The portal — a secret opening or entrance to a fantastical world, starkly different from the ordinary world that surrounds us — is found everywhere in children’s literature and film. It serves as an escape route from the mundane, and the magic of the world beyond the portal is often underscored by the drabness or unhappiness of the real world that precedes it. Examples abound: from the claustrophobic black-and-white patterned room (and, of course, Charlie’s life of poverty) that leads toward the candy-filled wonderland in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the colorless farm scenes and harrowing tornado that brings us to Oz, and of course the foreboding old mansion that the children evacuate to during World War II that houses the magical wardrobe/secret entrance to Narnia in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Most children will instantly relate to the thrill of discovery that Charlie and Dorothy and Lucy feel when they first set foot in these wonderlands, despite the fact that this is something — entering a fantastical world through a magic passage — no one in real life can actually experience. So why is this feeling so recognizable?
Maybe it’s less that children relate to these fantastical stories, and more that these fantastical stories model after real childhood experiences.
In childhood, life seems to consist of many distinct realms or worlds, not just one with many parts. When my daughter, Edel, age four, spots, say, a mossy nook from a distance while hiking, she’ll ask, “Oh, is that a world?” as if we’ve stumbled on a secret kingdom of gnomes. I remember, about her age, thinking that highway ramps were just ways of connecting a series of worlds, stacked like pancakes atop each other, an uncanny phenomenon that still reoccurs in my dreams. As a child, individual places feel isolated, remote, and distinct — unnavigable. You exist in one world (home, school, commonly-visited places) until you are shuffled into another world, always by an adult. Space is incomprehensible, it belongs to adults, who control it and its means of commute.
For children to think that there are places, only for them, that only they can access, is magical. And what is even better is that these places actually exist in some capacity. The portals of children’s literature are less based on an unreachable longing for escape that can never happen in reality, but a fantastical replication of a very common practice of childhood — discovering wild play spaces.
I’ve written about this in my first post for Wild Lot, about Bruno Schulz’s venturing into an abandoned garden where he and his friends run free (until they discover a man using the same space for “adult” purposes, which breaks the spell), and in a joint post, Stranger Things 1: Portals, Periphery Woods, and Parallel Worlds, which discusses, in part, how the woods surrounding suburban neighborhoods create opportunities for free play. And I plan on writing about it even more. These wild spaces generally have no conventional use-value for adults and thus become no-man’s-lands, essentially up for grabs for anyone who can find a use for them. Their proximity to homes allows them to be (relatively) safe and accessible places for children to freely explore and play, and further, try out adult-roles, away from the watchful eye of actual adults. These places are the vacant lots, the overgrown gardens, the streams, the bordering woods, and secluded alleys, or even the private corner of the backyard, hidden under a boxwood hedge. I am sure everyone can recall one of these such “worlds” from their childhoods. And while many children’s books choose to focus on their fantastical counterpart, the wonderland, there are also many that relish in recreating and examining the actual thing.
I’ve pulled lots of books off my children’s shelves that feature places like these, and they seem to all share these same, sometimes overlapping, qualities:
1. A distinct form: physically, the wild spaces featured are located in a nearby area, have minimal use for adults, and are somehow separated or tucked away from the surrounding, orderly, adult-dominated space. Further — the combination of natural setting and isolation bestows an almost magical or mythical quality to them.
2. A sense of utopia, including a progressive take on gender roles.
3. Lack of parental oversight as the child plays freely and imaginatively, making developmental strides.
4. Visuals. Beautiful encompassing illustration or description, teeming with all kinds of life, and reflecting the stimulating qualities of natural settings.
The list below is nowhere near conclusive, but a few of my favorites, spanning about a century of childhoods exploring unique American landscapes.
Roxaboxen
Harper Collins, 1991. Recommended for ages 4-8.
Roxaboxen is one of my favorite children’s books for its ability to capture the timeless wild play of mid-childhood that flourishes during the early years of elementary school and fades as we edge closer to adulthood. Written by Alice McLerran after the childhood experiences of her mother in Yuma, Arizona, the book describes the development of a play-town on the edge of a neighborhood (officially located “On a hill on the southeast corner of Second Avenue and Eighth Street”). Although published in 1991, the real Roxaboxen seems to have existed in the 1910s to early 1920s, though the narrator advises us that “Roxaboxen had always been there, and must have belonged to others long before.” Jeremy offers that what he likes most about the book is its sense of human beings as being only tiny iterations in time against a backdrop of endless Earth time, and the dreamy quality it creates.
