Comics I Don’t Understand

Children’s Books From Hell

Cidu Bill on Oct 23rd 2009

Filed in Berenstain Bears, Bill Bickel, Brooke McEldowney, In the Night Kitchen, Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are, children's books | 92 responses so far

92 Responses to “Children’s Books From Hell”

1. Pirk Oct 23rd 2009 at 10:45 am 1

   I’m reading the Grimm fairy tales right now, and if I have kids, I intend to read them to them.
   Of course, I’ve talked to people who say they would never read the Grimm tales to their children because they are too dark and scary.
   But I think that they portray the evils and dangers of the world in a way that can be beneficial to a child, to teach them that, and I think that catharsis is good for the soul.
   Nonetheless, I do wonder if a young child is ready for so much death and mutilation and so on. Has anyone here read the Grimm tales to their children, or had them read to them as a child? If so, how did they affect you/your child?

2. Super Jen Oct 23rd 2009 at 10:59 am 2

   I’ll let you know once this baby finally arrives, I guess…

   The main reason I’m posting a comment is to tell you that I am sitting here at my desk giggling like a loon after reading that rant

3. Arcane Oct 23rd 2009 at 11:00 am 3

   On the topic of dark children’s literature is a quote I recall, but I do not recall were it is from, “These stories do not exist to tell children that there are dragons, for children all ready know that there are dragons in the world. They exist to tell them that dragons can be defeated.”

4. Blinky The Wonder Wombat Oct 23rd 2009 at 11:22 am 4

   DNA studies indicate that Giant Pandas are indeed members of the bear family.

   Though that doesn’t meant they should go a-mixin’ with normal God-Fearin’ folk like the Berenstain Bears.

5. Cidu Bill Oct 23rd 2009 at 11:32 am 5

   Pandas aren’t part of the raccoon family anymore? Geez, what’s next, they’ll start telling us that some of the planets aren’t planets?

6. padraig Oct 23rd 2009 at 11:32 am 6

   Any of those PETA comics that show Mommy killing bunnies.

7. HM Oct 23rd 2009 at 11:40 am 7

   I have 3 daughters–my oldest one was not scared by much when she was young (although the kidnappers in Pete’s Dragon freaked her out), and I really haven’t restricted what she can and can’t read/watch as long as it is generally age-appropriate (she finished reading the Harry Potter books shortly before her 9th birthday, but I’m not letting her go out and watch a bunch of PG-13 movies at 10 yrs.)

   Her younger sister (4 yrs) however gets scared of things in books and movies easily–she won’t even watch some kids movies like Veggie Tales Jonah. I just tell her if she doesn’t like it she doesn’t have to watch it. But she love the book “Where the Wild Things Are”–although the movie would probably be too much for her.

   All that is just to say, every kid is different. Parents need to guage our own kids’ tolerance and make choices accordingly (and I agree about the Berenstain Bears, I find them very annoying). Some of our favorite kids books lately have been Daniel Pinkwater’s books, particularly the ones about Irving and Muktuk, Two Bad Bears. Unlike Brother and Sister, they never learn their lesson, but they are very funny!

8. James Oct 23rd 2009 at 11:41 am 8

   I grew up with Grimm’s fairy tales, Maurice Sendak, Edgar Allen Poe, and other “spooky” stories, and discovered the troves of old books when my parents passed away. I now read and share them with my children, and I notice that they do get scared, but they know it’s just a story and the scaredness goes away. They were more freaked out by the WTWTA movie because of the sadness of it, not because of the dark images and violence. I always read their books before them, but I’ve never had any reason to censor them. My kids are 9 and 6.

9. Judge Mental Oct 23rd 2009 at 12:28 pm 9

   Before I read “Where the Wild Things Are” to my son (he was 5 or 6 at the time), I told him that it was my absolute favorite when I was a boy. While it didn’t frighten him in any way, he was totally indifferent. He asked me “what was so great about that?”; and I honesty had no answer. Whatever it was about the images that struck a chord with me as a child was gone. I could still remember loving it, but I couldn’t really remember *what* it was that I found so fascinating. It left me kind of sad and I am not sure if it was disappointment that I was not able to share something magical with my son, or if it was because that corner of my imagination was gone. I knew it would not have the same effect on me as an adult, I thought I could at least *remember* what I felt as a child.

10. Christian Oct 23rd 2009 at 12:29 pm 10

    I completely and utterly refuse to expose my kids to any books-adapted-from-cartoons. I find them artistically bankrupt and detrimental to the imagination. And, yes, that includes any Disney’s Pooh books (appropriately named, no?). Of course we don’t much watch those cartoons in the first place.
    Books-adapted-from-video-games/toys are even worse.

11. Harley Quinn Oct 23rd 2009 at 12:31 pm 11

    I read “Grover and the monster at the end of this book” to my niece (3 at the time). When we first read it, she was terrified and kept hiding. After we finished the book with the surprise ending she immediately turned to me and said “Again!”

    Kids bounce back quick!!

12. padraig Oct 23rd 2009 at 12:36 pm 12

    Bear in mind that the old fairy tales often were safety lectures in story form. Red Riding Hood originally was a great way to teach kids 1) Don’t go into the woods alone, and 2) Don’t trust strangers, or you’ll be killed and eaten. In fact, the part about the woodsman saving her and Grandma was added later on to soften the story up.

    Maybe we should teach kids today that the weird guy up the block cooks and eats kids. Easier than explaining child molestation.

13. Oz Oct 23rd 2009 at 12:36 pm 13

    I don’t think there were any books I refused to read, but there are a couple of books I wish I hadn’t. Seals on wheels for example. My son loved that book. I don’t know how many times I read it to him. My mind still can go all the way from the first page “seals on wheels. wheels on seals.” to the last “night its falling. bang. it’s black now. shall we have a midnght snack now?” Once it starts, it just plays back. And it’s been 35 years. It’s worse than Green Eggs and Ham…at least that has a recipe.

