The Ambiguous Terrain of Petkeeping in Children's Realistic Animal Stories

Kathleen R. Johnson
Keene State College

A content analysis of 48 children's realistic animal stories shows an emphasis on pets and petkeeping that can both challenge and support traditional human-animal boundaries. The genre's sympathetic portrayal of pet animals and the condemnation of their mistreatment invite the reader to challenge such boundaries. Yet the genre's stereotypical portrayal of these animals also constrains our conceptualization of the human-animal bond. The author discusses these and other narrative elements which render this form of popular culture ambiguous terrain for negotiating an ethic of respect for nonhuman others which goes beyond most contemporary arrangements.

Folktales, fantasy, fables, and other literary genres associated with children often feature nonhuman animals as primary characters. Many of these characters are portrayed with qualities that are distinctly human. In Milne's Winnie the Pooh , for example, the animals enjoy human language, furnished homes, and celebrations that would rival many Fourth of July picnics. The realistic genre differentiates itself by minimizing such anthropomorphism and attempting to render a realistic account of the human treatment and conception of other animals. This genre, which includes such popular classics as National Velvet , Lassie , The Incredible Journey , and Old Yeller , raises a number of questions for the present study of human-animal relations:What topics, propositions, or broad concepts provide the organizing structure of the texts? Are there important gaps in the texts, leaving certain perspectives and questions unacknowledged? Do these texts tend to restrict the scope of possible human-animal relations? As Krutch writes, animal stories are always more than just a story:

Sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously (but always inevitably) the writer implies an answer to one or more of the questions which any concern with an animal must raise. (quoted in Arbuthnot & Sutherland, 1972, p. 393)

This project examines a sample of children's realistic animal stories in order to answer some of these questions. My intention is neither to condemn nor praise the stories themselves, but to understand better the role this form of popular culture plays in relating as well as determining the contemporary significance of human-animal relations.

Method

The exact boundaries of animal realism are difficult to define. Fortunately, a number of distinguished organizations and independent experts, including the Association for Library Service to Children (1981) and the National Council of Teachers of English (1981), produce lists of recommended reading for children that categorize readings based on genre and age appropriateness. I limit my analysis to those books intended for the "middle" or "young adult" reader (children between the approximate ages of 10 and 16). This eliminates preschool stories which lack the narrative complexity this project requires. All 48 books in the final sample are from the 20th century, still in print, and included on at least two recommended reading lists from the sources referred to above (see Appendix).

In Popular Culture Genres , Berger argues that we should understand genres as involving certain "conventions" consisting of the various "rules and codes which both those who create works of art and those who consume them know" (1992, p. 30). Conventions enable readers to recognize (and expect) the patterns that define and distinguish one genre from all others. According to this view, it is not the individual text that is culturally important, but the overlaps or "recipes" discernible from an examination of a collection of similarly structured texts. From these patterns, the researcher hopes to identify various unconscious imperatives or cultural assumptions--that is, to learn something about the larger culture which forms these genres.

The notion of convention proves useful in the present analysis of children's realistic animal stories, a genre that appears somewhat less structured than, say, fairy tales, romance novels, or traditional westerns. Conventions are not strict formulas, but a set of customary literary prescriptions that help to define the genre and make it what it is. Readers come to expect certain things from a particular type of animal story, and conventions supply readers with a number of premises from which to form their interpretations.

I first performed a content analysis in order to derive an accurate reading of the kinds and numbers of settings and characters. Following a second content analysis to locate plot and theme, I asked whether the most common formations of the texts function as a textual code from which we construct meaning about ourselves and other animals. Combining a content analysis with the notion of convention facilitates both an examination of the specific content of individual stories and an understanding of the collective structure of the genre.

Results

Before proceeding to the interpretation of texts, it may be helpful to report some of the frequency distributions resulting from the content analysis. This will provide a profile of the sample and a context for the analysis that follows. The data that identify the most prominent or common elements of the genre include:

Primary characters : Domesticated animal (81%, typically a dog or horse) and a boy (65%).

Time : Any time in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries (100%).

Location : Most usually in the countryside, small town, farm, or ranch (68%); island or wilderness (22%); city (8%); and variable or unspecified setting (4.1%). The stories that involve an important change in setting are counted more than once.

