten. The troll lurks under our bed at times; I play with the troll in the fleeting moments between work and responsibility; I listen to the stories the troll whispers when I can. But finally I choose my children instead of the troll of children's literature.

Perhaps, I sometimes tell myself, if time and circumstances permit, my grandchildren will hear more from the troll. In any case, the troll will be there under our bed. It is always there under all our beds. Often alone, like Lewis Carroll, H C Andersen and Jacob Grimm, but never lonely. No, never lonely.

~ Tabish Khair is author of The Glum Peacock, among others. Born in Bihar, he now lives in Denmark.