The marginal wildspace in Roxaboxen, one that exists on the fringes of development but goes undeveloped itself, marks another kind of nearby place that children gravitate toward for imaginary play. It might exist as a strip of woods at the edge of the neighborhood. It might be the interstitial passage between yards and buildings in urban landscapes, like this one, that Jeremy documents on our Instagram. Or it could be the natural feature, a creek or ravine, that is allowed to remain wild because it has little use for development (like the one in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye). Whatever the location or reason for its vacantness and wildness, these places proliferate in our urban and suburban landscapes and take on a mythical quality in childhood. My own space was a small stream that served as a boundary between my neighborhood and an adjacent one. I played there for hours from the ages of about four to eleven, doing everything from swimming and catching small, scared water creatures (crayfish, namely) to more domestic pretend play (a.k.a. “house”).
Roxaboxen has all the hallmarks of stories that feature these spaces. For one, it has many utopic qualities, which is probably its most encompassing feature. In Roxaboxen, money was simply black pebbles, originally found in a tin, but of course, more could be found elsewhere if you look hard enough. Houses were made of stone and found objects, and could be made as large or ornate as you wished. Luxury goods were easy to come by: “Everybody had a car. All you needed was something round for a steering wheel.” Though there was a cemetery, there had only been one death — a lizard. And there were TWO ice cream parlors. There were no gender barriers, either. The town was founded by Marian, who also served as mayor. “Quiet little Anna May” was known for speeding so much “you’d think she liked to go to jail.” The only obvious differentiation between boys and girls was the great war between them, though no winner was announced.
What further pronounces this sense of utopia is the landscape itself. The vivid illustrations by Barbara Cooney depict an unusual setting of stones and sand, repurposed crates and colored glass, flowering cacti, and ocotillo, whose sweet orange blossoms attract hummingbirds and butterfly in the spring. For me it is both similar to the familiar edge-of-the-neighborhood wild space of my childhood, and exotic enough to feel almost fantastical.
Like those spaces and memories from childhood, Roxaboxen has a just-out-of-reach quality to it that makes the reader yearn to be there and experience the freedom of running over the sand, ocotillo sword in hand. As the story draws to a close, we leave it behind, transcending time and witnessing Roxaboxen as it moves from memory to legend.
“Not one of them ever forgot. Years later, Marian’s children listened to stories of that place and fell asleep dreaming dreams of Roxaboxen. Gray-haired Charles picked up a black pebble on the beach and stood holding it, remembering Roxaboxen. More than fifty years later, Frances went back and Roxaboxen was still there.”
The Magic Next Door
Golden Press, 1971. Recommended for ages 3-5.
This Little Golden Book, by Evelyn Swetnam, illustrated by Judy Stang, exhibits one of the most common of these spaces: the vacant lot-in-waiting, as it typically appeared in America’s mid-century development phase as tracts of urban fringe land were parceled out and clustered into neighborhoods and the suburbs were born. The protagonist, a boy named Robert, lives in one such suburban neighborhood. He is the only child in the neighborhood, but he doesn’t mind because “he had a vacant lot, and it was just right for him.”
The book explains that the lot wasn’t actually “vacant” for Robert, but filled with things — tall grass, dirt, paths, a tree. However, it doesn’t linger on his enjoyment of the lot for long. By the second page a house appears on the otherwise still overgrown lot, while he is away visiting his grandmother. His father, in the only major appearance of an adult in the narrative, explains: “Sometimes houses that are already built are moved to another place.” (Ahh, the modern magic of manufactured housing.)
The lot is imbued with a feeling of specialness from the start. The fact that a complete house can appear seemingly overnight is an extension of this. And, as Robert learns of the new inhabitants, a sense of magicalness further extends to them:
“But Robert liked the idea of magic. If anything had to be on his own vacant lot, it ought to be something magic. If the house wasn’t magic, then the people in the house were.”
While the first appearances of the adults of the house aren’t particularly magical (to the disappointment of Robert), the little girl living there certainly is. Everything from her “lemon-colored” hair to her jump-rope skills, to her name, Allison Ann, intrigues Robert. Yet, Robert is still cross that she is in his lot. She tries to entice him to come over the fence with “the biggest, reddest apple” and “the prettiest puppy” he has ever seen, to no avail. When she does a headstand, though, he laughs so hard he falls over onto her side of the fence, into his lot. After a few moments of giggling, Robert shows her how to play wild animals in the overgrowth, and she teaches him how to play games that require two children. He discovers he is happy to share his lot:
“Robert decided there was something more important than his own vacant lot, and that was a friend to play with. Even if she wasn’t magic. But especially if she was.”
