"Like Water Through a Sieve," by Anne Nesbet

Last weekend I was celebrating Independent Bookstore Day by wandering happily through my second of TWO within-walking-distance independent bookstores, Pegasus Books (the other wonderful local store is Books Inc., Berkeley), when I noticed a little table with squares of paper scattered across--and on each piece of paper was what seemed to be a few words or a phrase in mirror writing. A card explained: these were sentences from Alice Through the Looking-Glass, turned into temporary tattoos. Volunteers were being asked to adopt one of these little literary tattoos, apply it to some friendly patch of skin, take a photo of the phrase, and send it to the people running this project so it could be stitched together with a gazillion other photos of word-tattoos and turned into a new, breathtakingly crazy online edition of Through the Looking-Glass.

Well, now, listen. They had me at "Alice"! All the rest was blah-blah-blah details. I was in. Of course, I wanted to be part of a living Looking-Glass! I nabbed one of the little tattoos and brought it home quick as could be, so I could set about BECOMING ART. I read the instructions many times, but quickly.

"1. Write down or remember your number."

There was a four-digit number on the tattoo, so that the organizers could later sort our emailed photos into book order. So cleverly arranged.

"2. Rip, fold, or cut your number off, so that it is not applied. 3.--"

Oh, goodness, how hard could this be? I grabbed a wet paper towel and applied that tattoo to my arm. I could feel myself BECOMING ART! It was a little drippy, but thrilling! I counted out the thirty seconds at fever speed. Long enough, surely. Let's look! ART! --

There it was, my own tattooed sentence, looking grand: "Like water through a sieve."  Let's be honest, I got one of the best lines on that table, didn't I? "Like water through a sieve"! That's so great! That's philosophical! Maybe I should get a real tattoo saying that, "Like water through a--OH, RATS!"

I had forgotten to cut the little number off. So on my arm was the Alice phrase--and an unsightly four-digit number.

My right hand reacted before my brain even picked up the neuron-phone. My right hand reached over and scritched that ugly number out, quick as quickest quick--GONE.

Now I was really Art! Except--OH RATS AGAIN!!

I had just destroyed the only link between my gorgeous Alice tattoo and the rest of the book project.

I looked sadly at my speedy right hand, but there were no numbers left, nope: just a bit of powdery black debris under my fingernail.

.....So, friends, have you reread the Alice books recently? Do you see where this is going? Are the little hairs that respond to coincidence and magic beginning to leap up on the back of your neck?

Because for one thing, I may have flunked Following Instructions, but even in my failure to Follow Instructions, I was definitely, positively following Alice! I had just more or less managed to reenact Alice's adventures in the hall with the tiny door into the garden and the key to the door on the top of the glass table and when she's tall she can't get through the door and when she shrinks small she can't reach the key and up and down and up and down it's all a fiasco until we all nearly drown in a pool of our own tears.........

And then, speaking of moisture and mental failure, what did my new tattoo say again? "Like water through a sieve"!

That is my mind at work: like water through a sieve. Oh, my, yes.

It's from the White Knight's song (I went back and looked it up):

"'Who are you, aged man?' I said.

'And how is it you live?'

And his answer trickled through my head,

Like water through a sieve . . . ."

The sad story of my life is that all too many things just trickle through my head, like water through a sieve.

On the other hand, let me just point out that sieves are potentially very creative objects. Ideas trickle through in lovely trickly patterns. We can't hold onto all the details, maybe, but that just means we have to get very good at making details up--or at writing details down, so that we can find them later. The holes in the sieve are what make it a sieve--our own gaps and flaws make us what we are, don't they?

Sieves!

And then I laughed and thought happily about sieves for quite some time, and about all the sieve-like flaws and gaps and scars and fails that make me Me. Even if I am not exactly ART, I am--because of (not despite) all those flaws and gaps and scars and fails--an artist, a writer, a sieve that works a little bit of magic on the world trickling through it.

What flaw or gap or scar or fear or failure is your secret creative strength, if I may ask? "How is it you live?" as the question goes in the White Knight's song.

Remember that the Knight himself, like all writers, tends to fall off his horse quite a bit ("he had a habit of now and then falling off sideways"). If we remember how close the word "riding" is to "writing," we can find ourselves reading the story a little differently:

"'The great art of riding [or writing!],' the Knight suddenly began in a loud voice, waving his right arm as he spoke, 'is to keep----' Here the sentence ended as suddenly as it had begun, as the Knight fell heavily on the top of his head exactly in the path where Alice was walking."

To keep--

falling and flowing!

--like water through a sieve.

In Praise of Prickles by Kell Andrews

Not every thorn has its rose.

Nobody wrote prickles like Diana Wynne Jones.

I'm reading her Dalemark Quartet for the first time, and it strikes me again how prickly her characters are. From The Spellcoats (Book Three):

Robin wrung her hands. ... It annoys me when she does.

"We can go away down the River and find somewhere better to live," I said. It was the most exciting thing I had ever said. I had always wanted to see the River. ...

"But the Heathens!" Robin said, wringing away. I could have hit her.

The narrator Tanaqui is not nice. She isn't patient or kind. She sulks when she doesn't get her way, she teases her brother and snaps at her sister, and she turns out to be a hero in the end. Even then, she's still not nice.

In Jones's most popular novel, Howl's Moving Castle, Howl is vain, lazy, and not very brave, but it's Sophie who we root for as she becomes less nice.  Disguised as an old woman, she discovers her inner curmudgeon -- commandeering and no-nonsense, where once she was timid and compliant. She gains an edge. This is character growth in the world of Diana Wynne Jones, and that's why I love it.

Middle-grade characters are often so nice. They do the right thing. They even feel the right thing. They have flaws, but their flaws are the kind of answers they could give to a potential employer who asked them their biggest weakness in a job interview.

"I'm too much of a perfectionist."
"I care too much about how others think and feel."
"I have many unique qualities and quirks that are not always appreciated."
"Other people are intimidated by my intelligence and competence, as well as my world-saving magical gifts."

We have a higher expectation of morality from children. Everyone must play together, everyone is invited, everyone should be nice. This higher expectation is doubled for child characters -- there is a lot of "should" in children's literature, and readers like it too, and not just parents. When I was a kid, I adored perfect princess Sara Crewe but couldn't warm to sickly, fretful Mistress Mary Quite Contrary.  And I still love a transcendentally good character --  Auggie Pullman in Wonder, Felicity Pickle in A Snicker of Magic.

Readers want to spend time with likeable characters. They want to see themselves in characters they wish they were -- mirrors and windows, yes, but mirrors that show a particularly flattering reflection or a windows that let in the most attractive light.  Who wouldn't rather be Harry Potter rather than jealous, dim Ron or know-it-all Hermione? Ron and Hermione have prickles. Harry is nice, as well as being the Boy Who Lived, Hogwarts Champion, the Griffindor Seeker, and all-around BMOC. Maybe that's why Rowling's Harry Potter is more popular than Jones's Christopher Chant.

Children's literature past and present has its share of Pollyannas, including the title character from Eleanor H. Porter's novel whose is synonymous with unshakeable optimism and goodness. Maybe that's why middle-grade characters with prickles stand out, and why I like them so much. Even when you're saving civilization, your little brother might still get on your nerves. Probably especially then.
Who are some of your favorite prickly characters?