Plot : Most generally, child characters overcome some obstacle with or related to a pet animal. There are three specific types: (1) those in which the animal character acts as a catalyst for change in the human character(s) (69%); (2) those that revolve around the animal (19%); and (3) those that are relatively humorous involving mischievous animal deeds (12%).

Theme : This refers to the main idea or central meaning of a text. In contrast to expository writing, the themes of imaginative works must be deduced from individual incidents or passages that sustain a particular idea through repetition. Any one story can have several themes, but at least three prominent themes important to this essay repeat across the sample: (1) the theme of petkeeping which revolves around finding, keeping, or parting from a pet animal (71%); (2) the misunderstood animal theme in which an antagonist fails to appreciate the animal (44%); (3) the theme of growth and maturation in which the conflict involves a change in the personality or image of the child (often resolved when the child undergoes a change that reflects his or her adult status) (38%). The stories which contain overlapping themes or multiple themes are counted more than once.

Although these narrative elements do not appear in every story, we can use them collectively to describe and understand the genre. Due to space limitations, the discussion that follows primarily focuses on the most prominent theme within the genre--the theme of petkeeping--and the ways that this convention reflects and produces cultural meaning. Space limitations further limit the discussion to a limited number of sampled texts. The reader should also keep in mind that this effort is in large part an interpretive one and as such is open to dispute. In making the interpretations, however, I always begin with the texts themselves. Consequently, although the explanatory hypothesis ventures beyond the actual passages, it nonetheless begins with them.

Interpretation

The Challenge to Traditional Boundaries

Literary experts usually cite the development of books specifically designed for children with the publication of Newbery's first storybook in 1744 (Allen, 1983). Shortly thereafter, the compassionate representations of literary animals became standard fare for children's fiction. Sewell's Black Beauty , first published in 1879, became one of the clearest examples of an animal welfare novel. And according to Allen-Newberry, the 1920 publication of Lofting's The Story of Doctor Dolittle represented a "significant step toward animal rights" (1987, p. 41). The development of this kind of animal fantasy was not accidental but reflected the logical extension and increasing popularity of the humanitarian ideals that provided the basis for abolition, anti-vivisection, children's welfare, and labor reform (Grier, 1992).

The genre of children's animal realism developed when popular nature writers began to "cast the natural history and behavior of wildlife in the form of stories with animal heroes" (Lutts, 1990, p. 32). Such stories generally succeed in projecting the ideals of animal welfare and invite the reader to renegotiate traditional human-animal boundaries. This is accomplished in several ways. First, and perhaps most straightforwardly, animal realism reflects children's affection for animals. Although these sentiments may not be necessary for the process of recognizing the interests of other animals, they are at least important (Fisher, 1992).

Second, many of these stories follow the lives and experiences of the animals, often from the animals' point of view. This requires that an author use what sociologist Max Weber refers to as "verstehen"--the technique of applying one's own understanding of what it means to be (in this case) an animal. Consequently, the authors of stories such as The Call of the Wild , The Incredible Journey , White Fang , Lassie Come Home , Brighty of the Grand Canyon , and Smoky the Cow Horse portray the animal protagonist with intelligence, memory, desire, and interests of his or her own.

Third, in the tradition of Black Beauty some stories directly attempt to persuade the reader to avoid particular acts of cruelty toward animals. These acts include the use of steel leghold traps ( The Wolfling ), competing in large-scale dog competitions ( Lad, A Dog ), hunting ( Cry of the Crow , Midnight Fox , Incident at Hawks' Hill , and Storm Boy ), and a variety of cruel acts to dogs ( White Fang , Hotel for Dogs , and Call of the Wild ).

Fourth, the misunderstood animal theme attempts to produce in the reader certain sympathies for the animals. Typically, an animal's life is threatened after he or she is wrongly accused of a misdeed or of being dangerous to humans. As the story unfolds, often with the assistance of a human character, the animal is eventually redeemed, and those who initially fear, dislike, or even hate the animal learn of their mistake. Consider Lad, A Dog involving a dog who becomes lost. During the course of his struggle to return home, Lad is chased, accused of madness, and eventually shot by the police. The author is clear about his message:

One wonders, disgustedly, how many thousand luckless and totally harmless pet dogs in the course of a year are thus hunted down and shot or kicked or stoned to death in the sacred name of Humanity, just because some idiot mistakes a hanging tongue or an uncertainty of direction for signs of that semi-phantom malady known as "rabies." (Terhune, 1919, p. 104)

Later in the story, a neighbor wrongly accuses Lad of being a sheep killer, and Lad's attempt to save a boy from a burning fire is misconstrued as an attack. As in other stories, the success of this theme rests on the reader's access to information about the animal's true nature. As the story evolves, so do the reader's sympathies for the animal and sense of outrage over the animal's misfortune and treatment.