14. Judge Mental Oct 23rd 2009 at 12:38 pm 14

    I sort of strayed off topic there, sorry. I have never kept books from my children due to potential scariness, but there were times that I was tempted to hide some of the Thomas the Train books. Not permanently mind you, there were just times I *really* preferred to read something else. Much of the phrasing in these books is constructed in a very odd, stilted manner, especially for stories aimed at preschoolers. I had to sometimes read the obfuscated text two or three times to get the proper inflection such that an individual sentence made sense. (If you watch a video based one of these stories and compare it to the book, you can see where they addressed this and altered the wording to more conventional language) Some, but certainly not all, of this can be attributed to its use of British vernacular. In addition, they sometimes elected to put pictures either a few pages earlier or later then the text describing the associated action. The first time through, you start re-reading stuff thinking you missed something.

15. Elyrest Oct 23rd 2009 at 12:39 pm 15

    Aw, Judge Mental - your comments almost make me want to cry. Your “inner child” (to use an overused phrase) is still there, but there is no way to go back to what it felt like. All this talk of children’s books, Soupy Sales dying and long ago childhoods combined with a dreary rainy fall makes me feel rather moribund. I think I’ll go read the funny pages.

16. Vic in Chicagoland Oct 23rd 2009 at 12:43 pm 16

    Arcane, the quote is from G.K. Chesterton “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

    My son (now 22 and an avid reader) never had Berenstain Bears growing up, for the same reason in the rant. Not the lesson I wanted him to get. We also didn’t have anything Disney, except Fantasia, or most, if not all, of the current “Award Winning KidLit” stuff. There always seemed to be an undercurrent in the Kiddie Lit books then for group think. Never be alone, never DO anything by yourself, only the “BAD PEOPLE” would do that, decisions by committee, don’t think for yourself… then there were the saccharine-sweet illustrations of cute bunnies playing with even cuter wolves. Bleh, I need insulin just remembering them.

    The other sort he never got at home was the all-inclusive, politically correct, diversity-trained, propaganda for a better world book. The ones that re-wrote “5 Chinese Brothers” or “Uncle Remus”, or Huck Finn. I wanted my son to understand that people ARE different, they sound different, they act different; and different isn’t always bad, it’s just not what you’re used to. Those sort of books took different out of the equation and made everyone the same, and that just wasn’t OK with me.

    What he did get was not your usual Children’s Lit of today (or late 80’s) both his mother and I kept all of OUR books from the 50’s and he heard those, on the Sweetness & Light side he got all of the Peter Rabbit books, but also Bre’r Rabbit too. He heard Russian, Scots, and other Folk Tales. Poetry from Shel Silverstein and Gahan Wilson’s Illustrated Poe (went through 3 of these), and Classics Illustrated Shakespeare stories, and Anderson’s Fairy Tales, and he heard his mother’s text books for the classes she was taking, and whatever I was reading at the time.

    For Pirk- Even Grimm’s. Especially Grimm’s. Not the expurgated sweet versions, the older pre-Disney influenced versions where limbs are chopped off to fit in a shoe or eyes burned out with hot pokers, grannies eaten by wolves…. Never a nightmare or ‘bad dream’, he loved the macabre and dark stories as much as he loved Beatrix Potter. No issues I recall growing up, other than most of his early teachers complaining that he wasn’t reading from the “Official Approved List” and one that sent a note home suggesting that “maybe Macbeth isn’t appropriate for 4th grade”. His tastes today lean towards horror movies- vampires, cannibals, zombies, blood, gore, & guts, and he reads a lot of my old science fiction & fantasy, but also physics & philosophy.

17. Mel Oct 23rd 2009 at 12:49 pm 17

    Arcane, the quote is generally attributed to G. K. Chesterton: Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.

    As far as books being too inappropriate for children — that’s up to the parents and child to decide for themselves. That being said, I’m a school librarian and many of my students are begging for more scary stories — I can’t keep them on the shelves. I’ve also read “Where the Wild Things Are” to my first graders and they enjoyed it. If they get scared, it’s for the character and not for themselves. And I always talk about the difference between fact and fiction. I’ve never had any parents complain because the wild things gave their kids nightmares. Kids love to be scared, adults just need to give them context and the comfort so that they feel safe being scared.

    And personally, I totally agree about the suckage of the Berenstein Bears and the cartoon spin-off books. But as a librarian, if that’s what kids need to get drawn into reading, then so be it. I just make sure I’ve got other things to tempt them once their ready to expand their reading.

18. Carolyn Oct 23rd 2009 at 01:05 pm 18

    When my oldest was 7 she was reading Superfudge by Judy Blume and asked me why it said Santa wasn’t real. That book was not read by my other two and I warn parents of early readers to keep away from it.

    My kids didn’t care for the book WTWTA either but I can’t think of any other than Superfudge that I wouldn’t let them read. I know a lot of parents won’t allow their kids to read the Junie B Jones series because of the poor grammar but it never bothered me.

19. tpjim Oct 23rd 2009 at 01:09 pm 19

    @Judge Mental #13: Heh. I have a friend who tries to keep Thomas the Tank Engine material away from their kids because it’s authoritarian: the various machines’ behavior (in his view - I wouldn’t know) is judged entirely by whether it’s pleasing or upsetting to the human authority figures. An older book about an anthropomorphic train called “Tootle“, which my parents used to read me, had the same problem. I wonder if this is a problem endemic to the entire body of literature about anthropomorphic machines: blurring the line between useful lessons about duty, responsibility, and focus and horrifying lessons about mechanical obedience. (But I don’t remember ever taking issue with “The Little Engine That Could”.)

20. Thomas Oct 23rd 2009 at 01:21 pm 20

    Sounds like they just prepare them suitably for their life in a working environment.

21. paperboy Oct 23rd 2009 at 01:57 pm 21

    I knew one little boy who watched Thomas The Tank Engine again and again. I don’t think he cared about the story, he was just nuts about trains.

22. Jordan Oct 23rd 2009 at 02:21 pm 22

    When I do have kids, I plan on reading them anything and everything. I think that refusing to read a certain book to my child or putting a certain series “off limits” is akin to libraries and schools banning books - Something I absolutely abhor.
    When I was a kid, I devoured all the berenstein books I could. I also devoured everything else! I was a voracious reader and I couldn’t get enough. When I become a parent, everything under the sun will be available to my kids. Most underlying issues that authors put into their books (take for example, the atheism that is apparant in The Golden Compass) completely flies over kids’s heads when they read it.I read a book about wolves once in middle school called “The Sight” It wasn’t until I returned to it later that I realized that it completely mirrored some of the Bible.

