I've heard a couple of months ago an author of children books explaining how much the market for kids is changing from a season to another, in terms of favorite animals characters. "This summer the elephants are wanted, or the rabbits, the next season the giraffes or the apes; the bears are the favorites almost all the time". Probably it is the same happening with the movies - jungle animals from Madagascar, the rats - first Ratatouille, which I saw and found full of humor, after Despereaux, which I don't but maybe I don't want to see all the rats representations in movies for children, the bees - from the Bee Movie etc. For the kids, the ingredients of the character should include a sympathetic human figure, playful and very close of a normal - and sometimes freer, because in the wild, of course - and happy kid.
As an adult, probably you wait the animal-character to be different than any human or at least to reveal hidden perceptions, perspectives and, why not, ideas. What the rat character from Firmin: Advantages of a Metropolitan Lowlife is not. Shortly, as an occurence of his rat's life, he started to live around books, ate some of them and started to read. And as his understading of human increase, an old world is about to change and even his favorite bookstore is closing the doors. Firmin is not an usual, normal, looking for knowledge kind of reader: he is reading with a passion close to multiple personality obsession, completely identifying with the book characters. You cannot shout "Firmin, c'est moi", because you cannot describe exactly what he is: a child-abused animal, a human turned by a bad fairy in a rat. And, at the end of the story, he dies. I am sure I am missing something about understanding the key-elements of successful books.
But, anyway, Sam Savage bio's is quite interesting: the beat Ph.D. in philosophy turned to a fisherman and bycicle mechanic.
And, in fact, I like books with animal characters for adults. Still looking to find at least something as lively than Paul Auster's Timbuktu.
As an adult, probably you wait the animal-character to be different than any human or at least to reveal hidden perceptions, perspectives and, why not, ideas. What the rat character from Firmin: Advantages of a Metropolitan Lowlife is not. Shortly, as an occurence of his rat's life, he started to live around books, ate some of them and started to read. And as his understading of human increase, an old world is about to change and even his favorite bookstore is closing the doors. Firmin is not an usual, normal, looking for knowledge kind of reader: he is reading with a passion close to multiple personality obsession, completely identifying with the book characters. You cannot shout "Firmin, c'est moi", because you cannot describe exactly what he is: a child-abused animal, a human turned by a bad fairy in a rat. And, at the end of the story, he dies. I am sure I am missing something about understanding the key-elements of successful books.
But, anyway, Sam Savage bio's is quite interesting: the beat Ph.D. in philosophy turned to a fisherman and bycicle mechanic.
And, in fact, I like books with animal characters for adults. Still looking to find at least something as lively than Paul Auster's Timbuktu.
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