manages a private talk every time she needs God as part of human needs to shelter and to believe to his power in her life.
Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret. I did an awful thing today. Just awful I’m definitely the most horrible person who ever lived and I really don’t
deserve anything good happen to me. I picked up Laura Danker. Just because I felt mean I took it all out on her. I really hurt Laura’s feelings. Why did you
let me do that? I’ve been looking for you, God. I looked in temple. I looked in church. And today, I looked for you when I wanted to confess. But you
weren’t there. I didn’t feel you at all. Not the way I do when I talk to you at night. Why, God? Why do I only feel you when I’m alone? 100
It can be seen that the impossibility kids’ have to consider about religion indeed becomes one of the main topics that Blume encourages to exist in their books.
In fact, it is not simply to make the readers acknowledged but also identified with the childhood experiences in religion.
1. 6. Death
Even in the real life, talking about death to children is considered uneasy. Parents hardly believe children will understand the concept of losing someone from
their life which can be painful that the reality is so often postponed until adults assume the kids are ready. Yet, Blume
’s novels imply that unhappiness does not come from books. They come from life. In Tiger Eyes, Davey is fictionally created to
experience a great lost of a father. Tragically, she is also narrated to witness the bloody murder of her dad.
We ran to the store. I remember the sound the sound of my screams when I saw my father on the floor. He was still alive. He said, Help me…help me,
Davey. And I said I will… I will, Daddy. I held him in my arms while Hugh phoned for help.’…
I don’t know how long it took before the police and the ambulance got there. I heard the sirens from a long way off. And then the flashing lights made a
pattern on the walls and ceiling of the store. By then my father is unconscious. I didn’t want to let go of him. The police had to pry me loose.
They let me ride to the ambulance with him. But when we got there, Daddy was already dead. 199
In missing her father, Davey is also characterized as a kid who mourns that she rejects to eat, to take a bath, and to go to school days after the funeral. Davey
thinks her sadness is too deep that it is not enough only to know that she is sad. “I don’t feel very well,” I tell her. “I might be coming down with something.”
I get into bed and lie back on the clean pillowcase. Mom sits down on the edge of my bed. “I remember my first day of high
school,” she says, tossing her hair away from her face. “I had violent stomach cramps. I didn’t want to go either. She takes my hand in hers.
“It’s not that,” I say. “It’s…” “I know, Davey.” Tears well up in her eyes.
“Don’t you think I know?” “Yes,” I tell her. “But having you know isn’t enough.” 20
Such described world in children’s literature suggests that children should not be exposed to situations upsetting them like sadness, fear, disappointment, and
under pressured because this world goes contradictorily to the ideology persuading children of the typical life of the joyful world. It is then understood that broad books
intended for babies in fact show the world as nothing but bright and clean and new and that the flaws, marks, and holes do not even exist. Nodelman observes that such
pictorial even continue to be intended to the older children
119
. Therefore, if children were not already the optimistic beings, then the fictions would encourage them by
insisting that the world is uncomplicated and blissful like in adults’ utopia. To
support this, surely, it is done by never giving any information that would suggest
119
Nodelman, The Pleasures 98.
