Imelda and the Goblin King
by Briony May Smith
2015
Imelda and the Goblin King is a children's picture book that retells an older fairy tale in a way that seems an awful lot like a modern political allegory. I didn't really care for this one! The reasons for that probably have more to do with me, and with when I read it, than they do with what Briony Smith has written and drawn. But so be it; right now I don't know how to give Imelda a fair reading.
Imelda is a human girl. She lives in a house on the edge of the forest, and spends all day every day in the forest playing with the fairies and the Fairy Queen. One day, the Goblin King comes stomping into the woods with all his little goblins, declares that he owns everything, kicks some fairies, and generally makes an un-ignorable nuisance of himself. The Fairy Queen invites him to a shared banquet to smooth tensions. He eats everything, then kidnaps her and locks her in a cage.
The fairies go to Imelda and beg her for help. She bakes a magic pie that's half safe and half poison, and offers to share a (safe) slice with him if he'll release the Fairy Queen. Predictably, the Goblin King steals the pie from Imelda, eats the whole thing, and turns into a worm. Without the king, all the little goblins become friends with the fairies, and everyone lives happily ever after, except for the very angry, bossy worm.
Like I said, this feels like a parable. You've got a woman politician going up against a shouting megalomaniac who wants everyone to pay attention to him, who wants to own everything, control everyone, who wants to lock up women in cages. Smith published this in 2015, thus probably wrote it in 2014, and also probably wasn't making the overt parallels to American politics that seem so obvious now.
As a political fable, I hate it. It's too simplistic - which, I know, is laughable criticism of a kids' book, but still. Everyone is happy and gets along until the Goblin King arrives. The moment he's gone, they do again, with absolutely no conflict between the fairies and the goblins. And how do you get rid of an opposing politician you don't like? Imelda's answer is, effectively, assassination.
But even as a kids' book with no larger implications, I don't like this. The message that it's important to stand up to bullies instead of appeasing them is sound, but I kind of don't think you should encourage kids to poison their enemies - a real thing it is actually possible for them to do! 'But if he hadn't stolen the poisoned food, he wouldn't have gotten sick' is typical kid logic, and may even appeal to some adult sense of fairness, but I assure you our legal system doesn't see it that way.
Imelda is a human girl. She lives in a house on the edge of the forest, and spends all day every day in the forest playing with the fairies and the Fairy Queen. One day, the Goblin King comes stomping into the woods with all his little goblins, declares that he owns everything, kicks some fairies, and generally makes an un-ignorable nuisance of himself. The Fairy Queen invites him to a shared banquet to smooth tensions. He eats everything, then kidnaps her and locks her in a cage.
The fairies go to Imelda and beg her for help. She bakes a magic pie that's half safe and half poison, and offers to share a (safe) slice with him if he'll release the Fairy Queen. Predictably, the Goblin King steals the pie from Imelda, eats the whole thing, and turns into a worm. Without the king, all the little goblins become friends with the fairies, and everyone lives happily ever after, except for the very angry, bossy worm.
Like I said, this feels like a parable. You've got a woman politician going up against a shouting megalomaniac who wants everyone to pay attention to him, who wants to own everything, control everyone, who wants to lock up women in cages. Smith published this in 2015, thus probably wrote it in 2014, and also probably wasn't making the overt parallels to American politics that seem so obvious now.
As a political fable, I hate it. It's too simplistic - which, I know, is laughable criticism of a kids' book, but still. Everyone is happy and gets along until the Goblin King arrives. The moment he's gone, they do again, with absolutely no conflict between the fairies and the goblins. And how do you get rid of an opposing politician you don't like? Imelda's answer is, effectively, assassination.
But even as a kids' book with no larger implications, I don't like this. The message that it's important to stand up to bullies instead of appeasing them is sound, but I kind of don't think you should encourage kids to poison their enemies - a real thing it is actually possible for them to do! 'But if he hadn't stolen the poisoned food, he wouldn't have gotten sick' is typical kid logic, and may even appeal to some adult sense of fairness, but I assure you our legal system doesn't see it that way.
I had the same complaint about the movie Brave. Merida is justified in not wanting an arranged marriage. But her solution is to find a witch, buy poison from her, and then use that poison on her mother. For all she knows, the poison will kill her! That's usually what it does! And, she leaves the leftover poison out, where her three little brothers can find it, eat it, and, again, as far as Merida knows, be killed by it. And she is the hero of the picture! The film treats her actions as totally appropriate!