These narrative elements invite the reader to produce a specific meaning, in this case, sympathy for the animal. If we were to widen this sympathy to include all animals, the texts might function as an important challenge to the firm division between humans and animals that historically has played a central role in the domination of nature and its inhabitants (Griffin, 1978; Johnson & Johnson, 1995; Mason, 1993; Midgley, 1983; Singer, 1975). However, the appearance of several other conventions undermines or limits this potential. With this in mind, my focus now turns to the recurring theme of petkeeping.

Petkeeping as Literary Convention

As noted above, a majority of the sampled stories feature the theme of petkeeping. A pet is the primary animal character and petkeeping itself--the relationship or the accompanying problems--is central to the plot. Like all literary conventions, this theme functions to give the stories a kind of predictability that enables readers to recognize (and expect) the patterns that distinguish this genre from all others. In ways that will soon be clear, the predominance of this theme may contradict and therefore weaken the stories' potential for challenging (and, in fact, may help to perpetuate) the more traditional view of other animals and our relations with them. In order to understand how this can occur we need to consider a largely unacknowledged (and perhaps less flattering) function of petkeeping.

In his book, Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets , Tuan (1984) understands the dependency of pets on their owners as representing a fundamentally unequal relationship. That is, given a cultural context in which human supremacy is the norm, the traditional form of petkeeping functions as an exercise in domination. While pets sometimes serve as friends and companions, they also serve as live, dispensable resources. We can locate evidence for this perspective in the millions of pet animals sold or abandoned after they have fulfilled our temporary needs. Our failure to recognize and address this less attractive side of petkeeping may be due to the many aspects of this institution which seem relatively innocent and benign. Or, as the historian Thomas argues, a "mixture of compromise and concealment may have so far prevented this conflict from having to be fully resolved" (1983, p. 301). This might partially explain why we can slaughter, strip, and broil a cow's flesh and still manage to call it a "happy meal. "What all this suggests is that the institution of petkeeping, like the institution of marriage or the family, may conceal ideologically laden practices and unjust relations between the individuals involved. From this perspective, we can more readily see the contradiction that petkeeping embodies. It can promote both an awareness and concern for other creatures (and possibly blur interspecies boundaries). Yet it can also promote excessive power and control over that same individual (and perhaps by extension over all animals, or at least the members of the species to which the pet belongs).

The Pet Stereotype

The predominance of pets within children's realistic animal stories reflects and sustains the traditional (and Tuan would say morally problematic) relationship with nonhuman animals in several ways. One problem occurs in the over-simplification of other animals and our relations with them. The stereotypical portrayals of other animals as pets delimit the arena in which the reader can negotiate the meaning of the bond between humans and other animals. Thus, the very same conventions of the genre that provide a sense of reassurance and predictability to its readers can also limit the genre's possible range of messages. The emphasis on pets communicates the idea that petkeeping is the only important relationship with other animals. This may seem innocuous until we consider how the concept of pet itself ties us not only practically but cognitively to a culture which devalues or, as Singer (1975) argues, "discriminates" against other creatures. This focus on the reduction of certain animals to pets constrains our ability to define and understand the wide spectrum of nonhuman animal interests and can result in the permanent incorporation of the stereotype into the reader's structure of reality. George Bernard Shaw captures this point in his essay entitled "The Womanly Woman." He writes:

If we have come to think that the nursery and the kitchen are the natural sphere of women, we have done so exactly as English children come to think that a cage is the natural sphere of a parrot--because they have never seen one anywhere else. (Roszak & Roszak, 1969, p. 60)

While Shaw's primary interest is, no doubt, the advancement of women's rights, this should not eclipse the case he simultaneously makes for other animals. In light of the ideological ambiguity of petkeeping discussed above, it seems reasonable to suggest that limiting the literary animal role to that of pet can have an equally limiting effect on the perception of, and actual relations between, humans and other animals.

