Prediction: (ooh! that made me feel like that guy on that show, you know that show where he cuts everybody off? just for a second I felt like that guy! I'm going to say it again:)
Prediction! This thing is going to be a LOT of kids' new favorite book.
Why? Because Hattie is not just bad like chanting that irritating little chant just one more time after she was specifically told to STOP chanting that little chant bad... nooo. Hattie is bad like tying Daddy's car keys to a bunch of helium balloons bad. INVENTIVE bad. Joyful, anarchic, you-did-WHAT?! bad.
Until all the kids aren't allowed to play with her anymore because she is such a hellion. Hellion. Wouldn't you love it if someone called you a hellion? Just once?
So then she becomes Hattie the Good. And just as she was a first-class hellraiser, she is now an A-number-one angel. Peter Pan collars. In bed without having to be told. GOOD POSTURE.
Until all the kids hate her because she's such a priss.
She becomes SO good at being good that she wins a nationwide prize, and is awarded the Best-Behaved Child Ever - on TV. Hattie is horrified. I'm sure she knows that no normal child would ever befriend The Best-Behaved Child Ever, and her expression as she ascends the long stairway to the stage, drowning in applause, is wide-eyed horror. But the wheels are turning beneath her neatly-combed hair, and when she arrives on stage to accept her award, she shows the world the hellion hiding under her angelic pink party dress.
But that's not the end. The next spread in the book shows the reactions of families watching at home. The parents swallow their tongues in shock, but the kids - the kids jump up and CHEER! YES!
Hattie's happy ending shows her back in her sloppy striped t-shirt, slapping orange paint all over the place... but the text promises that she now possesses "a teensy bit of good."
I could sit here and rumble about examples and ideals, and whether or not I think it's a good idea that "good" Hattie is depicted as un-natural... but we are not in that land, in this book. We are in a funner land, in this book, and I am not such a priss.
Comments