Koala Lou: "She Loves Me. She Loves Me Not."
Sometime in 1990,
I attended a Creative Writing Workshop
led by the award-winning Australian author Jackie French at the University of
the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.
I adored Jackie French and I savored
every word she said. But we had a conflict!
I couldn’t see eye to eye with her
regarding conflict. She told me in no uncertain terms that conflict there must
be between my main characters. Stubbornly, I maintained that there wasn’t any
conflict between them because they loved each other.
How naïve of me! How stupid!
Just to be polite to Jackie French,
the guest facilitator from Australia, I half-heartedly threw in a contrived
conflict into my workshop story.
Let’s fast-forward to 2013. My
grandson asks why there’s always an antagonist who makes the life of the
protagonist miserable. By way of a reply, I ask him questions.
“If Harry Potter didn’t have an
unloving and mean foster family – the Dursleys - would you emphathize with
Harry as much as you do?
“If Harry Potter didn’t have mean
classmates and professors at Hogwarts School, would you have rooted for Harry
as much as you have?
“If Harry Potter didn’t have the
meanest meanie of them all – Lord Voldemort – making his young life exteremely
dangerous, would all of us have continued reading all seven books in the
series?”
Conflict, not love, makes the world
go round.
Having invented Harry Potter, the
protagonist, and Lord Voldemort, the antagonist, J.K.Rowling has made herself richer than the
Queen of England.
Conflict is a gold mine.
What if it’s just an innocent
picture storybook for children? Does it need conflict? Very young children learning the alphabet and
the numbers one to ten don’t need
conflict yet.
But soon enough, conflict rears its
ugly head into their young lives. It makes them appreciate conflict in the
picture books read to them. (Sometimes, they ‘read’ the pictures by
themselves.) Isn’t conflict the glue which holds together fairy tales? Don’t
Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters make us love Cinderella more?
Let’s take the case of Koala Lou, written by
Mem Fox and illustrated by Pamela Lofts. Koala Lou, the bear, was the
first-born of her parents. Mommy K loved
her baby bear so very, very much. She always said, “Koala Lou, I do love you!”
Everybody loved Koala Lou. She was the superstar,
the megastar, the diamond star. She was the center of the universe. She loved
being loved by everyone, especially by her Mommy K who said all the time,
“Koala Lou, I do love you!”
In Frame 5 of the book, conflict suddenly happened
between Koala Lou and her Mommy K. How could that happen between mother and
child? Between two people who loved each other?
Well, new baby bears had been born. Koala Lou had
siblings and Mommy K had no more time to say, “Koala Lou, I do love you!”
Did Mem Fox, the author, put Koala Lou and Mommy K
toe-to-toe like bulls in a bullfight? No,
Mem Fox didn’t. Aware that she had only 15 frames in which to develop her
story, Mem Fox kept the spotlight on her main character, Koala Lou.
It was necessary to do so in order to develop the
character of Koala Lou. How did Mem Fox make Koala Lou an interesting character
to her readers? How did Koala Lou solve her problem? Did the conflict give her
an opportunity to grow up? To shine? To discover her hidden talents and skills?
Koala Lou didn’t hate her Mommy K and her siblings.
Instead, she resolved to make herself more lovable. She felt that if she could
win in the Bush Olympics in the Bear Universe, she would become the center of
the universe again for her Mommy K .
So Koala Lou trained long and hard for the Bush
Olympics. On the day of the championship in gum-tree climbing, Koala Lou exerted
every ounce of energy which she had. But it wasn’t good enough. She was only
second best.
Koala Lou’s strategy to win back her mother’s love
was a failure. Koala Lou was heart-broken. She went off somewhere to cry and be
alone.
Surprise!
When Koala Lou crept home, Mommy K who had been waiting gave her a long,
long hug and whispered, “Koala Lou, I do love you!”
This surprise ending was in the last frame, of
course. It is the most important frame because it shows the theme or message or
moral lesson of the story without preaching.
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