    My point is, I will read anything to my kids, and withhold no knowledge. I loved books growing up, and hope to instill that in any future children I have.

23. mkilby Oct 23rd 2009 at 02:49 pm 23

    Over the years I’ve discovered that I’m rarely thrilled by books translated from a foreign original. I have nothing against the foreign authors, it’s just that the translations often leave a lot to be desired. We’re raising a son who will be (if all goes well) bilingual, so I will have the luxury of reading Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen to him in the original German (except for about 10 or 15 stories that are recorded in impenetrable dialect - I’ll probably use the English translations for those). However, I would not dream of reading all 210 tales to any young child, until I thought they were ready for the particular story and understood the concept of a “fairy tale”. There are a few really brutal tales that I would classify as PG-13 or even R.

    The “it’s just a fairy tale” concept also applies to characters like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. If we do either, it will be with an honest caveat that “this is just a pretend game that we can play, but it’s not ‘real’.” I have no desire to go sneaking around behind my kid’s back for 5 or 6 years in a misguided attempt to “heighten the wonder” on Christmas morning.

24. The Bad Seed Oct 23rd 2009 at 02:51 pm 24

    I was born in 1963, and grew up hearing daily that the Russians (or anyone else) were going to bomb us into oblivion in our sleep, and seeing maimed and dead people on the news from Viet Nam, Lebanon, etc, every day. So I see scary stories and movies as something that serves to prepare us for the terrors of real life, allows us a safe way of experiencing and learning to deal with them, and generally gives us a relatively happy ending that gives us hope. I don’t think any kids should be FORCED to watch scary things, but I also don’t believe that parents are doing their kids any favors by shielding them too much.

    This all reminds me of the new data that indicates how much we’re screwing up our kids by over-praising them, not grading them accurately so we don’t hurt their feelings, and not preparing them for the realities of our competitive world. Sure, life is tough when you’re a kid and it would be nice if everything in your childhood were always good and shiny and happy and positive, but that doesn’t prepare you for anything you’ll ever encounter out in the real world. And kids generally have a lot of curiousity about dark things anyway, no matter what we like to believe. As squeamish as I was as a kid, I was always transfixed by photos of circus freaks or anything dead, and a friend and I spent a whole afternoon at her house poking at a dead rat with a stick. Kids need to learn how to deal with scary and dark things, and a book or movie seems pretty safe. Heck, I remember watching “Born Free” at the drive-in while sitting between my parents in the front bench seat in the station wagon, and being so scared when the lion leaps right at the camera that I flipped backward over the seat, right into my sister’s lap in the back seat. No harm done, and we got a good family story out of it.

25. Scott Oct 23rd 2009 at 03:07 pm 25

    We had no restrictions at all. My kids loved Bernestain Bears, though they outgrew them before the story CIDU Bill mentioned came out. The earlier ones were a bit less issue of the week. There were also some easy to read chapter books they liked. They never much cared for Sendak, but they both loved Ramona. We mixed literature, like Oz and Alice in Wonderland, with some not great literature, because we believe any kind of reading is good. Seems to have worked pretty well.

26. Karen Oct 23rd 2009 at 03:08 pm 26

    Okay, as a former student of folklore, I feel obligated to point out that the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales were actually stories told by adults, for adults, around the fire at night, which Jacob and Wilhelm gathered in order to preserve them, as part of Germany’s folklore heritage. They weren’t really ever intended to be for children. Even the Grimms cleaned them up in their later editions. The original ending of Snow White (or “Sneewitchen) has the prince and Snow White making the evil stepmother, after inviting her to the wedding, dance in iron shoes that have been heated over fire. Until she dies. Have a good night, kids!

    But then they did get cleaned up, and somehow they got mixed in with Perrault and Hans Christen Andersen (which, hello, The Little Match Girl is the most freakin’ depressing story ever!), and then Disney had to get his sticky paws on them and make them into animated movies.

    So while I would probably read the cleaned up versions to kids, the originals? Never.

    That said, one of the modern picture books i’ll never read is “Love You Forever” because I do not want my sons thinking that I’ll be scaling their houses to climb into their bedrooms when they’re adults, so I can rock them in my arms and call them my baby. CREEPY. And yet, moms love that book. Don’t know why.

27. Karen Oct 23rd 2009 at 03:11 pm 27

    Also, my husband says some of Dr Seuss’ stuff creeps him out. There’s a page in “One Fish Two Fish” with the kids carrying a weird monster in a jar into their house, and the copy reads:

    We have found in the park. We will take him home. We will name him Clark. He will live in our house and grow and grow. Will our mother like this? We don’t know.

    He asks that I skip that page every time. Creeps him out.

28. Darren S. A. George Oct 23rd 2009 at 03:15 pm 28

    I loved the BBears as a child, because they hadn’t come out with the moralizing versions- we had “Bears at Night” and “The Bike Lesson”. And “Old Hat New Hat.”

    The only books I won’t read to my kids are some of the Hans Christian Anderson stories. Some of them are just pointless (”To-day is the Golden Wedding Day!” And everyone became young again and danced and were happy. Then they died.) And some of them contain too much crap about his religious beliefs (”The man wished to be happy, and so he died, since all men are happiest once they are dead and safe in the arms of Our Creator….” Blech).

29. Karen Oct 23rd 2009 at 03:15 pm 29

    And lest you think I am restrictive, I have a sister in law who refuses to let her children read anything that is not published by a religious publishing house; they do not allow any secular books in the home at all. So no Ramona books for my nieces, or Thomas the Tank Engine for my nephews. I wonder if she realizes this will eventually come back to bite them where it hurts.

30. Darren S. A. George Oct 23rd 2009 at 03:36 pm 30

    Man, I feel sorry for Karen’s nieces/nephews.

31. paperboy Oct 23rd 2009 at 03:39 pm 31

    I guess the best thing is to expose your child to a lot of books, but read it with them first and be alert to any bad reaction.

32. Steven Oct 23rd 2009 at 03:51 pm 32

    There’s a difference between allowing children to read a book, and allowing a child to absorb its (questionable) ideals. Obviously the Berenstein Bears crosses a line with pandas, but rather than eschew the book (and the series) altogether, I’d rather talk it out with my kid. Pose the very situation that you used in your rant, Bill; “What if they had been rabbits, instead of bears?” The ensuing discussion could be quite illuminating.