The Objectification of Pets

We also find reflections of the traditional view in the genre's objectification of pets and other animals. The characteristic buying and selling of pet animals or the depiction of a child longing more than anything to "own" another animal illustrates this objectification. In Big Red, National Velvet, Black Stallion, Hotel for Dogs, A Day No Pigs Will Die, King of the Wind , and Born to Trot , a child has a dream where prestige and power will accompany the ecstasy of possessing another creature. In A Day No Pigs Will Die , Rob hopes for just about anything he can call his own:

I held Pinky close in my arms. She was the first thing I had ever really wanted, and owned. At least, the first thing of value. The only other thing I'd wanted was a bicycle, but I knew we couldn't afford it, so there was no sense in asking. (Peck, 1972, p. 25)

And in Big Red a boy has a dream where prestige and power would accompany the ecstasy of possessing "a dog to shame all others, a fine dog that he could treasure, and cherish, and breed so that all who loved fine dogs would come to see and buy his" (Kjelgaard, 1945, p. 13). More frequently, however, an animal becomes symbolic property during the moment of special bonding when the hero or heroine expresses his or her commitment to the animal. This bond contains a dynamic of power and control that circumscribes the form and expression of the hero's or heroine's authority. This is evident in Gentle Ben , a story of a boy who befriends a brown bear named Ben. Although relations between Mark and Ben are loving, Ben remains chained for the greater part of his life. From the beginning, Mark's conception of the relationship is self-serving:

Mark rubbed his cheek against Ben's broad forehead, hard as rock covered with fur, and said: "If you were mine I'd feed you up until you were as round as a seal. You'd grow and grow until you were the biggest bear in the whole world, I bet. And I'd train you to walk right behind me all the time. In the summer we could go down to the dock and watch the cruise ships come in, and the people would 'Oh' and 'Ah!' at us, and take pictures. And you'd follow me around like a dog....I bet I'd be the only kid in the whole world who had a bear for a pet. Gee!" (Morey, 1965, p. 16)

This passage succeeds in what is most likely its primary purpose: to convey a boy's intense attachment to the bear. It helps to establish plot and overall character development. However, it also harbors the idea that a bear, like an inanimate object, can be made into whatever we humans want. Consider in this light the following passage from My Friend Flicka , in which Ken pines for a horse of his own:

If I had a colt, I'd make it the most wonderful horse in the world. I'd have it with me all the time, eating and sleeping....I'd get a tent and sleep in it myself, and I'd have the colt beside me, and it would have to learn to live just the way I do; and I'd feed it so well it would grow bigger than any other horse on the ranch; and it would be the fastest; and I'd school it so it would follow me wherever I went, like a dog. (O'Hara, 1941, pp. 6-7)

We can see that the individuality of the horse, her needs and desires (like those of the bear in the previous example), are subordinated to the needs and desires of her "owner." In real life, the processes of "breaking" and training involve an attempt to change an animal to fit better our idea of the perfect pet. It is undoubtedly not a coincidence that the etymological source of the word puppy is poupée, the French word for doll (Shell, 1986). By considering their animals as things--or playthings--the literary child characters establish and confirm an underlying inequality between themselves and their pets. This perspective illuminates some of the moral and political implications of petkeeping. At the very least we can see that petkeeping is not an innocuous or trivial practice. Texts which ignore such potentially problematic aspects of the owner-pet relationship serve to naturalize the traditional and dominant values, making them seem normal, commonsensical, and unproblematic.

The Prototype

The implicit messages about the qualities of what we often consider to be the "perfect pet" intensify the literary objectification involved in owning an animal. The previous excerpts suggest that loyalty and obedience are the quintessential traits for a pet animal. Stories like Lassie Come Home or The Incredible Journey , where the animals travel hundreds of miles and suffer numerous dangers in order to return to their owners, portray a unfailing devotion to humans. In Old Yeller , White Fang , and A Dog Called Kitty , the animals risk their lives, often repeatedly, in order to save their masters. Even in the Buddhist legends described in The Cat Who Went to Heaven , we read about snails who sacrificed themselves for Buddha, the elephant who threw himself "into the abyss" so that weary and hungry travelers could "eat his flesh," the horse who "fell dead...at his master's feet" after insisting upon finishing the king's battles, and the dog who "saved not only his mistress but all the village" (Coatsworth, 1930, pp. 39-52).

