Read It Again! Read It Again! Read It Again!
My daughter, who turns two in a couple of weeks, has always really liked books more than about anything else. Recently, she's on even more of a binge, and the two things we hear most often are "Read a book?" and "Read again?" She also spends a lot of time singing the alphabet song, which is cute and funny. For a while.
Like most parents, we've become experienced in the ways of children's literature. We know what we like, what we love, what Mercedes likes, what's funny, what's not, what holds up to one hundred readings a day (Dr. Seuss and Goodnight Moon) and what holds up to one thousand readings a day (absolutely nothing). Kids--or at least our kids--like to hear the same things over and over again. To our shame, we've found that we've had to react to this by sequestering some books temporarily. Some of these are not great books, but some are. For instance, Curious George is currently mired on the top shelf. As genuinely great as those stories are, if I had had to face the prospect of retelling the stories of the good-but-curious monkey and all of his wacky misadventures just one more time, I might have freaked out and torn the book right in half. George will make a reappearance soon enough.
There are some books that we have been forced to deal with in a more....severe manner. The simple fact is that some children's literature is flat out awful. It's either saccharine, or too simple, or just stupid. Melissa and I are avid readers, and we have a great deal of respect for books and literature. So when we decide to take a book, tear it into a thousand pieces, spit on it, burn it, use ancient voodoo curses on the ashes, and flush the remains down a Tunisian public toilet, we don't take that decision lightly.
We've received a lot of books as gifts, and we sincerely appreciate every one of them--most are great and in any case it's very sweet. So if you're the person who gave us "Yee-Haw! A Bear's Vacation," trust me that we really do appreciate the thoughtfulness, even if we'd like to see the author skewered alive with a red-hot poker. It's just that there's only so far you can go with the touching story of a family of Yellowstone bears who travel to the big city, where the adorable bear cub who cannot do anything without first yelling "Yee-Haw!" saves the city zoo with his stunning lasso skills.
How we dealt with "Yee-Haw! A Bears Vacation"
We have a subscription to Babybug, a periodic children's magazine that contains very short stories or poems or ditties or whatever accompanied by pictures. It's really aimed at kids that are younger than Mercedes, but she's had them for a while, loves them, and still brings the issues around to be read. What kills me about Babybug is that each "story" has a byline. For instance, one recent issue had the scintillating four-page tale of a young boy who helps his parents wash dishes, laundry, and himself. The text is as follows: "(page one) Wash. Dry. (page two) Wash. Dry. (page three) Wash..... (page four) and dry!" Obviously, this is a perfectly fine story for small children. You want them to match the pictures and the words. Sure. But was artist Karen Dugan simply unable to come up with the subtle-but-powerful text, or was writer Mary J. Davis so proud of the way that she'd arranged the three words "wash," "dry," and "and" that she demanded her own byline?
If there was one single trend that I would like to completely stop, it's the proliferation of actors and other celebrities who write their own children's books. Like most Americans, of course, I'm completely and totally transfixed by every waking move of John Lithgow, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jewel. But do these people believe that because kids' books are generally pretty simple that anyone can write a good one? Or do they think that because they are famous and often are parents that they are worthy writers? Either way, publishing companies are going too far in allowing these books to be written. I understand that ALF has a book coming out.
The fact is that good children's literature is something to be relished and admired, and it is not an easy thing to write. I love reading with Mercedes, and I can't wait until Reeve is old enough to get into it. Especially because, by then, "The Collected Children's Stories of Tony Danza" will likely have made it to paperback.
