Books You Loved as a Child But Don't Want for Your Kids

[Anonymous]

We had a book about a little bunny rabbit who always got beat up by the big bully rabbits. Then one day the little rabbit grows really big overnight, beats up all the bully rabbits, and his daddy is proud of him for beating up the big rabbits. I loved that book, but it is very strange to read now.

[Anonymous]

You all must live in bubbles.

I didn’t care what my kids read bc we TALK about the ugly parts of life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The little match girl - I LOVED it. An orphan survives by selling matches on the street corner. On Christmas Eve she’s very cold in a blizzard and sees a family in their home all warm and happy. They welcome her in and she gets to enjoy this beautiful family scene. Except she didn’t really, that was a hallucination from hypothermia and she’s dead found dead on the street corner in the snow on Xmas morning.

Yeah WTF is that story about.

What do you mean, what is it about? It’s about an orphan (presumably) girl who dies on the streets of hunger and hypothermia. Andersen wanted to call attention to the plight of poor people/children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You all must live in bubbles.

I didn’t care what my kids read bc we TALK about the ugly parts of life.

I agree with this mostly but don't like extreme violence. Grimm's Fairy Tales for example are wayyyy too violent.

[Anonymous]

I thought the bubble wrap thing was overstated until I read this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

??? Um....but why is she so desperate that she keeps seeking a MALE dog's approval for her outward appearance?! Take a hint, lady...he doesn't LIKE it! Is he required to like it??? Maybe she should stop harassing the poor male dog!!! LOL
(And P.S.--he does like the hat she puts on at the end...because it's awesome!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had a book about a little bunny rabbit who always got beat up by the big bully rabbits. Then one day the little rabbit grows really big overnight, beats up all the bully rabbits, and his daddy is proud of him for beating up the big rabbits. I loved that book, but it is very strange to read now.

Message: Treat others as you want to be treated....or else you might get your ass handed to you!
What's strange about that???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I reread some of those Judy Blume books as an adult. I'm convinced they're why I became kind of a a mean girl in 6th and 7th grade. I always rooted for the underdogs in those books, but at the end time I think they normalized mean girl behavior enough in my young mind that I became one myself. I don't know. I was a dummy.

OMG Same! I was just telling me DS and DD about this like two days ago. BLUBBER was the worst and totally remember "experimenting" on the bus to see if I could BE that mean. (I could. And then I felt very sorry for it afterward and apologized to the crying girl before we got off the bus.) Just awful. I was in 5th grade.

Wow, this is really interesting, tell me more about this? I didn’t find it that way at all and still don’t. I may have to remov th books from my daughters room,

I didn't find these books to influence me in a negative way, either (I have no recollection of Deenie beyond the back brace.) I don't buy that the books create mean girls, but might normalize the behavior although that's a parenting issue.

So I'm the one who said Blubber made me want to experiment with mean behavior. My parents would have been 100% mortified if they had known about this. I attended church from an early age, knew the golden rule, was kind to others naturally, etc. And I feel like normally I would agree with you that most "mean girl" issues are parenting issues of not teaching your kid empathy/compassion for others, etc. But this wasn't the case for me. I felt empathy and compassion and was never the mean girl. And I definitely knew what my parents expected about being kind to others.

But something about that book made me identify with the main character, who, as I recall, is basically a normal and generally nice girl, Jill...who is good friends with two girls who inexplicably start picking on the fat girl in class after she gives a report on Whales. And Jill doesn't really want to be mean, but she doesn't exactly defend the girl either, mostly because she is not the queen bee and she doesn't want to upset the queen bee...but eventually she reluctantly joins in. But then she does something that makes her fall out of grace with the two friends and suddenly Jill is the one who is picked on...and the fat girl is now part of the popular mean girl group that joins in on picking on Jill too!
During my reading of the book when I was a kid, I think somehow I got the wrong message out of it at first and, to my 11-year-old mind was "it's an victimize or BE victimized" world! And I didn't want to be the victim...so I thought it would be better to victimize, even though I knew it was wrong. I even felt it as I was doing it, which is sort of psychopathic. And probably why I apologized even before getting off the bus. But I definitely DID it. And I guarantee you that, for me, this bizarre idea came directly from my reading this book and thinking I had probably get more aggressive and mean or I might end up like Jill with people being mean to ME. (Even though...at the end of the book, I think things end up "okay" again)
In fact, the message was supposed to be that Jill should have stood up for what she knew was right to begin with...then she never would have become the victim. But somehow that went over the head of my feeble mind at the time!

[Anonymous]

The shining and all Stephen king
Potnoys complaint
Read them both around 12

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought the bubble wrap thing was overstated until I read this thread.

Talk about overreaction.

[Anonymous]

My husband hates Rainbow Fish because he thinks it's about socialism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tikki tikki Tembo. Totally racist

I haven’t read this since I was a kid- what is wrong with it?

Basically it's a story to "explain" why Chinese kids now have monosyllabic names like "Chang" because the kid who had the long name ("Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sa Rembo Pep Beri Puchi Peri Peri Pembo"--or something crazy long and nonsensical, but fun for kids to try to memorize b/c it repeats throughout the story,,,which is basically why kids liked it!) fell into a well and the brother who tried to go get help took too long because he kept having to get through saying his name to try to get someone to come and save him.

