Once upon a time there were children's books for children. Books about the imagined, the silly, the nonsensical. Literature that engaged and entertained. Stories requested over and over, dog-eared with love. As alive to the children who read them as the Velveteen Rabbit. Today, there are children's books on almost any topic you can imagine, though many of them are taking on issues that are anything but child-friendly. For example, the new children's book about Mommy's Plastic Surgery, entitled, My Beautiful Mommy by Dr. Mihael Salzhauer, a plastic surgeon from Bal Harbour, Florida.
It seems that anyone, and everyone lately has penned themselves as a children's author, parlaying an area of expertise into a cute title, fanciful art and much moola, appealing to the pocketbook of every concerned mom with a potentially troubled kid. But really, come on, does it do anything more than alleviate the concerns of parental anxiety and satiate the obligatory twenty minutes a night of read aloud time? Could it hurt to have actually talked to your child about the issue at hand? And, more importantly (and for the most part overlooked) do the kids even like these books?
The real talent, at least as far as my children are concerned, lies within the mind-pleasing cadence of a Seuss rhyme, the never ending prose of a Sendak sentence and the matter of fact-ness heard in Margarot Wise Brown's wording. It's not so important that they understand the world any better, or that they undesrstand why we even exist at all. It is important though, that they love books.
It seems that anyone, and everyone lately has penned themselves as a children's author, parlaying an area of expertise into a cute title, fanciful art and much moola, appealing to the pocketbook of every concerned mom with a potentially troubled kid. But really, come on, does it do anything more than alleviate the concerns of parental anxiety and satiate the obligatory twenty minutes a night of read aloud time? Could it hurt to have actually talked to your child about the issue at hand? And, more importantly (and for the most part overlooked) do the kids even like these books?
The real talent, at least as far as my children are concerned, lies within the mind-pleasing cadence of a Seuss rhyme, the never ending prose of a Sendak sentence and the matter of fact-ness heard in Margarot Wise Brown's wording. It's not so important that they understand the world any better, or that they undesrstand why we even exist at all. It is important though, that they love books.
3 comments:
AMEN!!!!! Well said! xoxoxo Blooming Boomer
SO true!!!! a dictionary would be better to read to them than a book on mommy's boob job.
sugar mama
Ditto.
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