8 ms·

Why are there so few children’s books set in the suburbs?

35 points by krebs_liebhaber 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Klais 6y ago
Really
ihsw 6y ago
Because the suburbs and urban areas are cultural toilets.
pmiller2 6y ago
Hmm... is it because the suburbs are boring? reads article Yep, except instead of "boring," they say "walkable." I can't say I disagree.
- giantg2 6y ago
  I agree. I was trying to think of what a suburban story would look like. The cities have things like museums or the zoo. The country has natural things to explore. The suburbs are basically a bunch of houses with yards - not a lot of opportunity for childhood adventure stories.
  - hhggfdss 6y ago
    Really? I grew up in a rural area and the suburbs always seemed like fun, you know why? There were other kids! Is this just an illusion? All I ever wanted as a kid was a neighborhood. We had to convince our parents to drive us all over hill and dale if we wanted to see anyone our age.
    - mdorazio 6y ago
      In the suburbs if you're not old enough to drive your "adventures" mostly consist of meeting at someone's house and doing house things. So yes, there are other kids to interact with, but not much of an environment in which to interact with them.
      - sidibe 6y ago
        Seems like most things kids want to do just require yards or houses and other kids. Before you can drive I think the main factor for how much fun your environment is (assuming safety and no poverty) is the density of kids your age in the neighborhood.
        watwut 6y ago
        Kids do what is available. And kids are definitely able to use more then just yard. Yard gets boring when you are like 6. Then the kids either have bigger space to bike, explore, play actual hide and seek where they can actually hide etc .... or move all activities inside typically toward videogames.
      - indymike 6y ago
        Suburban parent of five kids here. I live in a lower middle class suburban neighborhood with about 600 homes. My kids have the following, within walking distance of their home: two neighborhood swimming pools, three parks, three schools (two public, one private) two convenience stores, two drug stores, a small department store, and a pizza joint. They can safely walk, ride bikes, play soccer, basketball, swim and even get to school without a bus. This is not a fancy suburb for the wealthy. It's a decidedly normal one in a pretty normal midwest city.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      I guess it depends in the demographics and location. I grew up in both settings. In the rural area I could ride my bike or walk to friends houses, but there were really only 2 that were in range. There were tons of activity options - bike trails, fishing, exploring the woods, model rockets, etc. Then in a small town setting, there were more kids, but not as many options for stuff to do. You would need to drive places for many outdoor activities, such as the fishing, mountain biking, model rockets, etc. So the activities were more indoor, which was still stuff I could do rurally, like video games (well rural couldn't do online, just in-person), board games, etc.
    - Finnucane 6y ago
      That's funny--I grew up in a suburb and always wanted to be somewhere else. I didn't want to read books about places like the one I was already in. (I now live not far from where my great-grandparents lived when they first came to this country, so I guess I made a big loop).
      - iso1210 6y ago
        I believe the idea is that the grass is always greener on the other side.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      Have you met kids? They suck, especially to other kids.
- namenotrequired 6y ago
  I think you mean unwalkable
  - iso1210 6y ago
    I think that's a function of american suburbs. It's rural round here which isn't really walkable (narrow country lanes with poor visibility). Suburbs where I live are very walkable, with footpath on both sides of the road, and typically plenty of traffic calming. Rare to be more than a mile to a school for under 11s, maybe 2-4 miles to high school, half a mile at most to a bus stop.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Yes, of course. Silly me.
- macjohnmcc 6y ago
  I'm also confused as to why there are no Spider-man movies in the suburbs.
- analog31 6y ago
  I grew up in a suburb. As kids, we found plenty to do, often involving places where we weren't supposed to be. The nature of suburbia as boring didn't even occur to us until we were teenagers, and then it led to adventures that can't be portrayed in children's books.
lr4444lr 6y ago
This just doesn't strike me as true at all. Most of my children's books have very non-descript settings that begin in non-connected single family houses. But regardless of that framing, so many of my kids' books dive into the realm of the protagonist's imagination. This honestly just sounds like another indirect shot taken at suburban life. I get it, internet content writers disproportionately live in the big cities, but to quote the Dude, this is just like, your opinion, man.
- giantg2 6y ago