The story ends here, with the two children playing among the weeds and fluttering insects, before the lawn is mown and orderly flower beds planted. The underlying message, with its Edenic overtones, appears to be simply that friends are good, even at the expense of solitary wildspace. Though it comes across as a little pro-development, that probably wasn’t the author’s intention.
Despite its simplicity, it nonetheless possesses the standard characteristics of the children’s wild space tale. The space is located next door, set off by a fence, and is vacant until purchased for the relocation of a house. It is not only “magic,” but the magic extends to everything associated with the lot — the apple, the puppy, and of course, Allison Ann. Illustrations of tall grasses, flowering weeds, a friendly blue and purple caterpillar that appears across multiple pages (and even seems interested in the children’s conversation!), and butterflies and bees, act as a backdrop to the story, accentuating the wonder-ful quality of the lot.
It has some fleeting utopic aspects, too. Though, admittedly, Allison Ann is somewhat objectified/other-fied, and the protagonist is male, this is not a solely male-centric world. Friends can be of any gender, and if anything, Allison Ann has an elevated status. She is special enough that Robert is willing to share his vacant lot with, after all. And they both contribute something important to the friendship through play. Further, it all happens without parents. The story starts with Robert alone and largely unfolds in the children’s world, as Robert comes to terms with the loss of his special place as well as making his first friend.
Finding Wild
Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. Recommended for ages 3-7.
This newer book, by Megan Wagner Lloyd, illustrated by Abigail Halpin, is quite a different spin on the children’s wild space. Firstly, in contrast to the others, it spends most of the book just describing and explaining the phenomenon of the wild and the rarity of it in developed, specifically urban spaces. The author does a beautiful job establishing wildness, per its opening question “what is wild?”, exploring it with a special focus on the wild as a sensory experience beyond just the visual. In this way, it is a more conscious, modern look at wildness, aware of its importance as it dwindles in the face of continuous development.
While much of the space the children observe is true wilderness — undeveloped coastlines, frozen forests, mountains and jungles — what stands out about this book is its interest in the wild spaces that are accessible to young urban dwellers and explorers. The author points out that nature is resilient to humankind, and you can find wild even in the most manmade of environments:
“It pushes through cracks and crannies and steals back forgotten places.”
As the story begins, we follow two backpack-clad children, an older girl and a younger boy, on a hunt for something wild. They exit a subway station and head straight for a jungly space, presumably a park, guided by a flying leaf. From the beginning, the book follows the same familiar four tenets of the children’s wildspace book. Although the children here exercise a bit more freedom than is usual (riding subways, exploring parks alone), they nonetheless stay in the nearby spaces that surround their everyday lives. The exploration is led by the older, female child, there are no parents to be found, and it is replete with vivid and detailed watercolor illustrations of wild scenes.
After indulging readers in pages of luscious drawings and sensory-laden descriptions of wildlife and landscape, the tone of the book becomes wistful as the author laments:
“…sometimes wild is buried too deep, and it seems like the whole world is clean and paved, ordered and tidy.”
The visuals shift from an impenetrable jungle to a two-page layered urban landscape with no sign of anything natural but a leaf (the same from the opening) whirling through.
The leaf, however, soon leads the children to (of course!) a secret door, behind which, “Old and worn and still standing strong–” is a magnificent lost garden, every inch packed with vegetation, overseen by ancient looming trees. The urban cityscape becomes nothing more than a few distant buildings on the horizon (and of course, the ever-present jet).
The ending represents the final kind of children’s wild space, post-civilization — the abandoned space. And what I love about this particular capstone “wild” is that it is almost purely a botanical wilderness, of flowers, trees, ferns, and maybe the occasional bird. Vertebrate animals that are able to thrive in urban spaces are few and far between, but when one thinks of the term “wild,” we often initially think of those notorious and ferocious top-of-the-food-chain beasts that exist only in pure wilderness — wolves, bears, large cats, and so forth. But are these small anomalous spaces of wildness in an increasingly developed world any less worthy of the term ‘wild’? Can they not offer us some smaller dose of the same restorative benefits as say, climbing a mountain or hiking in the forest?
One benefit that these wild urban spaces do bestow for certain is that of hope. The wild can adapt and survive, even thrive, despite the destructive nature of us humans — a heartening thought for today’s readers.
Header image: from Finding Wild, by Megan Wagner Lloyd, illustrated by Abigail Halpin. Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.