Call of the Wild & The Incredible Journey

Burnford herself said that The Incredible Journey was "not intended . . . as a book for children," although it was the recipient of the Canadian Children's Book of the Year award for 1961 (Stott, 1984, p. 60). As Isabelle Jan writes in On Children's Literature, the history of stories for children about animals is littered with works which are too sentimental and anthropomorphic (Jan, 1974, p. 81), and Burnford's own book has been criticized for showing those very shortcomings (Stott, 1984, p. 60). Jan writes that "Animal fables for children have a long history which starts with Roman de Renart and the Fables of La Fontaine." Those works, highly original and challenging to their readers' imaginations, are contrasted by Jan with such works as "the dreary, labored caricature in the manner of Benjamin Rabier or the Contes de mon pere le Jars by

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as spent writing, pursuing travel and politics, buying land, and fighting debt. In failing health at the end of his life, he became disillusioned with humanity, claiming to write only to add to his estate. He published The Call of the Wild in 1903 (Walcutt, 1966, pp. 5-16). Again, the great differences in the two stories are found in the audiences and purposes of the authors. To be fair to Burnford, her work should be judged on its own terms, rather than against a classic work of adult literature such as London's novel about Buck, which is far more complex and mysterious than Burnford's in terms of the two works' portrayals of domesticated animals and their responses to experiences in the wilderness. Nevertheless, the specifics of his study call for such a comparison, and Burnford's story falls far short of the accomplishment of London. Her two dogs and cat are too anthropomorphized, too humanized, to be authentic or persuasive as animals. A child will not protest at this, but an intelligent adult reader will be distanced from the story and characters by the author's heavy hand. Even in the brief period before the animals enter the wilderness, Burnford gives them traits and actions which make them more human than animal. The Labr
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Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)