With few exceptions, "man and his best friend," a dog, is the prototypical human-animal relationship. We attribute this harmonious bond to the "patriarchal instinct of the dog to honor the man as his absolute master" (Allen, 1983, p. 8). Consider Sounder as an illustrative story about a dog's devotion to a poor sharecropper who is sent to prison for stealing food. His dog Sounder was well known for his melodious bark that "filled up the night and made music as though the branches of all the trees were being pulled across silver strings" (Armstrong, 1969, p. 5). But during his master's absence, Sounder remained listless and mute. Years passed before the man, now disfigured from a mining accident, returns home; but Sounder was the first to recognize him, and the unabated devotion of the dog to his master is symbolized in the return of Sounder's voice:

Suddenly the voice of the great coon hound broke the sultry August deadness....The mighty voice rolled out upon the valley, each flute-like bark echoing from slope to slope....Sounder was a young dog again. His voice was the same mellow sound that had ridden the November breeze from the lowlands to the hills. (pp. 107-8)

This story is reminiscent of the scene in The Odyssey where Odysseus returns home. While his son thinks he is a beggar and his wife requires proof of his identity, only the family dog knows who he is: "Here lay the dog, this Argos, full of fleas. Yet even now, seeing Odysseus near, he wagged his tail and dropped both ears..." (quoted in Allen, 1983, p. 6).

Helplessness or vulnerability in other beings can, no doubt, foster human compassion. In Owls in the Family the primary child character uncovers his nurturant side when he discovers an orphaned owlet who had been torn from his nest after a brief storm:

I was still a little bit afraid of him....But he did look so wet and sad that after a while I stopped being afraid...I think he knew he was an orphan, and that if he stayed with us we'd look after him. (Mowat, 1961, p. 24)

Even so, the expressions of dependency and obedience create the conditions for dominance. In a hierarchical society, for example, members of the lower class become "perpetual minors to be shaped and patronized all their lives" (Tuan, 1984). These qualities are no less desirable in other animals than they were (or are) in slaves, workers, children, or women. Although relationships of dependency are neither entirely nor always negative, in complex, tacit ways these relationships can lead to abuses of power. This is especially problematic when the stronger manipulate the weaker or unsuspecting into a state of dependency. Consider the following passage from My Friend Flicka where Ken's father lectures his son on how to turn a wild horse into an obedient, dependent, and even loving horse, thus establishing the idea that if dependency does not exist, one need only to create it:

When you take away everything, freedom, friends, home, habits, happiness, from a living creature, almost life itself, it [sic] will turn, in sheer need and desperation, to the one thing that is left. And that's you....You are her whole world. Make her like it....I've been trying to breed fear out of these western horses for years. Flicka has been frightened. Only one thing will ever thoroughly overcome that, and that is, if she comes to trust you. Even so, some bad reactions of the fear may remain. This does not mean that you must not master her. You must....Make her grow so dependent on you, so used to your coming and going, always with some good thing for her--hay, oats, fresh water, or just talk and friendship--that she can't help turning to you. (O'Hara, 1941, p. 207)

In a more blatant fashion, Alec in The Black Stallion uses "kindness" to "conquer" the horse and to establish human superiority:

[Alec] had conquered this wild, unbroken stallion with kindness. He felt sure that from that day on the Black was his--his alone! (Farley, 1941, p. 31)

Alec's gentleness with Black may be genuine, but it also obscures the underlying inequality between the two. Janet Tompkins' conception of the relationship between horse and rider provides some insight:

...[W]hen a man is literally in the saddle and the other animal is underneath bearing the weight, that is not a relationship among equals. When one being holds the reins attached to a bit in the other being's mouth, when the rider wears spurs that are meant to gore the sides of the mount to urge him to go faster, when the rider gives the commands and the horse carries them out, when the rider owns the horse, that is not a relationship among equals. (1992, p. 99)

The Domestic Countertype

We often find messages about the value of pets embedded in the underlying conception of domestication which forms the basis for the genre's preference for pet animals. Relative to those who enjoy the unique and valued status (or "personhood") of our "companion" animals, the genre often portrays most other domesticated animals as "mindless drudges" (Ritvo, 1985, p. 83). Some authors treat sheep, chickens, cattle, and hogs as replaceable commodities. National Velvet is an illustrative case, as Velvet's love for her horse is casually juxtaposed throughout the story to her father's occupation as a butcher. And while the author of Smoky the Cow Horse recognizes Smoky's sentience and even noble character, he depicts the cattle as relatively nondescript entities--merely supportive creatures with no names, faces, or personalities--who are treated indiscriminately as a mass of resources:

There was a steady rumbling noise as the dust came closer and pretty soon [Smoky] could make out the bellering of the critter. A big herd it was, the 'combings' of the first `circle,' and a thousand head or more of white-faced, brockle-faced, speckled, red, black, and all colors and sizes of range cattle topped a ridge and on a high lope was swung toward the `cutting grounds.' (James, 1926, p. 151)

The objectification of domesticated animals is implicit in the language used to describe these animals. Just as it is frequently used to refer to animals (usually those not functioning as pets), the term livestock or stock is sometimes used when referring to cattle or hogs (as when Ezra Trent in The Wolfling decides to sell his "stock" while he can still get a good price for them [North, 1969]). Only one story within the sample ( A Day no Pigs will Die ) begins to depict the real conditions of most food animals.

Despite the sympathetic treatment of their leading animal characters, children's realistic animal stories can function in part as a cultural distancing device concealing animal exploitation. Realistic portrayals of the living conditions and deaths of exploited animals would promote questions about which animals we are "supposed" to care about and why. Instead, the genre submerges the possibility of such contradictions by treating domesticated food animals as unimportant or virtually invisible in the stories we read and tell. We can locate a similar form of devaluation implicit in the typical cartoon or comic strip (e.g., Road Runner or Tom and Jerry ), in which the animals are portrayed as masochistic and indestructible entities. No matter how many beatings, shootings, bombings, and poisonings are endured by these creatures, they keep coming back for more. Perhaps it is simply a matter of expediency that we distance ourselves from this potential incongruity between our faith in an increasingly inclusive moral circle and some of our actual behaviors. In short, the less our children know about them, the more easily we and our children can continue to exploit and consume them with relative indifference.

Clearly, the genre's realism and sympathetic character portrayals allow the stories to stimulate our concern for certain categories of animals--in particular, those animals with whom we already feel a bonding and kinship--but they have little power when the issue concerns domesticated farm animals, "pests," or "wild" animals.

The Path to Adulthood

To problematize further the status of pet animals, we find that a significant number of the narratives (23 or 48%) reflect the onset of adulthood in a sequence of events where the child must "give up" or in some way separate from the pet animal. The pain of this separation dominates at least part of the story, especially in those cases of separation (13 or 23%) where the animal's death fosters the child's maturation. As these child characters accept the loss or death of their pets as symbolic passage out of childhood and into adulthood, they must also adopt an "adult-like" attitude toward other animals, one that involves the subordination of sentiment. In My Friend Flicka , for example, Ken's mourning wanes as he admits of a personal change following the presumed death of his horse, and the family doctor congratulates Ken's parents for cutting off his fantasies, for "...making a practical thinker and performer out of a day-dreamer" (O'Hara, pp. 1941, 311-313). This attitude, however, is not just a matter reserved for literary characters. In one statewide survey, Kellert compared children's attitudes toward other animals with those of a national sample of adults and found that the "naturalistic attitude" (defined as having a "primary interest and affection for wildlife and the outdoors") was much more common among children, while a "utilitarian view" of animals (defined as having a "primary concern for the practical and material value of animals or the animal's habitat") was far more typical of adults (Kellert, 1985, p. 33).

Serpell summarizes two studies on pet ownership published in Psychological Reports , both of which conclude that pet owners are "'less psychologically healthy than non-owners'" (1986, p. 29). While more recent research emphasizes the health benefits to humans of pet ownership, the two previously mentioned studies do not reflect an unusual view toward adults who remain strongly devoted to other animals. Animal rights activists, for example, are sometimes considered excessively sentimental and immature (see Paul, 1995). Similarly, ethical vegetarians are labeled "fanatics" or "terrorists" determined to upset the dictates of "natural selection" (see Conniff, 1990 and McInerney, 1993). Even National Velvet perpetuates the dichotomous idea that animal lovers are people haters: "I don't like people," said Velvet, "except us and Mother and Mi. I like only horses" (Bagnold, 1935, p. 16).