  Most of my childhood books were rural based adventures. The books my kid has are mostly rural or have no setting at all. I agree that stories involving houses tend to portray single family homes. I can't think of any that actually portray that house in a suburban setting (the premise of the article). I'm sure they are out there, but none come to mind for me. Then the question is really, so what if the settings are not suburban? I didn't really see an answer to that in the article, so I guess they were just trying to point out that there may be fewer topics for childhood adventures set in suburban areas.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    My favorite children's book growing up (the embarrassingly named Captain Underpants) was definitively suburban. More generally, I guess I'd question what it means to portray a house as suburban. The author seems to be assuming that anywhere with cool nature stuff in walking distance is rural, and that's not true; my definitively suburban house growing up was within easy walking distance of a pretty well-forested park on one side and a creek on the other.
    - mcphage 6y ago
      That was also my biggest problem with this article. Take Calvin and Hobbes—definitely Calvin lives in a suburban environment, but he also has plenty of nature nearby. Would the author consider this rural then? I don’t know, but I don’t think it was.
- 6y ago
vmh1928 6y ago
The Dick and Jane books were set in the 'burbs. The suburbs are primarily white, cisgender and bastions of Patriarchy. Children's books that portray a white, cisgender, patriarchal world are not favored by the publishing or educational establishment.
- andylynch 6y ago
  That’s not quite correct - upscale of diversity is seen as an industry issue; creators of children’s books are mostly white and predominantly female. Interesting breakdown from a UK literacy charity: https://www.booktrust.org.uk/globalassets/resources/represents/booktrust-represents-diversity-childrens-authors-illustrators-report.pdf https://www.booktrust.org.uk/globalassets/resources/represen...
- kaitai 6y ago
  The suburbs these days are incredibly multiracial and multi-ethnic -- please update your stereotypes :)
Jugurtha 6y ago
Why do so few events that shape your life or are worthy of mention take place in the suburbs, a place where people mostly sleep/rest? This reminds me of "liquid networks" from Steven Johnson's book "Where Good Ideas Come From". Here's a talk where he addresses it briefly, timestamped at the moment he starts talking about "liquid network"[0] Things worth telling mostly happen in cities, or the internet. - [0]: https://youtu.be/0af00UcTO-c?t=538 https://youtu.be/0af00UcTO-c?t=538
- generalk 6y ago
  I grew up in suburbs, I went to school in suburbs. I met my wife in the suburbs, I had my first kiss in the suburbs. I definitely had some formative events that occurred on the mid-90s Internet, and would not be the person I am today without it. But I for damn sure also wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't rode my bike to my friends' houses to trade floppy disks or watch Schwarzenegger films, or sneaked out to the mall to meet folks, or hung out at the neighborhood strip-mall comic shop and picked up various CCGs and RPGs.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  > Why do so few events that shape your life or are worthy of mention take place in the suburbs, a place where people mostly sleep/rest? Your idea of a suburb and mine are apparently quite different. I live my entire life here. Buying food, going to work, going out to eat, going to concerts, meeting friends, etc. Why would I only eat & sleep here? Hell, if anything, it's the downtown core that gets quiet at night as all the businesses shut down and along with them about half the restaurants.
ComputerGuru 6y ago
There Is No Such Thing As A Dragon by Jack Kent (1974, I think?) has a clearly suburban setting visible when the kid’s dragon cum house on wheels relocates in chase of a bread truck. (When’s the last time you saw a bread truck!?)
- iso947 6y ago
  “dragon cum house” Are you sure it’s a kids book?!
  - ComputerGuru 6y ago
    See the first/primary dictionary entry: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cum https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cum (Although if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t have expected it to be the first definition.)
adamsea 6y ago
So the article addresses its own question and the answer is children’s stories require walking because it’s children and the suburbs aren’t generally walkable (or interestingly walkable) environments.
- iso1210 6y ago
  The article doesn't provide any evidence 1) That childrens stories aren't set in the suburbs 2) That suburbs aren't generally walkable 3) That suburbs aren't interesting
  - adamsea 6y ago
    It’s not really an evidence kind of article .... no one is trying to “prove” anything. It’s a thought piece.
rcthompson 6y ago
This is a pretty sweeping generalization. The suburb I grew up in was and still is plenty walkable (though it is admittedly even more bikeable/driveable) and has plenty of places for kids to have adventures. Of course, I've definitely been to many suburbs that are completely unwalkable by design, but not every suburb is like that. (My sense is that more recently-built suburbs tend to be more heavily designed around a presumption of car ownership, but that's just based on my own experience.)
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  > The suburb I grew up in was and still is plenty walkable I think on HN a lot of the urbanites think of suburbia as an endless sea of cookie-cutter houses on nondescript, seemingly identical streets. Nothing but houses for as far as you can see. That certainly exists in some places, I'm sure. But some of us grew up in places like Portland, Oregon, which is essentially one big suburban city (sure, there is an urban core, but it's tiny). Lots of single family houses, but lots of retail, industrial, and office space intermixed. Very walkable in most areas. I think a lot of the break down of suburban discussion happens because of this. There's a pretty wide range of perception based on different life experience.
  - drewcoo 6y ago
    Portland isn't a big city but it is a city. An urb, not a suburb. Portland actually has suburbs of its own. It has so many suburbs that they're ranked by someone who does that kind of thing (not that I vouch for the rankings): https://www.niche.com/places-to-live/search/best-suburbs-for-families/m/portland-or-metro-area/ https://www.niche.com/places-to-live/search/best-suburbs-for...
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
      Aside from a few blocks north of downtown on the west side of the Willamette River, Portland is entirely suburban, by my definition at least. Single family houses dominate outside of that small urban core. Outside of Portland you could say there are suburbs, but many of them are just towns themselves that blend into Portland as the area has grown. E.g. Oregon City, which is older than Portland but might now be considered a suburb.
dhosek 6y ago
The author undercuts his claims when he writes: t’s true that some popular picture books do seem to have a suburban setting: Victoria Kann’s Pinkalicious series (2006-), the Berenstain Bears series (1962-) by the Berenstain family, and Norman Bridwell’s Clifford the Big Red Dog (1963-) come to mind. But these books also come to mind when I consider books I’d rather burn than read – not because they take place in the suburbs but because they’re so poorly written and illustrated. My only claim here is that the best children’s books forgo suburbia. Just thinking about my kids' favorites of late and the Ladybug Girl series is set in exurbia and Mac B Kid Spy is set in suburban California when he's not flying off to England and elsewhere in the service of the Queen of England.
- yellowstuff 6y ago
  He also counts the Curious George books as being not suburban, which might be true of the original series, but there's a reboot by different authors that has a suburban feel. George drives around in a car, and goes to places like a pancake breakfast and a chocolate factory that don't seem to be in Brooklyn. These books aren't great, but my son likes them, as well as most of the other books that this article has committed to the flames.
  - dhosek 6y ago
    The Margaret and H. A. Rey books are frequently not urban as well. There was one where George borrows a pump from a nearby farm to try to clean up the mess he made with ink. There is no consistent geography in the books.
WhompingWindows 6y ago
Harry Potter's Privet Drive is unequivocally a suburb. While they are at "Number Four", the houses are all blandly similar, perhaps a cookie-cutter housing development. Vernon Dursley is in industrial drill sales and Petunia Dursley is a stay-at-home "mother" of two, though she spends most of the effort on Dudley. These couple of chapters every book, where Harry lies low and gets abused at Privet Drive, are tales of suburban doldrum and wasted life. Vernon lives for the capitalist dream of fancy cars and vacations, Petunia lives on gossip and spying on the neighbors, Dudley lives for food, bullying, and quick thrills. All the Dursleys are about conformism and consumerism, sign-posts for the suburban life. By being "neglected" of these things, Dumbledore says Harry has "escaped the appalling damage" done to Dudley (Book 6, Chapter 3). Harry is much more comfortable at the "rural" Hogwarts Castle, though admittedly that's got hundreds of friends, jinxes for any craving, mad drug potions, and who knows what else. It's really not a fair comparison, 9/10 would prefer Hogwarts' hybrid urban/rural feel. Also, side note, my HN name is a combination of HP + Windows/Linux humor. I have no idea if many people got that over the years.
hindsightbias 6y ago
Because suburbs were more the domain of angsty or angry teenagers? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079688/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_65 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079688/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_65 That was 41 years ago. Over the Edge, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller were more common than ET.
sharker8 6y ago
Let me put on my cognitive neuroscience hat. It's because the market for children's books is parents. And parents want a sentimental cognitive effect when reading to their kids (the article mentions 'romanticization' which in cognitive terms is sentimental feelings). I don't know many parents who have sentimental feelings for their upbringings in the suburbs, mainly because by the time they learned what the concept of the 'suburb' is, they were probably entering high school, which is to say, they were entering miniature delayed adulthood, while having to navigate a completely artificial political sphere (high school). That being said I'm sure its a fine story world and captain underpants has certainly done a great job with it.
sonotmyname 6y ago
Blah blah blah, suburbs bad|dense cities good. We get it - you don't like where we live and wish we'd live where you live. What I don't get is why people with this view are as adamant as CrossFit junkies in proselytizing their worldview. Some of us like the suburbs.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Klais 6y ago

