I’m not trying to be a killjoy here, but superheroes bore me. I understand why people love Marvel movies, cheering as the hero beats the villain down, but for me, that’s not a good enough story. Add to that stories where the hero conveniently has the magical ability that will solve everything. I’ve really had enough of children’s stories that offer easy solutions that no real human can employ.
Kids love superheroes and magical solutions.
They love stories in which there’s a really ugly villain and a really amazing hero who vanquishes the villain and makes the world right again. And why wouldn’t they? We adults thought the world we grew up in was screwed up—today’s kids are facing much bigger threats. Escapism can be very tempting.
Of course, any story worth listening to or reading is entertaining—any good preacher will tell you that no one cares to hear a boring sermon, either. But the function of storytelling throughout time has never been just to entertain. And any good preacher (or fiction writer, or TV series writer…) intrinsically knows that, too.
Superhero stories are the wonderbread of storytelling: lovely to the touch, easy to digest, offering no real nourishment for the soul. Stories in which magic saves the day are processed junkfood when what kids really need is fiber and nutrition.
We’re not superheroes, we’re not magical, we’re just human.
Even the real humans we call heroes are just human. It’s a bit depressing to admit that, but it’s also what makes us so fascinating to ourselves. If we were all superheroes or supervillains, life would be a wonderbread story: fluff through-and-through. We wouldn’t bother to care: the hero will always win, the villain will always come back, the little people will always die.
A really good story has at least a kernel of the human struggle in it. In magical stories like Harry Potter, magic doesn’t actually save the day—friendship, love, and faith do. In my current favorite kids’ book When You Reach Me, time travel is hard and imperfect but it’s the tool one kid has found to fix a screwed-up situation. In good realistic fiction like Wild Bird, kids struggle, embarrass themselves, and still find love and acceptance from other flawed humans.
Good stories, whether fantastical or realistic, teach us something about ourselves, ask us to question our assumptions, or inspire us to become better, stronger people.
A steady diet of superheroes and easy magic is not healthy for kids.
Many young writing students are attracted to stories in which they give their characters “powers” which allow their characters to step out of the human condition. It’s the rare kid who understands how much they sap the humanity of their characters by letting them solve their problems with a handy power that just happens to be the one needed to save the day.
Even worse, in writing these characters kids are able to avoid the introspection that writing fiction requires. No matter the genre that you’re writing or reading, when your character is in a bind, that’s when you learn something about life.
Kids will never be armed with a lightning bolt.
Ancient people used mythological gods to explain the forces that they couldn’t understand. But we do understand most of the malevolent forces facing us today.
When our kids experience the hurricanes, droughts, and poverty caused by climate change, they will know that no god was involved in creating the problem, and that they will never be given magical powers to fix it all with a wave of a wand.
When our kids face the deep political divisions in our country, people on the other side will simply be humans trying to make their way in the world, not supervillains to be killed off.
When our kids face heartbreak, illness, fear, or confusion, they will need tools.
Fiction can give them those tools.
We have to work within our human limitations.
I’m not against a good, fun read or two hours of light entertainment. But I am against bombarding kids, over and over, with stories that set them up for disappointment. No human they ever have a conflict with will be as simple to hate as a supervillain. No human who ever reaches out a hand to help them will have a hero’s lightning bolt to offer.
Stories help children make sense of the world by offering them tools in the form of words and ideas.
We’re giving our kids a pretty darn screwed-up world.
So let’s give them the tools they need to prepare them for the fight ahead.
