Thoughts about Good Times Travel Agency: Adventures in the Middle Ages

The cover, of course.
Image taken from Amazon.com, used for commentary

Read the previous piece in the series here.

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ℑt is no secret that I have an interest in children's literature for the simple reason that I have a child. And I think it no strange thing that I want to share what I do with my child. So, on a recent trip to our local library, I picked out a book to read with her from the children's stacks, one that talked about the kinds of things I do: Linda Bailey and Bill Slavin's Good Times Travel Agency: Adventures in the Middle Ages (Kids Can Press, 2000; ISBN 1-55074-538-7 or 1-55074-540-9).
The text is itself an entertaining enough read, at least enough to keep a five-year-old's attention through two nights of bedtime readings. The tone is accessible, with distinctions in voice between the focal characters--each of the Binkerton children sounds different--and others. (The snarkiness in Pettigrew's commentaries is delightful, honestly, occasioning laughter from my daughter and from my wife as she listened to me read to our child.) The illustrations are clear and engaging, splitting the difference between field guides, graphic novels, and short essays reasonably well. Small details contained in it contribute to the narrative presented by the words, helping to make the piece a more cohesive whole. My daughter enjoyed it, and I admit to having had a fair bit of fun reading it aloud to her. In that, then, the book is clearly successful.
Additionally, I appreciate that the book makes clear efforts to include contextual and historical information. The toil and drudgery of medieval life comes across clearly, as do concerns of hygiene and the possible perils of starvation--even in times of peace. Having the Disney-esque colors and cleanliness common to depictions of the medieval given to children offset is helpful. Children's works often shy away from unpleasantness out of an understandable desire to help kids be happy and to insulate them from the many things wrong in the world, but presenting some of those to them helps them to handle the problems they encounter. (The reminder that medieval children did not have easy times is also helpful.) And that the information is presented along the way, rather than being dumped on readers, eases its reception, which is to its benefit.
That all being said, there are problems with the text. Some of them result from the need to compress information for younger readers; the book does direct itself toward children--a note on the copyright page identifies it as a juvenile work in the Dewey decimal system, for example--and it is the case that minds with less experience need to have the information given them parsed somewhat. Even so, the reduction of the centuries and continents of the medieval to the "traditional" High Middle Ages in what is likely either France or England (judging by names given in the text) is somewhat vexatious; there is more to find following the fall of Western Rome than half-timber cottages and stone keeps. Related is the issue of the traditional framing of the medieval as being less than the preceding Classical and subsequent early-modern periods; it is not overt, perhaps, but children can pick up on subtle clues, as I have learned from experience. Too, while there is some passing mention of the influence of Christianity on the period, it is only passing mention, rather than situating it as one of the major cultural forces at play (for better and for worse, both). It's a remarkable oversight, really.
More problematically, the book follows the monochrome Middle Ages model that is being used to promote racism and fascism. There are few, if any, people of color depicted in the book at all, and certainly none in positions of power. While the publication date limits its direct engagement with the issue (i.e., Bailey and Slavin cannot have been responding to an argument that happened after the work was put into print), its presence and its direction at younger readers does not help with the just and appropriate opposition to that use.*
In the end, I am glad that such a work is available in a small-town local library. It's better than it could be, certainly, but I have to wonder if there isn't something better I could buy for the place--or if there isn't something better I could make for it.

*For some discussion of why this is particularly important, read Paul B. Sturtevant's The Middle Ages in Popular Imagination, of which the Society's review is here and my own is here.