    I just feel that, when I was a kid, I would have hated to be told what I could or could not read. My teachers called my father when I was elementary school with complaints that I wasn’t participating in class fully. When he asked why, and what I was doing instead, they told him I was reading in the back of class. What REALLY bothered them, though, was that I was reading The Lord of the Rings. My dad wasn’t bothered by it, despite the fact that it was far out of my reading group’s normal range. Every child has different tastes in reading. It’s far more vital that parents monitor their child’s moral structure than their entertainment intake.

    It should be noted, however, that I am quite child-less, and therefore speaking from the perspective of the child, not from that of the parent. My opinion may be in some ways suspect.

33. Carolyn Oct 23rd 2009 at 03:55 pm 33

    Karen!
    Years ago a friend had just had a child and kept telling us all about a book she received - “Love You Forever” - and how it was the sweetest book ever and she cried every time she read it and was going to keep it locked away for her baby to have one day. Being a new mom myself I couldn’t wait to read this magical book and couldn’t believe it was the same book that brought her to tears. Yuck.

34. Cidu Bill Oct 23rd 2009 at 04:06 pm 34

    Steven, I did tell him why I considered the book and the Ku Klux Bears’ attitude objectionable. I really didn’t want to delve into the bizarre logic by which Papa Bear’s racism was assuaged only by his belief that pandas were really bears, mostly because I’d have to explain that the authors were apparently insane.

35. Tristara Oct 23rd 2009 at 04:18 pm 35

    I have only ever censored one book, and sadly I did this during “banned books week” which I support BTW…

    My middle schooler brought home a graphic novel. It had a LOT of violence, sex and very sexy violence. I overlooked that part, we discussed it and I just pointed out there was better stuff to read.

    Then we got to the part of the story where the heroine was raped by her kidnapper and then thanked him for showing her she really loved him and just could not express it… This wasn’t a date rape thing, this was full on knife point rip her open and leave her bruised rape. In color. She got pregnant and by the end of the story had a happy little family, married the rapist so the kid would not be a bastard. This wasn’t Stockholm syndrome. This was a heroine who didn’t know she liked it dirty until he showed her.

    Even then I didn’t try to have the book banned, just moved out of the middle school library to a more appropriate place.

    Believe it or not, even though I was raised strict Baptist, I was taught banning or burning books was wrong. If anybody can control what I read, then they will go after my Bible. Pretty amazing sentiment for Baptists……. I wonder how they would have felt about the graphic novel…..

36. Howabominable (aka Lindsey ^_^) Oct 23rd 2009 at 04:55 pm 36

    @Jordan #20 - I agree with you that the message often goes over kids’ heads. When I was a kid I LOVED the Chronicles of Narnia books, and I did not notice any of the Biblical parallels in them. It wasn’t until I was a teenager and had already decided to become a Christian that I read them and said, “… OOOOH, I get it!” So whenever I see people complaining that those books were an attempt to indoctrinate children I sort of have a chuckle, because if children don’t already know what is in the Bible they won’t draw Biblical parallels and won’t care - they’ll just enjoy the story. There are so many books I loved as a kid that I go back and read now and finally understand.

    I don’t have kids, but I plan on allowing them to read whatever they want - but I do plan on reading whatever they read along with them and discussing what it is, what the themes are, if it’s right or wrong, etc.

37. Lola Oct 23rd 2009 at 05:38 pm 37

    I think one of the all time worst children’s books has got to be The Giving Tree. I still don’t get why everybody else seems to think this is a wonderful book with a loving message. That tree was a doormat and should have dropped a branch on that selfish kid or put splinters in his ass when he sat on the stump.

38. amo Oct 23rd 2009 at 05:42 pm 38

    @CIDUBill My dad didn’t like reading the Berenstein bears either. He called them the “stupid dad” books because the kids were the smart ones and the dad was always having them do something wrong and inevitably the kids would have to save the situation [At least this was the case in our limited collection. We didn’t have a library.]

    I have to say that a majority of books I wouldn’t read to my kids would be cut out because the authors thought they could just rhyme a few things and it doesn’t matter if it sounds completely inane. I even [and I know I’m going to be sent to the whipping block for this] don’t like Eric Carl [sp?] because his writing largely consists of such gems as “Brown Bear, Brown Bear. What do you see. I see ______ looking at me” over and over again. Not much imagination used in that book. Not to say I would forbid them. I would just never pay money for them.

39. Darren S. A. George Oct 23rd 2009 at 05:42 pm 39

    Lola will now be forced to write “The Giving Tree is not a chump.” on the blackboard five hundred times after school.

40. Cidu Bill Oct 23rd 2009 at 05:55 pm 40

    Lola, I so agree. I almost suspect Shel Silverstein wrote the book as a joke, to see whether anybody would take it seriously as a “heartwarming” children’s book.

    And Amo, if you want to talk about creative bankruptcy, let’s start with “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” which was a charming little book — and then was followed by an endless series of cookie-cutter sequels: “If You Give a Moose a Muffin,” “If You Give a Pig a BLT”…

    And who buys these? I mean, this would make sense if children remained 3 years old indefinitely and would anxiously await each sequel — but every kid starts fresh, presumably with “Mouse,” and how many variations can any kid read before outgrowing the concept?

41. Lord Jubjub Oct 23rd 2009 at 05:56 pm 41

    Lola, the Cartoon Network program Robot Chicken parodied that by having the Giving Tree refer the young man to the Raping Tree nearby. . .

    I remember a book I received from a children’s book club that my mother sent back shortly after I read it (early ’70s). It was a story of a young boy who came upon a medallion that would possess him if he gave in to it. A local wizard warned him against keeping it, but the boy insisted on wearing it. After he practically killed a local bully using its power, the boy decided that it would be best to rid himself of it. I read it once before my mom sent it back. I don’t remember the title of the details of the story.

42. Cidu Bill Oct 23rd 2009 at 05:56 pm 42

    And Darren, I’m sure the Giving Tree would be more than happy to do all that blackboard writing for Lola. Using its own sap.

43. Cidu Bill Oct 23rd 2009 at 06:02 pm 43

    Carolyn, “Love You Forever” has to be the most unsettling children’s book I’ve ever read. “Creepy” doesn’t begin to describe it.

44. Darren S. A. George Oct 23rd 2009 at 06:28 pm 44

    What? A “Simpsons” reference going un-got? Unbelievable.

45. Cristiane Oct 23rd 2009 at 06:43 pm 45

    Karen -

    You can tell your sister that Thomas the Tank Engine was created by the Rev. W. Awdry, an Anglican priest. Ramona, on the other hand, is obviously an imp of Satan.

46. Karen Oct 23rd 2009 at 06:52 pm 46

    Cristiane,

    My sister in law firmly believes that her children will be warped if they read anything pertaining to secular culture. The Fat Controller in the Thomas the Tank Engine books never goes to church, so he obviously is a heathen and will burn in the fiery pit.

    I agree with Lola that the Giving Tree is one of the dumbest books ever. What is the “relationship” between the tree and the kid supposed to symbolize? I have heard lots of moms say “it is juuuuust like a mom’s and kid’s relationship”..well, um, yeah, screw that. The kid takes and takes and then he’s old and sickly and realizes the tree was the only one who really loved him? Okay, depressing.

    Memo to new parents: Just because it is written by a famed children’s author (and some of Shel Silverstein’s stuff isn’t for kids, FYI), doesn’t mean it’s good.

47. CaroZ Oct 23rd 2009 at 08:11 pm 47

    Hey, some of Dr. Seuss’s stuff is very much not for kids either!

48. Andrea Oct 23rd 2009 at 08:19 pm 48

    OK, just to get this out on the table, I’m a youth services librarian. I have read many, many children’s books, many of which were really crappy. There’s not much I’d completely refuse to let my kid (currently 6 1/2) read. Some stuff, I tell him he’s not ready for yet; I’ll let him read it in a year or three, depending on what it is. He is a sensitive kid and was easily frightened when he was younger, so books with nightmare potential were avoided for awhile. A couple of years ago, I thought I’d read him the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, since I’ve known a lot of kids who liked them as family read-alouds. Then I read the first scene in the first book (to myself, not to him), where the family is barricading themselves in their cabin against a marauding bear. Oh. Never mind.

    I do, however, refuse to *choose* certain books for him, and prefer not to read them to him if I have a choice. This includes anything that started its life in another medium (Care Bears, Barbie, Pokemon, anything Disney), Love You Forever (creepy), and anything from the bibliotherapy genre (Let’s Talk About Telling Lies, When Joey’s Mommy Drinks Too Much, etc.).

    And although I believe in letting him make his own choices, I can and will give advice about what I think he’ll like, and what I think he’s ready for. That’s my job, after all, and it’s even more so with my own kid.

49. Katie Oct 23rd 2009 at 08:57 pm 49

    While I don’t believe in banning books, I daily wish all copies of “Love you Forever” would magically disappear.

    I think the following quote sums up my feelings quite nicely:

    “Ultimately, stories come from violence, they come from sex. They come from death. They come from the dark places that everybody has to go to. . . . If you raise a kid to think everything is sunshine and flowers, they’re going to get into the real world and die. . . . That’s the reason fairy tales are so creepy, because we need to encapsulate these things, to inoculate ourselves against them, so that when we’re confronted by the genuine horror that is day-to-day life we don’t go insane.”
    joss whedon

50. amo Oct 24th 2009 at 12:45 am 50

    Cidu Bill - I completely agree about the unnecessary sequels.

    Everyone - I always think of the poor guys’ wife in “Love You Forever.” Imagine if your mother-in-law crept in while you were sleeping and started rocking your husband. Now that’s nightmare material. Side note: When my mom read it to us she would read it in a spooky voice like it was a ghost story on purpose to make us laugh. She taught us to be cynical from a pretty young age.

51. Vidya Oct 24th 2009 at 06:33 am 51

    @Harley Quinn - The Monster at the End of This Book is awesome! Is it still published?

    @CaroZ - Because of Dr. Seuss, I’m still afraid of unexpectedly encountering those pale green pants with nobody inside them. :-p

52. Ooten Aboot Oct 24th 2009 at 07:06 am 52

    Did someone mention comics?

53. Powers Oct 24th 2009 at 08:28 am 53

    #34: The issue with the Christian parallels is not that kids will read Narnia and say “Oh, that’s just like the Bible”. The potential problem is that the Narnia books provide a kid-relatable parallel that can be used as an opening into Christianity. “Isn’t it great that Aslan sacrificed himself for Edmund? Poor Edmund, who was trying to be good but slipped up here and there. Well, sometimes you slip up, too, even though you try hard, and God doesn’t like that. But someone sacrificed himself for you, too, just like Aslan did.”

54. chuckers Oct 24th 2009 at 09:30 am 54

    Wow, I was going to mention “Love You Forever” before I got down through all of the comments, not realising it was “popular.” I think my mother or one of her friends sent it to us as a gift for our (now) 3 year old daughter.

    About half way through it, the stalker mom gets to be really Really REALLY creepy. And, to be honest, it did tend make be a bit weepy when I read all the way through the first time. But the stalker mom just really puts me off and I really don’t like reading it to my daughter. Fortunately, she has other books she seems to prefer.

    Berenstein Bears must have taken a turn for the preachy since I grew up with them because my favourite book with them was “Inside, outside, upside down” and I wish I had a copy of it to pass on. I guess I vaguely knew BB was doing parable type of books at some point but they never really entered my realm.

    I read all the Narnia books when I was younger, and like others, the religious allegories flew right passed me. In fact, I still probably wouldn’t have know if it hadn’t been for the live action movies coming out and the reviews all saying this is the born again Christians LoTR. If my daughter wants to read them when she gets old enough to do so, she is more than welcome to.

    I don’t really intend to keep my daughter from reading anything (other than the exception noted above) provided they are reasonably age appropriate. If she grows up anything like me, she will be a voracious reader. More power to her. She can read “The Three Musketeers” and find out what a prick D’Artagnan really was. Something that was never covered in the movies I saw growing up.

55. Morris Keesan Oct 24th 2009 at 10:44 am 55

    (Just time for a quick comment before my son wants to use the computer, because he has an appointment to meet one of his classmates in an online RPG)

    CIDU Bill: The Greater Panda is a bear. The Lesser Panda, aka the Red Panda, is a raccoon.
    (genetically)

56. AMC Oct 24th 2009 at 10:49 am 56

    Chuckers - $2 and shipping and its yours:

    http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?binding=&mtype=&keyword=Inside%2C+outside%2C+upside+down&hs.x=12&hs.y=17

57. Cidu Bill Oct 24th 2009 at 11:27 am 57

    Chuckers, there are — or at least there were, as of the mid-90s — three separate series of Berenstain Bears books: The easy-reader Suess-ish books like as “Inside, Outside, Upside Down” (which might actually have been published by the Seuss people; the more advanced, simple story series I mentioned where you’d have Brother Bear burning down an orphanage and then learning at the end that this was a bad thing to do; and for older kids, chapter books about the adventure of the Bear Scouts or somesuch.

58. AMC Oct 24th 2009 at 12:34 pm 58

    “Children’s books” is a broad category because kids change so much as they grow up. “Love You Forever”, in addition to be a brilliantly executed marketing play on the emotions of early nesting mothers, does provide very young children with a comforting message as a counterbalance to what they hear on the news.

    What that books make me think of is one of my most prized possessions - a signed note from my son, at 8, describing our bet of a $100 that he’ll still want me to snuggle with him as he goes to sleep when he is 23. He meant every word of it at the time, and was confident he would win the bet.

    There are just stages where ideas that are creepy to an adult, and which offend our adult sensibilities, make perfect sense to very young children. And to me as a parent, that was OK.

59. mkilby Oct 24th 2009 at 02:34 pm 59

    @ Karen (26 & 27) - Although the Grimm brothers maintained a “philological” stance (rejecting or deleting tales that did not fit into their “Germanic framework”), they certainly did not shy away from slicing and dicing the material to fit their own concepts. The stories have a wide variety of sources, but they labelled the package “Children’s and Household Tales”, and that has been their “intended” audience ever since, no matter how gruesome the contents (the standard German text of Schneewittchen still contains the glowing hot stepmother shoes to this day).

    I like many of Dr. Seuss’s stories a great deal, but I vastly prefer the older books (like “500 Hats” or “The King’s Stilts”), and I dislike the stuff where the moralistic preaching gets too opressive (like “The Lorax”). There is, however, one aspect that relates to a “creepy” feeling: as a kid I had a series of “roller coaster” nightmares, which may (or may not) have traced back to the loopy, impossibly steep paths and bridges drawn in some of the Seuss books. It hasn’t bothered me since then, but I sometimes wonder if the same thing may happen in my own kid’s dreams, now that I’ve started reading Dr. Seuss to him.

60. Reema Oct 24th 2009 at 03:35 pm 60

    When I read, “Love You Forever,” to my children, they laughed at the parts where the mom acted as ’stalker mom.’ I think the author meant for those parts to be funny and they were funny…for me and my kids, anyway. When I cried at the end of the book, my kids didn’t understand why.

61. Anita Oct 24th 2009 at 05:07 pm 61

    @AMC #58, I think you are absolutely right that ideas that are creepy to an adult may make sense to children, and “Love You Forever” is a perfect example. I received it as a gift when my son was born and for the first few passes I could not read it without shedding a tear or two — not because I don’t think the mother breaking into her adult son’s house isn’t psychotic — just the whole ‘cycle of life’ theme I guess. I blame it on postpartum hormones. For very young children, the concept that their mother will always be there and will always love them is just comforting. To them, the mother’s behaviour isn’t weird and my son (now 4) loves that book. Other books by Robert Munsch also tend to make adults look stupid in ridiculous situations. His books are hugely popular but — with a few exceptions like “The Paperbag Princess” — I tend not to go out of my way to select them for reading.

    As for Grimm’s fairy tales, I am from a German background and grew up with those stories. I don’t think they affected me in a negative way, but at the same time I don’t think I will read them to my son until he is a little older. The stories of “Max and Moritz”, two very badly behaved boys, did give me nightmares (they are finally caught in one of their crimes and end up being ground up and fed to the geese). Don’t think I’ll be getting those any time soon.

    Basically, there are books that I don’t go out of my way to find and read to my son, but I don’t think I will censor what he reads as long as I think he is ready for it. As HM said, you have to know your own child and what they can handle. I also think discussion is important. I have a friend who won’t read the Curious George books because he always gets into trouble yet it’s always OK in the end. She feels that it will give her son the idea he can do things that he shouldn’t and there will be no consequences. My son loves these stories and as we read them I will ask him things like “should George be doing that?”. I think he realizes that George’s world is different from what he would get away with. I’ve never read the Berenstain Bears and after reading the comments above, I doubt I will.

    I’ve been reading “Where the Wild Things Are” to my son since he was 2 or so and he seemed to like it, though it’s not one that he generally chooses now. My feeling about the upcoming movie is that they have taken a fairly simple story and turned it into something that will likely appeal more to adults than kids. Let’s face it, there isn’t enough in the original book to make a full-length movie, so a whole set of neuroses need to be introduced to stretch the story.

    Interesting discussion.

62. Cidu Bill Oct 24th 2009 at 05:17 pm 62

    I loved Paperbag Princess. The year my older son was 4, every girl whose birthday party he went to got a copy of that book from us.

    And yes, I’m aware that especially given the point of that book, giving it only to girls seems inappropriately sexist.

63. Haley Oct 24th 2009 at 08:14 pm 63

    Beranstine Bears “don’t talk to strangers” book scared the shit out of me as a kid. My mom later told me she felt so awful because I read tons of those books for Book-It and that ONE book made me terrified of the friendly old men at church.

64. Harley Quinn Oct 24th 2009 at 10:32 pm 64

    @Vidya — it was still in print 2 years ago, so I would imagine it still is.

65. Kamino Neko Oct 25th 2009 at 12:09 am 65

    Morris:

    CIDU Bill: The Greater Panda is a bear. The Lesser Panda, aka the Red Panda, is a raccoon.

    Well, no, not quite.

    The Red Panda is a mustelid, rather than a bear (which is, in fact, what the Giant Panda is), but it’s in its own family, not in the Procyonid family with raccoons (and kinkajus, and ringtails, and a few other genera)….and even when classed as Procyonids, they’re a different genus to raccoons (Ailurus, as opposed to Procyon.).

66. chuckers Oct 25th 2009 at 01:28 am 66

    @AMC

    Thanks for the link. It is the shipping that might make it a bit too expensive.
    My local Amazon has it for a reasonable price so I might pick it up from there.

    If people are looking for books that express a mother’s (or father’s) love for their
    children, perhaps “Mama, Do You Love Me?” (or “Papa, Do You Love Me?”) would
    be better choices than “Love You Forever” Not quite as tear inducing, I will admit
    but it does (should?) teach children that even when they do bad things that upset
    the parent, they are still loved.

67. J Oct 25th 2009 at 02:53 am 67

    Despite the earlier assertion that kids bounce back, and the fact that many kids LIKE to be scared, I would keep the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark from my children. Many of the stories were just…too much, especially for the grade school kids it had been targeted at. I have yet to meet anybody around my age that has not been scarred by at least one of the stories in that series and still don’t like to think about them even now.

68. Oz Oct 25th 2009 at 03:25 am 68

    I think there is a difference between censorship and selection. Before my son could read, I selected the books I would read to him (and when he began to read I mostly selected the ones we read together). I’d never read a Hans Christian Andersen story, for example, because they were pointlessly sad and depressing: A tree is chopped down for christmas and then thrown away, a poor match girl freezes to death … life’s a bitch sometimes - you don’t need a story to tell you that. On the other hand, once he could read he had full run of my or the public library’s stacks. For the most part he had pretty good sense, although he did get the wrong idea from the Stainless Steel rat.

69. lynn Oct 25th 2009 at 08:51 am 69

    The only two books I hid from my children and wouldn’t read to them are:
    Bedtime for Frances, and
    Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear?

    I just don’t need my kids told that they maybe should be scared of the dark, or of scary things in the dark, or that it was okay to wake up Mommy over and over and want more and more nightlights.

70. Marin Oct 25th 2009 at 01:10 pm 70

    As far as I can remember, my mother didn’t stop me from reading anything once I was old enough to choose my own books. She also read to us a lot, and usually we chose the books (which included a LOT of Berenstein Bears. I should probably call her and apologize for that). I’m pretty sure I’d do the same for my kids. Honestly, sometimes I think I want a kid just so I’d have an excuse to read kids’ books.

    I would never ever read the original Grimm’s tales to them, though. Not because they’re too scary — I read them myself at a pretty young age. But I think what I loved most was feeling like I was getting away with something, like I had discovered for myself that they were nothing like the Disney versions and that if other people (ie, adults) knew what I was reading, they’d be shocked. It was fun! I wouldn’t want to take that away from my kids.

71. Marin Oct 25th 2009 at 01:20 pm 71

    I don’t really remember “Love You Forever,” but I did have a book called “The Runaway Bunny” that sounds similar. I didn’t find it creepy at all when I was little. I don’t know about now.

72. Catelli Oct 25th 2009 at 07:18 pm 72

    We haven’t banned any books, but there were/are a few I can’t get through without making a snide comment or two. We let our sons (3 and 5 currently) pick their own books from the library or from the scholastic book order the school provides monthly.

    “Love you Forever” That book has always bugged me. The creepy mother driving through town with a ladder just freaked me out.

    But at the end, when the son is holding his mother in his arms… the tears just start flowing.
    And I’m the Dad. No postpartum hormones or anything.

73. Jenny Oct 25th 2009 at 11:15 pm 73

    Vic in Chicagoland said: /The other sort he never got at home was the all-inclusive, politically correct, diversity-trained, propaganda for a better world book. The ones that re-wrote “5 Chinese Brothers” or “Uncle Remus”, or Huck Finn. I wanted my son to understand that people ARE different, they sound different, they act different; and different isn’t always bad, it’s just not what you’re used to. Those sort of books took different out of the equation and made everyone the same, and that just wasn’t OK with me./

    It’s worth considering that all three of the examples you give are “difference” as seen by white people, not as written by the different people themselves. My daughter is from China, and I’d definitely want her to see something written by a Chinese person or a Chinese-American before I’d want her to see the caricatures in “5 Chinese Brothers.” Not that I think that book is evil or that she should never read it. But it shouldn’t be her first or only source. And the “Seven Chinese Sisters” (a rewriting, of sorts) is a wonderful book that we’ve given at every birthday party.

    My kids are little right now and I’m mostly careful about violence. I use almost everything (sexism, etc) as a jumping-off place for discussion, but violence is so casual in society (and in daycare!) that I like to be careful in books.

74. chuckers Oct 26th 2009 at 05:20 am 74

    I wonder where you can get this book:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8eE6SpVA5I

75. Matthew Oct 26th 2009 at 08:33 am 75

    From the wikipedia page- “In particular, Papa Bear dislikes Mr. Panda because Mr. Panda is better at math and science than him. However, Papa Bear finds Mrs. Panda to be sexually attractive since he has a severe case of yellow fever from having served in the Vietnam War.”

    That can’t be true, right?

76. mkilby Oct 26th 2009 at 08:38 am 76

    @ CIDU Bill - as long as we’re up to 75 posts on this thread, would you be willing to tell us all the “funny epilogue” now, even if it is off-topic?

77. HM Oct 26th 2009 at 09:57 am 77

    Great book about/for misbehaving kids is “No David” by David Shannon. Very simple, great illustrations, and the kids really get it.

    Some other books we love are the Irving and Muktuk, “Two Bad Bears” books by Daniel Pinkwater, very funny!

78. Czhorat Oct 26th 2009 at 10:35 am 78

    I agree on the Berenstein Bears, but more for sexism than anything else. The non-moralistic ones (The BBears go to School, Move, etc) have very traditional gender roles: Father works with tools and on the lawn, mother cooks and cleans and takes care of the kids. Mother is always the nurturing and supportive one.

    The “moral” ones are even worse; I’d go farther than Amo’s dad who calls them “stupid dad” books. I find them propulgating some of the worse sexist stereotypes. You have the lazy father who is as bad at following rules as his kids, and the nagging wife and mother who is going to set everyone right. Very little kids are too young for real discussions of these issues, so I find it best not to keep repeating something with a message of which that I don’t approve.

