Pound Foolish wrote:
Mandy got a nasty knock over the head, she didn't really develop much during it. People sometimes equate development with knocking a character over the head with a shovel. It's not the same thing at all. Character development isn't going through changes in your life, it's developing lasting change yourself.
I wasn't talking about being involved in a car crash. I was talking about the fact that she learned over the course of her parents' separation that she couldn't just pray and expect God to fix everything. Listen to her conversation with David, when she tells him that she isn't going to ask God to fix their marriage. She explains that she gave in to her emotions...and now she's going to trust. Not "trust" as in "trust that God will wave a magic wand and make everything good again"; trust as in "have faith that God's will is His will". And a few weeks later, she tells Connie that she's now okay with what's happening no matter what, because God will provide—so that lesson clearly stuck.
That is character development, and very deep character development for someone her age—that's what I'm talking about.
Pound Foolish wrote:
Especially when you consider many AIO kids, like Jared Trent or Robyn, receive relatively little or no character development of any significance.
I agree on Jared (and I don't know much about Robyn, so I can't say either way); I've always considered him to be too static for my liking. As a sidebar, though, I would like to point out that Trent does progress; we're shown a very realistic progression of facing one's fears over the course of "Called On In Class", "Tales of a Small-Town Thug" (it's not spotlighted, but it's nodded to when he says that he's still not comfortable with public speaking), "Blood, Sweat, and Fears", "Something Significant", and "A Class Reenactment". He started out with crippling glossophobia and slowly gained more confidence to be able to perform in plays. And what's interesting to note is that in "Called On In Class", he doesn't mention calling on God for help and he still has problems; after "Blood, Sweat, and Fears", which is when he's reminded that God is his strength in tough times, he's able to overcome his fear. If that's not character development, I don't know what is.
Pound Foolish wrote:
you did not rebuff the point that Holmes does not develop within his cases, and yet they are not for children. Do you then concede the point?
If you had read my post, what you would have noticed was that I said that this was faulty wording on my part and that subject matter, among other things, must also be considered aside from character development to determine whether or not a book is for children.
Pound Foolish wrote:
Why should Emily run into a case she cant solve?
Because AIO is not exclusively mysteries. We have seen time and time again that the Jones and Parker Detective Agency does not exist in a vacuum; it exists in the context of the world around it. And in the world around it, Emily Jones does not exist as an Encyclopedia Brown wannabe or exclusively as a detective; she exists as a person. I want a mystery she can't solve and where she is upstaged because we're somehow expected to believe that she's a character in her own right and yet she is never challenged at what she loves.
That aside, a mystery that the Oh-So-Wonderful Emily cannot solve would make for nothing if not a unique plotline for J&P. Because the thing is, if they're going to continue to make the J&P Detective Agency a recurring thing for Matthew and Emily, it's going to get really boring to hear Emily solve it all perfectly and constantly sass Matthew every single episode. :/
Pound Foolish wrote:
No. Emily has more room to grow, and that makes sense. She's a kid. She's has not peaked out, but arguablyu she's grown enough to warrant being an AIO character.
Has she really, though? She's got an insecurity that was resolved in one episode. She found out she doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up. That's...basically it, as near as I can tell.
Pound Foolish wrote:
Judge Emily by her own niche, not your personal preferences.
My judgment on whether or not I appreciate a fictional character is going to be about my personal preferences, and I see no reason why it shouldn't be. I understand why someone could conceivably think that Emily being in the mystery genre of episodes means that she never gets challenged in them, but that doesn't mean that my understanding of this will somehow make me miraculously appreciate her character. I will judge Emily by my personal preferences—as far as to say that I don't like her because I don't like stagnant characters who do everything right.
And yes, that means that I would dislike these other "mystery stories" that apparently can never have the main character progress at all—because according to your logic, the thought process is "why make your main character intriguing and actually feel like a real person when they can just be perfect at what they do?" And I can't appreciate stories like that, not when I know that characters can be so much more.
Pound Foolish wrote:
I adore the Enyclopedia Brown stories, as do other adults, so keep in mind that something made for children does not necessarily lack excellence.
Just because a lot of people like it doesn't make it "excellent". A lot of adult women liked
Twilight, but that doesn't make it a good book. Also, apparently we have met completely different kinds of adults in our different lifetimes, because the adults I know who would read books like
Encyclopedia Brown are reading them to their kids, not necessarily because they like them or because they think they're a standard of excellence for mystery novels.
Still, she's better than Nelson Swansen, Camilla Parker, Olivia Parker, Vance King, and Ryan Cummings.