Week 3: Inquiry

I've been thinking about the role of the creator in children's stuff recently. Between our discussions about inquiry and the screening of The Jungle Book two weeks ago, I've been trying to figure out what an adult's responsibility is in creating things for children. It goes without saying that the majority of creators of children's media are not children, which makes the genre(?) a unique one. Even when I consider work created by children, they are always facilitated by adults.

One of these works, the comic series Axe Cop, was created by Ethan Nicolle but written by his then 5 year-old brother Malachi. The series was illustrated and constructed by the elder brother, but was conceived and dictated by the younger one. Here's an example of that dynamic:
The strange thing about Axe Cop is that it is by no means for children — instead, it revels in the fertile imagination and loose logic of a kid's brain while wrapped in a winking, adult tone. The irony on display wouldn't resonate with kids either; they'd still just respond to the silly stuff.

But our trip to the Bean Museum helped connect these disparate ideas of responsibility in creation. It was being at an actual museum that made me apply the word curation to these concepts of children's media. A museum curator works to facilitate the best possible experience for their given museum and carefully chooses what is displayed and how it is displayed. Likewise, Ethan Nicolle facilitates his little brother's creativity and gives him an outlet to see his imagination fulfilled. In the same sense, Georges Lopez (the teacher in To Be and to Have) takes on a similar role of curator to his student's understanding of the world. In all three of these cases, the adults are helping shape children in ways that directly meet children on their level.

For example, I think it's relevant that the Bean Museum recently underwent a major renovation. In the past, the museum has been a stuffy, grandpa's-basement sort of place, with an emphasis on the deadness of the taxidermied animals. Now, the museum is brighter and more open, with the animals arranged in ways that are more accessible to children. There are more hands-on exhibits, and everything seems better designed to have appeal with kids. That curatorial goal reminds me of To Be and to Have, in the sense that Lopez works to meet his students on a mutual level of understanding, rather than lecture or speak down to them.

The most obvious instances of this dynamic are when Lopez sits down with one of the students individually. He makes a concerted effort to make them broaden their senses of understanding, be it pushing their conception of numbers to greater levels or questioning what a bee would be doing in their school's hallway. The film presents him as a sage more than an instructor, giving children the tools to find their own answers -- much like a good museum gives children the right room to explore the world around them. Adults who create for children have a special responsibility to motivate their audience to further explore and push their senses of understanding, and I think those thoughtful curators are the linchpin to successful children's media, and even successful children as a whole.