I Don't Want It to Be Over!

That might be the most lack luster book I've ever drawn. You should see the real cover. It's beautiful!

The Tricky Thing About Endings

Three books I'm psyched we got in the children's section:

1. House of Hades by Rick Riordan
 Do I really need to say anything else about this?
2. Unbreakable by Kami Garcia
Half of the writing team of Beautiful Creatures. Creepy ghosts. Some romance. Wonderful.
3.Fletcher and the Falling Leaves by Julia Rawlinson.
Okay, so we got this one back in. It's a favorite of mine.

I know a lot of people who are happy ending people. They want every book to end with everything neatly wrapped and tied with a bow.

That's fine. I think some books should end that way. Not everything needs to end with a string of deaths and heartache. It would be boring, not to mention very strange if every book did (I imagine a lot of rogue cars jumping curbs, random snipers, and spontaneous rockslides).

But there are books where most of the book pretty much promises death. You read the entire thing on the edge of your seat wondering which character is going die. Someone has to. Maybe our ragtag band of heroes is horrendously outnumbered. Maybe someone starts off the story incurably ill (John Green proves that that can still be surprisingly heart-wrenching). You read the entire thing completely certain that someone is about to die.

And then no one does. At the last second that surprise army comes in, or someone with a magical cure to this previously incurable illness appears and everyone is okay...happy even.

I am usually disappointed... I am also infamous among friends for having no qualms about killing characters off.

Sometimes people are okay. I'm cool with that. I don't want to read books where everyone dies all the time, I'm not that macabre. I do usually like it if the characters bleed a little first (that can be emotional bleeding. I'm not picky). If no one gets hurt what are the stakes?

That's the thing though, the stakes. They need to be high for what's happening to matter. The threat must seem great. Even in books like the teen romances they are up against time. It takes place over a summer or a school year and they only have so long. But if the threat is going to be big enough to matter something must be lost.

I'm never convinced when five main characters go up against an army (with maybe 10 of their closest friends) and no one dies. Often no one is even gravely injured. It doesn't make sense. There should at least be lots of blood. Maybe most of them make it out alive thanks to their superior powers or that last minute help but there's no way that there were no casualties.

Often authors will toss in what I mentally refer to as 'padding characters.' These are the ones whose names we hear a couple times before, maybe they share a joke or two with the main characters. They are almost guaranteed to die. Because you recognize the name you care just enough and the author can say that someone we knew died.

I'm not okay with just padding characters dying. The stakes aren't high enough.

But how many people are really happy with a book (or series) that ends with the main character alone and grieving...or dead? There would be outrage. But at the same time people are still angry when the consequences aren't high enough.

Where's the line? Can we ever be happy with the way it ends?

I would be okay with the main character dead if it made sense. But I also think the story requires the same respect the characters do. To change the flow of the story for the sake of the ending is cheap. And I think it often shows when that happens. The ending doesn't make sense. There is never a time when every reader is going to be happy. I'd rather be devastated but satisfied.

But I'm beginning to think that I might be a little bit bloodthirsty.

-Amy

endings haunt me

Today my four-and-a-half year old son graduated from his, um, second out of three years of pre-school. I'm aware that the graduation ceremony is more for the parents than the kids. (If I hadn't been before, I would have been as soon as I realized that, instead of playing the guaranteed-to-make-a-room-full-of-adults-weep "Pomp & Circumstance", the teachers had chosen a meek version of "God Bless America". Approximately 90 percent of Jack's schoolmates are sons or daughters of first responders. Firefighter and police families really dig that sort of thing. I can appreciate that.)
Seventeen little folk proceed to their seats, caps askew and gowns fluttering around their syncopating feet, and then there's number eighteen, my boy, with NO CAP thank you very much.
Surprised, am I? Noooooo.

I didn't feel pride, exactly. I am not foolish enough to think that he was making some sort of principled stand against uniforms, conformity, or the (delightful and appropriate) pomp and circumstance of a graduation ceremony for four-year-olds. If he were four or five years older, it would have been respect that I felt. But he's so little (and yet so big. If you have had children growing up in your home, you might know how a person can seem both so so tiny and so so huge at the same time.), I know that he was just doing the thing that he does. Not much more to it than that. It's not as if he felt oppressed by the authority who was trying to force a mortarboard on him.
He just doesn't wear a hat.
Nobody puts a hat on Jackson.

It's like me with ties. Unless you're getting married and you need me to wear a tuxedo, get that pretty noose away from my neck. Never again, I tell you, never again.

So now it's the little snacks-and-goodbyes party in the classroom afterwards. For me, there are memories of endings, and of new schools, new people; mysteries looming. These are teachers and parents and kids that I have known from pick-up and drop-off time for two years. But now we live in another town, and in September Jack, and later Lib will be going to school closer to home. It's bittersweet. Miss Sheila picks up Jack in a big hug and doesn't want to let go. Menisci of tears are to be found in the eyes of teachers, most moms and at least this one dad.

Jack is ready to go. It's just another day of school. In our embraces, he waits patiently for the car, where there is usually a snack for the long ride home.

When does that start for children? The missing things before they are gone? Is it a predictable stage of mental development? Or is it triggered by an event, different for each of us?
Is it something you have to experience before you can learn how to stop doing it?
I mourn the loss of innocence in the world. My children have not lost it.
I mourn the loss of playfulness in the world. My children play.
I mourn the loss of the natural world. I will walk home under trees, I will remove my shoes and walk in a field at night, and in the morning when I walk outside a spiderweb will tickle and tug across my brow.

I mourn the loss of our democracy. I vote.
I mourn the loss of the printed book. I am reading one.
I mourn the death of honest communication. I trust you.