Really

ihsw 6y ago

Because the suburbs and urban areas are cultural toilets.

pmiller2 6y ago

Hmm... is it because the suburbs are boring? reads article Yep, except instead of "boring," they say "walkable." I can't say I disagree.

giantg2 6y ago
I agree. I was trying to think of what a suburban story would look like. The cities have things like museums or the zoo. The country has natural things to explore. The suburbs are basically a bunch of houses with yards - not a lot of opportunity for childhood adventure stories.
- hhggfdss 6y ago
  Really? I grew up in a rural area and the suburbs always seemed like fun, you know why? There were other kids! Is this just an illusion? All I ever wanted as a kid was a neighborhood. We had to convince our parents to drive us all over hill and dale if we wanted to see anyone our age.
  - mdorazio 6y ago
    In the suburbs if you're not old enough to drive your "adventures" mostly consist of meeting at someone's house and doing house things. So yes, there are other kids to interact with, but not much of an environment in which to interact with them.
    - sidibe 6y ago
      Seems like most things kids want to do just require yards or houses and other kids. Before you can drive I think the main factor for how much fun your environment is (assuming safety and no poverty) is the density of kids your age in the neighborhood.
      - watwut 6y ago
        Kids do what is available. And kids are definitely able to use more then just yard. Yard gets boring when you are like 6. Then the kids either have bigger space to bike, explore, play actual hide and seek where they can actually hide etc .... or move all activities inside typically toward videogames.
    - indymike 6y ago
      Suburban parent of five kids here. I live in a lower middle class suburban neighborhood with about 600 homes. My kids have the following, within walking distance of their home: two neighborhood swimming pools, three parks, three schools (two public, one private) two convenience stores, two drug stores, a small department store, and a pizza joint. They can safely walk, ride bikes, play soccer, basketball, swim and even get to school without a bus. This is not a fancy suburb for the wealthy. It's a decidedly normal one in a pretty normal midwest city.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    I guess it depends in the demographics and location. I grew up in both settings. In the rural area I could ride my bike or walk to friends houses, but there were really only 2 that were in range. There were tons of activity options - bike trails, fishing, exploring the woods, model rockets, etc. Then in a small town setting, there were more kids, but not as many options for stuff to do. You would need to drive places for many outdoor activities, such as the fishing, mountain biking, model rockets, etc. So the activities were more indoor, which was still stuff I could do rurally, like video games (well rural couldn't do online, just in-person), board games, etc.
  - Finnucane 6y ago
    That's funny--I grew up in a suburb and always wanted to be somewhere else. I didn't want to read books about places like the one I was already in. (I now live not far from where my great-grandparents lived when they first came to this country, so I guess I made a big loop).
    - iso1210 6y ago
      I believe the idea is that the grass is always greener on the other side.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Have you met kids? They suck, especially to other kids.
namenotrequired 6y ago
I think you mean unwalkable
- iso1210 6y ago
  I think that's a function of american suburbs. It's rural round here which isn't really walkable (narrow country lanes with poor visibility). Suburbs where I live are very walkable, with footpath on both sides of the road, and typically plenty of traffic calming. Rare to be more than a mile to a school for under 11s, maybe 2-4 miles to high school, half a mile at most to a bus stop.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Yes, of course. Silly me.
macjohnmcc 6y ago
I'm also confused as to why there are no Spider-man movies in the suburbs.
analog31 6y ago
I grew up in a suburb. As kids, we found plenty to do, often involving places where we weren't supposed to be. The nature of suburbia as boring didn't even occur to us until we were teenagers, and then it led to adventures that can't be portrayed in children's books.

lr4444lr 6y ago

This just doesn't strike me as true at all. Most of my children's books have very non-descript settings that begin in non-connected single family houses. But regardless of that framing, so many of my kids' books dive into the realm of the protagonist's imagination. This honestly just sounds like another indirect shot taken at suburban life. I get it, internet content writers disproportionately live in the big cities, but to quote the Dude, this is just like, your opinion, man.

