The Strategy Of The Were-Wolf Dog by Willa Cather, 1896
The magic trick:
Clearly connecting the story to what kids will care about
An excellent Christmas Eve Eve story for you today, what with the titular were-wolf dog executing his dastardly plan the nigh before the reindeer are set to ride with Santa.
The story connects itself very clearly to children. It’s funny. I work in communications, and one of the things we try to do – especially in this short-attention-span age of ours – is make explicitly clear why you should care about this piece of content we’ve created. It’s not enough to simply put out a good interview and trust the audience to show up. We have to hold their hand; sell the interview as something that specifically speaks to you and your life. Every audience everywhere, essentially, now must be treated as if they have the mindset of a 6-year-old.
Hey, this were-wolf dog story is good. You’ll really like it because it talks about Santa Claus and presents and kids like you like presents. So please read the story.
Pathetic.
But true.
And that’s quite a trick on Cather’s part.
The selection:
But most boys and girls do not know much about the White Bear, for though he is really a very important personage, he has been strangely neglected by the biographers of Santa Claus. But that is often the way of the historians: they concentrate themselves upon a single important figure of a place or time, and forget to mention at all other factors quite as important. Then after a while some one takes up the people whom the historians have left in the dark, and tries to do them long-delayed justice. Now I would consider it quite a sufficient purpose in life and a very considerable accomplishment if I could set the White Bear right with history, and convince the world of his importance. He is not at all like the bears who carry off naughty children, and does not even belong to the same family as the bears who ate up the forty children who mocked at the Prophet’s bald head. On the contrary, this bear is a most gentle and kindly fellow, and fonder of boys and girls than any one else in the world, except Santa Claus himself. He has lived with Papa Santa from time immemorial, helping him in his workshop, painting rocking horses, and stretching drum heads, and gluing yellow wigs on doll babies. But his principal duty is to care for the reindeer, those swift, strong, nervous little beasts, without whom the hobby horses and dolls and red drums would never reach the little children in the world.
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