KidLit Forum

REALISTIC FICTION
- it resides in the fact that the story takes place in modern times and the characters are involved in events that could happen (the farm scenes, the fair scene, etc.)

- from the first chapter we get the idea of the children’s favourite toys; from both Avery and Fern’s attitudes results the fact that they are in a transition from childhood to adulthood.
- all the details that are given concerning the description of the barn, the tools in the barn “it was full of all sorts of things that you find in barns: ladders, grindstones, pitch forks, monkey wrenches, scythe, lawn mowers, snow shovels, ax handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and rusty rat traps. ”

- details on the slop (several times) that sometimes sound like a ‘recipe’: „It was a delicious meal - skim milk, wheat middlings, leftover pancakes, half a doughnut, the rind of a summer squash, two pieces of stale toast, a third of a gingersnap, a fish tail, one orange peel, several noodles from a noodle soup, the scum off a cup of cocoa, an ancient jelly roll, a strip of paper from the lining of the garbage pail, and a spoonful of raspberry jello”

- list of insects that are on Charlotte’s menu: ” Flies, bugs, grasshoppers, choice beetles, moths, butterflies, tasty cockroaches, gnats, midges, daddy longlegs, centipedes, mosquitoes, crickets (...)”

- types of cars (all American): „The Zuckermans' driveway was full of cars and trucks from morning till night - Fords and Chevvies and Buick roadmasters and GMC pickups and Plymouths and Studebakers and Packards and De Sotos with gyromatic transmissions and Oldsmobiles with rocket engines and Jeep station wagons and Pontiacs. ”

- goodies to be found at the fair as „A fair is a rat’s paradise” : „In the horse barn you will find oats that the trotters and pacers have spilled. In the trampled grass of the infield you will find old discarded lunch boxes containing the foul remains of peanut butter sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, bits of doughnuts, and particles of cheese. In the hard-packed dirt of the midway, after the glaring lights are out and the people have gone home to bed, you will find a veritable treasure of popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribblings, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, popsicles, partially gnawed ice cream cones, and the wooden sticks of lollypops. ”

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Monika Bandi