giantg2 6y ago
Most of my childhood books were rural based adventures. The books my kid has are mostly rural or have no setting at all. I agree that stories involving houses tend to portray single family homes. I can't think of any that actually portray that house in a suburban setting (the premise of the article). I'm sure they are out there, but none come to mind for me. Then the question is really, so what if the settings are not suburban? I didn't really see an answer to that in the article, so I guess they were just trying to point out that there may be fewer topics for childhood adventures set in suburban areas.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  My favorite children's book growing up (the embarrassingly named Captain Underpants) was definitively suburban. More generally, I guess I'd question what it means to portray a house as suburban. The author seems to be assuming that anywhere with cool nature stuff in walking distance is rural, and that's not true; my definitively suburban house growing up was within easy walking distance of a pretty well-forested park on one side and a creek on the other.
  - mcphage 6y ago
    That was also my biggest problem with this article. Take Calvin and Hobbes—definitely Calvin lives in a suburban environment, but he also has plenty of nature nearby. Would the author consider this rural then? I don’t know, but I don’t think it was.
6y ago

vmh1928 6y ago

The Dick and Jane books were set in the 'burbs. The suburbs are primarily white, cisgender and bastions of Patriarchy. Children's books that portray a white, cisgender, patriarchal world are not favored by the publishing or educational establishment.

andylynch 6y ago
That’s not quite correct - upscale of diversity is seen as an industry issue; creators of children’s books are mostly white and predominantly female. Interesting breakdown from a UK literacy charity: https://www.booktrust.org.uk/globalassets/resources/represents/booktrust-represents-diversity-childrens-authors-illustrators-report.pdf https://www.booktrust.org.uk/globalassets/resources/represen...
kaitai 6y ago
The suburbs these days are incredibly multiracial and multi-ethnic -- please update your stereotypes :)

Jugurtha 6y ago

Why do so few events that shape your life or are worthy of mention take place in the suburbs, a place where people mostly sleep/rest? This reminds me of "liquid networks" from Steven Johnson's book "Where Good Ideas Come From". Here's a talk where he addresses it briefly, timestamped at the moment he starts talking about "liquid network"[0] Things worth telling mostly happen in cities, or the internet. - [0]: https://youtu.be/0af00UcTO-c?t=538 https://youtu.be/0af00UcTO-c?t=538

generalk 6y ago
I grew up in suburbs, I went to school in suburbs. I met my wife in the suburbs, I had my first kiss in the suburbs. I definitely had some formative events that occurred on the mid-90s Internet, and would not be the person I am today without it. But I for damn sure also wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't rode my bike to my friends' houses to trade floppy disks or watch Schwarzenegger films, or sneaked out to the mall to meet folks, or hung out at the neighborhood strip-mall comic shop and picked up various CCGs and RPGs.
rootusrootus 6y ago
> Why do so few events that shape your life or are worthy of mention take place in the suburbs, a place where people mostly sleep/rest? Your idea of a suburb and mine are apparently quite different. I live my entire life here. Buying food, going to work, going out to eat, going to concerts, meeting friends, etc. Why would I only eat & sleep here? Hell, if anything, it's the downtown core that gets quiet at night as all the businesses shut down and along with them about half the restaurants.

ComputerGuru 6y ago

There Is No Such Thing As A Dragon by Jack Kent (1974, I think?) has a clearly suburban setting visible when the kid’s dragon cum house on wheels relocates in chase of a bread truck. (When’s the last time you saw a bread truck!?)

iso947 6y ago
“dragon cum house” Are you sure it’s a kids book?!
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  See the first/primary dictionary entry: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cum https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cum (Although if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t have expected it to be the first definition.)

adamsea 6y ago

So the article addresses its own question and the answer is children’s stories require walking because it’s children and the suburbs aren’t generally walkable (or interestingly walkable) environments.

iso1210 6y ago
The article doesn't provide any evidence 1) That childrens stories aren't set in the suburbs 2) That suburbs aren't generally walkable 3) That suburbs aren't interesting
- adamsea 6y ago
  It’s not really an evidence kind of article .... no one is trying to “prove” anything. It’s a thought piece.

rcthompson 6y ago

This is a pretty sweeping generalization. The suburb I grew up in was and still is plenty walkable (though it is admittedly even more bikeable/driveable) and has plenty of places for kids to have adventures. Of course, I've definitely been to many suburbs that are completely unwalkable by design, but not every suburb is like that. (My sense is that more recently-built suburbs tend to be more heavily designed around a presumption of car ownership, but that's just based on my own experience.)

