One of the hottest trends in publishing right now is the continued expansion of the genre “Teen / Young Adult”, a category my book “Downriver” belongs in. Literature dealing with the difficulties faced growing up and having to make sense of an often senseless world teaches many great lessons and eases the burden placed on kids. There is also one teevee show that can stand with the best of this budding genre.

“Avatar: The Last Airbender” is a cartoon series on Nickelodeon. It is set in another world, a small planet that has managed to stay in touch with its basic elements and the spiritual guidance that comes from them. The four Kingdoms that comprise this world are Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The monks in each of these have master “Bending”, the process by which the human mind and spirit manipulates their particular element. Only the Avatar is a master of all four elements, and he or she is reincarnated through a line stretching through generations. The Avatar has kept the Kingdoms of the world in balance.

Over a hundred years ago, the Avatar died and a new one was reincarnated in the Air Kingdom. While he was an infant, the Fire Nation saw its chance to attack and attempt to rule the whole world. The dire situation caused the Air Monks to speed up the training of the young Avatar, named Aang, whereupon the pressure of the situation caused him to panic and flee. He wound up frozen inside an iceberg for 100 years while the planet was ravaged by the dangerous and volatile Fire Nation. That’s where two young Water Tribe kids, Sokka and Katara, found him at the start of the show as Aang thawed out in a burst of Avatar energy.

The show, through 51 half-hour episodes so far, is about the process of these kids learning their own power and the power of the universe as they seek to restore the balance of the Avatar. They are pursued by other prodigies from the Fire Nation who have their own sense of balance and order to understand.

http://www.nick.com/shows/avatar/index.jhtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar:_The_Last_Airbender

Why is this such a great show? For one thing, it is very Taoist in its basic construction, but leans heavily on spiritual concepts from around the world. There is a good dose of basic Christianity in there as well, since the redemption of the Fire Nation appears to require a substantial amount of grace before it can proceed.

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While the show is deeply spiritual, it never loses sight of what makes a story great. The character development is spectacular; the kids who go through all of these amazing adventures noticeably age and grow up in front of us. There’s also plenty of martial arts action and a few dollops of teen angst thrown in for good measure.

What is remarkable about this show is not what it teaches. It creates a frame, a mythology that provides a language that allows us to describe our own world in very different ways. Imagine for a moment a mythology that does not view our earth as a “gift” from the deities, but instead as something we are a part of. Consider how the language of “dominion” over the world is very much apart from the balance of nature that is so evident to anyone who has spent time with it.

These perspectives and frames are far from new. What “Avatar” does is to put them into a package that Westerners, specifically kids, can absorb. In that sense they may provide a gateway that allows difficult concepts like Taoism to be more accessible to a generation as they grow up and take on positions of authority.

That’s what makes this a great show; it will stay with the kids who watch it the rest of their lives. Who knows? One of them may wind up being the Avatar herself one day.