And at the end of the book it's like "so this is why Chinese kids have short names" as like the moral of the story. (Probably whoever wrote it wasn't trying to be racist. It just as easily could have been a stupid story that ended with "and that's why tigers have stripes"--but that wouldn't go along with the name thing and making it repetitive and all that.) In the end, it just comes off sounding super racist.

I guess to some people. To me, it reads like a folk tale, which, like most folk tales, is nonsensical and very appealing to young children. (And, in fact, Tikki Tikki Tembo it is a retelling of an old story, although the origins of the story are unclear.)

Stories about why tigers have stripes are not "stupid" stories. They are the stories humans have told throughout history.

My kids LOVED the book Tikki Tikki Tembo. They are teens now, and they don't think Chinese naming customs center around the experiences of a boy who fell down a well any more than they think that tigers got their stripes because somebody spilled paint on them (though we read stories like that when they were little, too).

This is what I thought until my Asian spouse and I had a conversation about why it’s racist and offensive. It’s a tale made up by white people to explain something about another culture. It’s insensitive and racist. It’s akin to a story about a white kid getting burned over and over and saying ‘and this is why they are black’.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tikki tikki Tembo. Totally racist

I haven’t read this since I was a kid- what is wrong with it?

Basically it's a story to "explain" why Chinese kids now have monosyllabic names like "Chang" because the kid who had the long name ("Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sa Rembo Pep Beri Puchi Peri Peri Pembo"--or something crazy long and nonsensical, but fun for kids to try to memorize b/c it repeats throughout the story,,,which is basically why kids liked it!) fell into a well and the brother who tried to go get help took too long because he kept having to get through saying his name to try to get someone to come and save him.

And at the end of the book it's like "so this is why Chinese kids have short names" as like the moral of the story. (Probably whoever wrote it wasn't trying to be racist. It just as easily could have been a stupid story that ended with "and that's why tigers have stripes"--but that wouldn't go along with the name thing and making it repetitive and all that.) In the end, it just comes off sounding super racist.

I guess to some people. To me, it reads like a folk tale, which, like most folk tales, is nonsensical and very appealing to young children. (And, in fact, Tikki Tikki Tembo it is a retelling of an old story, although the origins of the story are unclear.)

Stories about why tigers have stripes are not "stupid" stories. They are the stories humans have told throughout history.

My kids LOVED the book Tikki Tikki Tembo. They are teens now, and they don't think Chinese naming customs center around the experiences of a boy who fell down a well any more than they think that tigers got their stripes because somebody spilled paint on them (though we read stories like that when they were little, too).

This is what I thought until my Asian spouse and I had a conversation about why it’s racist and offensive. It’s a tale made up by white people to explain something about another culture. It’s insensitive and racist. It’s akin to a story about a white kid getting burned over and over and saying ‘and this is why they are black’.

Although the origins of the story seem to be murky, it is a retelling of a folk tale. It's not a made up tale by white people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tikki tikki Tembo. Totally racist

I haven’t read this since I was a kid- what is wrong with it?

Basically it's a story to "explain" why Chinese kids now have monosyllabic names like "Chang" because the kid who had the long name ("Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sa Rembo Pep Beri Puchi Peri Peri Pembo"--or something crazy long and nonsensical, but fun for kids to try to memorize b/c it repeats throughout the story,,,which is basically why kids liked it!) fell into a well and the brother who tried to go get help took too long because he kept having to get through saying his name to try to get someone to come and save him.

And at the end of the book it's like "so this is why Chinese kids have short names" as like the moral of the story. (Probably whoever wrote it wasn't trying to be racist. It just as easily could have been a stupid story that ended with "and that's why tigers have stripes"--but that wouldn't go along with the name thing and making it repetitive and all that.) In the end, it just comes off sounding super racist.

I guess to some people. To me, it reads like a folk tale, which, like most folk tales, is nonsensical and very appealing to young children. (And, in fact, Tikki Tikki Tembo it is a retelling of an old story, although the origins of the story are unclear.)

Stories about why tigers have stripes are not "stupid" stories. They are the stories humans have told throughout history.

My kids LOVED the book Tikki Tikki Tembo. They are teens now, and they don't think Chinese naming customs center around the experiences of a boy who fell down a well any more than they think that tigers got their stripes because somebody spilled paint on them (though we read stories like that when they were little, too).

This is what I thought until my Asian spouse and I had a conversation about why it’s racist and offensive. It’s a tale made up by white people to explain something about another culture. It’s insensitive and racist. It’s akin to a story about a white kid getting burned over and over and saying ‘and this is why they are black’.

Although the origins of the story seem to be murky, it is a retelling of a folk tale. It's not a made up tale by white people.

I’ll rephrase. It’s a white author retelling a Japanese folktale as Chinese (hey, I have Wikipedia, too!). And a white illustrator who created entirely inaccurate images. And text that mocks how Asian languages sound to those that don’t speak them. It’s basically ‘Chinese, Japanese, who cares?’ And ‘all those Asian words sound like gibberish anyway, let’s just make up what the meaning of some super Chinese words ‘Chang’ and throw in some not even Chinese but gibberish enough words ‘tikki tikki tembo’ and give it to little white kids to read. We will all feel proud for learning about exotic cultures!’

You seriously don’t see how it’s culturally insensitive and racist? I’d expect as much in the 1960’s, but not today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nothing. Books are about creativity and imagination - there's nothing wrong with learning about the evolution of child development by teaching a 3 yr old that in the olden days it was common to spank children but now we know how it can affect them.

I was spanked as a child and it didn't have a negative affect on me.