Yay for Elderly Ladies

Within the book Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, the main character Ethan has a mentor who guides him throughout his troubling life. This character is very similar to the Alex Cross series by James Patterson. Both of these characters are elderly ladies who have been with the family for an infinite amount of time. Amma, from the Beautiful Creatures series, is not even related to Ethan, she is simply just the housekeeper. Nana Mama is at least Alex Cross’ grandmother who acts as the housekeeper. Both of these mentors have the same duties: take care of the children, cook the meals, and try to clean up the house. But their most important job is giving the main protagonist(s) advice, that may or may not be taken seriously.  If it wasn’t for their stubborn beliefs and their want of stating their opinions, the main characters may have veered off in a different direction. For example, in Beautiful Creatures, Amma scolds Ethan for not having listened to her earlier when warning him to stay away from the new girl, who is apparently a witch. Obviously Ethan did not follow Amma’s directions because he is a hormonal teenager who would subconsciously want to be with the new girl more since it is forbidden. If Ethan did follow Amma’s advice though, there may have never been a plot and the new girl would have turned toward the “dark” witches. So even though Amma is not a major character within the story, her impact has indirect costs within the storyline. This is the same situation with Nana Mama except Alex Cross actually obeys his grandmother’s counseling. Since the Alex Cross series has at least twelve books, it is hard to provide an exact example of the impact of Nana Mama’s advice but she appears in every single dilemma, encouraging Alex Cross to do the right thing. It usually has to do with a situation between Alex Cross’ children or at his detective job for the Washington D.C. police/FBI. The point is that both of these New York Best-Sellers books have minor elderly characters whose advice has a major impact on the protagonists and the solution to the complication.