Look, I know that what to do about a bully politician who runs on a platform of hurting everyone who doesn't vote for him is a complex question, and that as an adult, I shouldn't be looking to a picture book for answers. But a kid might! And while I don't expect any children's book to avoid simplification, I'd hope for one whose answers aren't quite so insipid. 'Just kill him, and then he won't be around anymore' isn't a good answer for a number of reasons, among them, it's not really practical or actionable.
Two of my favorite superheroes are Word Girl and Squirrel Girl, because they both address the question, what do you do about a bad guy, besides just be stronger than him and beat him up?
Squirrel Girl is probably better known. She had an ongoing Marvel comic series for awhile. About half the time, she uses her strength to simply stop the villain from whatever they're doing so she can talk with them, find out why they're rampaging, and see if they could be redirected to some more constructive activity instead. The rest of the time, talking doesn't work, but neither does simply being super strong and having the powers of a squirrel. To win, she needs a coalition, both other superhero allies, and reformed supervillains she previously talked to and made friends with.
Word Girl is probably less well known. She has a PBS kids' show that I used to watch all the time in grad school when I couldn't fall asleep. She's super strong, flies, and officially, her shtick is that she teaches you several vocabulary words every episode. And sometimes her villains are just wacky guys like The Butcher, who buries you under a pile of lunchmeat so you're immobilized while he robs you. But sometimes, she faces off against an evil businessman who uses mass hypnosis in his advertising to get people to buy his worthless products and/or revere him. Sometimes she faces an elderly woman who uses a 'sweet old grandmother' routine to trick people into helping her with her crimes. And in those cases, Word Girl can't win just by flying fast or punching hard. She has to convince the public that a crime has been committed at all, show them how they've been fooled, persuade them to turn against the villain. So she's not just teaching vocabulary, she's teaching critical thinking.
Look, I know that what to do about a bully politician who runs on a platform of hurting everyone who doesn't vote for him is a complex question, and that as an adult, I shouldn't be looking to a picture book for answers. But a kid might! And while I don't expect any children's book to avoid simplification, I'd hope for one whose answers aren't quite so insipid. 'Just kill him, and then he won't be around anymore' isn't a good answer for a number of reasons, among them, it's not really practical or actionable.
Two of my favorite superheroes are Word Girl and Squirrel Girl, because they both address the question, what do you do about a bad guy, besides just be stronger than him and beat him up?
Squirrel Girl is probably better known. She had an ongoing Marvel comic series for awhile. About half the time, she uses her strength to simply stop the villain from whatever they're doing so she can talk with them, find out why they're rampaging, and see if they could be redirected to some more constructive activity instead. The rest of the time, talking doesn't work, but neither does simply being super strong and having the powers of a squirrel. To win, she needs a coalition, both other superhero allies, and reformed supervillains she previously talked to and made friends with.
Word Girl is probably less well known. She has a PBS kids' show that I used to watch all the time in grad school when I couldn't fall asleep. She's super strong, flies, and officially, her shtick is that she teaches you several vocabulary words every episode. And sometimes her villains are just wacky guys like The Butcher, who buries you under a pile of lunchmeat so you're immobilized while he robs you. But sometimes, she faces off against an evil businessman who uses mass hypnosis in his advertising to get people to buy his worthless products and/or revere him. Sometimes she faces an elderly woman who uses a 'sweet old grandmother' routine to trick people into helping her with her crimes. And in those cases, Word Girl can't win just by flying fast or punching hard. She has to convince the public that a crime has been committed at all, show them how they've been fooled, persuade them to turn against the villain. So she's not just teaching vocabulary, she's teaching critical thinking.
These stories are still simplified, but they're not simplistic. They model, at an interpersonal level, what you need to do when you can't win just by being physically strong. And one benefit to this, is that this kind of organizing is fractal - the same actions need to be repeated at several scales. Because a mass movement isn't just a gathering of millions of unaffiliated individuals. It's not even an organization made up of organizations - it's a coalition of coalitions.
Organizing a mass protest is a lot like putting together a holiday parade. Yes, you invite everyone you can to show up and join the audience (and the audience absolutely is a part of the event) but the core of the event is made up of pre-existing groups, which normally meet separately and each do their own thing, cooperating on a shared goal. The bridge work connecting group to group and collection-of-groups to collection-of-groups is important, but so is the work of building and maintaining each of the individual teams and clubs. And practicing at the interpersonal level is how you learn to make connections between groups. Cooperating with friends is both an excellent first step, and a guide to what you should do next.
Is it fair to hold Imelda and the Goblin King to this standard? No, absolutely not. I ought to engage with it on its own terms, rather than imposing judgment based on American politics a decade after it was written and my own idiosyncratic test for the 'right' way to teach kids how to handle conflict. But that's where I'm at. Right now, I don't know how to be fair.
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