rootusrootus 6y ago
> The suburb I grew up in was and still is plenty walkable I think on HN a lot of the urbanites think of suburbia as an endless sea of cookie-cutter houses on nondescript, seemingly identical streets. Nothing but houses for as far as you can see. That certainly exists in some places, I'm sure. But some of us grew up in places like Portland, Oregon, which is essentially one big suburban city (sure, there is an urban core, but it's tiny). Lots of single family houses, but lots of retail, industrial, and office space intermixed. Very walkable in most areas. I think a lot of the break down of suburban discussion happens because of this. There's a pretty wide range of perception based on different life experience.
- drewcoo 6y ago
  Portland isn't a big city but it is a city. An urb, not a suburb. Portland actually has suburbs of its own. It has so many suburbs that they're ranked by someone who does that kind of thing (not that I vouch for the rankings): https://www.niche.com/places-to-live/search/best-suburbs-for-families/m/portland-or-metro-area/ https://www.niche.com/places-to-live/search/best-suburbs-for...
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    Aside from a few blocks north of downtown on the west side of the Willamette River, Portland is entirely suburban, by my definition at least. Single family houses dominate outside of that small urban core. Outside of Portland you could say there are suburbs, but many of them are just towns themselves that blend into Portland as the area has grown. E.g. Oregon City, which is older than Portland but might now be considered a suburb.

dhosek 6y ago

The author undercuts his claims when he writes: t’s true that some popular picture books do seem to have a suburban setting: Victoria Kann’s Pinkalicious series (2006-), the Berenstain Bears series (1962-) by the Berenstain family, and Norman Bridwell’s Clifford the Big Red Dog (1963-) come to mind. But these books also come to mind when I consider books I’d rather burn than read – not because they take place in the suburbs but because they’re so poorly written and illustrated. My only claim here is that the best children’s books forgo suburbia. Just thinking about my kids' favorites of late and the Ladybug Girl series is set in exurbia and Mac B Kid Spy is set in suburban California when he's not flying off to England and elsewhere in the service of the Queen of England.

yellowstuff 6y ago
He also counts the Curious George books as being not suburban, which might be true of the original series, but there's a reboot by different authors that has a suburban feel. George drives around in a car, and goes to places like a pancake breakfast and a chocolate factory that don't seem to be in Brooklyn. These books aren't great, but my son likes them, as well as most of the other books that this article has committed to the flames.
- dhosek 6y ago
  The Margaret and H. A. Rey books are frequently not urban as well. There was one where George borrows a pump from a nearby farm to try to clean up the mess he made with ink. There is no consistent geography in the books.

WhompingWindows 6y ago

Harry Potter's Privet Drive is unequivocally a suburb. While they are at "Number Four", the houses are all blandly similar, perhaps a cookie-cutter housing development. Vernon Dursley is in industrial drill sales and Petunia Dursley is a stay-at-home "mother" of two, though she spends most of the effort on Dudley. These couple of chapters every book, where Harry lies low and gets abused at Privet Drive, are tales of suburban doldrum and wasted life. Vernon lives for the capitalist dream of fancy cars and vacations, Petunia lives on gossip and spying on the neighbors, Dudley lives for food, bullying, and quick thrills. All the Dursleys are about conformism and consumerism, sign-posts for the suburban life. By being "neglected" of these things, Dumbledore says Harry has "escaped the appalling damage" done to Dudley (Book 6, Chapter 3). Harry is much more comfortable at the "rural" Hogwarts Castle, though admittedly that's got hundreds of friends, jinxes for any craving, mad drug potions, and who knows what else. It's really not a fair comparison, 9/10 would prefer Hogwarts' hybrid urban/rural feel. Also, side note, my HN name is a combination of HP + Windows/Linux humor. I have no idea if many people got that over the years.

hindsightbias 6y ago

Because suburbs were more the domain of angsty or angry teenagers? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079688/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_65 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079688/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_65 That was 41 years ago. Over the Edge, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller were more common than ET.

sharker8 6y ago

Let me put on my cognitive neuroscience hat. It's because the market for children's books is parents. And parents want a sentimental cognitive effect when reading to their kids (the article mentions 'romanticization' which in cognitive terms is sentimental feelings). I don't know many parents who have sentimental feelings for their upbringings in the suburbs, mainly because by the time they learned what the concept of the 'suburb' is, they were probably entering high school, which is to say, they were entering miniature delayed adulthood, while having to navigate a completely artificial political sphere (high school). That being said I'm sure its a fine story world and captain underpants has certainly done a great job with it.

sonotmyname 6y ago

Blah blah blah, suburbs bad|dense cities good. We get it - you don't like where we live and wish we'd live where you live. What I don't get is why people with this view are as adamant as CrossFit junkies in proselytizing their worldview. Some of us like the suburbs.