Conclusion

Thomas identifies a dilemma plaguing the evolution of humanitarianism: how to "reconcile the physical requirements of civilization with the new feelings and values which that same civilization...generate[s]" (1983, p. 300). Consequently, we express our love and reverence toward some other animals, yet we also continue to use, abuse, and even fear them. These contradictions in how we think about and relate to other animals are reflected in our rituals (where, for example, at Thanksgiving, the turkey is revered as an American icon as well as a meal) and in a variety of artifacts that includes children's animal realism.

By focusing on a specific recurring theme we have seen that children's realistic animal stories contain competing ideological messages. In many ways, children's stories go against the grain of our traditional moral order that places humans and other animals in a hierarchical relationship. These stories often rely on pathos or sentimentality to make their case for other animals, and taking care of animals or minimizing harm to them may, in fact, be their more explicit aim. Yet we have also considered the possibly less benign side of petkeeping within children's animal realism--those aspects of petkeeping that are all too often overlooked by a society committed to certain nature/culture and animal/human boundaries. Such competing messages make this form of popular culture ambiguous terrain for negotiating an ethic of respect for nonhuman others which goes beyond most contemporary arrangements.

Appendix: The Sample

Armstrong, W. H. (1969). Sounder . New York: Harper & Row.

Atwater, R. & F. (1938). Mr. Popper's penguins . New York: Dell.

Bagnold, E. (1935). National velvet . New York: Avon.

Baylor, B. (1976). Hawk, I'm your brother . New York: Aladdin.

Bulla, C. R. (1966). White bird . New York: Random House.

Burnford, S. (1960). The incredible journey . New York: Bantam.

Byars, B. (1968). The midnight fox . New York: Puffin.

Coatsworth, E. (1930). The cat who went to heaven . New York: Macmillan.

Cone, M. (1962). Mishmash . New York: Pocket Books.

Corcoran, B. (1986). A horse named sky . New York: Atheneum.

Duncan, L. (1971). Hotel for dogs . New York: Dell.

Eckert, A. W. (1971). Incident at hawk's hill . Boston: Little, Brown.

Estes, E. (1951). Ginger pye . New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

Farley, W. (1941). The black stallion . New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Fox, P. (1984). One-eyed cat . New York: Bradbury.

George, J. C. (1959). My side of the mountain . New York: E. P. Dutton.

George, J. C. (1972). Julie of the wolves . New York: Harper & Row.

George, J. C. (1980). The Cry of the Crow . New York: Harper & Row.

Gipson, F. (1956). Old yeller . New York: Harper & Row.

Girion, B. (1979). Misty and me . New York: Aladdin Books.

Griffiths, H. (1983). Rafa's dog . New York: Holiday House.

Hall, L. (1983). Megan's mare . New York: Charles Scribner.

Henry, M. (1948). King of the wind . New York: Rand McNally.

Henry, M. (1950) Born to trot . New York: Rand McNally.

Henry, M. (1953) Brighty of the grand canyon . New York: Scholastic Book Services.

James, W. (1926). Smoky the cow horse . New York: Aladdin Books.

Kjelgaard, J. A. (1945). Big red . New York: Holiday House.

Kjelgaard, J. A. (1954). Haunt fox . New York: Bantam Books.

Knight, E. (1940). Lassie come home . Philadelphia: John C. Winston.

Langton, J. (1980). The fledgling . New York: Harper & Row.

London, J. (1903). The call of the wild . New York: Puffin Books.

London, J. (1906). White fang . New York: Scholastic Book Services.

Morey, W. (1965). Gentle Ben . New York: E.P. Dutton.

Morey, W. (1976). Year of the black pony . Oregon: Blue Heron.

Mowat, F. (1961). Owls in the family . New York: Bantam Books.

Nevelle, E. (1963). It's like this, cat . New York: Harper and Row.

North, S. (1963). Rascal . New York: Puffin Books.

North, S. (1969). The wolfling . New York: Scholastic.

O'Dell, S. (1960). Island of the blue dolphins . Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

O'Hara, M. (1941). My friend Flicka . New York: Dell Publishing.

Peck, R. N. (1972). A day no pigs will die . New York: Dell Publishing.

Rawlings, M. K. (1938). The yearling . New York: Collier MacMillan.

Rawls, W. (1961). Where the red fern grows . New York: Bantam Books.

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