Mark Lou: "Dear Vina Jie-Min Prasad: The best ending in children's fiction"

Dear Vina Jie-Min Prasad: The best ending in children’s fiction

By Mark Lou

What work of fiction do you think had an ending that was really well done, and why? What did you like about that ending--what made it work for you, specifically, and what do you think it did right overall? What makes an ending satisfying?

The ending of the story is that part that leaves readers thinking. It’s the last impression that you can leave, and the only thing that can get a reader to pick up the book again. A good ending leaves a reader satisfied, fulfilled. A poor ending or one with many loose ends or is incomprehensible, can ruin an otherwise great book. The rest of the story focuses on the suspense, the build-up and ultimately paves the way for the ending, so when the final outcome makes no sense, neither will the book. A truly good ending must tie back to the original circumstances, and leave the reader thinking at the end. Looking for good endings isn’t terribly difficult, but one of my favorite ones is found in the children’s novel, The Trumpet of the Swan.

The great thing about ending of Trumpet of the Swan is how everything ties together at the end. While children’s books tend to always clean up any loose ends, the beauty of this ending lies in that there are so many details that get resolved along the way, and you finally see how they pop up again at the end of the story. For example, while Louis the swan was the camp instructor for a group of boys at a summer camp, he learned to play taps and other simple trumpet tunes there. Every night at the lake, he would play taps so the boys knew when bedtime was so that they could prepare to go to sleep. At the ending of the story, many years later, Sam writes in his journal, “Tonight I heard Louis's horn. My father heard it, too. The wind was right, and I could hear the notes of taps, just as darkness fell. There is nothing in the entire world I like better than the trumpet of the swan.” This last line made me remember everything that happened, including all the trials and tribulations during summer camp and learning how to play.

Of course, not everything goes as planned, even in children’s books. A good ending has the element of surprise, with something very shocking coming at the end that nobody would have expected. Sometimes, it has a major effect on the outcome of the story, while other times it is a surprise but fairly innocuous. In the Trumpet of the Swan, the surprise happened at the end when the dad of Louis the swan returned to billings to pay back the debt he owed to the storeowner from stealing the trumpet. When he returned with the money and the message and circled around the shop, the owner of the store thought that the swan was going to rob the building again so he pulled out his shotgun and shot the swan. Because the entire premise of the story was that the father would eventually one day return and pay back his debts and live his life in peace, that scene was very surprising. Although he eventually survived to return back to his family, this was a very memorable scene because it came out of nowhere.  

While this might come as a given, a great ending for me should be reasonable and not the result of pure luck or fate. While luck could be on the side of the protagonist, it is often nonsense for the villain or someone to randomly die from a fluke accident. The ending should show off the strengths of the protagonist and perhaps show the fruit of all the character development that happened throughout the course of the journey. In the Trumpet of the Swan, Louis’s love interest, Serena, accidentally lands into the same pool that Louis is in, and Louis manages to woo Serena through his large collection of merchandise around his neck and his skills with the trumpet. Here, we could see everything that the main character became all at the end.

Endings define the success of a story, and it is the keystone needed to finish off a strong piece of writing. The Trumpet of the Swan had such a good ending because the ending managed to include suspense, showed the character development of Louis, and connected to the rest of the story.