Reply to Children's books that drive you crazy

Forum Index » Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers

Reply to "Children's books that drive you crazy"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] Yes. We were happily reading The Little House in the Big Woods to our biracial children, when we came to the "darkie"part. WTF. I clapped the book shut 6 years ago and haven't opened it since. I am white as is DH, kids are adopted. I just could not go on reading it to them. It brings tears to my eyes to recall the memory. It ruined the book for me. I know, strong reaction, but it was during a time when race dynamics were coming on strong in our family and it just upset me.[/quote]

Sigh.  I have no idea what do to about the Little House series.  They were my absolute favorite books when I was a kid.  I read all of them until the covers fell off.  They were what made me fall in love with reading.  Now, however, I'm married to an Indian, our kids are (obviously) Indians, and we try to spend as much time as we can teaching them about their tribe, their history, etc.  And the Little House books are just SO problematic when it comes to Indians (not to mention that whole horrific minstrel show thing that the PPs have mentioned).

On the one hand, the books offer a great opportunity to talk about Native American history, racism, stereotyping, and all kinds of other important issues.  On the other hand, I'm not sure it would be a pleasant experience to read these books to my kids and have to stop every five pages to offer some sort of important commentary on racism.  (I can my imagine my 6-year-old saying, "Just read the story, mom!")

We have friends that have read the books to their kids but heavily edited or completely omitted all of the problematic sections.  I'm just not sure what the right approach is here or if I should just give up on the books altogether.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics