Books You Loved as a Child But Don't Want for Your Kids
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Anonymous
It is so effing dark. But there is no accounting for taste. Disney has an animation of it in a short film collection dvd we have and I was forwarding past it and my kids (8, 6 and 3) were like 'why mum' and I was like 'it's so depressing'. They were like 'at least tell us what it's about!' so I was like "long ago, life sucked, everyone was poor, this kid had no parents and had to work in the streets selling crappy matches no one wanted and everyone was mean to her and one night it was so bloody snowy and cold she started striking matches to stay warm. It was a hard decision because she really needed to sell the matches to make money to buy food to eat- if she used them all she'd have no food and no matches...she struck matches all night until an angel saved her and brought her to a splendid home where she had food, warmth, clean clothes and things she'd never had before. It was great. Except it didn't really happen- surprise, she actually froze to death in the alley and her brain made up the hallucination as she succumbed to hypothermia and froze to death! The end." The 8 year old (B) nodded and said "that IS depressing. I'm fine not seeing it" and was fine to start the next movie. The 6 year old (G) wanted to know if they showed her dead body. The 3 year old (G) asked what 'succumbed' meant. The girls wanted to watch it and did so cuddling together in their blankets, completely focused. They really processed it and asked a lot of questions about the world/kids in history/hypothermia and the boy watched it as he played with other things and said 'lets never watch it again'. I let them know there was a great world out there but it can also be a scary world and they understood. At the time I worked at Department of Labor and there is a huge dark depressing mural on the wall there that shows the history of labor, including children. The oldest mentioned "like in the painting in your building" and the others were like "Oh yeah!" so this moved into a conversation about socialism and government aid, welfare systems and protection for children, the elderly etc etc. They just couldn't believe there was a whole world out there where children were abused/treated like rats and left to freeze in the street historically, but also that it exists today). BUT: it's a good seasonal seque into doing charity work/donations for the needy. I hope they aren't scarred for life. If you 'loved' this story/short movie, you'd also love "The Water Babies" book (warning- judgments about Catholics, Jews, Americans, Irish and the poor) and 1978 movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ACpWUFttTI (street urchin/chimney sweep/oh wait it's a fantasy cartoon of escapism!) |
Anonymous
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We like Tikki Tikki Tembo because DH is Thai, the names are incredibly long (like 13 syllables) and the story has a point (Thai people have nicknames for this reason).
BUT the imagery is mixed Chinese/Japanese so not in any way accurate, but neither is the story of name origins true/accurate. Practicing rhyming and memory are the point of the story. Though DH and I will reference the story if we are in the middle of a project and one of the kids has an 'urgent' interruption with lengthy non-relevant info at a bad time aka 'get to the point'. |
Anonymous
| I remember reading the Little Match Girl as a kid, as well as this one story in a book where a girl's dog gets out and gets hit by a car and he dies. I remember going back to that story again (the other stories were completely forgettable) because I was fascinated by the fact that they included a story where there wasn't a happy ending -- that was still pretty rare for kids' stories then as it is now. I wasn't scarred or anything; it made me think and I suppose it introduced me to the idea that there aren't always happy endings. I think that was a good thing, so I'll probably not stop my kid from reading those kind of stories. |
Anonymous
I have told my 5 year old that there are many different versions of old stories, and that one version of Cinderella has the toe and heel thing. I think it's different to say that once, than to read or watch a movie of it. I haven't told her about the Andersen mermaid; I had an illustrated version of that but I was probably 10. |
Anonymous
Well, I said 4 year old if you read my post. |
Anonymous
+1000. And I don't understand why, if you loved a particular book as a child and feel like you still turned out okay, why you would think your kid couldn't handle the same thing? |
Anonymous
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This is movies but I loved disney’s Peter Pan and now am too disturbed by the racism and sexism (why must the two females hate each other and fight over the man??) to show it to my kids.
I think the point is that we want our kids to be better than we were...so even if it didn’t “ruin” us, maybe if we show our kids more positive role models, they can live better lives and help build a better world? |
Anonymous
| My DD is still pretty young, but even the toddler books I've found problems with. Yes, Curious George (I find even the fact that the man in the yellow hat is just nameless the whole time very odd) and Dr. Suess already mentioned-- but also Go Dog Go, female dog asking male dog if he likes her hat and he keeps saying NO- wth, not cool. |
Anonymous
What a silly response. Racism is embedded in all sorts of places and ideas from books get planted in our minds and have a big impact on our culture. It doesn't mean we can't read imperfect books but just that we need to discuss the problems in them and explain the context to our kids. -a dad who read the Little House Books as a kid with his mother who grew up on a farm 100 miles from where Laura Ingalls Wilder spent the majority of her childhood and who has read the books with his own kids |
Anonymous
Puhlease. Racist morons do not even read. They certainly didn't get their attitudes from reading Little House on the Prairie. |
Anonymous
Not sure if racist morons read or not but you clearly don't. Or maybe you just proved your own point without realizing it. |
Anonymous
Yeah WTF is that story about. |
Anonymous
It’s telling that you can read about dead Indians comments and blackface minstrel shoes, but still put racism in quotes like those things are NBD. |
Anonymous
How many people do you think really discuss these issues with their ES age kids? As a MS teacher, I can tell you very few. As a result, when we show them a political cartoon from the mid-1800s and the child makes a comment that offends half the class, the parents tell us that they thought the child wasn’t ready yet to learn about racism. But they thought it was okay to repeatedly read a book that referred to people as darkies? |
Anonymous
| Playboys and Penthouse |