Surtout N’entrez Pas Dans Le Sac
In the regular events of the Reading to Kids group in the spring term 2025, one of the books that I read to children was a picture book in French, Surtout N’entrez Pas Dans Le Sac, or, Never Ever Should You Enter into the Bag, by a Togolese author, Gnimdewa Atakpama.
The story is about a lion and a goat, both of whom want to build their respective homes on the same piece of land. The two animals, one herbivorous and the other carnivorous, resolve the conflicts by some violent means in the end. A perspective lens of the illustration helps distance the dramatic moment of physical force.
My audience, including the two classes of the 5th- and 6th-graders and their homeroom teachers, gasped at the resolution. Although the climax is meant to be witty, funny and surprising, each time when I read up to the moment of climax, I somehow felt that I was obliged to apologize for the development, so I made a comment, “sorry” (ごめんね!).
Why did I have to feel sorry for the violence in the story when it is used by one character to restore justice? I reflected on my own simultaneous reaction after the readings.
I came across the book more than 5 years ago in a nearby second-hand bookstore. The wittiness made me laugh when I read it through on the spot. But apparently T, around 5 years old at the time, found it scary.
Shouldn’t the lion and the goat try to negotiate first? Can’t the story use a more civilized approach? The power of compassion and peace is the method most books for children will deploy.
Civilized approaches do not usually work, I am afraid. Especially, in the case of the minority. There is this old question as to whether the subaltern can speak. They can, and they are encouraged to, but they won’t be listened to. When anger and dramatic measures are finally resorted to, the minors are usually considered to be uncivilized and rebellious, while the world has forgotten how they have tried to be civil without any avail.
I remember once I tried to claim my rights on a certain circumstance, but the other party questioned why I acted “vengeful”. In the end, my very normal act and wish became unfathomable and outrageous to the privileged power when it clipped their taken-for-granted interests.
Of course, I did not develop this theory in front of the children, and it was satisfactory enough that they sat long enough to listen to the story, which was read aloud in a language alien to them, and chuckled when the story concluded. From time to time, I have doubts about the meaning of reading to children in other languages despite that I have set it a mission for myself. One fellow reader told me that it is a great opportunity for children to rely more on imagination to understand a story in a language unknown to them. The mechanism of imagination, and perhaps creative ability, overpowers a more restrictive model of cognition through language in a situation like this. I do try to perform the languages as much as I can dramatize it whenever I read. Several months ago in a city next to mine, there was a cultural event featuring different languages other than English. Its flyer encouraged people to hear different languages to know their cultures, which are usually marginalized or stigmatized by mainstream languages.
