User:Percy James91/sandbox

The plots of the Hairy Maclary books are generally simple, in keeping with the comprehension of the age group for which they are ranged. They generally involve Hairy and his friends in adventurous scenarios pitched against local cats, with an implication that the cats are more clever. Hairy's character could be said to equate to that of William Brown in the well known books by Richmal Crompton.

The Hairy Maclary books are picture books that are designed to be shared by an adult reader and a young child. The plots are simple, in keeping with the comprehension of the pre-reading age group for which they are ranged. They generally involve Hairy and his friends in adventurous scenarios pitched against local cats, often with an implication that the cats are more cunning. The animals in this series, unlike the creatures of Beatrix Potter's stories, are not given human thoughts and motives. Their actions tell the stories, and reflect their animal natures.

Each double page has a picture on one side, and writing on the other. The pictures and the written words combine to tell the story, with much anecdotal material appearing within the pictures that is not described in the text. The books have a wide format which enables a child seated beside an adult to have a full view of the picture page while the adult reads.

The text is written in rhythmic verse that flows easily and has simple rhymes like "Bottomley Potts covered in spots, Hercules Morse as big as a horse". Characters, events and therefore language are repetitive and cumulative, after the manner of "Old MacDonald had a farm". Each book contains a twist or some sort of conclusion at the end. The repetitions permit a young child to anticipate what is coming next, and repeat the words.

Although the books are designed to entertain young children, they are not intended as "early readers", as are, for example, the "Cat in the Hat" books by Doctor Seuss which have a very basic and largely phonic vocabulary. The Hairy Maclary books, despite their simple stories, introduce the listening child to some long but very expressive words which are not part of the average pre-schooler vocabulary, but must be understood by the child in the context in which they occur. For example, the noise made by a stranded cat and the excited dogs who discover it is described as a "cacophony".

Lynley Dodd's illustrations are closely observed from life. The breeds of dogs, the types of houses and the plants growing in each garden can generally be identified. The stories seem to exist in a real suburb in the real world. Hairy Maclary's home, for example, has a red corrugated iron roof supported on wooden brackets, and the garden has a frangipani tree, a picket fence and a row of agapanthus. Each picture promotes investigation and discussion between the child and the reader, as events unfold in the pictures which are not described in the text. In the first book of the series the repeated lines "...and Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy" accompany a series of illustrations showing Hairy Maclary sniffing the bottom of a lamp-post, burrowing into a hedge, barking at some birds and raiding a garbage can. Close observation is encouraged by the inclusion in many of the pictures of a tiny glimpse of the dog who has been named on the previous page, as it approaches or walks out of the picture, showing only the point of a nose or the tip of a tail.

As Hairy is not a pedigree hound, there are none of the debilitating social implications which encourage aspirations to own a thoroughbred dog, hence children may enjoy Hairy as an imaginary pet without him being a display of parental wealth. Thus Hairy does not inspire children to be competitive, which is in line with the progressive education encouraged by left wing British governments and in the Scandinavian countries (where a dog needs to have a full hairy coat to withstand the inclemencies of the climate). In this way Hairy becomes an establishment figure, more readily acceptable to modern British life than the royal corgis.

While the books are lavishly illustrated, with pictures of an almost cartoon nature, by the author, there is also large print text, which encourages small children to wish to learn to read. Like Ezra Pound's Cantos the narrative is written in verse, nowever unlike Pound's epic Hairy Maclary is amusing. In the "Caterwaul Caper" Hairy's arch enemy Scarface Claw becomes stuck in a tree, the dreadful noise he makes alerts Hairy and his friends to his predicament.

There is also often generally a moral to the tale, with the "baddie" getting his "come-uppance" at the end of the story, in this instance Scarface had been chasing birds. Thus children at an early age can be taught to distinguish right from wrong.

The Hairy Maclary books also teach children from a very young age to appreciate good literary construction. It is instructive to compare and contrast the original Hairy Maclary book — Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy — with another book generally reckoned a children's classic, Green Eggs and Ham by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel.

In the former book (referred to simply as "Dairy" by kiddie-lit aficionados), Dodd uses the long list of Maclary's friends who join him on his stroll as an effective plot device, building suspense as the list lengthens. The tension piles on as Maclary is joined by Hercules Morse (as big as a horse), Bitzer Maloney (skinny and bony — which is incidentally probably a sophisticated political reference to the Irish Potato famine), and many others. It is only then, when the reader has been made aware that something big is about to happen, that Dodds describes the thrilling denouement of Scarface Claw going "FFFWWWWSSSSSTTTTT".

By contrast, Seuss (who was not a real doctor in any case), exibits a distinct lack of talent in this area. His main character is immediately (on the first page of the narrative) offered a dish of green eggs and ham, and immediately declines in the most vehement terms imaginable. Seuss is then left with nowhere to go. He cannot develop the story, because he has already gone for the nuclear option right at the outset. The bulk of the remainder of his book is taken up with a painfully forced repetition of the theme he has already enunciated- that the protagonist has a strong prejudice against green eggs and ham. One feels that a writer of Dodd's calibre would have been able to do so much more with the idea, perhaps a polite refusal at the first, with persistent offers building up to a response of mild annoyance, and then only towards the close would there be the suggestion of wildly extravagant hypothetical situations by the offerer, which elicit screaming and shouting from the offeree.

True, Seuss does show some skill in the twist he inserts into the end, where the green eggs and ham are shown to be enjoyable after all; but even here he is thoroughly outclassed by Dodds. In "Dairy", after the dramatic introduction of Scarface Claw, the reader learns that the large pack of dogs all turn tail and run for home! A turn in the "tale" indeed.

As the Hairy Maclary books are simple tales, the critical approach to them has long been that outlined in Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation" (1963): "What the overemphasis on the idea of content entails is the perennial, never consummated project of interpretation. And, conversely, it is the habit of approaching works of art in order to interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing as the content of a work of art." As of 2005, several New Historicist critics have attempted to overcome Hairy's notorious resistance to interpretation by the application of Montesquieu's climate theory.^[3]