79. Mark Oct 26th 2009 at 11:26 am 79

    No kids, but I can chime in from the POV of a former kid:
    My parents, like Tristara’s, are Southern Baptist, and while not super-strict, they were definitely’good’ Baptists while I was growing up (still are). However, they never banned any books from us kids. I was a voracious reader growing up, and would read anything I could get my hands on. Dad was an entertainer, and as such, had tons of joke books, including all of Larry Wilde’s joke books, which had some pretty raunchy jokes in them.
    I’d probably read every one of those books at least twice by the time I was 7. Dad figured the stuff that was too mature for me, I wouldn’t get and I would either ask about and he could explain why it was inappropriate, or I would just forget it because it made no sense (some of those jokes come back to me occasionally, even though I haven’t read those books in years, and I’ll have an “oooh… OOOOhhh… That’s what that joke was!” moment).
    He was the same way with scary books, movies, or television shows. He might tell me I’d be better off not reading/watching it, but if I was insistent, he’d let me, figuring it would teach me to heed his advice the next time (The Thing has been my favorite movie since I was about 6 or so).
    As far as censoring/banning books in general, my favorite book as a child was Little Black Sambo, and I read that book over and over, until it literally fell apart. I thought he was such a clever child for outwitting the bullying tigers, and the stack of pancakes with tiger butter always looked so delicious. When I got older and learned that it was a ‘bad’ book, I just could not (and still don’t really) believe it.
    This topic is interesting, because just in the past two weeks, an issue has come up with censoring of books at our local school, but it’s actually been overblown. Apparently, The Kiterunner was on a course syllabus as mandatory reading. Some parents complained, and so it was dropped from the required reading list, but still freely available to be checked out from the library. Now _other_ parents are up in arms that books are being banned or censored (they are not) by a vocal minority. It’s still a dicey topic around here.
    As far as the B. Bears, I’m surprised, because the story given does not jibe with my memory of them, but I believe I only ever read the Easy Reader ones (which were in fact put out by the Dr. Seuss company. I remember the Cat-in-the-Hat on the back of the books, with the I Can Read logo.)

80. p Oct 26th 2009 at 05:24 pm 80

    We have found in the park. We will take him home. We will name him Clark. He will live in our house and grow and grow. Will our mother like this? We don’t know.

    haha, Clark has been one of my favorite scenes since I was a little kid. I was reciting this just about a month ago!
    “Will our mother like this? We don’t know!” cracks me up every time.

81. Lindz Oct 26th 2009 at 07:53 pm 81

    Gotta say, I LOVE all these stories from readers! I work in a library and my absolute favorite thing is when I get to check books out to kids.

    I was really reminded of a place I volunteer at off and on called the Children’s Book Bank (I’m not affiliated with them at all, I’ve just been really impressed by them each time I’ve worked with them). Reading all these stories of how books affected us as children and the conversations and thoughts they inspired…then contrasting it with this quote from their website:

    “In homes in middle income neighborhoods, the ratio of books to children is 13 books for every child. In low income neighborhoods the ratio is 1 book for every 300 children.”

    I don’t usually like to say “send money here!” but check it out, especially if you live in the Portland, OR area. And if you don’t, then look around your area to see how you can inspire readers. Their website should be my name’s link. If not, it is http://www.childrensbookbank.org/

    Okay, getting off my soapbox. Time to go scrounge up something to read Thanks for listening!

82. Adam! Oct 26th 2009 at 10:04 pm 82

    I loved Roald Dahl when I was a kid, but read a bit of his stuff a little too early. I remember being infuriated by The Witches’ conclusion-less conclusion, be-nightmare’d by Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator’s genocidal Knids, and profoundly disturbed by a short story called The Swan in which a young boy is tortured–possibly to death–by two older boys. Being a young boy myself at the time I was utterly horrified by this prospect. I later found out that some of his works, including that story, were NOT written for kids, but that did not stop my elementary’s library from stocking them.

83. Cidu Bill Oct 26th 2009 at 10:04 pm 83

    Mkilby, more of a punchline really: A few months after I made the comment to my son about being free to read Berenstain Bears when he learned how to read, just before of just after his fourth birthday, I was reading to him (Little House on the Prairie) and I noticed his eyes moving in sync with what I was reading. I should add here that I work at home and therefore I’m the parent who had by far the most day-to-day contact with the kids.

    I stopped and said “Zachary, do you know to read?” He said yeah, and it turned out he’d been reading for a while but didn’t want to tell us because he thought we wouldn’t read to him anymore.

84. Wendy Oct 26th 2009 at 10:34 pm 84

    I have a 5yo Daughter, and we read lots of things together. A fair bit of it is old Seuss books from when my husband was a kid, or Disney princesses or Barbie. I’ve tried the Ramona books, but we just never seem to find the time to finish a whole chapter in one sitting. So far, other than being bored out of my mind re-reading the same story for the 25th time, we haven’t said no to any books.
    However, after my daughter brought home the original HC Anderson version of The Little Mermaid, I will be more careful about those stories. She loved it, but as I read it, all I could think was “what a horrible story!”. Unlike the Disney version, the mermaid has her tongue cut out as the price for her legs, and ends up dying because the prince treats her like a pet instead of marrying her. There was more that I really didn’t like, but I don’t remember right now. I guess my daughter liked it for the same reason Marin said about the Grimm fairy tales.

85. Powers Oct 27th 2009 at 09:22 am 85

    Not all of the Berenstain Bears books feature “dumb Papa” and Mama solving the problem. I know there was at least one where Mama had a problem that she had to be made to realize.

86. Mark in Boston Oct 27th 2009 at 10:03 am 86

    Hey Adam! Try Roald Dahl’s “My Uncle Oswald.” Would you read that one to your kids? Does your library have it in the children’s section? It certainly would be educational, in a way.

87. paperboy Oct 27th 2009 at 02:03 pm 87

    Mathew, #75: Are you doubting the veracity of Wikipedia???

88. Matthew Oct 27th 2009 at 04:11 pm 88

    I would never doubt the wise and powerful Wikipedia, I just didn’t know Papa served in the ‘Nam.

89. Paperboy Oct 27th 2009 at 05:11 pm 89

    That’s because he never talks about it…. and DON”T ask him, man; just don’t ask him.

90. jonah29 Oct 28th 2009 at 09:39 am 90

    “My Two Daddies”

91. paperboy Oct 28th 2009 at 01:39 pm 91

    I think “My Two Daddies” is a sit-com, not a children’s book.

92. Cidu Bill Dec 29th 2009 at 09:52 pm 92

    Marin, “The Runaway Bunny” was my wife’s favorite book to read to our first son.

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