When we visit schools and libraries, among other things, the kids always subject us to a third degree of questions and requests. Often, the little ones catch us off guard, but there are also a series of questions and requests of a very diverse nature that are repeated continuously ('Will you make more books?', 'What book are you working on now?', 'Are you a couple?', 'Where do you work?'...). Among these topics, a request often arises: to create a scary book. Whenever someone makes this proposal, they receive the festive and unanimous approval of their peers while we look at each other and nod. And, with all due respect for the repetition, even though fear scares us, in general, when we place it in fiction, more or less, we all like it. And, perhaps for this reason, one day, coming out of a school, we finally decided to respond to the request for fear. In reality, deciding took us little to no time because we were eager to do it. And since we were at it, we decided to do it doubly with 'TerrorÃfic' from the 'Agus and the Monsters' series and 'Are You Scared, Iverson?' from the 'Bitmax&Co' series.
To say that fear is one of the great themes of children's literature, especially that which comes from the popular and oral tradition, is so obvious that it's almost like a cliché. But the reality is that fear is also one of the great themes of life in the broadest sense. We are afraid or have fears of what exists, what doesn't exist, the unknown, monsters, darkness, loss, death, loneliness, abandonment, punishment, dreams, not being loved, beasts, and often even of snakes and rats.
Fear is an intense and ancient emotion – and sorry, because at this point the treatment of emotions in children's literature already smells. Indeed, it is the most primitive part of our brain, the amygdala, the organ responsible for making us react to what we don't understand, what we find strange or dangerous. Then we feel fear, and our reaction, if culture, knowledge, training, and reflection do not intervene, manifests in two absolutely primitive ways: flee or attack. If you think about it, that's what happens to racists, xenophobes, homophobes... In short, a problem of primitivism.
In children's literature, fear has often been used to instruct and make it clear to the little ones that they should follow the path their parents have told them or that they should not trust or talk to strangers (Doesn't Little Red Riding Hood ring a bell?). In reality, between attack and escape, the message received by the little humans is very clear: flee from danger. We're not saying it's wrong (as long as it's not exaggerated, and fear doesn't become a control mechanism), but when we set out to create 'scary' books, we simply contented ourselves with implicitly establishing in the stories we develop a series of elements that, in the long run, could contribute to the reader starting to elaborate, even in a very basic way, on the reactions primarily caused by fear. It's true that in our case, we have two decisive factors to introduce these elements. The first is humor – our trademark – which relativizes every situation, and the second is the fact that we focus mainly on creating stories that entertain, amuse, and excite the reader because, in fact, although children's literature can have many functions – and it does, and they are important – if there is no fun, emotion, and entertainment, the reader will hardly derive any benefit.
Copons&Fortuny
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